The British Antarctic Survey

The series of base and field reports and photographs forms the backbone of the archive collections of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and its predecessors, the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (1945-62) and the Second World War expedition Operation Tabarin (1943-45). It is a unique and comprehensive account of these organisations’ activities, illustrating the United Kingdom’s leading role in the modern era of Antarctic scientific exploration from the establishment of the first United Kingdom Antarctic stations in 1944 to the end of the 20th Century.

The material contains ten thousand reports and approximately nineteen thousand photographs, covering all twenty of the UK’s Antarctic stations past and present. Data underpinning globally significant discoveries, such as the hole in the ozone layer, is included. So too are accounts of the challenges of living and working in an extreme environment, and of prolonged journeys into the field to research and map the unknown.

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