for National Geographic News
An extraordinary collection of treasures charting 500 years of British exploration around the globe opened to the public this week. It belongs to the Royal Geographical Society, the London-based scientific institution whose members have explored and mapped the biggest empire in history.
The archive represents one of world's biggest collections of geographical knowledge. It includes the hats doffed by Stanley and Livingstone during their famous "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" encounter in Africa, photographs of Ernest Shackleton's epic expedition to Antarctica, and maps used for the D-Day landings during World War II.
Public access to these and countless other historic items was made possible through a project—valued at U.S. $13.1 million dollars—that funded construction of a new exhibition area, a reading room, and storage facilities at the society's headquarters in Kensington, London.
Rita Gardner, director of the Royal Geographical Society, said: "We had two million maps, manuscripts, photographs, and other artifacts squirreled away in the dark in more than 40 rooms on five different floors and kept in a Dickensian condition. So we thought, what shall we do with what's one of the greatest collections in the world?"
With the help of the U.K.'s Heritage Lottery Fund, the society decided to open up its archive for the first time in its 174-year history. (The fund raises money for public causes through a national lottery held twice each week.)
"We are not just making the archive physically accessible but aiding intellectual access to what we hold," Gardner said.
Schoolchildren doing geography homework, for example, can now access an online catalog.
Scientists, meanwhile, can study polar maps dating back to the mid-1800s that "show polar ice shelves as they were 150 years ago," said Steve Brace, the Society's head of collections. Brace notes that the maps "can help researchers in tracking glacial melting due to climate change."
Brace says that Antarctic researchers are intrigued by the dairies and scientific writings of Captain Robert Scott. The explorer froze to death soon after reaching the South Pole in 1912. His writings suggest to modern-day scientists that blue whales were once far more widespread in Antarctic waters than previously thought.
The archive contains photographer Herbert Pontin's poignant record of Scott's final, ill-fated expedition. It also holds dramatic glass-plate images of Shackleton's trip to Antarctica two years later, when his ship, Endurance, was crushed by ice. Shackleton and his team managed to survive subzero polar conditions for a year and a half before being rescued.
A New Era
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