To the Ends of the Earth
Page 18
Among the nations of Europe, scientific cooperation was not a new concept. As far back as the mid-eighteenth century, astronomers from several countries had worked together to observe the transits of Mercury and Venus. This effort had spurred many more such international ventures.8 Throughout the Victorian era, this working together had extended to many fields, including meteorology, botany, and geology, driven by a common desire to increase human knowledge—and sustain economic progress—for mutual benefit. In 1829, the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt had proposed that scientists from many nations pool their resources to study magnetism and the weather near the Arctic Circle. Prince Albert had given a royal blessing to this “great and sacred mission” of revealing the laws of Nature at the opening of London's Crystal Palace, in 1851.9 International congresses of scientists met periodically to share their findings and set standards. During earlier expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic, science had taken a backseat to territorial discovery and conquest. But now this pragmatic, commercially based focus gave top priority to the collecting of data on topography, temperatures, sea currents, magnetic fields, and marine life. Since they were now risking their lives for the betterment of humankind, these so-called “missionaries of science” were hailed as heroes—much like the fictional Indiana Jones in our day—supplanting those explorers who had gone north and south on quixotic, self-serving adventures.10
This growing curiosity about the polar world was part and parcel of a broad scientific effort to identify, codify, and understand little-known regions of the planet and their life-forms. This had started in the eighteenth century, with naturalists like Joseph Banks and Mungo Park, and reached its apogee with Darwin's voyage to the Galapagos in the 1830s. (In the United States, President Thomas Jefferson had promoted this kind of investigation by tasking Lewis and Clark with gathering specimens on their way to the Pacific.) At the top of the world, such achievements compensated for the repeated failure of mariners to locate the Northwest Passage or reach the North Pole—including the Franklin disaster. After his party disappeared, exploration “for its own sake” lost much of its allure, and “the hope and need and romance of reaching the East” faded away.11 “Explorer-adventurers” became “explorer-observers.”12 Donors and sponsors of expeditions felt that important scientific findings gave them a good return on their investments. Organizations like England's Royal Geographical Society were now reluctant to sink money into a “record-chasing dash to the pole or more adventure travel.” By the mid-1860s, even an ardent admirer of polar heroism such as Clements Markham had come around to believing that the symbolic triumph of reaching ninety degrees north by itself was not enough to justify more high-risk expeditions.13 Mapping uncharted territory was now considered much more important than setting foot on it.
Several early nineteenth-century explorers had already put considerable emphasis on learning about the polar environment. While a young officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, the Baltic-German cartographer Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen had taken part in that country's first round-the-world voyage in 1803–1806 and then, just over a dozen years later, led an expedition south that became the first to clearly see (unlike Cook) the Antarctic continent. Hoping to interest his adopted country in the economic potential of this scarcely visited region, Bellingshausen brought hundreds of specimens of plant and animal life, as well as minerals, back to his ship, even though it had been inadequately outfitted for proper scientific study.14 But in this aspiration he was to be sorely disappointed, as the items he had brought back gathered dust on museum shelves for decades. In Bellingshausen's day most governments still regarded Antarctica as an empty, frozen wasteland, of no practical value. However, the British Admiralty did send along naturalists on the expeditions it sponsored, as part of a concerted bid to render the unknown world comprehensible, and with this knowledge conquer it. In the Arctic tundra, the Scottish surgeon John Richardson accompanied Lieutenant John Franklin expressly for the purpose of compiling samples of plants and rocks as he and his men explored far northern Canada in the 1820s. While mainly eager to trace the route of the elusive Northwest Passage, Franklin was proud of the fact that his nation's expeditions proceeded “not from any prospect of immediate benefit to herself, but from a steady view to the acquirement of useful knowledge, and the extension of the bounds of science.”15 His former companion George Back adopted the same philosophy when he was searching for the missing John Ross a decade later: adding to scientific understanding was a major reason why his sovereign had sent him there.16 So Back dutifully made magnetic readings and other scientific measurements as he followed fur trading paths leading to the post where Ross had disappeared.
During much of the nineteenth century the accurate and exhaustive compiling of data was the chief purpose of science. Spurred by the South American discoveries and the writings of the influential Humboldt, this approach derived from the belief that all natural phenomena were interrelated: by carefully observing and collating the “minute particulars” of what was observed and examined, a sense of underlying order would emerge, ultimately revealing God's plan for the universe. Thus, naturalists who went into the wilderness after Humboldt kept meticulous, precise, and detailed records of all the animals, plants, fish, birds, and reptiles, as well as inorganic forms (minerals and fossils) they happened upon. In carrying out this often tedious, exhausting, and at times dangerous work, these men of science (the term “scientist” did not come into use until the 1830s) were seen as courageous pioneers. Their notebooks were filled with long lists of numbers added to humanity's relentless quest for truth: “measuring the world, measuring men, and measuring empire” defined this new heroism.17 Because the conditions and life-forms found in the Arctic and Antarctic were so greatly different from those that existed elsewhere, information from these regions was especially treasured: it would add crucial missing pieces to an immense earthly jigsaw puzzle then still being completed. “Mapping” the planet was the nineteenth century's great scientific challenge—a task that, as long as it remained unfinished, was—in the words of the 8th Duke of Argyll—“a reproach upon the enterprise, civilisation, and condition of knowledge of the human race.”18
This elevation of science made it obligatory that meteorologists, geologists, oceanographers, and naturalists have a prominent role in expeditions reaching for the poles. More than merely compilers of facts about currents, channels, ice movement, and temperatures, they were representatives of a noble, civilizing imperative. Exploiting the public's admiration for this new type of hero, some explorers wrapped themselves in the mantle of science and thus added more luster to their image. None better personified this penchant than Elisha Kent Kane. As a student at the University of Virginia in the late 1830s, he had studied natural science and become fascinated by this nascent field. At medical school he went on to conduct seminal research on a film or coating present in female urine that was a sign of pregnancy, receiving international recognition for this discovery before he had even earned his degree.19 While subsequently traveling across the Pacific, Kane kept extensive notebooks describing in great detail what he had seen and done. This habit sharpened his observational skills, which he would later put to good use in the Arctic.
As chief medical officer and scientist on the Advance, during the 1850–1851 Grinnell-funded “crusade in search for a lost comrade”—John Franklin—Kane took advantage of his ship's being icebound in Lancaster Sound to study ice formation, local geology, and weather conditions, although he was handicapped by having had just one day to procure the requisite equipment before his ship had sailed from New York. (He also found time during this Canadian interlude to shoot and skin a polar bear over eight feet long.) In writing afterward about this abortive voyage, Kane made a point of stressing how much he had devoted his time to making observations—at the expense of looking for traces of the vanished Franklin party. (He went so far as to imply that the latter endeavor had not really been worth the bother: “For myself, looking on
ly at the facts, and carefully discarding every deduction that might be prompted by sympathy rather than reason, my journal reminds me that I did not see in these signs the evidence of a lost party.”) But his descriptions (and sketches) of natural phenomena were laden with romantic rhapsodies about the beauty of the Arctic world and its strange creatures: a huge iceberg looked like a “great marble monolith, only awaiting the chisel to stand out in peristyle and pediment a floating Parthenon”; walruses—or, as he preferred to call them, “marine pachyderm”—were described as “grim-looking monsters,” reminding him of the “stage hobgoblins, something venerable and semi-Egyptian withal.”20
These were not the words of a naturalist or medical doctor, but of a would-be Lord Byron or Shelley, exalting the world around him as the backdrop for an exotic, heroic adventure, with himself front and center. Kane was not writing to inform his readers, but to sweep them away. In fact, he, his younger brother Thomas, and their father—a Philadelphia judge—had decided to produce a book that would make him famous, building on the notoriety Elisha had already acquired by going on this Arctic expedition and then enduring a winter's imprisonment in Baffin Bay.21 As the three of them had foreseen, the book's combination of melodrama and scientific dedication was wildly popular, and almost overnight Kane became the prototype for the dashing American scientist defying death in his relentless quest for knowledge.
When Kane returned to the Far North a few years later, ostensibly to resume searching for the Franklin party, his scientific zeal was even more apparent. Settling in for winter off the coast of Greenland in 1853, Kane and his men set up two observatories on the ice—one for magnetic readings, the other for studying the weather. Even after temperatures dipped as low as 75 degrees below zero that February, they kept up their routine of leaving the ship several times a day to take readings. Astronomical calculations had to be made outdoors—in spite of frozen fingers, snow-encrusted eyes, and chattering teeth. The igloo used for measuring the magnetic field was, in Kane's typically hyperbolic language, “an ice-house of the coldest imaginable description.” Two men at a time would go out there clad in sealskin trousers, reindeer jacket, dogskin cap, and walrus boots, to sit on top of a wooden box and record the movements of a magnetometer at precise, six-minute intervals. This process went on uninterrupted for twenty-four hours a day—yielding several hundred readings each week. Since there was a small stove burning inside the igloo, the real challenge was getting to and back from this makeshift observatory, with only a small lantern and pole to point the way through the otherwise total darkness.22 When Kane's hefty, two-volume account of this expedition was published, it contained eighteen appendices, not only summarizing the various overland journeys Kane's party had made, as well as the plants collected along the way, but also containing extensive tables on temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, and magnetism that he and his companions had compiled. (Details about magnetic fields near the poles were then considered important in understanding the underlying physics and helping ships navigate by compass.23) Publishing such lengthy findings—as was the custom for polar explorers back then—was intended to showcase this scientific “payoff” from explorations.
Kane's second book was a phenomenal bestseller: some sixty thousand copies were sold the year it came out, and as many as three million persons would ultimately read about his bone-chilling adventures in the Greenland ice, with presumably far fewer checking the scientific tables at the back.24 More than any previous account of polar expedition, Kane's dramatic tale satisfied Americans’ longing for a bold, fearless masculine figure who could triumph over a hostile Nature by blazing new paths into the wilderness, at a time when Western expansion and Manifest Destiny were dominant national preoccupations. The unparalleled appeal and commercial success of Kane's books made them models for future explorers hoping to make a name for themselves—and a fortune—from their exploits. The public's notion of a scientist was central to this heroic image, and so carrying out science-related tasks became a sine qua non on subsequent voyages and sledge journeys. The audacity and perseverance needed to perform this dangerous work was seen as equivalent to what was required to set a new Farthest North. Indeed, scientific “victories” could make up for geographical “defeats.” It was the demonstration of courage, gumption, and character that counted, and Kane embodied those qualities in spades, even if his territorial conquests were less than spectacular.
Piggybacking scientific experiments onto an Arctic voyage also guaranteed that backers would not be totally disappointed if no new territory was discovered. Thus, when Francis McClintock sailed from Aberdeen, Scotland, in command of the Fox in July of 1857, hoping to bring an anguished Lady Jane Franklin some closure by finding relics of her husband, he also took along £50 worth of equipment provided by the Royal Geographical Society to enable him learn more about the North Magnetic Pole.25 (McClintock was also supposed to look for proof that Franklin had actually discovered the Northwest Passage; finding this would ease the pain of the lives presumed lost and give his widow added reason for being proud of him.) In retrospect, Franklin was also acclaimed for his “scientific” accomplishments, although these had not been his primary mission: Lady Franklin arranged for a marble tablet to be placed on Disko Island, off the western coast of Greenland, in memory of “Franklin, Crozier, Fitzjames, / and all their Gallant Brother Officers and Faithful Companions who have suffered and perished / in the cause of science and / the service of their country.”26
Increasingly, scientific discoveries were valued as affirmation of national stature and prowess. Accordingly, many explorers in the second half of the century took them seriously. A notable example is the Scottish-Canadian oceanographer Sir John Murray, who first traveled to the Arctic in 1868, when he was in his late twenties, scooping up exotic marine creatures and plumbing the bottom of the waters his ship passed through. In the course of a subsequent voyage, on board the Challenger, Murray collected some four thousand previously unknown species and published his descriptions of them in a massive, fifty-volume set. During this circumnavigation of the earth, he also laid the foundation for modern oceanography, by measuring the depth, temperature, and terrain of the sea floor. For a man of science like Murray, gathering such data had intrinsic scientific merit, but it also brought prestige to the nation whose scientists did this work.27 In a November 1893 speech before the Royal Geographical Society, in which he called for more Antarctic expeditions, Murray would rhetorically ask, “Is the last great piece of maritime exploration on the surface of our earth to be undertaken by Britons, or is to be left to those who may be destined to succeed or supplant us on the ocean? That is a question this generation must answer.”28 At a time when curiosity about the unknown dovetailed with nationalism, this argument resonated with his London audience. Because governments were often footing the bills, the information brought back from polar expeditions was supposed to further national ambitions: amassing new facts was akin to acquiring new colonies. Both kinds of conquests bolstered a country's prestige and increased its power on the world stage. In the words of one historian of Germany's polar expeditions, knowledge acquired in the Arctic deepened the “steadily expanding link between science and the state and the gradual absorption of scientific exploration in the political aims of the state.”29
Adjusting to this new rationale, explorers who really only cared about setting a new Farthest North began to emphasize the scientific importance of their proposed expeditions. Often the need to attract funding made this virtue a necessary. Charles Hall, for instance, had to make his case for underwriting an 1871 voyage toward the North Pole on these grounds, despite the fact that he was largely uneducated and had no real interest in science.30 To obtain the $50 thousand Congress eventually appropriated for this expedition, Hall reluctantly agreed to accept on the Polaris a team of German scientists, who ended up opposing Hall's geographical ambitions and rebelling against his leadership.31 Likewise, Lieutenant George De Long regarded himself first and foremost as
a pioneering explorer and tolerated scientific work on his ill-fated Jeannette only to satisfy the US Navy—under whose auspices he was sailing.32 He, too, frequently clashed with the two civilian scientists he had been compelled to take with him.33 Expedition backers like the Royal Geographical Society stressed the need to make accurate observations and keep detailed records, insisting that explorers be trained in the use of equipment such as sextants and barometers.
During the First International Polar Year (1882–1883), science took center stage more than ever before. This was due, in large part, to a tacit acceptance among the nations interested in the Arctic and Antarctic that the human costs of continuing to pursue new geographical “firsts” were simply too high. (It has been estimated that, between 1770 and 1918, approximately one of every two polar explorers perished on expeditions.34) Furthermore, the commercial advantages once believed to be derived from navigating the Northwest Passage had not materialized, after centuries of unsuccessful attempts to trace this route in its entirety. While some explorers, like Hall, clung to the dream of reaching the North Pole, other, less grandiose goals seemed more attainable, and so more energy and resources were invested in achieving them. The idea of establishing stations around the poles, to conduct meteorological, astronomical, and geophysical observations, fit well into this more realistic approach. By making science its focus, the International Polar Year turned the mundane tasks of measuring and recording data into a noble endeavor for the seven-hundred-odd men from eleven countries who would be participating in this effort.