by Chris Turney
Leaving Buenos Aires the Deutschland pushed on through some of the planet’s most feared seas, towards the 170-kilometre-long island of South Georgia, which lies in a vast belt of waves and wind that encircles the mid-latitudes of the southern hemisphere. The region has acquired all sorts of dramatic names—the ‘screaming sixties’, the ‘furious fifties’, the ‘roaring forties’—because of the temperature difference of several degrees over a relatively narrow band of latitude. Combined with the spin of the Earth and the vast expanse of ocean, this means the wind almost always blows from the west, and with prodigious force.
South Georgia sits in a perfect position to be hit sideways by this continuous blast. Because the island is immediately downwind of a relatively small gap between South America and Antarctica known as the Drake Passage, the circulating ocean waters can combine with the wind to create extraordinarily rough seas. It is also something of a gateway to Antarctica. On 20 January 1775, as part of his second expedition, Captain Cook fought through these same South Atlantic waters in HMS Resolution to explore the southwest coast of South Georgia, hoping it would continue south and prove to be part of the hitherto undiscovered Terra Australis Incognita. The Resolution rounded a headland at the southern end and Cook, to his dismay, saw land heading northeast. South Georgia was an island and not the tip of a great continent: it was another false dawn. The British captain would have to continue polewards.
Cape Disappointment was preserved forever on the world’s maps, a testament to Cook’s frustration. He later wrote of South Georgia that it was ‘doomed by Nature to perpetual frigidness… whose horrible and savage aspect I have not words to describe’. But, after his remarks on the rich abundance of its wildlife, especially the seal colonies, South Georgia became a significant location in the Southern Ocean.
Reaching South Georgia today is fraught with difficulty. There is no airfield, and visiting cruise ships, while frequent in the summer months, are not a cheap way to travel. For scientists, the principal way of reaching the island is by a Fishery Protection Vessel operated by the South Georgian government. Known as the Pharos, this distinctive red ship ploughs the waves between the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and beyond. Day in, day out, it searches for poachers of the famed delicacy the Chilean toothfish. To survive, like many other Antarctic fish, the toothfish have glycoproteins in their body fluid that effectively act as an anti-freeze, allowing them to rove in waters as cold as -2°C. Adaptations like this allow the Southern Ocean to support vast—but rapidly depleting—fishing populations.
You are guaranteed a rocky journey on the Pharos; save for the almost constant company of albatrosses, there is nothing to see beyond the succession of rolling waves and the inside of a toilet bowl. Travelling there is one of the closest experiences you can get to the expeditions of 1912, even though it is only four days’ journey each way. In 1912 the men had weeks of this, and in far more vulnerable vessels. But reaching South Georgia is worth it. It is like travelling to the fabled land of Prester John, the mythical kingdom in the Southern Ocean, a place rather like the Scottish Highlands but with glaciers. If you are fortunate enough to arrive with a break in the clouds, you are greeted with a vista of mountains and ice, shrieking flocks of sea birds, pods of dolphins and, in among the floating mats of seaweed, harems of seals.
Wildlife is so abundant here because South Georgia sits just south of a prominent boundary between very different masses of ocean water known as the Antarctic Convergence, or the Polar Front. Critically, there are two different forms of ocean circulation in Antarctic waters. The best known is the drift in the surface waters from the west, driven by the pervasive westerly winds; but there is another, deeper type that travels south–north, suggestions of which were first made by the men of the Challenger and Belgica.
To understand the latter we have to look south, at what is taking place around Antarctica when sea ice is formed out of the freezing surface waters. Because the newly formed ice contains little salt, the water left behind becomes heavier, sinking to the sea floor and flowing north, taking with it dissolved gases and the decaying remains of ocean-dwelling plants and animals. The sea ice left behind is blown north and, as it melts, forms a cold, fresh ocean mass. By the time this Antarctic Surface Water reaches South Georgia it meets a considerably warmer body of water heading in the opposite direction and is forced to sink before it can carry on to the tropics. More importantly for South Georgia, a warmer ocean mass is drawn south to replace the surface and deep cold waters heading north, bringing the nutrients to the surface that are essential in supporting the island’s remarkable wildlife.
Today South Georgia is teeming with fur and elephant seals—most lying among the shoreline tussock, including surrounding the research station at King Edward Point, next to the old whaling station of Grytviken. After Cook’s reports reached home sealers poured in to the subantarctic, lured by the rich pickings. Fur-seal skin was particularly prized for hats, while elephant seals were hunted for their blubber. The damage was colossal: populations plummeted and in turn new hunting grounds were pursued. In 1821 the Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen was staggered to find eighteen American and British sealing ships lying at anchor at Deception Island, a small piece of rock off the Antarctic Andes that had only been discovered the previous year.
Fur seals were some of the worst hit by over-hunting: in 1825 James Weddell calculated that around 1.2 million fur seals had been killed on South Georgia alone. He realised the devastating impact of indiscriminate killing and proposed that, by not killing the females until the young were capable of taking to the Antarctic waters, the southern sealing grounds could provide a sustainable yield of one hundred thousand furs per year. It was a radical thought about sustainability, way ahead of its time, and it was largely ignored. When Wilhelm Filchner reached South Georgia, decades later, fur seals numbered in the low hundreds, while elephant seals survived only as isolated communities scattered across the island. Today, South Georgia’s seal population has largely recovered, with the number of ‘furries’ estimated at three million—probably their highest level.
By the late nineteenth century the most lucrative financial endeavour in the Southern Ocean was whaling. In 1851 Herman Melville’s fictional Captain Ishmael opined, ‘For many years past, the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed.’ Where governments had been largely uninterested in exploring polar regions, whalers had carried on regardless. The increasingly industrialised world had become hungry for whale oil and the North Atlantic could not keep up with demand; supplies were dwindling fast, and South Georgia soon became a whaling centre.
These days the whaling station of Grytviken lies empty, save for a museum catering for tourists. But a century ago it was a hive of industrial activity. Between late 1904—when a Norwegian, Carl Anton Larsen, established a whaling factory—and 1914, almost thirty thousand whales were caught there. Dead whales were moored in the bay, waiting to be processed; when finished with, the abandoned carcasses would drift towards the shore. Even today, if you disturb the surface shoreline the smell of rotting meat and oil is overwhelming.
It was against this backdrop that the Germans arrived in October 1911. Larsen’s stunning financial success meant the island now supported twelve hundred people. The Germans found Grytviken was a Scandinavian preserve, with only a small British contingent, but they were warmly welcomed. Although disgusted at the level of waste, Filchner got along famously with Larsen and the Norwegian lent him a ship to ferry his men around.
Over the next two months the Germans frenetically studied the island. They returned to the former International Polar Year station and took magnetic measurements to see how the Earth’s field had changed over the intervening thirty years; they took meteorological measurements for comparison with those they planned to gather in Antarctica; and, in their little spare tim
e, they visited the outer islands of the Scotia Arc, the island system around the Scotia Sea that includes South Georgia.
When not making measurements, Filchner was busy readying equipment and organising supplies for their time south. The preparation was marred by the disappearance of one of the crew while fishing in the bay off Grytviken. The man fell overboard—some said accidentally, but others suspected suicide. And the ship’s doctor, Ludwig Kohl, was diagnosed with appendicitis and could not continue to Antarctica, staying behind to be nursed by Larsen’s daughter, whom he later married.
Despite this, the Deutschland left on time, departing South Georgia in December 1911. But, with conditions changing fast, Shackleton worried that the Germans now ran the risk of getting caught in the sea ice.
Heading south into the Weddell Sea the Deutschland made good time and in just a week sighted pack ice. But Filchner’s hope that the way might be clear was soon dashed: the Weddell Sea was crowded with bergs. Slowly, the Germans pushed on, and their efforts were rewarded. By 28 January the amount of ice suddenly lessened, allowing the Deutschland to make considerably faster progress. By 29 January they had reached further south than the pioneering British sealer Weddell, ninety years before.
There came hints they were near land. Sounding measurements continued to show great depths below the ship but the dead weight now routinely came back to the surface with blue clay attached, showing the seabed was covered in fine sediments laid on the ocean floor by vast ancient glaciers—something not possible far from shore. Shortly after, the water rapidly became shallower and, by the following afternoon, a gently rising icecap more than two hundred metres high and crowned by a pinnacle of rock loomed on the horizon. It was the first hard evidence of land in the far south Weddell Sea. The German team named the new coastline Prinzregent Luitpold Land, in honour of the expedition’s sponsor.
After catching several penguins that made the mistake of approaching the Deutschland, the Germans were able to follow a similar approach to the Japanese and analyse the birds’ stomachs, finding only basalt stones, implying the recently discovered mainland was all the same rock type. Hoping to find a more suitable landing place, the German expedition pushed on south from Luitpold Land, but reached just a little north of 78°S before they met an eight- to fifteen-metre-high ice cliff surrounding a small bay. The situation here was different: at a depth of more than 1150 metres, the seabed was considerably futher down. The party had discovered a hitherto-unknown ice shelf, a cousin to the Great Ice Barrier in the Ross Sea.
Keen to get as far south as possible, the expedition tried heading west—but there was no way through. To the Germans’ dismay, the ice shelf directed them towards the northwest and conditions looked decidedly more threatening, risking the safety of the Deutschland. They could go no further; the ice shelf was a true barrier to the south. Reluctantly, Filchner realised they had to return east, from where they had come. The Germans had found the southernmost extent of the Weddell Sea and, in spite of their monarch’s lack of support, named it the Kaiser Wilhelm Ice Barrier.
Returning southeast on 2 February, the Deutschland edged into the recently discovered bay at the junction between Luitpold Land and the new ice barrier. Behind, the ice sheet continued to the south, the surface broken by impressive nunataks that continued off over the horizon. Filchner baptised their new anchorage Vahsel Bay.
Just as the expedition appeared to be on the verge of success, personality clashes threatened its survival. Fights broke out on board and Filchner started recording in his diary that some of the expedition members were plotting against him. Part of the problem was the frustration the men felt in seeing the land and not being able to reach it. Behind the pack ice of the Weddell Sea is one of the world’s most inaccessible coastlines, and landing to explore the interior proved far more difficult than the Germans had anticipated.
Filchner’s book on the expedition only hints vaguely at problems on board. To the Sixth Continent is a remarkably dry account that gives almost no insight into what happened behind the scenes. Filchner was a Prussian officer, and had no desire to air his dirty laundry in public. It was only towards the end of his life that he published his Exposé, with signed affidavits testifying to his account. Since then his diary has become available to scholars and, read together, the two accounts give a totally different insight into the expedition.
It was clear early on that Filchner and his captain were different in character and that, thanks to the expedition committee, the line of command had become confused. Filchner drank little and considered tobacco a vice, while Vahsel liked alcohol—a lot—and had a host of health problems: colds, rheumatism, exhaustion, heart concerns and, if those weren’t enough, syphilis, which no doubt made all his other complaints considerably worse in the frigid conditions. Filchner had hoped the individual cabins on board the Deutschland might help, so that ‘the personal tensions inevitable on polar voyages should rarely reach a dangerous level.’ It was not to be. The ship’s officers and crew split down lines of allegiance to the two men.
With its unenviable atmosphere of tension and suspicion, the team was in danger of falling apart. Summer was nearing its end and the expedition was falling drastically behind schedule. Yet more problems surfaced. The captain now insisted the main aim of the journey was to beat Weddell’s southernmost record of 1823, and this had been achieved. Given all the preparations for sledging and scientific observation on shore, Vahsel’s new stance bewildered Filchner. Landing was anathema to Vahsel. Perhaps, because of his experience in the sea ice on the Gauss, he feared being caught a second time. Filchner pleaded with the captain to land, so they could set up a base from which scientific exploration might start.
Finally, in February, Vahsel yielded—but the chosen site was controversial. The captain had suggested they place their base on an iceberg attached to the shelf, where it would be within easy reach of the ship and connected to the inland ice. Filchner was not so sure: it seemed too close to the sea edge and at risk of falling into the ocean. Vahsel maintained it would be okay; but with Filchner desiring a second opinion, the captain reluctantly agreed to consult the Norwegian ice pilot Paul Björvik, one of the few seamen on board who had any experience of ice. Vahsel went away and returned shortly after, confirming he had Björvik’s word that this was the best spot. Filchner consented. The next phase of the expedition could start.
With the site chosen, supplies were hurriedly unloaded in preparation for the winter. Seeing Björvik, Filchner remarked on its fine location. ‘Very bad,’ Björvik replied. ‘I have always had the opinion that you should build no station on a floating iceberg but only on the inland ice, and if possible a couple of kilometres inland.’ When the bosun also voiced displeasure and accused Filchner of making decisions without listening to experienced men, the German leader realised Vahsel had never asked Björvik his opinion.
Filchner was furious. He challenged Vahsel, who retorted angrily that the crewman had lied. Filchner wrote wearily in his diary on the 13 February, ‘I don’t trust the captain any more.’ It was too late to do anything. The expedition was committed to the decision and the location would have to do.
In four days the hut frame was raised and the roof completed. For a brief moment, concerns over the wisdom of the site were forgotten. Cigars were lit, beers cracked and chocolates eaten in celebration. By 17 February the expedition hut was completed: animals, provisions, coal and scientific equipment had been unloaded for a winter of work and the following year’s attempt on the South Geographic Pole.
The celebrations did not last long. Within twenty-four hours there was an explosive boom and the expedition was in crisis. Filchner would later write ruefully, ‘In the Antarctic ice one should never celebrate too loudly if, for once, everything is going well for the moment; generally things soon turn out differently.’ It could not have been much worse: a sudden spring tide had exposed a weakness in the shelf and a large part had broken off, taking the new base with it.
The be
rg cast adrift was a staggering size, close in area to Singapore and containing the equivalent of some fifty billion cubic metres of water. It must have been an awe-inspiring sight for the men on the Deutschland. Filchner had been incredibly unlucky: even today a berg of this size is a rare sight in the south.
The Deutschland fired up its engines and set off in hot pursuit, chasing the berg that was floating away with the expedition’s raison d’être. The Germans worked tirelessly towards a single aim: to salvage as much of the equipment and animals as possible, and ferry them back on to the Deutschland using the ship’s lifeboats. Incredibly, most of these were saved.
With admirable optimism, they immediately started another base on the ice, intending to move a tonne of supplies on shore, led by the loyal Kling. Vahsel’s delays and intransigence over landing, though, prevented this modest plan being completed; on 4 March the captain declared they must return to South Georgia if the ship was to escape being frozen in. The Deutschland would have to return next year for a second attempt. Filchner somehow kept calm in front of the men as the vessel turned north.
Because of all the delays, the German expedition had left it too late. By 15 March 1912 the Deutschland was trapped in the sea ice. Picks and dynamites were tried, to no avail. It was hopeless. The ship’s engines were turned off and the vessel quickly lost warmth.
This was the worst outcome of all. No Antarctic base was set up for the winter and now everyone was trapped on the Deutschland. Yet their predicament seemed to galvanise the men. They quickly set up a research station on the sea ice and made measurements as originally intended. They drilled holes to observe and record the growth of ice and the ocean temperature; to collect samples of water and plankton; and to measure the speed, direction and depth of the water below their feet. On the surface they established a weather station, from which kites and balloons with self-recording thermometers attached were sent up every few days. And by early April a magnetic observatory was established, completing the scientific set-up. The activities kept everyone busy and, for a while, their minds off the situation.