CHAPTER XVIII 
STEAM WHALERS BOUND SOUTH 
“The bergs like kelpies overside that girn and turn and shift 
Whaur, grindin’ like the Mills o’ God, goes by the big South 
Drift. 
Hail, snow an’ ice that praise the Lord; I’ve met them at their 
work, 
An’ wished we had anither route or they anither kirk.” 
— Rudyard Kipling. 
A LTHOUGH Dr. Georg von Neumayer was disap- 
- pointed of the command of an Antarctic expedition 
both in 1870 and in 1871, he never ceased to urge on his 
countrymen the importance of renewing exploration. His 
voice perhaps received more attention abroad than at 
home, but in time the spirit of polar exploration was 
stirred all the same in the ancient Hansa towns of Ham- 
burg and Bremen. A German Society for Polar Navi- 
gation was founded in Hamburg to promote explora- 
tion as well as whaling and sealing in the northern seas. 
Its director, Herr Albert Rosenthal, provided large sums 
of money for the work of the society, and in the words of 
one of his countrymen he did more for German polar 
exploration than the Emperor or the Empire. His atten- 
tion was turned to the southern as well as the northern 
polar seas, and in 1873 he sent out one of the Arctic 
vessels to try her luck off the South Shetlands. 
On July 22nd, 1873, the steam whaler Gronland, Cap- 
tain Eduard Dallmann, sailed from Hamburg and made 
her way southward along the South American coast, 
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