A very clear mirage observed by Scoresby in the Greenland Sea shows an inverted ship floating above the horizon. This mirage can be mathematically reconstructed using a linear image diagram. Scoresby's description is here re-examined: anew set of essential assumptions is distilled from his report, and an ‘exact’ reproduction of the mirage is obtained to match these conditions.

During the 1981–82 austral summer a Joint Services Expedition to South Georgia recorded meteorological observations at Royal Bay, near to the site of the German station of the First International Polar Year in 1882–83. Comparisons between the two sets of observations emphasize the storminess of the climate and indicate slightly higher temperatures in 1981–82. Weather conditions at Royal Bay in 1981–82 were more comparable to those at King Edward Point (Grytviken), the main meteorological station on the island, than in the central mountains of the Salvesen Range.

Australia, a leading Antarctic state that played a key role in negotiating the Convention for the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities, in May 1989 announced its opposition to the Convention and adoption instead of a World Park or Wilderness Reserve concept for Antarctica. This article examines possible environmental and economic reasons for Australia's attitude, which is likely to have significant implications for the future of the Convention and for the Antarctic Treaty System as a whole.

During March and April 1989 a two-man team from the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) took part in the oceanography ice camp phase of the Office of Naval Research-sponsored Coordinated Eastern Arctic Experiment (CEAREX). The aim of the experiment was to measure with strainmeters and tiltmeters the interaction between oceanic internal waves and sea ice. Arrays of these instruments were deployed to measure horizontal strain and vertical tilt fields continuously over a 29-day period. The resulting time series show quite clearly internal wavelike activity indicating that a strong coupling mechanism exists. Other interesting phenomena are evident in the data with timę-scales varying from seconds to several days.

Henry Grinnell (1799–1874), a retired New York shipping magnate, maintained for 20 years a correspondence with Jane Franklin, wife of the British explorer Sir John Franklin whose ships Erebus and Terror were lost in the Arctic some time after 1845. Grinnell financed two United States expeditions and two searches by Charles Francis Hall to the Arctic to collect information on the fate of the Franklin expedition. Grinnell's letters, now held in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute, form the basis of this article.

Herbert Ponting, Robert Falcon Scott's photographer and cinematographer on the Terra Nova expedition, was the first specialized, professional photographer to accompany a polar expedition. Born in 1870, he had already acquired an international reputation as a travel writer and photographer before joining Scott in 1910. His personality did not mesh readily with those of other expedition members, but in his film 90° North Ponting produced what is arguably the finest travel documentary before Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North. His work compares favourably with professional film records of much later exploration, for example those of Hillary and Tenzing on Everest in 1953. After his year in Antarctica he produced various versions of the film, and undertook a number of unsuccessful enterprises. He died in 1935. We can still learn from the work of this pompous British photographic artist from the early years of the century.

The data used by Dr Frederick A. Cook in support of his claim to have reached the North Pole on 21 April 1908 are reinterpreted to support a hypothesis that Cook did not reach the Pole, that his journey towards the Pole lasted only one week, and thathe subsequently discovered and visited Meighen Island. This reconstruction explains how Dr Cook could have made observations of ice conditions and drift, and of an ice island, without having travelled far out on the Arctic Ocean. A possible reason for his failure to announce discovery of Meighen Island is also offered.