South by Northwest

The Magnetic Crusade and the Contest for Antarctica

by Granville Allen Mawer

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Book Cover image:
The corvette Astrolabe breaking free of the
Antarctic pack ice 9 February 1838
Artist : AEF Mayer, National Library of Australia
Cover design: Liz Nicholson

ABOUT THE BOOK

For many, Antarctic history begins and ends with the race between Scott and Amundsen for the geographic south pole but they were late to the start and only briefly on the course. By then, another polar race had already been in progress for seventy years, and it would continue for even longer. That race, for the South Magnetic Pole, was a marathon rather than a sprint and its starting point was suitably distant from Antarctica, in the ice of the fabled Northwest Passage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Granville Allen Mawer, historian, is the author of several books including his book Ahab's Trade, short listed for the Queensland Premier's History Prize 2000 and the NSW Premier's History Prize 2001. He is a contributor to the Australian Dictionary of Biography and sometime reviewer of maritime books for The Times Literary Supplement. His most recently published work is Diary of a Spitfire Pilot, over the English Channel and Over Darwin (Rosenberg Publishing 2011).

 

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