Art, culture & history images

Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912)

Scott was an English naval officer, hired by the Royal Geographical Society before WWI to explore the Antarctic alongside Ernest Shackleton. In the wake of these navigations’ extreme success, Scott dreamed to set off again to the South Pole and garner further distinction for the British Empire. He followed a chilly path blazed by Shackleton in a failed prior expedition, with the knowledge that a team of Norwegian explorers were simultaneously pursuing a mysterious, but similar, polar trek. A day before reaching the pole in 1912, Scott’s team saw the Norwegian flag and knew they had been bested. His papers, found months later with his body, narrated the sad but passionate journey that ended in starvation on the team’s attempted return from the pole to civilization.

Bridgeman represents the Scott Polar Research Institute. Read full story...

Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809)

A Virginian naturalist, family friend of Thomas Jefferson, and Captain in the U.S. Army, Meriwether Lewis is one of a pair of American icons who continued the map of North America west to the Pacific, this time with the aid and sanction of the native Indian population. The recruitment of a French-Canadian familiar with Native American languages, along with his female companion Sacajawea, was an incredible coup to the voyage. Returning in 1805 to the accolades he shared with his partner, William Clark, Lewis was awarded the title of governor of the Louisiana Territory by President Jefferson. Years later, Lewis excited scandal when he was found dead of gunshot wounds in a Tennessee inn. The mystery remains whether his death was self-inflicted or murder.

Captain James Cook (1728 – 1779)

Another officer in the Royal British Navy, Cook made his mark navigating the Southern Hemisphere and being the first to sail around parts of New Zealand and Australia. He traveled with a botanist and an astronomer to observe the transit of Venus in front of the sun at the order of the British government, but unbeknownst to competitors was actually hoping to survey uncharted lands, that would eventually become New South Wales. On his third voyage, Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands, where he met his doom in a fight with island natives and was stabbed. He is survived by his records, which greatly impacted navigation (even astronomy) from the 18th century and beyond.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552 - 1618)

Like other ill-fated navigators, Raleigh’s favor at the royal court swung a tempestuous gamut. His patroness, Elizabeth I, famously adored and punished Raleigh with equal vigor, but was not ultimately his executor. Under her reign, the Oxford man and Parliamentarian would found the American colony at Roanoke, sail in search of the mythic El Dorado, be imprisoned in the Tower of London for imprudent love, and achieve renown as a writer and poet. Raleigh’s death finally came under James I for an attack on the Spanish, ironically the former enemy of Elizabethan England. Arrested several times throughout his career, Raleigh had narrowly escaped the scaffold before—but King James’s efforts toward peace with Spain sealed his fate: the British (anti-) hero was beheaded in 1618.

Hernando De Soto (c. 1500-1542)

If Balboa ran a school for conquistadors, fellow-Spaniard de Soto would surely have been his star student. Also a governor in Central and South America, who tormented native peoples and shrewdly profited by the accomplishments of the Incan Empire, de Soto’s notoriety now in fact lies in his unique exploration of the southern U.S. In the 1540s he waged an almost nightly battle with American Indians as he made his way through what are now Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. Convinced the region held undiscovered riches, de Soto pushed his troops further inland towards the Mississippi River, where he contracted fever and was buried in what must be the most holistic manner for a Renaissance explorer: sunk in the river within the hollow of a large tree.

Francisco Pizarro (1478-1541)

Francisco Pizarro was Balboa’s apprentice, his first mate to Panama. Pizarro in turn oversaw Hernando De Soto in the former’s devastating and most significant accomplishment, his exploration and ultimate domination of Peru. After looting the Inca capital and executing their leader (not without first raising a ransom on his life), Pizarro renamed the capital Lima and established himself in a palace there. Political intrigue and betrayal was what ultimately took Pizarro’s life, as a series of fatal decisions and assassinations led to the killing of Pizarro and his primary friend-turned-rival Almagro, each by the other’s families.

Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485–1528)

A career sailor, Verrazzano got his break when the King of France commissioned an exploration of the North American east coast, as-yet uncharted by Europeans in 1520. He is credited with discovering New York Harbor (before Henry Hudson) and is honored as the namesake of the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge joining Staten Island and Brooklyn. Verrazzano's discoveries were eclipsed by two dramatic events of the time: conquest of Mexico and Magellan's trip around the world. His end is quite possibly the most unlucky of his explorer brethren, although it remains a source of debate. Many believe that he was beset by unfriendly natives in the Antilles, and cannibalized while his brother watched from afar.

Juan Ponce de Leon (c.1460–1521)

Ponce de Leon is that most famous of all seekers (and there is one in each of us) of the Fountain of Youth. Having experienced the New World as a member of the crew under Christopher Columbus, he was later authorized by the Spanish crown to find the “Fountain” on an island in the Bahamas and, thinking Florida another island, coined its name and claimed the region for Spain. He died truly an adventurer’s death, after meeting the rebellion of the Native Americans on a return to the Florida coast. Suffering a poisoned-arrow wound in the attack, alongside many of his men, Ponce de Leon perished in Cuba.

Ferdinand Magellan (c.1480 – 1521)

The Portuguese-born explorer is actually most famous for the voyage he never completed. For two years beginning in 1519, Magellan led a dwindling number of ships on behalf of the Spanish king, in what was supposed to be a profitable trip to dominate the Spice Islands. Only one of the five ships made it back to Spain, but it had gone westward around the entire globe—the groundbreaking first circumnavigation! Magellan was not on it. He had unwisely become sympathetic to a Filipino tribe and died fighting in their civil war. A wealthy orphan who lived and was educated at court, Magellan took great risks with his privilege and led a life on the edge, including shipwrecks, starvation, violence, and disease. The unexpected results of his ambition revealed how large and unexplored the world really was.

Vasco Nunez de Balboa (c.1475–1519)

Balboa wore many hats in his motley career including farmer, soldier, governor, and eventually…traitor. He made his name in South America, where he founded a colony for the Spanish and enjoyed popularity as a leader despite performing the common cruelties of his profession. Although his dog shares credit in many of Balboa’s greatest moments, the high point was the pair’s tenacious lone trek to a peak on the Isthmus of Panama, from which the Incas had said he would view a new ocean: what we now know as the Pacific. Unfortunately, the new colonial governor appointed during Balboa’s absence was a longstanding competitor, who framed him and his adventures as an upset to the Spanish crown and had the conquistador publicly beheaded.