Calum and Tom on:

- The history of British Antarctic exploration, from Captain Cook's mission to find Terra Australis to Shackleton's heroic survival after the Endurance was trapped in ice,

- The geopolitical status of Antarctica, including Britain's territorial claims, the 1959 Antarctic Treaty that prohibits mining and militarisation, and how this could change after 2048,

- The potential economic value of the British Antarctic Territory with its vast untapped resources (oil, gas, gold, and other minerals) and whether Britain should develop these resources before other nations claim them,

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Timestamps

(00:00:00 ) - Introduction

(00:01:30 ) - Antarctic Overview

(00:04:16 ) - Historical Expeditions

(00:12:50 ) - Heroic Age

(00:31:19 ) - Sovereignty Issues

(00:34:58 ) - Antarctic Treaty

(00:36:49 ) - Resource Potential

(00:54:25 ) - Future Prospects

Transcript

00:00:00 - Introduction

Tom Ough

Welcome back to the King Charles III Space Station. I'm Tom Ough.

Calum Drysdale

And I'm Calum Drysdale. And if you, our listeners, have a telescope handy, you might be able to see our orbital space pub speeding southwards. Tom's behind the bar with one hand on our ship's wheels and the other one clutching a pint of gin.

Tom Ough

Listeners, you can't see the wheel but let me assure you that it's fashioned of beautiful English oak. A perfect replica of the wheel on HMS Victory.

Calum Drysdale

Tom, tell me where you're taking us.

Tom Ough

Well, take a look through that Mullions porthole we put in the floor.

Calum Drysdale

Yep, taking a look.

Tom Ough

What do you see?

Calum Drysdale

I see the Falklands to the west. South Georgia… and I think that must be the South Sandwich Islands to the east. And now it's a long rocky peninsula.

Tom Ough

Yeah, an enormous apparently inhospitable peninsula.

Calum Drysdale

And yet, something about it feels like home.

Tom Ough

Correct. As we sweep over this frozen continent, you will need no reminding that we are looking over the British Antarctic Territory.

I will stop the ship here.

00:01:30 - Antarctic Overview

Calum Drysdale

Listeners, the view is stunning. Mile upon mile of white wilderness with the southern lights dancing above it. But Tom, maybe you can tell the listeners why you've brought us here.

Tom Ough

Well, in short, what we're looking at is Britain's most valuable overseas possession. It could be the ticket to a new age of British prosperity, but it's under threat. And I think it's high time the country pay the matter some attention.

Calum Drysdale

Well, I think it's something that we often forget. In that it's notable when, well or maybe not so notable to some people, when we try to rid ourselves of a few tiny atolls in the Indian Ocean. But actually the idea that we own a whole sort of section of a slice of a continent is maybe even less well known.

Tom Ough

Yeah and let's put this in perspective because the Chagos Islands, important as they are, are pretty minuscule in terms of land mass. Whereas the British Antarctic Territory is about eight times the size of Great Britain. It's insane, it's absolutely enormous and I think it's high time the country paid the matter some attention.

Calum Drysdale

I think it's a bit risky Tom, isn’t it? Because the more attention we draw to our overseas territories the greater risk that the FCDO tries to find someone to foist them off on.

Tom Ough

Yeah I do worry about this because I think our claim to the Antarctic territory is in fact weaker than our claim to the Chagos Islands. So if you are listening and you are a senior civil servant at the FCDO then please, please avert your ears. But we are going to do an episode on the British Antarctic Territory nevertheless.

Calum Drysdale

And our first one without a guest as seemingly Tom you are appointing yourself as our resident expert in the field.

Tom Ough

Well there is a there is a criminal dearth of enthusiasts about the British Antarctic territory and I hope listeners will over the next half hour or so come to understand why I think there's a dearth.

Calum Drysdale

Whilst most people are going out to the pub and talking to women, what on earth have you done spending your time worrying about the British Antarctic territory?

Tom Ough

I for one got nerd sniped by the BAT as they call it last year when a big oil and gas discovery was made in the waters surrounding it and that led me to look into the BAT to which I had not given much thought prior to that. I discovered that it's enormous. It could be very lucrative. It's very exciting. It's a frontier. There's an amazing British history there as well. Perhaps we can get into all of those over this conversation.

Calum Drysdale

Absolutely. Do you want to start us off, Tom? Why on earth do we own a slice of this icy pie?

00:04:16 - Historical Expeditions

Tom Ough

There's a story to this which explains why we make the claim and I think we can get into that very soon. But I think it's worth winding back a little further because Antarctica has a fascinating recent history. Ancient and medieval cartographers hadn't been there. They nevertheless assumed that because of all the land mass that they're aware of north of the equator that there would be a continent in the far south to counterbalance that land in the north.

So that's not really evidence in favour of Antarctica existing but nevertheless a picture began to build and we had 17th century sailors coming home with stories of islands of ice trailing through empty seas.

Calum Drysdale

I mean the counterweight stuff is funny right because actually there isn't really a continent down there. Most of the land on the globe is concentrated to the north, there isn't reason really to go. I suppose the southern ocean around Antarctica is so empty that actually it's quite an inhospitable place for a wooden hulled ship to go.

Tom Ough

The seas around there are full of ice. They're very stormy. There's a prevailing west wind that rushes clockwise around the continent, dragging this very strong current along beneath. So not only is it freezing, it's also a very difficult place to navigate. So you can sort of understand why nobody went, why nobody discovered Antarctica sooner than they did. But nevertheless, people were interested.

Calum Drysdale

And there was a sense that there had to be something there, right? Like you weren't just venturing out into open ocean.

Tom Ough

Well, it's almost a little spooky because if you look at some of the old maps, they will even insert a large southern continent called Terra Australis Nondum Cognita, which means the southern land not yet known. And so we had French sailors, Dutch sailors, English sailors, including Francis Drake, who all went on a hunt for this continent. Didn't find anything.

Calum Drysdale

Yeah, and I think it's interesting you talk about this unknown southern and counterweight continent as I think Terry Pratchett put it. When I’ve heard that term, it's always been in reference to Australia, right? And Cook's expeditions down south.

Tom Ough

Yeah, well, Cook's a very important figure here. And the background is that in 1768, he was chosen to lead an expedition, chosen by the Royal Society, and its putative purpose was to observe the transit of Venus. And the idea was that if the transit of Venus were monitored from various points on the surface of the globe, the Astronomer Royal could accurately determine the distance between the planets. So that, as I say, was a putative purpose of that mission in 1768. And they do it, Cook’s in Tahiti, and then in June 1769, still in Tahiti, he opens an envelope which he carried with him on the ship all the way from London and it contains secret instructions from King George III.

Calum Drysdale

I mean this is the sort of thing that you really you read about in kind of Cold War spy thrillers. The dour Soviet comm