Category Archives: Exploration

Billionaires and the Titanic: the allure of extreme expeditions

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The more adventurous of the world’s wealthiest take trips to the edge of space and Antarctica in their stride

The disappearance of the submersible en route to the wreck of the Titanic has highlighted the businesses that offer extreme expeditions – and their clienteles.

Among the five people on the missing Titan submersible are two billionaires – Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old businessman who made his fortune selling private jets and holds three Guinness world records for previous extremetrips, and the British-based Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, who is onboard with his 19-year-old son Suleman.

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Missing Titanic submarine: US and Canadian teams search for tourist vessel

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Race against time to find craft that went missing on Sunday with five people onboard, including British billionaire

US and Canadian rescue teams are scrambling to search for a tourist submarine that went missing during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck with a British billionaire among the five people onboard.

Hamish Harding is the chair of the private plane firm Action Aviation, which said he was one of the mission specialists on the OceanGate Expeditions vessel reported overdue on Sunday evening about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland.

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Lost letters reveal how ‘desperate’ Shackleton charmed Falklanders to save stranded crew

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Explorer hid his torment as he regaled officials in Port Stanley with jokes and stories

The marine archaeologist who headed the 2022 Antarctic expedition that discovered the wreck of Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance has found two previously unknown letters which describe the explorer in the Falklands while he was trying to save 22 of his men stranded on the “hellish rock” of Elephant Island.

Ahead of today’s anniversary of the wreck’s discovery, Mensun Bound told the Observer that the correspondence is remarkable because there is no witness account of him in Port Stanley during this crucial period in 1916 after their ship had become trapped in ice.

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How Ernest Shackleton’s icy adventure was frozen in time

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An exhibition of vivid photographs and a restored documentary give fresh insight into the Antarctic explorer, who died a century ago

One hundred years ago, the leader of the last great expedition of the heroic age of polar exploration died from a heart attack as his ship, Quest, headed for Antarctica. The announcement of the death of Ernest Shackleton on 30 January 1922 was greeted with an outpouring of national grief.

This was the man, after all, who had saved the entire crew of his ship Endurance – which had been crushed and sunk by ice in 1915 – by making a daring trip in a tiny open boat over 750 miles of polar sea to raise the alarm at a whaling station in South Georgia.

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South review – startling filmed record of Shackleton’s gruelling Antarctic odyssey

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Frank Hurley’s 1919 silent footage turns Sir Ernest Shackleton’s gruelling expedition into a travelogue with cute penguins

Pioneering Australian photographer and film-maker Frank Hurley was the official witness to Sir Ernest Shackleton’s gruelling expedition attempting to cross the Antarctic landmass, which lasted three years from 1914 to 1917. For most of the time the crew were utterly cut off from news of the outside world and the expedition became an epic ordeal when, on the way there, their ship (aptly named Endurance) was crushed and sunk by pack ice. Shackleton and his men were forced to journey onwards in a lifeboat in the desolate cold, finally to South Georgia, then rescued and brought by a Chilean vessel to the harbour in Valparaíso where they were accorded a hero’s welcome.

This 1919 silent movie is Hurley’s filmed record of Shackleton’s voyage and what is startling about it is its weird tonal obtuseness: so often it feels like a home-movie travelogue in which the mood is bafflingly jaunty. Towards the end of the film, just at the point when their lives have been saved and disaster averted, the film spends about 10 minutes on the adorable behaviour of the penguins. This is at the moment when Shackleton’s victory was said to consist simply in his heroic survival, the expedition itself having, of course, been a failure, but the film simply sets aside the obvious poignant or tragic dimension.

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French coast: the early explorers who sparked British fears of a Francophone Australia

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Nicolas Baudin’s voyage at the height of the Napoleonic wars gave us dozens of French place names, and left with kangaroos for the Empress Josephine

From La Perouse in Sydney to Victoria’s French Island and South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula, hints of early French exploration dot the country’s coastline.

In fact, French familiarity with our region was such that they were the first to print a near-complete chart of Australia’s coast in 1811, beating the British by three years. But for a few other historical quirks, at least part of the nation might now be Francophone.

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Antarctic expedition to renew search for Shackleton’s ship Endurance

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Endurance22 will launch early next year with aim of locating and surveying wreck in the Weddell Sea

The location of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance has been one of the great maritime mysteries since the ship became trapped in ice and sank in 1915. Finding this symbol of the “heroic age” of polar exploration at the bottom of the Weddell Sea was long thought impossible because of the harshness of the Antarctic environment – “the evil conditions”, as Shackleton described them.

Now a major scientific expedition, announced on Monday, is being planned with a mission to locate, survey and film the wreck.

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Mrs Livingstone, I presume? Museum to feature role of explorer’s wife

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Revamped gallery to reveal the importance – and presence – of Mary Moffat in missionary’s life and travels

Dr Livingstone, the Scottish explorer and Christian missionary in Africa, was a hero for Victorian schoolboys, his reputation enhanced by exuberant biographies. But next month the reopening of a museum on the banks of the River Clyde, following a £9.1m investment, is to set his famous story in a broader context.

The cliche runs that behind every great man stands a great woman. In Livingstone’s case, the reputation of his fearless wife, Mary Moffat, actually went before him, smoothing his path through remote regions.

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Not a sprint: endurance experts on how to make it through lockdown

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Marathon runner Eddie Izzard, solo sailor Pip Hare and explorer Levison Wood explain what they have learned about enduring the seemingly unendurable

It just goes on and on, doesn’t it? Despite the millions of vaccinations, and Boris Johnson’s “roadmap” for easing the lockdown, this pandemic is feeling increasingly like an endurance test – a marathon, followed by another marathon, followed by another. Or trudging for miles and miles across the desert for day after day. Or sailing alone around the world, battling storms and loneliness. How do you keep going? There are people who know a thing or two about that – keeping going, endurance, deserts and storms. Perhaps they might even have some advice.

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Bear Grylls: ‘There’s no point getting to the summit if you’re an arsehole’

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The TV adventurer talks near-death experiences, what he learned from Eton and why he decided to go public about his religious faith

“The ninjas of the future,” says Bear Grylls, “are going to be those who can learn how to navigate the fear. It’s like a firefight. You can’t move backwards. You’ve got to move towards it, you know?” Not really. But I’ve never been in a firefight. And if I saw one, I doubt I’d move towards it. Like most people, I’ve been raised in mimsy, risk-averse Britain. Few of us have acquired the wild wisdom of Edward Michael “Bear” Grylls OBE. Unlike the 46-year-old TV adventurer, we have never simmered a sheep’s eyeball in geyser water, paused on Everest to reflect on the corpse of a late friend, wrestled snakes, outrun lions, or broken our backs parachuting. Rather, we’ve been raised in a land where a PE lesson can consist of Tudor-dancing.

Grylls wants to change all that. He wants kids to embrace fear and risk. “If you meet somebody who says they don’t have fear, it means one of two things: one, they’re not telling the truth; or two, they’re not going for anything big enough in their life. What I’ve learned through many trips and many failures is that you have got to move towards the difficult stuff. And the irony is that the things we fear most often dissipate.”

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The Guardian view on Turkish-Greek relations: dangerous waters | Editorial

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A row over over borders, gasfields and national pride risks regional disorder

Some claim it has been centuries since the Mediterranean has been viewed as the cockpit of history. But great powers and coastline states, wishing to capture hydrocarbon riches, are today vying for mastery of the sea – or at least its eastern waves. The trouble surfaced last month when a Turkish frigate escorting an oil-and-gas exploration ship collided with a Greek naval vessel. Since then, tempers have flared, with the unresolved question of Cyprus providing a flashpoint between the two nations. Greek ships were last week joined by France, Italy and the United Arab Emirates in the waters around Cyprus. Turkey announced that Russia will hold naval exercises. Nato is right that the temperature needs lowering and ought to be congratulated for kickstarting talks aimed at de-escalation. Nato members ought to trade words, not blows.

In Turkey there has been a lurch towards authoritarianism under the executive presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while the country’s military, economic and cultural power has expanded. Not since the Ottoman empire has the Turkish military had such a sprawling global footprint, with troops and drones recently saving a UN-recognised government in Tripoli from defeat. Despite a Covid recession, Turkish companies retain a global edge – taking advantage of cheap labour, made even cheaper by a weak Turkish lira, and access to European markets. Mr Erdoğan has also won favour in the Sunni Arab world by hosting 4 million Syrian refugees.

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Greek military put on high alert as tensions with Turkey rise

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Dispute over exploration of energy reserves in eastern Mediterranean escalates

Greece has placed its military forces on high alert, recalling its naval and air force officers from holiday, as tensions with Turkey over exploration of potentially lucrative offshore energy reserves escalate in the eastern Mediterranean.

With Ankara dispatching the Oruç Reis, a drillship escorted by gunboats, to conduct seismic research in contested waters, Athens stepped up calls for Turkey to stop the “illegal” activities, intensifying a diplomatic offensive that has prompted the US, EU, France and Israel to express growing anxiety over the situation.

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Diary of explorer David Livingstone’s African attendant published

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Jacob Wainwright’s diary is only handwritten witness account of missionary’s death

The diary of an African attendant on the Scottish explorer David Livingstone’s final journey into the continent has been published online, containing the only handwritten witness account of the the Victorian missionary’s death in 1873.

The manuscript was written by Jacob Wainwright, a member of the Yao ethnic group from east Africa and the only African pallbearer at the explorer’s funeral in Westminster Abbey in 1874.

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World’s largest bee, missing for 38 years, found in Indonesia

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Biologists discover single female Wallace’s giant bee inside a termites’ nest in a tree

As long as an adult thumb, with jaws like a stag beetle and four times larger than a honeybee, Wallace’s giant bee is not exactly inconspicuous.

But after going missing, feared extinct, for 38 years, the world’s largest bee has been rediscovered on the Indonesian islands of the North Moluccas.

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