The ship’s diary dates the epoch-making event to February 16, 1874; exactly 150 years have passed since then. On this day, the HMS Challenger, a full ship of the Royal Navy, crossed the Antarctic Circle. There, 66 degrees, 33 minutes and 55 seconds south of the equator, the sun does not set or rise on the solstice days – the first third of June and the first third of December. At the time of the passage of the Challenger, which had been converted from a war ship to a research ship, it was summer in the southern hemisphere, just like it is now. The three-master now sailed across the invisible border of the polar region, but not so far that the Antarctic continent came into view. Then the course line turned northward again.
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