Photo: Václav Vojtěch, ‘Námořníkem, topičem a psovodem za jižním polárním kruhem’, 1932
Ninety-five years ago, Václav Vojtěch, geography teacher, scientist and polar explorer, became the first Czech to reach Antarctica together with an American expedition.
Václav Vojtěch was born in 1901 in the town of Skřivany, east of Prague, and as the son of a forester, loved adventure and the great outdoors from an early age. He studied history and geography, and as an editor of Czechoslovak Radio he was able to visit Paris. There, he saw a film about the race to the South Pole between Norwegian Roald Amundsen and British adventurer Robert Scott and became obsessed with the notion to reach the South Pole himself. Eventually, after many attempts and rejections, he was able to join an expedition to Antarctica led by the American Admiral Richard Byrd. Vojtěch was twenty-seven, and although he participated in the expedition only as a gunner on a supply ship and later as a waiter, on January 27, 1929 his lifelong dream came true. That day he stepped onto the shore in Ross Sea’s Whale Bay on the coast of Antarctica.
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Source: Český rozhlas