3. Leonard F. Guttridge, Ghosts of Cape Sabine: The True Story of the Greely Expedition (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2000), p. 109.
4. David L. Brainard, letter to Maria L. Brainard, [various dates, 1882], Folder 24, Box 7, Series V, “Personal or Private Letters and Notes,” Collection of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, Research Collections, Explorers Club, New York.
5. To go on the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, which was also an Army operation, Pavy had to be temporarily given the rank of captain—a designation that irked him as he was decidedly unmilitary and despised how this appointment restricted his freedom.
6. Greely, Three Years of Arctic Service, vol. 2, p. 310, and vol. 1, p. 180. Chartering the Proteus to bring the party to Ellesmere Island had used up three fourths of Greely's $24 thousand budget, so that he was forced to buy supplies, including scientific equipment, at the cheapest possible price, thus sacrificing quality. Greely, Arctic Service, vol. 1, p. 38.
7. Guttridge, Ghosts of Cape Sabine, p. 62. Thermometers designed to measure solar and earthly radiation turned out to have too small a scale to be of use so far north, and crucial winter readings were therefore abandoned. (Greely, Arctic Service, vol. 1, p. 127.) The Greely party had also arrived in the Arctic without sufficient winter clothing, and the men had to stitch together coats and other garments from blankets. (See “Medical Report of Hospital Steward Biederbeck,” in Adolphus W. Greely, Report on the Proceedings of the United States Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, Grinnell Land, vol. 1 [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1888], p. 335.)
8. Sergeant George W. Rice and Dr. Pavy went on the first exploratory excursion from Fort Conger just over a week after the Greely party had moved into its winter quarters in late August. Other depot-laying trips took place early the next month. (See journal of C. B. Henry, Folder 3:5, Series V, Collection of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, Explorers Club.)
9. Greely, Arctic Service, vol. 1, pp. 238, 296, 297.
10. Ibid., p. 335.
11. “Adolphus Greely, Arctic Explorer of 1882, Recipient of Congressional Medal of Honor,” Cornell Daily Sun (Ithaca, NY), March 28, 1935.
12. Roald Amundsen, My Life as an Explorer (Garden City: Doubleday, 1927), pp. 32–34.
13. In a 1906 letter to H. G. Wells, William James described pursuit of the “bitch-goddess Success” as our “national disease.”
14. George Back, “Recollections of our Unfortunate Voyage to Discover the Country between the Mouth of the Coppermine River and Hudson's Bay,” entry of January 10, 1822, Back, “Miscellaneous Items” folder, Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), Cambridge.
15. See, for example, letter of Elisha Kent Kane to Henry Grinnell, May 10, 1855. Henry Grinnell Correspondence, Elisha Kent Kane Collection, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. In this letter Kane explained that his surveying of Smith Sound was primarily for that purpose.
16. David Chapin, “‘Science Weeps, the World Weeps, Humanity Weeps’: America Mourns Elisha Kent Kane,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 123, no. 4 (October 1999): 277.
17. “Arctic Expedition,” Constitution (Middletown, CT), June 8, 1853.
18. Kane recognized the exploitative parallels between his lectures and Maggie Fox's communing with the dead. As he once wrote to her, “just as you have your wearisome round of daily money-making, I have my own sad vanities to pursue.” (Undated letter of Kane to Maggie Fox, quoted in The Love Life of Dr. Kane: Containing the Correspondence, and a History of the Acquaintance, Engagement, and Secret Marriage between Elisha K. Kane and Margaret Fox [Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 1999], p. 49.)
19. When Kane died he was celebrated for his scientific discoveries, which had made him “the greatest hero” of his day. (Chapin, “‘Science Weeps,’” p. 275.)
20. Elisha K. Kane, Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, ’54, ’55 (Bedford, MA: Applewood, 1856), pp. 146, 165.
21. H. D. Traill, The Life of Sir John Franklin, RN (London: John Murray, 1896), p. 444.
22. Charles F. Hall, introduction to Arctic Researches and Life among the Esquimaux: Being the Narrative of an Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, in the Years 1860, 1861, and 1862 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1865), p. xix.
23. Robinson, Coldest Crucible, p. 81. When Hall had first appeared before the House Appropriations Committee in April 1870, his gratuitous attacks on Isaac Hayes riled its members, who concluded that Hall did not “possess any of the qualifications necessary to carry out an expedition that should be thought of only in connection with scientific discovery” and voted against giving him any money. (“Expedition to the North Pole: Unseemly Conduct of Captain Hall,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 12, 1870.)
24. Quoted in Charles F. Hall, Narrative of the North Polar Expedition: US Ship Polaris, Captain Charles Francis Hall Commanding, ed. G. M. Robeson (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1876), pp. 18–19.
25. Whereas members of Congress were loath to “squander” money on someone as unqualified for this polar mission as they thought Hall was, they were persuaded by scientific organizations to back Hayes. For example, officials at the Geographical Society of New York wrote lawmakers, stating that Hayes—the recipient of several medals for his contributions to polar science—was considered “the most able, eminent, and experienced of living American Arctic explorers.” (“An Expedition to the Polar Seas,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 13, 1870.)
26. Isaac I. Hayes, The Open Polar Sea: A Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery towards the North Pole, in the Schooner “United States” (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867), pp. vii, 164, 182, 317, 355. In the spring of 1861, Hayes would have renewed hopes of finding open water to the north, based upon theories of Humboldt and others that higher latitudes did not necessarily correlate with lower temperatures. But testing this theory would be beyond his capabilities. After escaping the ice and returning to Halifax, Hayes realized he now had to “sacrifice all the hopes and all the ambitions which had encouraged me through toil and danger, with the promise of fame to follow the successful completion of a great object; to abandon an enterprise in which I had aspired to win for myself an honorable place among the men who have illustrated their country's history and shed lustre upon their country's flag.”
27. T. H. Baughman, Before the Heroes Came: Antarctica in the 1890s (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), pp. 95, 105.
28. Quoted in J. Kennedy Maclean, Heroes of the Polar Seas: A Record of Exploration in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas (London: W. and R. Chambers, 1910), p. 13.
29. Beau Riffenburgh, The Myth of the Explorer: The Press, Sensationalism, and Geographical Discovery (London: Belhaven, 1993), p. 142.
30. Fridtjof Nansen, Farthest North: Being the Record of an Voyage of Exploration of the Ship “Fram” (1893–1896) and of a Fifteen Months’ Sleigh Journey by Dr. Nansen and Lieut. Johansen, vol. 1 (Westminster, MD: Constable, 1897), pp. 325–26.
31. Ibid., pp. 330, 331.
32. This abrupt decision did not change Nansen's public image as a man of science, however. For example, in a review of his book Farthest North, which appeared in the Saturday Review, the Norwegian explorer was described as being before “everything else…a man of science.” Nansen had not left behind his wife and child and traveled so far north “that he might write a book of adventure, or gain the barren laurels of having reached a more northerly point on the surface of the earth than any other human being since human history,” but rather to gather a “richer harvest of scientific data than any other expedition that has ever entered the Arctic circle.” (“The Story of the Fram,” Saturday Review of Books 83, no. 2156 [February 20, 1897]: 199.)
33. Francis Leopold McClintock, The Voyage of the “Fox” in the Arctic Seas: A Narrative of Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin and His Companions (Cologne: Konemann, 1998), pp. 25, 28.
34. McClintock also felt that dogs might also be used for this purpose.
35. Da
vid Day, Antarctica: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 133, 143.
36. Edward J. Larson, An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 18, 58, 121.
37. Letter of Shackleton to Scott, February 21, 1910, quoted in Elsbeth Huxley, Scott of the Antarctic (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), p. 187.
38. The British inclusion of scientific work in their Antarctic expeditions was not popular with the public, which was “anxious to have a race to the South Pole and to read of the triumph of English courage and endurance over their continental rivals.” (Day, Antarctica, p. 143.) As was pointed out in an article in the British medical journal Lancet in 1910, “The cultivation of an adventurous spirit is of vital importance to a nation having such extensive maritime interests as those of Great Britain, and the national sense of patriotism is thrilled when British navigators show themselves as ready in the present day as in the past to run great risks and to suffer hardships in traveling the Polar [sic] ice fields.” (“Captain Scott's Antarctic Expedition,” Lancet 175, no. 4506 [January 8, 1910]: 120.)
39. Before the three men left, Scott took Wilson aside and stressed to him that he needed to have Cherry-Garrard and Bowers return in good shape for the polar trek. (Susan Solomon, The Coldest March: Scott's Fatal Antarctic Expedition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 135.)
40. Diana Preston, A First Rate Tragedy: Captain Scott's Antarctic Expeditions (London: Constable, 1997), p. 150.
41. Larson, Empire of Ice, p. 115.
42. In September 1909, Scott wrote in his journal that “the scientific exploration of a considerable extent of the Antarctic continent” was a secondary objective of his Terra Nova expedition. (Entry of September 16, 1909, quoted in Wilfrid Noyce, The Springs of Adventure [Cleveland: World, 1958], p. 159.)
43. Francis Spufford has argued that collecting these fossils, with their clues to early life on the planet, was “among the most forward-looking things Scott ever did.” But it is not at all clear that the explorer himself would have seen it that way. (Spufford, introduction to The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic, ed. Elizabeth Kolbert [New York: Bloomsbury, 2007], p. 6.)
44. Crane, Scott of Antarctica, pp. 5–6. However, in his journal entries made during the trip back, Scott made no mention of scientific accomplishments and only praised the endurance of his companions.
45. Charles W. Johnson, Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2014), pp. 82–83.
46. William C. Godfrey, Godfrey's Narrative of the Last Grinnell Arctic Exploring Party in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853-4-5 (Philadelphia: J. T. Lloyd, 1857), p. 71.
47. Adrien de Gerlache, The Belgian Antarctic Expedition under the Command of A. de Gerlache de Gomery (Brussels: Hayez, 1904), p. 43.
48. Adrien de Gerlache, Fifteen Months in the Antarctic, trans. Maurice Raraty (Norfolk: Bluntisham, 1998), p. 104.
CHAPTER NINE: NO MAN IS AN ISLAND
1. Quoted in Wilfrid Noyce, The Springs of Adventure (Cleveland: World, 1958), p. 81.
2. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (London: Macmillan, 1868), p. 158.
3. Richard E. Byrd, Alone (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1938), p. 11. He wrote to his wife, Marie, that she should not be concerned since he had “planned the whole thing.” (Lisle A. Rose, Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008], p. 34.)
4. Warren R. Hofstra, “Richard E. Byrd and the Legacy of Polar Exploration,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 110, no. 2 (2002): 147.
5. Lisle A. Rose, “Exploring a Secret Land: The Literary and Technological Legacies of Richard E. Byrd,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 110, no. 2 (2002): 191.
6. Byrd, Alone, p. 3.
7. Gabrielle Walker, Antarctic: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2013), p. 335.
8. Quoted in Rose, Explorer, p. 352.
9. Esther D. Rothblum, “Psychological Factors in the Antarctic,” Journal of Psychology 124, no. 3 (1990): 257. Rothblum cited as her source an article by Charles S. Mullin Jr.: “Some Psychological Aspects of Isolated Antarctic Living,” American Journal of Psychiatry 117, no. 4 (October 1960): 323–25.
10. Rose, Explorer, p. 360.
11. Henry Fairfield Osborn, foreword to Byrd's Great Adventure: The Fight to Conquer the Ends of the Earth, by Francis Trevelyan Miller (Chicago: Winston, 1930), p. 15.
12. Quoted in Noyce, Springs of Adventure, p. 83.
13. Robert M. Bryce, Cook & Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1997), p. 319. Cook had suffered from feelings of isolation on the way to the pole, even though he was accompanied by two Inuit men. He later would write, “We were alone—all alone in a lifeless world…. With eager eyes we searched the dusky plains of frost, but there was no speck of life to grace the purple run of death.” (Cook, “The Conquest of the North Pole,” New York Herald, October 1, 1909, quoted in Bryce, Cook & Peary, p. 409.)
14. For an account of this truly amazing journey, see Stephen R. Bown, White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen's Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic (New York: Da Capo, 2015), pp. 223–51.
15. Mertz was also a vegetarian, so it was difficult for him to digest meat. For this psychological explanation for his death, see D. Carrington-Smith, “Mawson and Mertz: A Re-Evaluation of Their Ill-Fated Mapping Journey during the 1911–1914 Australasian Antarctic Expedition,” Medical Journal of Australia 183, nos. 11–12 (December 5–19, 2005): 638–41.
16. Lennard Bickel, Mawson's Will: The Greatest Survival Story Ever Written (New York: Stein and Day, 1997), p. 125. See also Charles F. Laseron, South with Mawson: Reminiscences of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911–1914 (Sydney: Australasian Publishing, 1947), pp. 212–13.
17. But this expression of regret did not find its way into his book Home of the Blizzard.
18. Quoted from the journal of John Richardson, in Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis Garden, ed., Polar Secrets: A Treasury of the Arctic and Antarctic (New York: Doubleday, 1968), p. 144.
19. Byrd, Alone, pp. 15–16.
20. Rose, Explorer, p. 220. Some five thousand men had volunteered for this earlier expedition of Shackleton's.
21. Nansen also looked for men who were as ambitious as he was—who possessed “the same thirst for achievement, the same craving to get beyond the limits of the known which inspired this people in the Saga times.” (Fridtjof Nansen, Farthest North: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship “Fram” (1893–1896) and of a Fifteen Months’ Sleigh Journey by Dr. Nansen and Lieut. Johansen, vol. 1 [Westminster, MD: Constable, 1897], p. 93.)
22. Ibid., p. 222. See also Eugene Rodgers, preface to Beyond the Barrier: The Story of Byrd's First Antarctic Expedition (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1990), p. ix.
23. When he was researching a book on this expedition, Eugene Rodgers found that many surviving veterans did not want to talk to him about Byrd. (Rodgers, Beyond the Barrier, p. vi.)
24. Scott biographer Roland Huntford points out that Scott lacked confidence around nonmilitary types. (Huntford, The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole [New York: Random House, 1999], p. 137.)
25. George W. De Long, The Voyage of the “Jeannette”: The Ship and Ice Journals of George W. De Long, ed. Emma De Long, vol.1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), p. 68.
26. Iain McCalman, Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), p. 141.
27. Sherard Osborn, Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; or, Eighteen Months in the Polar Regions in Search of Sir John Franklin's Expedition, in the Years 1850–51 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1852), p. 152.
28. Mark M. Sawin, Raising Kane: Elisha Kent Kane and the Culture of Fame in Antebellum Ame
rica (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2008), p. 168.
29. Nansen, Farthest North, vol. 1, p. 144.
30. Isaac I. Hayes, The Open Polar Sea: A Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery towards the North Pole, in the Schooner “United States” (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867), pp. 16, 162, 167, 168, 203, 222, 316, 317.
31. Charles F. Hall, Narrative of the Second Arctic Expedition Made by Charles F. Hall: His Voyage to Repulse Bay, Sledge Journeys to the Straits of Fury and Hecla and to King William's Land (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1879), p. 130.
32. Quoted from Hall's journal, in Chauncey C. Loomis, Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), p. 130.
33. Ibid., p. 259.
34. Nansen, Farthest North, vol. 1, p. 144.
35. Roald Amundsen, The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the Fram, 1910–1912, trans. A. G. Chater, vol. 2(London: John Murray, 1913), p. 445.
36. Members referred to this outing by its original name, the “Eastern Party.”
37. Raymond E. Priestley, Antarctic Adventure: Scott's Northern Party (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1915), pp. 232, 249, 279, 30.
38. Quoted in Leonard F. Guttridge, Ghosts of Cape Sabine: The True Story of the Greely Expedition (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2000), p. 81.
39. Katherine Lambert, The Longest Winter: The Incredible Survival of Scott's Lost Party (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2004), p. 145.
40. David Crane, Scott of Antarctica: A Life of Courage and Tragedy in the Extreme South (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), p. 119.
41. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1989), p. 204.
42. Quoted in Caroline Alexander, The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition (New York: Knopf, 1999), p. 131.
43. “Peary as His Friends Portray Him,” Current Literature 48, no. 5 (May 1910): 496.
44. Robert E. Peary, The North Pole: Its Discovery in 1909 under the Auspices of the Peary Arctic Club (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1910), pp. 270–71.
To the Ends of the Earth Page 35