The Last Viking

by Stephen Bown

  On February 28, de Gerlache steered the Belgica into heaving ice as another “terrific gale” blew in. Instead of heading north into the open sea, he ordered the ship to ride before the storm through a tiny opening in the ice to the south. When the storm abated, the Belgica had been driven deep into an ice field. “Here we were, fast in the Antarctic ice drifting round in the uncharted southern seas at the beginning of the long Polar winter.” Interestingly, later in life Amundsen blamed the manoeuvre on “a lack of experience in Polar navigation,” when clearly de Gerlache’s actions had been intentional. In his journal of the voyage, Amundsen recalls being “happy,” writing that “nothing could be better” than this outcome. But these musings were penned before he realized that they had packed no winter outer clothes for most of the crew, had inadequate food for an overwintering and insufficient lamp oil. Writing thirty years later, he recalled the predicament as “a truly dreadful prospect.” The ship lay 150 kilometres in the surging pack ice and was almost certainly locked in for the winter. De Gerlache made a half-hearted effort to extricate the Belgica from the ice swells, its engines roaring as the ship futilely surged against the congested ice. It was, however, an action intended to mollify the despondent crew rather than to escape. By this time de Gerlache had taken Amundsen into his confidence; the Norwegian knew of the deception and approved of it. “Here we were,” he wrote in his memoirs, “drifting round in the uncharted southern seas at the beginning of the long Polar winter.”

  A polar winter can be a dreary, morale-sapping season even for those who are psychologically and physically prepared: living in cold and darkness for months on end, locked up together on a tiny ship, rehashing the same stories, brooding over the same resentments and reviving the same quarrels with the same people again and again. Add to this unwholesome isolation the constant fears that they might never again see the sun or return to their homes; that the ship might be frozen in the desolate wasteland until they perished from exposure and dwindling supplies; and that if the ice shifted the ship could be pinched in a vise and burst—it was hardly a wonder that morale plummeted on the Belgica as the months dragged on. Certainly there could be no rescue in this most forlorn reach of the planet. The crew’s dissatisfaction increased when it became known that they had been tricked by de Gerlache. Two of the men were driven mad, and others teetered on the edge of sanity. Cook wrote of life on board the Belgica that “mentally, the outlook was that of a madhouse.”

  Amundsen seemed to thrive on the hardships and continued absence of the usual comforts of life: variable and fresh food, new conversation partners, even female company. He relished the absence of these comforts, the shrinking of his daily joys. His apparent pleasure in suffering may have been a coping mechanism that enabled him to endure the monotony and discomfort of extreme conditions, or perhaps an ascetic quest for deprivation fuelled his desire for harsh expeditions, so that he could suffer just like Franklin did. This relishing of hardship stayed with him his whole life, but it was limited to the times when he was on expedition. Between adventures, he wholeheartedly embraced the daily pleasures to be found in food, companionship, warmth, variations in scenery and intellectual stimulation. Even in the midst of perpetual darkness, he deliberately kept his spirits up: “Tomorrow the sun will reach the end of its northward journey and start to make its way back. Of course I am looking forward to seeing it again, but I haven’t missed it.”

  Perhaps like many adventurers today, whether canoe-trippers, backpackers, sailors, mountain climbers or polar skiers, Amundsen had a great appreciation for the sense of accomplishment that the struggle against hostile elements provides, or the intense pleasure that comes from simple comforts like a cup of warm soup and a dry pair of socks after a day of hard labour in the freezing cold. There is a way in which a shared struggle in dangerous situations magically reduces the worries of a complicated life to an intense appreciation of even minor comforts, but even celebration in communal struggle eventually gives way to despair and hopelessness. The months of cold and darkness groaned on throughout 1898. Many of the Belgica’s crew were convinced of their imminent death. They became lethargic, depressed and anti-social, drifting away into near-catatonic isolation even while crammed together on the ship. Their hair and beards grew unkempt, their eyes became dim and bloodshot and their weary faces showed the strain of their predicament.

  Amundsen and his friend Cook weathered the season better than most. Amundsen was eager to continue learning all he could of the techniques of polar travel and survival, and during the nine months they were locked in the ice he worked on testing new tent designs, perfecting new clothing and venturing on a sledging foray onto the pack ice, the first such trek in Antarctic history. He and Cook tested skis on the pack ice, comparing them with snowshoes and finding them faster, safer and better suited to distributing weight when crossing dangerous sections of ice. Cook, “of all the ships’ company, was the one man of unfaltering courage, unfailing hope, endless cheerfulness, and unwearied kindness. When anyone was sick, he was there at his bedside to comfort him; when any was disheartened, he was there to encourage and inspire. And not only was his faith undaunted, but his ingenuity and enterprise were boundless.”

  It was the energetic Dr. Cook who spearheaded the solution to the greatest threat to the mens’ survival during that gloomy winter: the insidious spread of scurvy. Many of the mental aberrations that beset the crew during those dark months—their depression, morose moping in their bunks, lethargy and lack of enthusiasm even to help themselves—are psychological symptoms of scurvy, whose physical symptoms include puffy, blackened and bleeding gums and loose teeth, foul breath, swollen joints, the opening of old wounds and the un-knitting of broken bones as the body’s connective tissue disintegrates. All this is accompanied by a general inability to focus or to think clearly. Scurvy is one of the most ancient of diseases, although it is more properly considered a dietary deficiency. It is caused by a lack of ascorbic acid. Vitamin C is found primarily in fresh foods, and scurvy will show up anywhere that a diet is lacking in this essential ingredient, during famines or long winters and in impoverished populations.

  During the Age of Sail scurvy was the bane of mariners, indirectly causing more deaths than storms, battles and shipwrecks combined. On long voyages it could claim the lives of entire crews, as they became too ill to pilot their vessel and it capsized or was driven against a rocky coast. The renowned British mariner Captain James Cook was able to keep scurvy mostly under control on his epic voyages in the late eighteenth century by imposing a strict diet. The problem was famously solved by the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars in 1795, when the physician Sir Gilbert Blane persuaded the admiralty to issue lemon or lime juice daily, mixed with sailors’ rum ration, giving rise to the term “Limeys” to describe British sailors. In the early twentieth century, during Amundsen’s time, scurvy’s causes were still unknown and synthetic vitamin supplements did not exist. The methods for preserving food (drying, salting and primitive canning techniques) destroyed most, if not all, vitamin C. Thus it was on long expeditions in polar environments, or in armies subsisting on rations through long winters, that scurvy would show up to make history.

  Nearly everyone on the Belgica was suffering from scurvy long before the winter was through. One man died of it on June 15, and many more would undoubtedly have followed, had not Cook recognized the seriousness of the problem from his experience in the Arctic and his observations of the diets of northern polar peoples. His solution was introduce fresh meat into the men’s diet. He noted that the open channels near the ship were frequented by penguins and seals, which if cooked only lightly would provide the men with sufficient amounts of the essential nutrient. Amundsen recorded that “we had, therefore, spent many weary hours, after the day’s work was done, travelling for miles over the ice in search of seals and penguins, and with great labour had killed and brought to the ship a great number of each. The commander, however, developed an aversion to the flesh of both
that amounted to a mania.” While Cook and Amundsen and several others frequently consumed the meat in a near-raw state and avoided the most severe symptoms of scurvy, de Gerlache opposed having the meat issued as a daily ration to the men, allowing the crew to eat it only occasionally and, even then, only if they wanted it.

  The men hated the taste of the meat, and many ate it only as a medicine under the doctor’s orders. Amundsen, in his typically contrarian and open-minded style, claimed that “the meat is excellent, not unlike beef.” He preferred the daily ration of lime juice. As historians have noted, however, the production quality and consistency of bottled lime juice varied greatly, depending on how it was heated during the manufacturing process. The rapid development of scurvy in the crew of the Belgica was an indication that the lime juice supplied for the expedition was probably compromised and contained little or none of the vital vitamin.

  Many of the crew became horribly ill before they saw the benefits of the semi-raw seal meat: those who ate it remained mostly free of the ravages of the deadly deficiency. The ship’s cook then thawed the frozen seal steaks acquired through Amundsen and Cook’s hunting forays and prepared the meat regularly for meals. As with all cases of scurvy, the men’s improvement from their debilitated state was rapid and remarkable. Even de Gerlache, who was prostrate with the sickness, was soon going about his regular duties.

  After pulling through the long winter, the men were faced with another serious problem: the pack ice that surrounded the ship remained thick and impenetrable, even as spring gave way to summer in the southern hemisphere. Yet more forced immobility was frustrating for everyone aboard, and it exposed another disagreement. Amundsen and Cook were annoyed at de Gerlache’s intransigence in refusing to eat fresh seal meat, and, as captain, to order his crew to eat it even while the scurvy epidemic spread through the ship. His obstinacy had endangered the lives of all—indeed, the entire expedition.

  Then, when November arrived, Amundsen discovered that a secret deal had been arranged whereby the Belgica’s normal chain of command was to be altered to give Belgian officers priority in commanding the expedition, regardless of their rank. De Gerlache informed Amundsen, who was second mate, that he was to be passed over in the succession of command by the third mate, a young Belgian officer. Amundsen, consumed with anger, viewed the decision as an attack on himself and on Norwegians in general. It was a seriously damaging lapse in the judgment of the expedition’s organizers, founded in nationalism. He wrote to de Gerlache in frustration, “I followed you without pay. It was not a question of money, but honour. That honour you have insulted by denying me my right. As far as I am concerned, there is no longer a Belgian Antarctic expedition, and the Belgica is just an ordinary ship locked in the ice. It is my duty to help the men on board. For this reason, captain, I will continue my work as if nothing had happened.”

  The fact the ship was immobilized in ice, thousands of kilometres from any other ship or inhabited land, was certainly another consideration that kept the young Norwegian aboard and at his post. He felt that many of the crew and officers were incompetent—certainly an accurate observation if the word “inexperienced” is substituted—and that only through his efforts could he ensure that the ship would ever break free of the ice and return to civilization.

  Several writers have seen his angry response to de Gerlache as evidence of Amundsen’s “irrational” and “hysterical” reaction to any and all criticism, and that the slight was somehow insignificant or imagined. In fact, there is a reason de Gerlache kept this information secret for over a year and a half: it was not normal or accepted protocol in naval or maritime traditions. It was a serious violation of custom to have an erratic and random chain of command that was revealed by secret documents only when the need arose. The formalized succession of command exists for a good reason—law at sea—and is undermined by the issuance of secret papers partway through a voyage. Amundsen was right to be infuriated by the situation, not for personal reasons, but rather for institutional and structural reasons. Gaps in the hierarchy of leadership could lead to infighting and even mutiny, endangering both the crew and the expedition. De Gerlache later admitted that he was forced into the sly situation under duress—pressure from the Belgian Geographical Society.

  Amundsen recognized an incompatible difference in style between himself and the Belgian crew when he wrote that “between us and the Belgian nation there exists in thought and deed such a vast difference, that we would never be able to work well together.” This was the sort of insight that Amundsen became famous for, and this one led him later to consistently choose men who would work well together as a team. It is fair to note that much of the criticism Amundsen was frustrated with later in his life was levelled by people who had far less experience than he did. And, as was the case in the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, it was initiated for reasons that had little to do with Amundsen’s actual competence as a leader.

  Meanwhile, the Belgica was still stuck in the ice and showed no signs of breaking free after nine months and the return of Antarctic summer. If the crew couldn’t get the ship free, the men would either have to stay a second winter or abandon the ship and march for land; neither option offered much hope of a happy ending. For the second time on the voyage it was Cook who roused the shipmates from their torpor. During his ramblings on the ice with Amundsen he had noticed, a kilometre or two from the ship, a large crack in the otherwise unbroken ice sheet. Cook’s plan was to somehow cut a path through the ice to the crack and get the Belgica into it, so that as the thaw progressed the ship would have a chance of sailing out to open water. Indifferent at first to what Amundsen himself called a “mad enterprise,” the men were soon enthusiastic; as Amundsen wrote, “at least it would give us something to do besides sitting and contemplating our probable fate.”

  The main problem was their equipment. The Belgica’s supplies contained only a small supply of dynamite and a few four-foot saws. The men were still weakened, despite the fresh meat in their diet. Nevertheless, by January 1899, Cook got them working together to cut lines in the ice and then place dynamite in them to blast a channel. After several weeks of hard labour the men had created a channel long enough to drag the ship to water, where they continued to wait. “Then,” Amundsen related, “the miracle happened—exactly what Cook had predicted. The ice opened and the lane to the sea ran directly through our basin!”

  The engineer fired up the boiler and the Belgica surged forward, struggling against two giant icebergs. “All day and all night we were subjected to a terrific grinding pressure, and the noise of the ice cakes battering against our sides and splintering off incessantly was at times so loud as to make conversation trying.” To prevent damage to the hull, they lowered penguin skins over the side of the ship to serve as bumpers as the Belgica slowly ground against the pack ice. The struggle continued for another month before the crew even saw open water. By mid-March the ship was still grinding against the congestion of ice, making little headway, its engines roaring and belching smoke as it bucked ineffectually against a mighty frozen wall. But then, deliverance: “[T]he engineer comes on deck to say he cannot keep up steam any longer. He sees the gravity of the situation for himself. It is unnecessary to ask him to keep steam up. In the winking of an eye he is below again, and the engine is working as it has never worked before, and never will again. We fight our way ahead, inch by inch, foot by foot, meter by meter. We are saved. At the critical moment, the ice slackens.” The battered ship surged ahead into open water, free.

  Two weeks later, on March 27, 1899, the Belgica cruised into Punta Arenas, a Chilean port in the Strait of Magellan. Here Amundsen disembarked and sailed home to Norway on his own. He was disgusted with the incompetence, deceitfulness and nationalist prejudice of the expedition’s Belgian officers. The Belgica had long been feared lost, so the public was surprised by its return; likewise, its crew members were surprised to learn of events that had transpired since they had entered the Antarctic ice at the end o
f 1897, such as the start of the Boer War in South Africa and the Spanish American War in the Caribbean and the Pacific. During the nearly two years of their voyage and imprisonment in the ice, the world had marched on. It was a phenomenon to which Amundsen would have to adjust. He returned home without fanfare, on a mail boat, escorting one of the Norwegian mariners who had gone mad during the terrifying Antarctic winter.

  That the Belgica expedition was fraught with inefficiencies, inappropriate equipment, flaws in the chain of command and imprecise objectives is undoubted. Amundsen did, nevertheless, learn a great deal about how, and how not, to organize and lead an expedition in extreme polar conditions. The negatives came from observing the innumerable deficiencies in leadership and crew that caused most of the trouble and a near-fatal outcome for the Belgica expedition. Most of the positives came from the many hours spent with Cook in exploring and discussing various methods and types of equipment.

  The German author Rainer K. Langer, writing in Scott and Amundsen: Duel in the Ice, seems to accuse Amundsen of poor judgment for signing on to the expedition in the first place. “Amundsen ought to have known better, but after the London congress he was blinded by ambition to reach the place at de Gerlache’s side that was the center of world attention.” An alternate view does not presuppose such responsibility on the young Norwegian: de Gerlache’s was the first exploring expedition that had accepted him as a member; he had applied for many positions before and had been overlooked. Amundsen was not about to turn down his first and perhaps only chance to go on a voyage of exploration and gain polar experience, and it’s hard to imagine anyone in his place doing so. He was second mate on the voyage, not the captain, and he was not responsible for selecting the other members of the crew or for arranging the financing. Criticism of Amundsen as being blinded by ambition is unwarranted, but it fits the stereotypical image of him that became popular decades later.