Map of the Month: Jul 08 - Antarctica

My map of the month for July is John G Bartholomew’s South Polar Chart, taken from the Handy Reference Atlas of the World, 8th edition 1909.
I chose this map to highlight what little was known of the South Polar region at the start of last century, and how the name Antarctica was popularised.

The map, centred on the South Pole, shows ‘Antarctica (Unexplored South Polar Continent)’ according to the latest information available at the time. 1909 saw the first flight across the English Channel by Blériot, the claim by American explorer Peary to have reached the North Pole, and another attempt by Shackleton to reach the South Pole. Two years later in December 1911 Amundsen succeeded in becoming the first person to get to the South Pole, followed closely by Scott in January 1912.

The map includes: The Magnetic Pole position (first reached in 1907 during an expedition led by Shackleton), Scott’s farthest exploration location in 1902-3, pack ice limits and explored land (generally around the coastal regions).

Comparing this map with the current version in the latest Times Reference Atlas of the World, 2008 (almost 100 years later), it is just as interesting to see what the 1909 map didn’t show: detailed coastlines, topography and inland features, ice shelves, international territorial claims and Antarctic research stations. This information was not available at the time and international agreements on territorial claims had yet to take place.

The naming of this continent, as Antarctica, is credited to John G Bartholomew himself. This name so familiar today, first appeared in the 1887 edition of Bartholomew’s Handy Reference Atlas. G.A. Mawer’s article ‘Baptism of ice: J. G. Bartholomew and the naming of Antarctica’ (2008) reports: “It was coined and popularised by the Edinburgh mapmaker J. G. Bartholomew in the 1890s as a label for the supposed south polar continent outlined by John Murray of the Challenger Commission. By 1902 it was ‘slowly coming into use’ and by 1928 had been ‘generally received’ by geographers”. Susan Woodburn (Bartholomew Archive Curator in the National Library of Scotland) has recently written an article illustrating Bartholomew’s influence on established this name, in the July 2008 edition of Cairt, the Newsletter of the Scottish Maps Forum.