In a recent Financial Times feature, Oxford historian, writer, and hotelier Peter Frankopan reflects on his Swan Hellenic voyage to Antarctica aboard SH Vega. Traveling from Ushuaia to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and the Antarctic Peninsula, he explores Shackleton’s legacy, the remains of South Georgia’s whaling stations, penguin colonies, whales, and icebergs of all kinds of shapes and sizes. The article captures what makes Antarctica such a powerful destination: remote geographically, yet deeply connected to the world we all inhabit, it is one of the greatest engines of the Earth’s climate system.
“Great God! this is an awful place”, wrote Robert Falcon Scott on January 17 1912 after reaching the South Pole. Scott’s verdict was no doubt partly influenced by the fact that he and his small team had found a tent left by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, along with a letter addressed to Haakon VII, King of Norway, which Scott was politely asked to post as proof that both men had reached the centre of the world’s seventh continent.
For most of us, Antarctica is a vast, remote icy wilderness that is home to penguins, a small community of scientists and a place where explorers of the past and present push themselves to their very limits. It may be larger than Australia, and around one and a half times the size of the United States, but Antarctica is a place that seems unimportant and where nothing happens.
That impression is reinforced by Antarctica having been one of the last great frontiers of human exploration. Although there are disputed claims that people first reached its shores in the early 19th century, the first universally accepted landing on the Antarctic mainland did not take place until 1895, when a Norwegian whaling party came ashore. Until that point, the continent had remained beyond the reach of sailors, merchants, settlers and empires — a desolate place of glaciers, bleak terrain and howling winds.
Yet that perception is wildly misleading. Antarctica is one of the great engines of the Earth’s climate system: the immense ice sheet stores around 70 per cent of the world’s fresh water, while the freezing of seawater around its shores helps drive the deep ocean currents that circulate heat, oxygen and nutrients around the globe. Changes in Antarctica reverberate far beyond the Southern Ocean, influencing sea levels, weather patterns, marine ecosystems and the stability of climates on every continent.
Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the Antarctic is home to dozens of research stations, operated by 30 different nations, many of which collect and assess data that is of great value in tracking climate change — and providing early warnings of shifts that have planetary implications. In recent years, scientists have become increasingly concerned in particular about the stability of the ice shelf that acts as a buttress and holds back the Thwaites glacier, with some reports suggesting Thwaites could lose as much as 200bn tonnes of ice per year within the next 40 years. Understanding if, when and how this might happen could not be more important.
A new frontier is opening up, which means that it is not only research scientists who are heading to the Antarctic these days. A new generation of cruise ships with reinforced hulls that have icebreaking capabilities has begun to take travellers into the Southern Ocean, along the Antarctic Peninsula and, in some cases — usually dependent on the weather — further south into the Antarctic Circle.
I journeyed on the SH Vega, a luxuriously appointed vessel with an impeccable crew and a full complement of experts aboard who gave daily talks about the geology of the polar region, about the effects of whale hunting and about the heroic age of polar exploration. Long-distance flights and cruise ships have an uncomfortable relationship with environmental impacts; so a heavy emphasis was placed on understanding the fragility of the Antarctic ecosystem and the responsibilities that come with visiting it, with every passenger briefed in detail on the strict environmental rules that govern tourism under the Antarctic Treaty System.
Our clothing, boots and equipment were meticulously inspected and disinfected before every landing to prevent the introduction of seeds, soil or pathogens such as bird flu, and we were monitored closely when we went ashore, instructed to keep well away from wildlife, forbidden from crouching near penguins lest they mistake us for part of the landscape and approach too closely, and required to leave absolutely no trace of our presence. On board too, we were repeatedly reminded that Antarctica is not just another destination, but a continent that is (uniquely) protected by international agreement that demands exceptional care from everyone fortunate enough to visit.
We set sail from Ushuaia in Argentina, the most southerly city in the world, sailing down the Beagle Channel named after the ship that carried the young Charles Darwin on a voyage that transformed our understanding of the natural world. We made first for the Falkland Islands, putting in first at West Point Island to see nesting albatrosses alongside a colony of macaroni penguins, before continuing to Stanley — raised to city status in 2022 — complete with red telephone booths, Royal Mail postboxes, Waitrose goods in a local store and a pint or two at the Victory Bar.
From there we crossed to South Georgia past Shag Rocks that rose eerily through the mist — two days through challenging seas where the swell rose to six metres, something the ship handled better than some of the passengers. The first stop was Stromness, an old whaling station from the time when the island was a key node in the global network that hunted and processed whales for products that would light city streets in Europe and North America, lubricate factory machinery and stiffen corsets, brassieres, collars and umbrellas.
The industry has left a haunting reminder across South Georgia as well as on other islands in the south Atlantic and Southern Ocean. Abandoned whaling stations look like sets for horror films, with massive rusting pipes, cranes and boilers that processed blubber, meat and bones into oil — now overrun by colonies of fur seals, king penguins and seabirds. The scenery of South Georgia is extraordinary, with massive glaciers dropping into the sea and vast mountains towering above natural harbours like Stromness and Grytviken.
The latter is the resting place of Sir Ernest Shackleton, whose leadership, bravery and determination made him one of the most famous polar explorers of the golden age of expeditions to the Antarctic at the start of the 20th century. His incredible journey is the stuff of legend: with the Endurance trapped and then crushed by the sea ice in 1915, Shackleton and his men abandoned ship and eventually sailed in lifeboats to Elephant Island, an unpromising, remote and bleak part of the South Shetland Islands. From there, they set out for South Georgia with five crew, including Frank Worsley, who was able to navigate with miraculous skill. He and two others then had to cross the towering mountains and glaciers to reach Stromness to find help, before returning to rescue his men — all of whom survived.
After a beautiful memorial service in the church in Grytviken — built by Norwegian whalers a century ago — we set sail south, into the Antarctic Circle, in seas that were unusually calm, given the Southern Ocean is not only notoriously treacherous, but can change quickly: our timing could not have been better, as when we had put in to Grytviken and found shelter in the harbour, wind speeds around South Georgia were among the strongest anywhere on Earth that day.
We reached the ice fields in the dead of night and were woken — initially terrified — by the sound of ice being broken and pushed aside by the hull. Come the morning, the sun was shining against a brilliant blue sky and the sea was again flat. We were sailing past icebergs of all kinds of shapes and sizes, dazzling white above the surface, each with different shades of blue beneath. We passed many the size of colossal mountains adrift in the ocean, sculpted by wind and sea into arches, cliffs and towers — and then angular and geometrically perfect giant slabs that looked as though they’d been hewn clean off a cliff.
Charles Wilkes, an early visitor to the Antarctic in the first half of the 19th century, described sailing past massive “tabular” icebergs as passing through “an immense city of ruined alabaster palaces”, with “huge piles of buildings grouped together.” A description of these giant, rectangular icebergs “can do little to convey the reality to the imagination of one who has not been among them.”
Each had layer upon layer of faint bands of blue and white, each marking successive episodes of snowfall that had been compressed over centuries and, in many cases, millennia into dense glacial ice. When you visit a museum, you can feel the past around you; here, in the Southern Ocean, you feel the immensity of geological time.
Once we reached the Antarctic, we came ashore at Brown Bluff, a bay flanked by two glaciers. On a bright sunny day it felt momentous to step on to these shores, not least since so few people have done so. After all, it was only at the very end of the 19th century when the first fully documented landing on Antarctica took place. Back then, scientists were still not sure if the ice covered an landing on Antarctica took place. Back then, scientists were still not sure if the ice covered an archipelago or a massive continent.
We went on to Hope Bay, which we explored on small ribs that crunched through the ice, before putting into Charlotte Bay, where we were treated to the magic of dozens of whales feeding. Some came alongside to investigate, drawing gasps from us: these majestic creatures are a wonder. Megafauna can provide powerful reminders of the importance of biodiversity, of respect for the natural environment, and of the destruction that humans have inflicted in the past when transforming landscapes and ecosystems without thought to the consequences.
In that sense, the Antarctic is itself an anomaly, a rare place free of conflict, where battles have not been fought for control of resources, territory or influence. In fact, as the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 sets out, it is “in the interest of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord.” Those are fine words — and what is more, they have held for more than six decades.
Whether that continues to be the case is a good question. For all the hopeful words about cooperation and solidarity — reinforced by a protocol signed in 1998 that designated Antarctica as “a natural reserve devoted to peace and science” — the original treaty did not resolve overlapping and competing claims made by seven states — the UK, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, France, Chile and Argentina. In addition, there are countries, such as the US, which have formally declared a “basis to claim territory” in Antarctica in the future.
One reason to do so is to gain access to the continent’s presumed extensive mineral wealth — even though for now, extraction of any natural resources is prohibited. Another is that not all the scientific research in this part of the world is centred on global warming: the polar regions are critical for satellite operations, space weather monitoring and global communications. As a result, in recent years, the Antarctic has seen a sharp rise in both attention and investment in sophisticated ground stations.
The importance that Beijing attaches to its Antarctic presence, for example, was underlined by none other than Xi Jinping, who highlighted Qinling Station in his 2025 New Year address as one of China’s landmark national achievements, placing it alongside major engineering and scientific successes as evidence of the country’s determination to “explore the stars and oceans.”
Having sailed past Argentina’s Esperanza research station — the place of the first recorded human birth in the Antarctic — we made for Deception Island, one of the continent’s two active volcanoes. After sailing into the flooded caldera, we disembarked at Whalers’ Bay and walked past another abandoned industrial plant and dilapidated housing and climbed to the highest point to take in a spectacular view. We headed back aboard a few hours ahead of schedule to stay in front of weather that was closing in fast.
Many aboard had been anxious about Drake Passage, one of the most fearsome and feared stretches of water in the world. We need not have worried, even as the swells became stiffer — helped by a crew that was attentive and unflappable, and by a ship fitted with the latest technology to keep the hull stable through the peaks and dips in the waves.
As we sipped a final glass of wine while we sailed back into the Beagle Channel, it was hard not to reflect both on the wonders of the natural world, from enormous elephant seals sparring with each other on the beaches of South Georgia to the mother and calf right whales snoozing as we kayaked past them, from the table-shaped icebergs of the Southern Ocean to the thought of generations of polar explorers of the past and present who have helped reveal more about this strange continent.
After 17 days at sea, we finally put into harbour at Ushuaia. The polar regions have been a part of my own research for the best part of a decade, in part because of their importance for understanding both the causes and the consequences of global warming, but also because of their rising role in the new geopolitical rivalries and competitions that are playing out in a world going through a time of profound changes.
The Antarctic might feel like the edge of the world; the reality is that it sits much closer to the centre of our future than most of us realise. I arrived thinking I was going to visit one of the most remote places on Earth. I left wondering whether it is, in fact, one of the most central.
Peter Frankopan is professor of global history at the University of Oxford
