Lars Christensen Expedition 1936/37

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The Lars Christensen Expedition 1936/37 ( Norwegian consul Lars Christensen's ekspedisjon 1936/37 ) was a research trip to the Antarctic . It was the eleventh and last expedition financed by the Norwegian whaling entrepreneur Lars Christensen , and also the fourth in which he also participated. The aim of the trip, which in some ways resembled a pleasure trip, was to map around 5000 km of coastline from Queen Marie Land to Queen Maud Land between 100 degrees east and 10 degrees west.

course

In addition to Christensen and a 32-person crew under Captain Klarius Mikkelsen (* 1887), Christensen's wife Ingrid (1891–1976) and his youngest daughter Augusta Sofie (* 1919) took part in the voyage with the tanker Thorshavn . The ship had previously been used on four Antarctic voyages financed by Christensen between 1931 and 1935. The most important piece of equipment for creating aerial photographs for mapping was a Stinson Reliant aircraft with 350  hp and a range of 1200 km, which was piloted by the Norwegian pilot Viggo Widerøe (1904–2002), founder of the Widerøe's Flying Company .

The Thorshavn left Cape Town on December 28, 1936 on a south-easterly course. The first destination in Antarctica after a stopover on the Kerguelen was the West Ice Shelf on the coast of Princess Elisabeth Land. Between January 25 and 28, 1937, Widerøe and aerial photographer Nils Romnæs (1902-1943) made several flights in a westerly direction along the Ingrid-Christensen and Lars-Christensen coasts up to 66 degrees east. On January 30, Christensen and his wife landed on the Scullin Monolith in Mac Robertson Land . The next day, aerial photographs were taken of the Mawson coast and that of the Kemplands, which bordered to the west .

On February 4, 1937, the Thorshavn reached 45 degrees east and anchored off the Crown Prince Olav coast . Widerøe discovered a previously unexplored north-east-south-west coastline on a 2 ½ hour flight to the west, which is now known as the Prince Harald Coast . The next day, aerial photographs of the Princess Ragnhild Coast were taken during two more flights . On February 6, 1937, Widerøe took off at 69 ° 15 ′  S , 26 ° 0 ′  E on a flight into the interior of the Antarctic continent and discovered the Sør Rondane mountains .

On February 18, 1937, the Thorshavn arrived back in Cape Town, where most of the crew left the ship. The expedition finally ended in New York City , which reached the Thorshavn in March of the same year. Norwegian cartographers evaluated the around 2200 aerial photographs taken during the expedition in 1946. This evaluation led to the recording and naming of numerous previously undiscovered geographical objects.

See also

literature

  • Lars Christensen : My Last Expedition to the Antarctic 1936–1937. Johan Grundt Tanum, Oslo 1938 (English).
  • Hans Edvard Hansen: Consul Lars Christensen's ekspedisjon til Antarctica sesongen 1936–37 og the cartographic results. Polar-Årboken, 1937 (Norwegian), SPRI record no.17050.
  • John Stewart: Antarctica - An Encyclopedia . Vol. 2, McFarland & Co., Jefferson and London 2011, ISBN 978-0-7864-3590-6 , pp. 903-904 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ MT Thorshavn . Information and photos about the ship on the homepage of the Norwegian shipping company Thor Dahl A / S (Norwegian, accessed on September 18, 2017).