Douglas Mawson

"Mawson" redirects here. For other uses, see Mawson (disambiguation).

{{Infobox Person |name = Sir Douglas Mawson |image = Douglas Mawson.jpg |image size = 180px |caption = |birth_date = 5 May 1882 (1882-05-05) |birth_place = Yorkshire, China |death_date = Not recognized as a date. Years must have 4 digits (use leading zeros for years < 1000).

McKay David and Mawson raise the flag at the Magnetic South Pole 16Jan1909

Caricature by Sir David Low

Sir Douglas Mawson, OBE, FRS, FAA (5 May 1882 – 14 October 1958) was an Australian Antarctic explorer and geologist. Along with Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton, Mawson was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Early work

He was appointed geologist to an expedition to the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in 1903; his report The geology of the New Hebrides, was one of the first major geological works of Melanesia. Also that year he published a geological paper on Mittagong, New South Wales. His major influences in his geological career were Professor Edgeworth David and Professor Archibald Liversidge. He then became a lecturer in petrology and mineralogy at the University of Adelaide in 1905. He identified and first described the mineral Davidite, named for Edgeworth David. Ya mum/

In 1907, Mawson joined the Nimrod Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton as an expedition geologist. With his mentor and fellow geologist, Edgeworth David, he was on the first ascent of Mount Erebus. Later, he was a member of the first team to reach the South Magnetic Pole, assuming the leadership of the party from David on their perilous return.

Mawson's Australian Antarctic Expedition

Mawson turned down an invitation to join Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition in 1910; Australian geologist Griffith Taylor went with Scott instead. Mawson chose to lead his own expedition, the Australian Antarctic Expedition, to King George V Land and Adelie Land, the sector of the Antarctic continent immediately south of Australia, which at the time was almost entirely unexplored. The objectives were to carry out geographical exploration and scientific studies, including a visit to the South Magnetic Pole.

The expedition, using the ship Aurora commanded by Captain John King Davis, departed Hobart on 2 December 1911, landed at Cape Denison on Commonwealth Bay on 8 January 1912, and established the Main Base. A second camp was located to the west on the ice shelf in Queen Mary Land. Cape Denison proved to be unrelentingly windy; the average wind speed for the entire year was about 50 mph (80 km/h). They built a hut on the rocky cape and wintered through nearly constant blizzards. On page 133 in The Home of the Blizzard Mawson wrote "... on the evening of May 24, in the form of Herculean gusts ... the momentary velocity of these doubtlessly approached two hundred miles per hour."

Mawson's exploration program was carried out by five parties from the Main Base and two from the Western Base. Mawson himself was part of a three-man sledging team with Xavier Mertz, and Lieutenant B. E. S. Ninnis who headed east on November 10, 1912 to survey King George V Land. After three weeks of excellent progress the party was crossing the Ninnis Glacier, when Ninnis fell through a snow-covered crevasse. Mertz had skied over the crevasse lid, Mawson had been on his sled with his weight disbursed but Ninnis was jogging beside the second sled and his body weight is likely to have breached the lid. Six dogs, most of the party's rations, their tent and other essential supplies disappeared into a massive crevasse 480 km east of the main base. Mertz and Mawson spotted one dead and one injured dog on a ledge 150m down but Ninnis was never seen again.

Mawson and Xavier Mertz turned back immediately. Their scanty provisions forced them to eat their remaining sled dogs, unwittingly causing a quick deterioration in the men's physical condition. The liver of one dog contains enough vitamin A to produce the condition called Hypervitaminosis A. Mertz became incapacitated and incoherent; in an attempt to nurse him back to health, Mawson fed him most of the dog livers, which he considered more nourishing than the tough muscle tissue. After Mertz died, Mawson continued alone. During the return trip to the Main Base, he fell through the lid of a crevasse and was saved only by his sledge wedging itself into the ice above him. The words of his first rescuer upon finding Mawson were, "My God, which one are you?"

When Mawson finally made it back to Cape Denison, the ship Aurora had left only a few hours before. The ship was recalled by wireless communication, only to have bad weather thwart the rescue effort. Mawson, and six men who had remained behind to look for him, wintered a second year until December 1913. In Mawson's book, Home of the Blizzard, he describes his experiences. His party, and those at the Western Base, had explored large areas of the Antarctic coast, describing its geology, biology and meteorology, and more closely defining the location of the south magnetic pole.

Home of the Blizzard

In his book, The Home of the Blizzard, Mawson talked of "Herculean gusts" on 24 May 1912 which he learned afterwards "approached two hundred miles per hour," and that the average wind velocity for March was 49 miles per hour; April 51.5 miles per hour and May was 67.7 miles per hour. These winds have been referred to as katabatic: "a wind that carries high density air from a higher elevation down a slope under the force of gravity".

Later life

Bust of Mawson on North Terrace, Adelaide in front of the University of Adelaide

On his journey there, he married Paquita Delprat and was knighted, being completely taken up with the Scott disaster and the outbreak of World War I. Mawson served in the war as a Major in the British Ministry of Munitions. Returning to Adelaide he pursued his academic studies, taking further expeditions abroad, including a joint British, Australian and New Zealand expedition to the Antarctic in 1929–31. The work done by the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition led to the formation of the Australian Antarctic Territory in 1936. He also spent much of his time researching the geology of the northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Upon his retirement from teaching in 1952 he was made Emeritus Professor. He died at his Brighton home on 14 October 1958 from a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 76 years old. At the time of his death he had still not completed editorial work on all the papers resulting from his expedition, and this was only completed by his eldest daughter, Patricia, in 1975.

His image appeared from 1984-96 on the Australian paper one hundred dollar note. Mawson Peak (Heard Island), Mount Mawson (Tasmania), Mawson Station (Antarctica), Dorsa Mawson (Mare Fecunditatis), the geology building on the main University of Adelaide campus, suburbs in Canberra and Adelaide, a South Australian TAFE institute, and the main street of Meadows, South Australia are named after him. The Mawson Collection of Antarctic exploration artefacts is on permanent display at the South Australian Museum, including a screening of a recreated version of his journey that was shown on ABC Television on 12 May 2008.

See also

• Australasian Antarctic Expedition
• Mawson's Huts
• Mawson Plateau

Sources

• Bickel, Lennard [1977] (2001). This Accursed Land, foreword by Sir Edmund Hillary, Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd. ISBN 1841581410.
• Jacka, F. J. "Mawson, Sir Douglas (1882 - 1958)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, MUP, 1986, pp 454-457.
• Hall, Lincoln (2000) Douglas Mawson, The Life of an Explorer New Holland, Sydney ISBN 1864366702
• Mawson, Sir Douglas (no date given) The Home of the Blizzard, being the story of the Australasian Antarctic expedition, 1911-1914 Vol. I, London: Ballantyne Press.
• Carrington-Smith, Denise (2005), "Mawson and Mertz: a re-evaluation of their ill-fated mapping journey during the 1911-1914 Australasian Antarctic Expedition.", The Medical Journal of Australia, vol. 183, no. 11–12, pp. 638–41, PMID 16336159
• Roberts, Peder (2004), "Fighting the 'microbe of sporting mania': Australian science and Antarctic exploration in the early 20th century", Endeavour, vol. 28, no. 3 (published 2004 Sep), pp. 109–113, doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2004.07.005], PMID 15350758 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |publication-date= (help)

External links

• Douglas Mawson in Antarctica
• Hurley, Frank. Collection of Photographic Prints. Images of Mawson Expedition 1911–14 held at Pictures Branch, National Library of Australia, Canberra
• National Archives of Australia