One of the last old-time adventurers and discoverers,
Australian Earl de Blonville will be wearing his
Auloronesa Foulard Alpin on his next expedition to the Arctic on the tall ship
Courage, following in the footsteps of French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot.
Charcot himself was a true boinero too, wearing his Alpin during both Antarctic
and Arctic expeditions.
Jean-Baptiste Charcot was appointed leader of the French
Antarctic Expedition with the ship Français exploring the west coast of Graham
Land from 1904 until 1907. The expedition reached Adelaide Island in 1905 and
took pictures of the Palmer Archipelago and Loubet Coast.
From 1908 until 1910,
another expedition followed with the ship Pourquoi-Pas, exploring the
Bellingshausen Sea and the Amundsen Sea and discovering Loubet Land, Marguerite
Bay and Charcot Island, which was named after his father, Jean-Martin Charcot.
Later on, Jean-Baptiste Charcot explored Rockall in 1921 and
Eastern Greenland and Svalbard from 1925 until 1936. He died when the
Pourquoi-Pas? was wrecked in a storm off the coast of Iceland in 1936.
Like all French explorers, even to this very day, Charcot had wonderful style. He arrived in East Greenland with 15 tons of wine. At the same time a British expedition arrived with 15 tons of equipment in total, including a large prefabricated house. And French science results were second to none, specifically that achieved by Paul-Emile Victor in Ammassalik and later on the icecap.
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