Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram

by Charles W. Johnson

  Amundsen, the ambitious, self-sure leader who had his men sign documents of loyalty and obedience, saw it otherwise. He had not abandoned his men. He sped in front with Wisting because Hanssen, Hassel, and Stubberud needed help and he wanted to get them back quickly to treat them. He said he did not know that Prestrud was also suffering from frostbite, as he had never said a word about a problem. Had he known, he of course would have given him his place on Wisting’s sledge, to hustle him home with the others.

  Amundsen went to each man separately to get their opinion about what happened, so that whether by force of his personality, power of persuasion, or simply flexing his muscle as Boss, he built support for his actions. He did this in Madeira when he asked the men if they wanted to go to Antarctica instead of the North Pole. He would do it again in other circumstances. His technique worked, as it did before and would again. Except for Johansen, the bystanders were careful not to take sides overtly, though what they felt might have been quite different. Bjaaland wrote in his diary that Johansen said things he should not have. Stubberud thought that Amundsen just made a mistake. Lindstrøm, a favorite of Amundsen and one who wanted people to be happy, kept quiet. Amundsen showed who was the Boss.

  ››› Amundsen had always been wary of Johansen, this powerful yet moody man foisted on him by Nansen, though he entrusted him with work befitting his seniority and experience. He had even put him in charge of the expedition, even over the officer Prestrud, during a period when Amundsen himself was incapacitated by an internal injury. But Johansen had questioned, even criticized, some of his decisions (e.g., too much weight for the sledges) and had been proved right. Now, his outburst and defiance changed everything. Johansen offended him and, more gravely, openly challenged his authority.

  Amundsen could see it was a mutiny in the making, a potential mortal blow to the expedition, and he had to act. He demoted him that same day. Johansen, the best polar traveler of them all, would not be going to the pole. Instead, Amundsen came up with the equivalent of banishment in exile. He sent him and two others on a separate trip to explore King Edward VII Land. Prestrud would be in charge, with Stubberud and Johansen as team members. He gave each written orders to sign. Prestrud, an officer supplicating to his superior and perhaps just as happy to be out of it, did so. Stubberud also signed, though with some regret. Johansen, suffering the indignity of having to serve under a younger, far less experienced man, flatly refused.

  ››› By mid-October, Amundsen was ready to try again, with the sun higher, the temperatures less brutal, and the foot wounds of his men mostly healed. With him were his chosen four: two of his most trusted loyalists, Hanssen and Wisting, and two with other qualities needed for the trip, Bjaaland with his expertise with skis, and Hassel with his polar wisdom and skills at driving dogs. Since Johansen’s blowup, the mood in Framheim, by all accounts, had changed; its unifying spirit was fractured. So when the southern party took off on October 20, it was probably with relief at getting away as well as anticipation about getting on.

  Hanssen led the way out fast, as he usually did, guided by one of the Fram’s compasses mounted on his sledge. The others followed. Prestrud kept them company for a while, filming the departure, and then stopped and watched them speed away into the distance. “There I stood, utterly alone,” he wrote, “and I cannot deny that I was a prey to somewhat mixed feelings.”7 Three weeks later, November 8, it was Prestrud’s turn to depart Framheim for the made-up mission east. With him, driving their own sledges, were Stubberud and Johansen. Johansen had given in. The Boss had won. Lindstrøm was the only one left to say good-bye.

  26 ›TRIUMPH & TRAGEDY

  Hjalmar Gjertsen hid under the blankets of Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm’s bunk bed when they heard the men approaching; Lindstrøm pretended to be busy at the cookstove. When Kristian Prestrud lumbered through the door, Lindstrøm looked up and greeted him loudly, cheerily, “The Fram’s come in!”

  Prestrud already knew. On their way back from King Edward VII Land, they had seen it way out through the telescope, thinking at first it was a distant iceberg on the horizon. They sped the last fourteen miles to Framheim, hoping to find company and news. As they neared, the place was quiet and dead outside, with no one around, not even Lindstrøm who usually came out to meet anyone returning.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Prestrud retorted, maybe a bit put out from not being welcomed.8 Lindstrøm moved to his bunk and asked Prestrud if he could guess what was under the blanket. Before he had a chance to answer, Gjertsen threw off the blanket and jumped out, grinning behind his thick beard. Lindstrøm tried the trick again with Jørgen Stubberud, but he smelled a rat and was not to be fooled. It was a silly little game that children might play, but after all, in spite of the rugged, self-reliant lives they led, they were still young, and sometimes felt like boys.

  The same day all but Lindstrøm went down to the edge of the barrier and thence across the broken ice field on the water to where the Fram lay; they came under their shipmates’ smiles and then up into their warm embrace. The stories had to be told again, back and forth, to fill in all the blanks of their lives since separating. Surely one of the first questions for the three was, What of the polar party? But there would be another obvious one right on its heels: Why did you not go with them? The answer to this, no doubt, depended on who was telling and who was listening. Everyone on a ship, any ship, knows to be careful about what is said, to whom, for word travels fast. Problems and dissatisfactions of individuals must never threaten order and rule, lest they spread like disease and infect the entire body. Captain Thorvald Nilsen, most of all, would be aware of this, knew his men, and knew who signed his orders.

  Of the polar party, there was no sign. If the Boss’s estimates were correct and nothing had gone seriously wrong, it was still early for them to be getting back, so there was no reason to worry yet. What about Robert Falcon Scott? Not a word.

  The four men left the Fram the next day, replete with food and conversation, carrying letters and papers from home, with their ancient yet precious news, and went back to Framheim to work on maps and surveys of where they had been. A few days later those aboard the Fram were surprised when another ship came slowly in and thought perhaps it was the Aurora of Australian explorer Douglas Mawson, whom they knew was to conduct an expedition to the magnetic pole of Antarctica, but starting far west of here. It turned out to be a Japanese ship, the Kainan Maru, which moored to the ice not far from them. Its men jumped to the ice and went after penguins and seals in a slaughtering frenzy, in the process wounding or torturing many. It was a display of gratuitous cruelty that disturbed Nilsen and others on the Fram, who themselves had killed many an animal for food but never in such an inhumane, wanton way. They were not sorry to see the ship drift off and disappear. They had the Bay of Whales to themselves again, and there they waited, moving off the barrier when the storms kicked up and coming in closer when calmer weather and the ice allowed.

  After several days far out in the bay, on January 27 the Fram was able to come back in and penetrate the slack ice nearly up to the barrier. As it came in, they spied a large Norwegian flag flying, and immediately they knew: the polar party had returned. “We went therefore as far south as possible,” Nilsen wrote, “and blew our powerful siren; it was not very long before eight men came tearing down . . . the first man on board was the Chief [Boss].”9

  They had arrived at Framheim the day before, after ninety-nine days away and 1,860 miles traveled. No one had died, been injured, or gone hungry. Everything had gone according to plan. They planted the Norwegian flag at the South Pole. There were no Englishmen and no English flag. The race was won.

  But for Roald Amundsen the race was not over. Now he had to get back as soon as possible, to be first to tell the world the news. He could not have known then that there was no need to hurry. He would not know till much later that his competitor Scott and four of his men had only just arrived at the pole, a month and hundreds of miles behind; wou
ld suffer terribly coming back; and would never make it to the finish line.

  ››› Amundsen, despite a sometimes-distant, sometimes-prickly personality, held the keys to success: polar experience, both north and south; meticulous, even niggling, planning and preparation; a steely, unflinching focus on the goal; and flawless execution. He also had another trait that contributed to the achievement but that could easily have had the opposite effect and led to a far different outcome: absolute belief in himself to find a way where no way had been tried before. Once he had thought it through exhaustively and prepared thoroughly, it was time to act, and to get the job done, no matter what it took. In this he was very much like Fridtjof Nansen. Gå fram!

  From Framheim at the Bay of Whales to the end of the Great Ice Barrier was 450 miles of mostly flat surface upon which the dogs, sledges, and skis usually went well, and they were able to make good progress, leapfrogging supplies from old depots to new ones further south. By November 17, after almost a month en route, they reached the end of ice-covered water, the barrier, and the beginning of ice-covered land, the continent of Antarctica itself. Before them spread the great northwest-to-southeast trending range called today the Transantarctic Mountains, with its high peaks rising to almost fifteen thousand feet. This they would have to cross to reach the high plateau beyond, where the South Pole lay. No one had ever seen the mountains from this place, much less walked or skied them. Ernest Shackleton had found a gap hundreds of miles to the west, up Beardmore Glacier, where Scott would be going now, but from where Amundsen stood this was all new and unknown, terra nova, terra incognita. Here was his great “risk,” where he would put his faith in himself to the test, to find a way through.

  He found a way through, up and across glaciers, even though the going was steep, crevassed, and treacherous. Thanks to the dogs and the skiing skills of the men, they made it to the polar plateau, ten thousand feet above sea level, in five days, naming features as they went, many after themselves or Fram shipmates (Amundsen Glacier, Mt. Bjaaland, Nilsen Plateau). Some names were descriptive of what they experienced there, such as Devil’s Glacier and, sadly, the Butcher’s Shop at the plateau where they killed twenty-four of the forty dogs who had pulled so gallantly.

  Two weeks and a day later they were at the pole; the official discovery was made on December 14, 1911. They set up camp, calling it Polheim (Polar Home). They celebrated with a meal of seal steaks and chocolate, and cigars that Olav Bjaaland had brought along for the occasion. Even the dogs had something extra, one of their own who had to be killed. Amundsen wanted it beyond question that they were there, so they stayed four days, taking and retaking solar observations at the pole and for miles out in all directions, to fix their location repeatedly. They marked the perimeter with flags and cairns; they checked each other’s figures and signed each other’s logbooks in confirmation.

  FIGURE 94

  At the South Pole, December 14, 1911. Facing Polheim, from left, Amundsen, Hanssen, Hassel, and Wisting. Bjaaland took the photo with his own camera, as Amundsen’s had failed. It is −9° F, breezy (see flags, Norwegian on top, Fram’s under). It appears the men made the effort to shave and get a haircut for the occasion.

  In getting ready to leave, days later, they pitched a small tent Martin Rønne had made for emergencies and put inside articles for Scott, including a sextant, outer clothing, and a folder containing a note and a letter. The note was from Amundsen to Scott; the letter was addressed to King Haakon VII of Norway. The note requested Scott to deliver the letter.

  Amundsen’s letter to the king informed him of the capture of the pole for Norway, the determination of the southern extent of the Great Ice Barrier, and the discovery of a new portion of the Transantarctic Mountains (which he had named, after the king’s wife, Queen Maud Range). He also wrote that the “gently sloping plain” on which the South Pole sat he had named King Haakon VII Plateau, which he hoped would meet with the king’s approval.

  The note to Scott, asking him to deliver the letter, was inscrutably Amundsen, working on two levels. On the surface, it made perfect sense. It was a logical way for Amundsen to prove he had been to the pole, by having someone else, a competitor and a non-Norwegian, bring back the incontrovertible evidence that both had reached it. But below the surface, behind its civility, was it an arrow aimed directly at Scott’s heart, to leave a piercing and bleeding wound, and to bring him to his knees?

  It was time to leave, the sun shining clear and warm at minus twenty. Norway’s flag waved from the top of the pole of Rønne’s tent and just below it the Fram’s pennant. As Bjaaland took photographs of the scene with his small camera (Amundsen’s more elaborate ones had failed), Amundsen and the other three faced the tent. They took off their hats in a spontaneous gesture of respect and honor, for the moment, for the place, and for what this tiny speck of a tent represented in the immensity of their universe. Afterward, they headed north, traveling at night so the sun would be behind them and not in their eyes, steadily down toward Framheim.

  Mostly through agreeable, even fine, weather they went, only slowed up now and then by storms. It had been the perfect expedition, a perfect adventure with a storybook ending. But unlike in the well-varnished picture Amundsen paints in his official account The South Pole, or even in his diary (which often reads as if it were meant for other eyes, not just his own), the trip so far had not been a bed of roses between his men and himself. Crossing the mountains he had fought with Bjaaland and threatened to send him back for insubordination, and only relented when Bjaaland humbled himself and begged to stay. Sverre Hassel privately grew more wary of Amundsen in his unpredictable moods. Even loyal Helmer Hanssen, on the way back, had words with him, but soon backed off into compliance. As in all things human, the story was more complex than it might have seemed from any one point of view.

  ››› The Norwegians were already halfway down the barrier at depot 82, men and dogs going strong and steady and fully fed toward Framheim, when the five beleaguered British men arrived at the pole. It was January 17, over a month since Amundsen had been there. The first, dispiriting clues that they were not the first came a day earlier when they saw what looked like a cairn and then, further on, a tiny black dot in the distance against the white. As they came closer they saw it was a flag, one of the black ones delineating the Amundsen surveying perimeter. Now, to Scott, it must have seemed more like the black flag of a pirate, demanding surrender. Later they came upon the little tent, the Norwegian flag flapping in the wind. Inside, they found the articles Amundsen left behind, including Amundsen’s note to Scott and his letter to the king. Scott, though “puzzled at the object,” took it and left a note of his own, for god-knows who. To document their presence, they took photographs of themselves in front of the tent and flag, but their worn, ravaged faces tell much more than that. A few miles away they built “a cairn, put up our poor slighted Union Jack, and photographed ourselves.”10 These images would be the last photographs of them.

  FIGURE 95

  Scott and his men at Polheim, January 18, 1912. The discouraged, exhausted English arrived at the pole about a month after the Norwegians and died on the return trip (see text for story). From left, Scott, Bowers, Wilson, and Evans. Lawrence Oates took the photograph.

  ››› The motor-sledge dropping through the ice as it was unloaded from the Terra Nova, and soon after the ponies likewise falling through and drowning, foreshadowed a larger tragedy, one whose causes are still controversial today, more than one hundred years after it played out. Some claim it was due mostly to bad luck, while others say to bad judgment. Was it unpredictable misfortune, predictable, or both?

  In many ways, Scott made things tough on himself and his men. He chose to employ mostly traditional British approaches to polar exploration, notwithstanding their proven inadequacies, especially in comparison to what was already available and known to be superior. Whether out of pride or self-confidence, no doubt he thought he could make them work better than they had before. />
  He shunned the better insulating, more breathable furs and skins à la the Inuit in favor of Western clothing of cotton and wool. He and his men did have skis (and even a Norwegian ski instructor), but they were not good skiers, some not skiers at all, and often resorted to slogging for a few hard-won miles instead of sliding over many. They relied on themselves, or untested ponies and motor sledges, instead of teams of hearty, adept dogs trained since birth at hauling heavy sledges. They ate mostly familiar foods of home, packed in cans and boxes, and more sparingly of what native fresh meat they could eat on the spot or freeze for later, such as penguins, flying birds, and seals. In all these he was like his compatriot George Nares decades earlier and unlike Amundsen, Nansen, and Otto Sverdrup, who took their lessons from those who lived in those climates, “heathens” or not.

  Things got off to a slow start with problems encountered early on and the great amount of supplies needed for so many men (twenty-seven as opposed to Amundsen’s nine), ponies, and dogs. That first winter they only managed to set one depot to Amundsen’s fully stocked three. When they did get going the following spring, the two remaining motor sledges proved undependable and did not last very long, quickly succumbing to the Antarctic cold with cracked engine blocks and broken tracks, and were abandoned on the barrier. The ponies, of questionable quality to begin with, struggled and failed in the cold and deep snow, and one by one were shot, all before reaching the mountains where they were supposed to be at their best. Their meat went into the stomachs of the men and dogs, or into depots, and the remaining great piles of fodder and grain went unused.

  The large expeditionary force set depots as it went but, as it turned out, at intervals too irregular and far apart for weakened, starving men to reach in bad weather. Minus the ponies, they followed Shackleton’s route up tough Beardmore Glacier through the mountains to the polar plateau; they were all pulling heavy sledges but in a strung-out procession since they were going different speeds, with some on skis, others on foot, and a couple driving dogs. The force grew progressively smaller as it proceeded, with Scott sending support parties back when their jobs were done until, on January 3 at just above latitude 87° south, there were five left to continue to the pole (over two hundred miles away) and then make it back.