Most guests aboard adventure and expedition cruise ships would
probably quote the scenic beauty and wildlife experiences as their
prime motivation, but many would also cite visiting or reliving some
of the famous journeys of history.
My first expedition cruise to Antarctica in 1998 introduced me to
the now not-quite-so-unknown Australian explorer, Sir Hubert
Wilkins. Our Quark Expeditions guest lecturer from the Scott Polar
Research Institute at Cambridge University berated me (as
quasi-ambassador for Australia) for our shamefully poor knowledge
of this extraordinary man. Wilkins, in case you didn’t know, was the
first man to take a submarine beneath the polar icecap, fly an aircraft
in Antarctica and fly across the polar icecap – among just some of his
achievements. Visitors to Deception Island should know that the
popular Whalers Bay was his base for these explorations over
summer 1928-29.
Visiting Mawsons Hut at Cape Denison with Heritage Expeditions or
Orion is becoming a pilgrimage of the order of the Kokoda track and
bowing in respect at Shackleton’s grave on South Georgia is another.
Some hardy trekkers have even completed his famous
cross-country hike across the island with the likes of Aurora
Expeditions. And who could forget the escape from Elephant Island
revisited by Silverseas guests just recently.
On a recent American Safari Cruises itinerary in Hawaii, we visited
the site of Cook’s final moments, a poignant experience for many
Australians. The well-documented plight of the Bounty mutineers,
whether you side with Christian or Bligh, can be explored at various
locations on a South Pacific cruise, like those of Hapag-Lloyd, Aranui or Paul Gaugin that visits Tahiti, Pitcairn or Norfolk Island.
While visiting familiar sites and locations from the great moments
in history is exhilarating for retro-adventure buffs, I would argue that
there is just as much excitement learning about the unheard-of or
the lost-to-time great feats of endurance and derring-do. For
example, Count Felix von Luckner, the German nobleman and sea
raider of WWI who took a longboat from Tahiti to Fiji in 1917 after
being shipwrecked. Or the diminutive Inuit woman, Ada Blackjack,
who was the last survivor of a failed arctic expedition stranded on
Wrangel Island in the Chukchi Sea – or the heroic Capt Bob ‘Ice
Master’ Bartlett who braved sea ice, polar bears and unfriendly
Russians to rescue another party marooned on the same island.
Spitsbergen is another impossibly remote archipelago dripping
with history, including two heroic chapters from the mind-boggling
Wilkins repertoire. Who remembers the valiant airship assaults on
the North Pole launched from the world’s most northerly
settlement, and the mysterious disappearance of Roald Amundsen
during the search and rescue? Clue: movie ‘The Red Tent’.
There are many more, but I will leave you with the tale of Sir John
Franklin who, along with 127 of his men and two state-of-the-art
vessels, vanished almost without trace attempting to forge the
northwest passage across the top of Canada. Today One Ocean
Expeditions is one of a handful of truly adventurous cruise
companies offering a “no casualty” re-enactment of Franklin’s 1845 folly.
For more details on these great journeys contact your favourite
ICCA adventure cruise agent or visit:
www.adventurecruiseguide.com.
