On his last expedition to Antarctica, a journey of tragedy that would define the sacrifices of the so-called “Heroic Age of Polar Exploration,” Captain Robert Falcon Scott had nothing but warm words for the man who labored in the freezing antipodes to maintain the welfare of the ponies, animals crucial to the success of his plan to be the first person to reach the Geographic South Pole.
That man was Anton Omelchenko, born in 1883 in the village of Batky, Poltava. The seventh child of a farmer, Anton’s prospects would not normally have been excellent. However, after landing himself a job on a local estate looking after the horses, he soon turned himself into a formidable jockey, his short stature proving perfect for the job. The new aristocratic owner of the estate took the young horseman into his tutelage and Anton joined him on far-flung travels.
It was in Vladivostok, while horseracing in the hippodrome, that Anton bumped into Captain Scott’s agent, Wilfred Bruce, and gave him advice on the types of ponies to buy for exploration adventures. That encounter led him to be drafted into Scott’s fateful expedition.
“Anton… had completed the furnishing of the stables. Neat stalls occupied the whole length of the ‘lean-to’… there was ample room for the safe harborage of the 10 beasts that remain, be the winter never so cold or the winds so wild,” Scott commented in his journal soon after landing in Antarctica.
Anton survived Scott’s expedition, returned home and became involved in local farming in Poltava. Fate plays cynical tricks. Despite having endured in the most extreme place on Earth, he met his end in a lightning strike outside his cottage in 1932.
Ponies are now banned from Antarctica because of their potential disturbance to local wildlife and the possibility of disease. And the Continent itself, once the focal point of fierce national rivalries (Scott was beaten to the South Pole by Norwegian Roald Amundsen), has become protected by the International Antarctic Treaty.
This frozen wasteland that covers nearly a tenth of our planet and is isolated by the vast and inhospitable Southern Ocean, which circles around it like a jealous protector, has been transformed into a type of world science park. Military conflict and national claims on territory have been frozen in favor of cooperation in the name of science.
Today, during the relatively clement Antarctic summer, over 4,500 personnel work at over 40 stations on the continent and many on islands around Antarctica. Over 50 nations have a presence there.
Long after Anton’s pioneering exploits, Ukraine had been busy in this wilderness. From 1956 to 1992, the country played a central role in Soviet efforts to begin science operations on the continent. It provided the Antonov aircraft that took Soviet scientists to Mirny Station.
A remarkable sort of tracked house, designed as a polar mobile home for scientists and engineers, the Kharkivyanka, had been designed by Ukrainian engineers. This invention proved essential for operating some of the Soviet Union’s most isolated stations, such as Vostok Station.
In 1992, the year after Ukraine had declared its independence, it found itself pushed out of Soviet Antarctic stations and left out in the cold.
Perhaps the ghosts of Omelchenko and Scott came calling, because it was around that time that Britain was looking to let go of its Antarctic Faraday Station, a jewel in the crown of British polar exploration because it had been the site of uninterrupted meteorological and scientific investigations since 1947. However, British efforts were now to be focused on a new station, Rothera Research Station, a few hundred kilometers away, as part of a strategy to consolidate work in stations that could be reached by aircraft, which Faraday could not. Britain wanted a new owner.
At any other time, with Ukraine’s economy still young and suffering from the effects of extracting itself from a socialist command economy, the last thing on most Ukrainian economist’s minds was buying Antarctic stations.
However, as luck would have it, Ukraine’s first Ambassador to the UK was a biochemist by training. Serhiy Komisarenko, who would later become the Head of Biochemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, understood the amazing opportunity that had just presented itself. As the new Ambassador, he was perfectly situated to bring this new scientific possibility to fruition. He frantically wrote to government ministers in Kyiv to wake them to the potential.
The British weren’t looking for any country that happened to want an Antarctic station. They wanted a nation that would cherish the priceless uninterrupted scientific records and continue that work. Facing stiff competition from South Korea, who were eying up the station, Ukraine constructed a compelling case for ownership. It had already had the foresight to keep its Antarctic science interests going despite losing access to the Soviet stations.
In 1992, the Verkhovna Rada acceded to the International Antarctic Treaty, and the formation of an Antarctic Scientific Center within the Academy of Sciences had further strengthened Ukraine’s demonstrated commitment to polar research. Britain helped Ukraine join the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) in 1994. All this kept Ukraine center stage in Antarctic research, but it still had no national station.
British delegations from the government and the British Antarctic Survey took the overtures from Ukraine seriously and several visits to the National Academy and the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ensued at which the Ukrainian and British sides examined each other’s proposals. It became increasingly clear that Ukraine was the main contender to take over the station.
Ukraine succeeded in convincing the British side that their scientific expertise and commitment to polar science was the best future. On July 20, 1995, at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, Faraday Station was formally handed over to Ukraine and it transformed itself into the Akademik Vernadsky Research Station, Ukraine’s first Antarctic station. The station was given to Ukraine for free, including all the scientific equipment and its unique British pub-styled bar.
On Feb. 6, 1996, the Ukrainian flag flew over the station and Ukraine joined the 28 other nations at that time with a presence in Antarctica.
Each year, Ukraine sends its annual Ukrainian Antarctic Expedition to the station. It consists of an overwintering crew who keep the station going during the frigid polar night which lasts for many months. The “seasonal” team visit during the more easily accessible summer months, when a ship can bring scientists and supplies.
Ukrainian researchers carry out vital research to understand this still isolated continent, to learn about its history, extreme life and to carry out many other geophysical, biological and astronomical investigations that are of direct practical value to world science.
In the next Part, we will look at some of the science done by Ukrainian researchers at Vernadsky Station and how Antarctic science can help humanity address some of its most pressing scientific and social challenges.