The Voyage of the 'Why Not?' in the Antarctic

This 1911 publication, translated from the French, vividly describes the varied hardships and satisfactions of Antarctic exploration and scientific research in the early twentieth century. Son of the famed neurologist, Jean-Baptiste Charcot (1867–1936) commanded the Pourquoi-Pas? on its hazardous journey into the ice-bound regions south of Cape Horn. Illustrated with numerous photographs, his journal entries provide a rich account of daily life aboard the ship and out on the ice, including encounters with seals and penguins, and Christmases gathered around a cardboard tree. Building on the advances made by previous expeditions, including his own on the Français (1903–5), Charcot and his men, ranging in their expertise from astronomy to zoology, set out to further push back the boundaries of the unknown 'for the honour of French science'. The precise mapping of more than a thousand miles of Antarctic coastline ranked as one of the expedition's foremost achievements.