Thirty-five years ago, a husband-and-wife team in Sydney started taking small groups of travellers to Antarctica. That operation is now AE Expeditions, running 73 itineraries across all seven continents and 26 countries, with roughly 500 passengers aboard its ships on any given day.
Founders Greg and Margaret Mortimer launched the company in 1991 on a straightforward idea: keep groups small, stay flexible enough to follow nature rather than a rigid schedule, and aim for trips that leave people genuinely attached to the places they've seen. AE joined IAATO (the Antarctica tour operators' association) in its very first year and ran its first Antarctic voyage in 1992.
What makes the anniversary interesting for anyone eyeing a polar trip is how many now-standard expedition activities AE pioneered. Ice camping and kayaking on the Antarctic Peninsula? 1994. The first commercial climbers' expedition to the Peninsula? 1995. Arctic voyages began in 1997, Antarctic diving a year later, and in 2001 the company ran the first passenger expedition retracing Shackleton's crossing of South Georgia. Flying to Antarctica featured from 2012, polar snorkelling from 2016.
The fleet caught up with the ambition. The Greg Mortimer, launched in 2019, was the first passenger ship built with the Ulstein X-BOW hull design, which softens the ride in heavy seas. The Sylvia Earle followed in 2022 and the Douglas Mawson in 2025, completing a set of three purpose-built small expedition ships.
There's a credentials angle too. In 2024 AE became the first cruise line — and remains the only one — to earn Certified B Corporation status, and this year it launched Ocean Regeneration, a programme built around decarbonisation and leaving the places it visits better off. For travellers increasingly sceptical of cruise-industry greenwash, that certification is a third-party standard, not a marketing line.
The anniversary isn't just a corporate milestone. Long-time travellers remember the expeditions as formative — Dick Smith, the Australian adventurer who helped launch the company and has been to Antarctica seven times, calls landing on Elephant Island one of the most moving experiences of his life. Co-owner Michael Alscher frames the future the same way the founders did: the point of having 500 people on ships daily is helping them understand why these places deserve protection.
So who is this for? If you've been weighing up an Antarctic or Arctic voyage and want a small-ship operator with three decades of polar experience, expert guides and a documented record of firsts — from Shackleton retracements to citizen-science-style activities like kayaking, camping and snorkelling — AE is one of the benchmark names. With the third ship now in service, availability and itinerary variety across the polar seasons are broader than ever. The company has marked the anniversary with a video gathering founders, veteran expeditioners and staff, worth a watch if you're dreaming of the ice.
Story via Breaking Travel News.
