Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Below the Convergence: Voyages Toward Antarctica, 1699-1839

Below the Convergence: Voyages Toward Antarctica, 1699-1839

Gurney, Alan

Paperback

Travel GeneralGeneral World HistoryNaval History

ISBN10: 0393329046
ISBN13: 9780393329049
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: Mar 1 2007
Pages: 328
Weight: 0.63
Height: 0.82 Width: 5.58 Depth: 8.20
Language: English
This wonderfully written book tells of the first Herculean expeditions to Antarctica, from astronomer Edmond Halley's 1699 voyage in the Paramore to the sealer John Balleny's 1839 excursion in the Eliza Scott, all in search of land, glory, fur, science, and profit. Life was harsh: crews had poor provisions and inadequate clothing, and scurvy was a constant threat. With unreliable--often homemade--charts, these intrepid explorers sailed in the stormy waters of the Southern Ocean below the Convergence, that sea frontier marking the boundary between the freezing Antarctic waters and the warmer sub-Antarctic seas. These men were the first to discover and exploit a new continent, which was not the verdant southern island they had imagined but an inhospitable expanse of rock and ice, ringed by pack ice and icebergs: Antarctica.

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