by Chris Turney
The basis of this was a mistaken idea circulating among some academic circles: during early stages of growth, embryos went through different phases of evolutionary history, giving an insight into the origin of a species. If the theory was correct, Wilson needed embryos from various stages of development. Writing on this winter journey, he observed: ‘If vestiges of teeth are ever to be found in birds of the present day it will be in the embryos of penguins which are the most primitive birds living now, and the Emperor is quite the most interesting of them all.’ Wilson felt the penguins might be descended from dinosaurs, and foetuses would provide the test.
Previous visits had shown that if you wanted to collect eggs it had to be done in the dead of the Antarctic winter. Wilson asked Scott for Cherry and the appropriately named ‘Birdie’ Bowers—so called because of his astounding beaklike nose—to accompany him in an attempt on Cape Crozier. Scott was probably wary of putting several of his key men at risk but accepted that Wilson had been determined to collect samples since his Discovery days. Science aside, there would also be other benefits to the expedition—it would help inform Scott about the equipment and food needed on the Antarctic Plateau the following summer.
Skirting the southern side of Ross Island at the end of June, the three men set off towards the emperor penguin colony. They worked their way there and back over five weeks, much of the time in darkness, battling temperatures as low as -60°C and wind speeds of up to two hundred kilometres per hour. At times it was so cold that the sledge runners failed to melt the surface ice, preventing gliding, and forcing the three men to unclip and carry their load forward by hand. Back at the bases, the others had little idea what Wilson’s team was experiencing. Cape Crozier is one of the most exposed places in Antarctica, and even when it is relatively calm in McMurdo Sound the eastern side of Ross Island can be blowing a gale, or worse. The men were exposed to the worst of Antarctic weather.
And yet it is this same environment that emperor penguins call home. The birds gather in winter, during which the males are presented with an egg that rests precariously on their feet, tucked under a fold of skin to keep it warm. As many as several thousand birds huddle and shuffle in one great spiral, each individual taking a turn in the centre. The huddling is thought to reduce body-weight loss by up to one-half and is remarkably effective at preserving the rookery as a viable population. When the chicks hatch during late winter, sometime between late July and early August, the females take over the care and the males return to the sea for a well-earned feed. By December the young birds can fend for themselves. Cherry later wrote, ‘I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an emperor penguin.’
After three weeks of the most trying conditions the three men somehow reached Cape Crozier, in July. Wilson was surprised to see not one hundred birds, having observed far greater numbers on his previous visit. He estimated only one in four or five of the birds had eggs. During a large storm the men lost their tent and the canvas cover of a stone shelter they had built as a temporary base near the rookery. Fortunately the tent was recovered after the winds temporarily abated, and the men returned home, much chastened, bearing five eggs—though two broke on the journey back to the base.
And yet Wilson wished to return and find out why the number of birds was so low. ‘I see no way of deciding this question except by another visit to the rookery—either this year in September or October or next year by August.’
Cherry does not seem to have been keen on the idea. In his later account of the harrowing expedition, The Worst Journey in the World, he wrote, ‘The horror of the nineteen days it took us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier would have to be appreciated: and anyone would be a fool who went again.’
There had been useful lessons. The rations used on the Cape Crozier trip gave Scott important knowledge about the likely needs of the expedition during its traverse of the plateau, with its anticipated colder temperatures. On the equipment front, the three men had found some of the gear sadly lacking. The woollen layers, due to their absorbent properties, froze easily in the cold and proved difficult to thaw in camp; even hanging the socks in the upper reaches of the tent rarely resulted in them drying for the next day’s effort. Scott had a ‘sneaking feeling’ Inuit fur clothing might be better, but it ‘would have been quite impossible to have obtained such articles’.
The reindeer-fur-lined sleeping bags were awful: the fur became moist from the sleeper’s breath, which froze solid when the bag was vacated, forcing the men to re-enter an ice-filled bag the next time, a process that sometimes took up to three-quarters of an hour. The ice added hugely to the weight of the bags at the end of the Cape Crozier mission, increasing them from around eight to a staggering twenty-one kilograms (a typical contemporary down-filled polar sleeping bag weighs three to four kilograms). On the plus side, testing of a double-lined tent for added warmth was an ‘immense success’ and the man-hauling harnesses had a significant fringe benefit. During the Cape Crozier trip Bowers had fallen into a crevasse and found to his relief that he was still connected to the sledge. He was hauled out relatively safely—some comfort to a team facing the rigours of an unknown land.
Towards the end of the 1911 winter Scott laid out his plans for reaching the South Geographic Pole. Drawing on Shackleton’s method and travel times, he intended to follow the Discovery leader’s proven route. Nervous of trusting the ponies, dogs or motor sledges to make it up the Beardmore Glacier, Scott made a series of calculations based on the size of the team—and the time, fuel and food—needed to support an assault on the pole. Scott was all too aware of the severe conditions on the 3000-metre-high plateau and, guided by his past experience, made it clear that the chance of a bad season was high. Conscious of the likely October blasts of cold, Scott intended to start south at the beginning of November. He wanted to reach the upper plateau early in December and ideally reach the South Geographic Pole around 22 December, at the summer solstice. As the men travelled south the sun’s daily arc across the sky would flatten, so that by the time the expedition members reached the pole it would be tracking across the sky through the day at a level 23° above the horizon, with virtually no dip in elevation. The team could use a theodolite to fix its location to an accuracy of around 1.5 kilometres, more than sufficient to claim the pole. He estimated a total travel time of 144 days, returning to base sometime around 27 March 1912, at the extreme end of summer.
When Scott had heard that Amundsen was going south, he had reconciled himself to his original timetable. The pole was important, but rushing would jeopardise the broader scientific program. He did not want to race. After all, ‘it doesn’t appear the sort of thing one is out for.’ Writing home, in missives reproduced in the world’s newspapers, Scott had reflected dryly, ‘If he [Amundsen] gets to the Pole he will be bound to do it rapidly with dogs, and one foresees that success will justify him. Anyway he is taking a big risk and if he gets through he will have deserved his luck. Meanwhile you may be sure that we are doing the best we can do to carry out our plans.’ In the end, there was not much Scott could do. He was committed to the horses, and the men could not leave until the temperature was high enough for the creatures to cope with the conditions.
Summing up his plans to the expedition members, Scott said, ‘One cannot affect to be blind to the situation, the scientific public as well as the more general public will gauge the result of the scientific work of the Expedition largely in accordance with the success or failure of the main object [reaching the South Geographic Pole]. With success all roads will be made easy, all work will receive its proper consideration. With failure even the most brilliant work may be neglected and forgotten, at least for a time.’
Feeling he had done as much as possible, Scott reviewed the expedition’s scientific work to date. Weighing it against the likelihood of Amundsen beating him to the pole, he wrote in his diary, ‘It is a really satisfactory state of affairs all round. If the Southern journey comes off, nothing, not even priority at t
he Pole, can prevent the Expedition ranking as one of the most important that ever entered the Polar regions.’
The Terra Nova returned to New Zealand with news of what had happened so far. During a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society in April 1911 the president remarked:
One must remember that it is only in civilized lands where the traveller can reasonably expect to escape all misfortunes; whilst, as for true exploration, its course never does run quite smoothly. These misfortunes are to be regretted, but they do not in the slightest degree dim our confident expectations that Captain Scott will produce splendid scientific results, or shake our hopes of his reaching the Pole. As to the Norwegian expedition, it will be best to say but little about it until we have fuller accounts of their proceedings, both past and future. I am glad, however, to take this opportunity of expressing my own personal opinion that no explorer attains any vested rights merely by exploration, and that we should therefore welcome all foreign scientific competition on the Antarctic continent, wherever it may appear, if information is given in good time in advance. I hope also that cordial relationship will always exist between all Norwegian and British expeditions, as appears in this instance to have been the case. But I cannot refrain from expressing my regret that Captain Amundsen did not give us an opportunity of discussing his Antarctic proposals before he left Europe for the south.
What happened during the following Antarctic summer is one of the great tales of exploration history. Scott has received bad press in recent years, with some—perhaps fair—criticism of his planning. But his was also a hugely ambitious scientific program. Logistically, the British attempt on the pole was complex, involving sixteen men who peeled off in small groups as the pole was approached, all supported by ten ponies, two dog teams and two motorised sledges.
From the outset Scott was frustrated by slow progress. The weather was ominously changeable: ‘One has a horrid feeling that this is a real bad season,’ he wrote on 4 December. Large swings in temperature, accompanied by high winds and heavy, wet snowfalls, led to delays.
The motorised sledges found things particularly difficult. Parts were in short supply, and the men struggled to keep the technology going in the alien environment. The sledge chains regularly slipped off and the engines frequently overheated. The convoy would often have to stop and turn them off. Only once the motors had cooled could they be restarted—worryingly, warmed by a blowtorch—and the cavalcade continue. But this intensive nursing was not enough. After several days, with the cylinders cracked and spare parts exhausted, the machines were ignobly dumped and the men were forced to continue on foot, dragging the sledges of supplies and equipment. Scott must have rued his decision not to bring Skelton, with his intimate knowledge of the motors’ inner workings.
The large convoy took fifteen painful days to reach One Ton Depot at 79°29’S. Shackleton, the expedition leader vented in his diary, had been lucky on his expedition—Scott felt it terribly. But his problems were not all down to the conditions. The combination of transport had unintended consequences: the dogs would attack faltering horses and had to be beaten off with sticks. By the time the expedition had reached the base of the Beardmore Glacier the Manchurian ponies had proved a failure. The low temperatures, along with the animals’ need for specialised feedstock and their inability to walk on the thin snow crust of the Great Ice Barrier, meant the expedition would often be held up for several days, slowing the British team when they could ill afford it. When the horses did proceed, they often could only drag lighter-than-expected loads.
To make up for lost time, Meares’s dogs were ordered to push on. Originally the canine teams were only meant to cross half the barrier. Now they were to carry on to the base of the Beardmore Glacier, something for which they were not provisioned. Supplies were redistributed and Meares’s team continued.
At the bottom of the Beardmore, Scott decided to kill the last of the horses and store their meat in a depot. Wary of Shackleton’s experiences, he had no intention of having the ponies and their precious cargo fall down a crevasse, threatening the whole expedition. At the base of the glacier, the dogs were also sent back—it would be man-hauling from now on.
Film shot earlier by Ponting indicates how hard this was: men are shown roped to the sledges, connected to a denim harness that spreads the load across the shoulders and stomach. Hauling their loads across the snow, they repeatedly stumble, weighed down with the effort. Cherry summed up the experience: ‘Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.’
As the expedition pushed on, small teams of men peeled away. Two groups were sent back along the barrier; another at the top of the Beardmore Glacier. One and a half degrees of latitude short of the pole, Scott suddenly announced he would go on with a team of five men—not four—for the final assault. Bowers was to join him from the other sledging team and second-in-command Evans was to be sent back with naval personnel Tom Crean and William Lashly. The three men were bitterly disappointed—Evans was furious, convinced Scott had never intended to take him and had appropriated Bowers to make his sledge-pulling easier—but their return to base proved more than eventful. On the barrier Evans fell down, ill with scurvy. Dumping geological samples to shed weight, Crean and Lashly dragged him on their sledge. Finding they could pull no further, Crean walked, weak from exhaustion, the remaining fifty-six kilometres to Ross Island and returned with help, saving Evans’s life.
The pole party’s scientific work continued unabated. The surrounding mountains were mapped and geological formations recorded—all precisely fixed by theodolites and compasses. Weather observations were a major focus, and meticulously taken each day. For the sledging teams, however, there would be none of the automatic measurements enjoyed by Simpson back at base. Instead, as Hints to Travellers suggests: ‘On the march, or whenever good shade cannot be had, it will be found a good plan to attach a string to the top of a pocket thermometer, and whirl the instrument round at arm’s length for about half a minute.’ Breakfast, lunch and dinner a sling thermometer was religiously brought out, swung vigorously round the body and the temperature noted. Changes in altitude and atmospheric pressure were monitored by barometer readings. As the men slowly approached the Antarctic Plateau temperatures dropped, routinely hitting -30°C and lower. The tents tested on Cape Crozier proved invaluable.
Fatigue, though, brought about mistakes. As the men approached the pole the two chronometers were found to be off by twenty-six minutes. The difference in time was not merely inconvenient: a precise time-keeping device meant the men could accurately place themselves on the ground. The watches were kept individually in small leather pockets attached to the inner vest and close to the body, shielding the mechanism from extreme conditions to maintain a regular beat. This was critical to fixing the time when the sun hit the highest point in the sky each day, and from this the men’s location.
The basic premise is that the sun moves overhead at an average speed of 15° of longitude per hour. By measuring the time when the sun is at its highest point in the sky it is possible to calculate an observer’s location relative to the agreed meridian in Greenwich, London. If the time of local noon happened one hour after midday at Greenwich, the longitude would be 15°W. But an error of just a few minutes can lead to a serious miscalculation—so Scott’s men brought two chronometers, to cross-check. They were meant to be wound up twice a day, before and after a march.
With the watches now disagreeing, there was a question over location and with it the prospect of the British reaching the pole by the most direct route. Scott was furious, convinced Bowers had not taken care of his device. Bowers recorded in his diary that he ‘got an unusual burst of wrath in consequence, in fact my name is mud just at present. It is rather sad to get into the dirt tub with one’s leader at this juncture.’
And yet Scott pushed on with increasing confidence. By 6 January the British sledging team was beyond Shackleton’s furthest south. Hopes we
re high—they were on the verge of reaching new territory. But, ten days later, a heart-breaking discovery: Bowers spotted a black flag on an upright sledge in the snow. It could mean only one thing.
On 17 January a dispirited Robert Scott and four companions staggered towards their long-sought goal and discovered a solitary small tent flying the Norwegian flag. After seventy-eight days of dragging equipment and food over fourteen hundred kilometres, they had managed to reach the last great unclaimed geographical record—but had arrived second.
Amundsen’s team had trumped Scott and his men by the slenderest of margins. Wilson wrote in his diary: ‘all agreed that he [Amundsen] can claim prior right to the Pole itself. He has beaten us in so far as he made a race of it. We have done what we came for all the same and as our programme was made out.’
Captive South Georgian king penguins strapped in corsets by the German polar expedition of 1882–1883. From Karl von den Steinen, in Die Internationale Polarforschung 1882–83: Die Deutschen Expeditionen und Ihre Ergebnisse (1891).
The changing face of the Bay of Whales (1902–1912). Map inspired by a lantern slide used in Edgeworth David’s 1914 Royal Geographical Society lecture ‘Antarctica and some of its problems’ (LS/333).
CHAPTER 4
OF REINDEER, PONIES AND AUTOMOBILES
Roald Amundsen and the Norwegian Bid for the South Pole, 1910–1912
Nobody except a demented scientist would want to melt ice on the tops of mountains, and even if he did, who cared what the temperature was?