Antarctica: the Last Frontier

By Geoffrey T Williams

Young Jon Michaels has traveled all over the world, but he's never been anywhere as dangerous - or as strangely beautiful - as Antarctica. Isolated at the bottom of the planet, it is the coldest, windiest place on Earth. The journey begins aboard the S.S. Windhover, as they battle 100-foot waves in the Drake Passage. Like every true explores, Jon records is adventure in his journal. "It's stranger than anything I ever imagined," he writes. On his arrival, he swims in a volcano, witnesses an attack by a killer whale, flies through a deadly whiteout, and learns why Antarctica is, perhaps, the most important continent on Earth. The book is filled with environmental facts, links to important topics, and stunning art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Geoffrey T Williams
• Release date: Apr 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9780977138197

Geoffrey T Williams

My love of science started when my geologist father told me a rock I had found in the back yard of our Wyoming house was a dinosaur bone. Fast-forward some years, and I wrote a short book called "Dinosaur World" and produced the cassette tape that went along with it. Thanks to a small publishing company named Price Stern Sloan, the book and tape went "viral," selling tens of thousands of copies in just a few months. That success led to the other Dinosaur World volumes, which eventually sold more than eight million copies. From that I branched out to write about other sciences I loved, including astronomy and space travel, entomology, oceanography, etc. And since I love producing audio, almost all the books included cassette tapes, and later, CDs.

Book preview

The Last Frontier—Antarctica

By Geoffrey T. Williams

Illustrated Nessa Becker

Copyright 1992 Geoffrey T. Williams – Smashwords Edition

Note to readers:

Like many explorers before him, Jon Michaels kept a journal of his extraordinary travels in Antarctica. In it he recorded the location of each event in longitude and latitude so that he could easily look it up on a world map, globe, or Google Earth™. You can follow his adventures by doing the same thing. He also gives the time using a 24-hour clock: 01:00 hours is one o’clock in the morning, 12:00 hours is noon, 24:00 hours is midnight. In a land where the sun can shine brightly almost 24 hours a day during the summer months, Jon found that this was the easiest way to remember when it was time to go to sleep!

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Rough Seas

Chapter 2 – Sailing a Frozen Sea

Chapter 3 – Volcano Swimming

Chapter 4 –Skua Sticks and Beachmasters

Chapter 5 – There’s Something Big Out There

Chapter 6 – Battle for the Pole

Chapter 7 – McMurdo Station

Chapter 8 – Ice Diving

Chapter 9 – Whiteout!

Chapter 10 – Walking Around the World

About the Author

Chaper 1 – Rough Seas

Journal Entry

October 8

55 degrees, 28 minutes west, 57 degrees south.

Drake Passage. 1900 hours.

Temperature: -14⁰F. Wind speed: 80 mph.

The storm is incredible! It’s like being in a washing machine stuck on the heavy-duty cycle.

The freezing wind thundered up from the south, turning the ocean into a swirling, white-capped confusion. Towering waves hammered the deck like explosions and tossed the Windhover like a stick-boat in a storm drain.

Safe inside the ship's bridge, Jon Michaels held onto the railing, fighting to keep his balance, and fighting a growing case of sea sickness.

Do you think MURV is okay? his mother, Dr. Dorothea Michaels, shouted over the shrieking wind. MURV, the three-man research submarine operated by the Mid-Ocean Institute, was tied to the deck taking a tremendous pounding from the storm.

Captain