Like most exploration narratives, Amundsen’s The South Pole (1912) provides a potted history of previous attempts to explore the Antarctic region – a South Polar genealogy. He divides it into two stages. The first comprises voyagers who headed south with only vague notions of what the region might yield: this group includes Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, Francis Drake, Edmond Halley and Jean-Baptiste-Charles Bouvet de Lozier. The next group, ‘Antarctic travellers in the proper sense of the term’, were more purposeful – these were the men aiming at the monster’s heart.4 This second stage ends, implicitly, with Amundsen’s own triumphant journey, the subject of his book; but it begins with British naval captain James Cook.
On his second world voyage, in the Resolution and Adventure (1772–5), Cook was charged with investigating land sighted at 54 degrees south in 1739 by Bouvet de Lozier. The Frenchman believed a ‘cape’ he had discovered could be a part of a southern continent. If this proved to be the case, Cook was to investigate and to befriend any natives; if not, he should continue southwards, still looking for the continent, ‘keeping in as high a latitude as I could, and prosecuting my discoveries as near to the South Pole as possible’. Unable to find Bouvet de Lozier’s cape and believing it to have been simply a large iceberg (it was later discovered to be a tiny, isolated island), Cook continued southwards, making the first ever crossing of the polar circle in early 1773. Over the following two years he circumnavigated the continent for the first time, dipping down to more than 71 degrees south in early 1774. At this point he was confronted by numerous ‘ice-hills … looking like a ridge of mountains, rising one above another till they were lost in the clouds’. He abandoned the attempt to approach the Pole, and not without some relief:
Bronze bust of Amundsen outside the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Hobart. The original plaster work was made by the American sculptor Victor Lewis in 1921. This cast was brought to Tasmania by the Norwegian navigator Einar Sverre Pedersen in 1988.
First edition of Amundsen’s expedition narrative (1912).
there must be some [land] to the South behind this ice; but if there is, it can afford no better retreat for birds, or any other animals, than the ice itself, with which it must be wholly covered. I, who had ambition not only to go farther than any one had been before, but as far as it was possible for man to go, was not sorry at meeting with this interruption.5
During the following decades it was sailors hunting for seals who most often ventured into high southern latitudes, quickly exhausting the populations of various subantarctic islands and pushing further south. Operating in a competitive industry, these sealers were not keen to advertise their discoveries, with the result that the first sighting of and landing on the continent are hard to pinpoint; there are several contenders for both. The earliest sighting is often attributed to Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, an explorer in the Russian navy, in late January 1820, but this is highly contestable. An American sealing expedition led by John Davis is usually considered to have made the first continental landing in February 1821. Another sealer, James Weddell, passed Cook’s ‘farthest south’ in 1823, reaching over 74 degrees south in surprisingly fine, ice-free conditions, turning back not due to obstacles but rather the ‘lateness of the season’ and the knowledge of a perilous homeward journey. It was, he speculated, ‘at least probable’ that the Pole was covered by water, and hence could be reached by sea.6 These and other achievements by sealers obviously added to knowledge of the Antarctic, but this group of voyagers were not focused on the Pole itself – or only inasmuch as it might (if Weddell’s experience was indicative) harbour more unsuspecting seals.
Frontispiece to the narrative of Dumont d’Urville’s expedition (1837–40).
Pole-hunting, not seal-hunting, was a crucial impetus for three naval exploratory expeditions sent south by France, the U.S. and Britain respectively in the late 1830s. Jules Dumont d’Urville, who led the French expedition, was instructed to ‘extend [his] exploration towards the Pole as far as the polar ice will permit’.7 His crewmen were offered 100 francs each if the expedition reached 75 degrees south, with a bonus of 5 francs for each further degree south.8 The American expedition, under Charles Wilkes, was instructed to follow ‘the track of Weddell as closely as practicable … endeavouring to reach a high southern latitude’.9 While neither expedition came close to Weddell’s record, they charted significant areas of the Antarctic coast elsewhere; both also gave (inaccurate) estimates of the position of the Magnetic South Pole. The instructions given to James Clark Ross, leader of the British expedition to the Antarctic, were more tightly focused on the Magnetic Pole – the position of which the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss had recently predicted. After establishing magnetic observatories and taking measurements in various locations, he was to ‘proceed direct to the southward’ in order to determine its position, ‘and even to attain it, if possible’.10
Illustration from Ross’s A Voyage of Discovery (1847). Several emperor penguins were caught and brought on board ship, where they were killed and (in some instances) preserved in cases of pickle for further study.
It was not possible, by ship at least: unbeknown to Ross until he reached the Antarctic region, the Magnetic Pole at this time lay inland, and his ships could not get closer to it than around 300 km (160 nautical miles).11 However, Ross’s men did not come away disappointed: they bettered Weddell’s farthest south (at a different longitude); discovered what is now known as the Ross Sea; encountered and claimed new coastline (Victoria Land); sailed along the spectacular ice cliffs of the ‘Victoria Barrier’ (now the Ross Ice Shelf); and sighted two volcanic peaks, which they named Erebus and Terror after their ships. The area of land on which these volcanoes sat (now known as Ross Island) became the launching point for later British attempts on the Geographic Pole, and the Ross Ice Shelf was to be Amundsen’s base for his successful polar journey.
For around the next half-century, there was little interest in reaching either the Magnetic or the Geographic South Pole, although scientific investigation in the Antarctic region was maintained by the Challenger oceanographic expedition. Subantarctic sealing continued on a significantly reduced scale (the original populations had been decimated) and whalers did not often venture into the far south until the later nineteenth century. Whaling and sealing were intended to underwrite the expense of the next expedition to reach Antarctica, led by the Norwegian businessman Henryk Johan Bull. While the commercial results were disappointing, the explorers did at least step onto the continent, in 1894 at Cape Adare in Victoria Land, an event often cited as the first ‘official’ landing. Bull concluded that it would be possible to spend a ‘safe and pleasant’ year at Cape Adare, with the possibility of reaching the Magnetic Pole.12
With the Sixth International Geographical Congress, in 1895, refocusing attention on Antarctica, numerous expeditions headed southwards over the next decade, although not all of them were safe or pleasant. Carsten Borchgrevink, a Norwegian-born Australian immigrant and one of the landing party on Bull’s expedition, remained entranced by the ‘glittering gates of the Poles’.13 He took up his erstwhile leader’s suggestion, spending the winter of 1899 at Cape Adare in charge of the British Antarctic Expedition. Only three of the ten wintering men were actually British; the expedition’s national identification came from its sponsor, a British publishing magnate, who had contributed £40,000 to its funds.14 Heroic feats in the polar regions made good press. Borchgrevink claimed, rather dubiously, to have fixed the location of the Magnetic South Pole, which had inevitably shifted since Ross’s visit, and he made a short trek (about 10 miles) inland over the Barrier, achieving a new farthest south of 78°50´ (78 degrees 50 minutes south).15 His expedition was the first to winter on the continent itself, although not the first in the Antarctic – the men of the Belgica expedition had spent a notoriously trying winter the previous year in their ice-entrapped ship.
Between 1900 and 1905 Scottish, French, German, Swe
dish and British expeditions arrived in the Antarctic, with several of these nations planning to coordinate efforts to take magnetic measurements in different regions. All had scientific and geographic goals, but only the British were located in an area that could enable a serious attempt on the Geographic South Pole. William Speirs Bruce, leader of the Scottish expedition, was in his own words ‘not a pole hunter’ nor someone who believed in ‘urging men on till they drop in order to get a mile further north or south than somebody else’. His expedition undertook hydrographic research in the Weddell Sea.16
Robert F. Scott, who led the British National Antarctic Expedition (or Discovery expedition) of 1901–4, was no Pole-hunter either, at least initially. He was, in a sense, an accidental explorer. In his account of his first expedition, he confesses that prior to this journey he ‘had no predilection for Polar exploration’ and that the story of his selection as leader (as a young midshipman he had impressed the influential geographer Clements Markham) was ‘exceedingly tame’.17 With tension mounting between the geographic and scientific supporters of the expedition, the idea of attaining the Geographic South Pole itself was ‘carefully avoided’ in the expedition instructions,18 and exploration of the region to the south of their base (on Ross Island) was listed as only one of a number of tasks. It was, however, implicitly an exciting potential outcome, if an aspirational one. Scott chose to lead the push southwards himself, accompanied by the expedition physician and zoologist Edward Wilson and third officer Ernest Shackleton, whose ‘one ambition’ was reportedly to ‘go on the southern journey’. The three of them were, Wilson recorded privately, ‘quite determined to do a big distance towards the South Pole’.19
They did cover a great distance – nearly 1,600 km (1,000 miles) for the round trip – but this included doubling over their tracks when they had to relay heavy loads. In late December 1902 they reached a record southern latitude of just over 82 degrees before turning back, but their journey was plagued with problems, including difficulty with their sledge dogs, whose food had spoiled. Eventually, they had to start killing some dogs to feed others – a process that Scott found appalling enough to make him wary of this method in future. The explorers themselves began to suffer from scurvy, and eventually Shackleton could only walk alongside the sledge or sit on it, pulled by the other two men. They had ‘made a greater advance towards a pole of the earth than has ever yet been achieved by a sledge party’, but they had not come within 800 km (500 miles) of the South Pole.20
While the expedition remained another winter, its ship (where the men lived) frozen into the ice, Shackleton was invalided home on a relief ship. The traumas of the southern journey, however, had evidently not turned him off polar exploration: by 1907 he had raised funds for his own expedition, and headed southwards that year in an old sealing vessel, the Nimrod. Basing himself at Cape Royds (also on Ross Island), Shackleton made a two-pronged attack on the poles: a three-man party led by the 50-year-old Australian geologist Edgeworth David headed over the mountains towards the Magnetic, while Shackleton with three others focused on the Geographic. Only the former reached their goal – more or less.
‘Antarctica; or, The Race to the South Pole’ – National Game Company, c. 1905.
The makeshift flag used by David, Mawson and Mackay to mark their arrival at – or, at least, near – the Magnetic South Pole.
The journey to the Magnetic Pole was beset with difficulties. David’s leadership style grated with the two younger men of the team, Douglas Mawson (whom David had taught at university) and Alistair Mackay, and his lesser strength and fitness were a problem. They had several dangerous encounters with crevasses, and their rations were insufficient for the journey, making them all obsessed with food. In early 1909, however, more than three months after their departure from base, they were nearing their frustratingly shifting goalpost. ‘The compass … indicates that the polar centre executes a daily round of wanderings about its mean position’, David wrote in a later account:
Mawson considered that we were now practically at the Magnetic Pole, and that if we were to wait for twenty-four hours … the Pole would probably, during that time, come vertically beneath us. We decided, however, to go on to the spot where he concluded the approximate mean position of the Magnetic Pole would lie.21
Jameson Adams, Frank Wild and Shackleton pose beside the Union Jack at their ‘farthest south’. The fourth team member, Eric Marshall, took the photograph.
As per Shackleton’s instructions, they proclaimed the area part of the British Empire and raised a makeshift flag. There had been no spare Union Jack available for their voyage, so one had been ‘very ingeniously’ constructed prior to their departure from a red polka-dotted handkerchief and some curtain material.22 They took a photograph of the moment using a string-pull, and, ‘too utterly weary to be capable of any great amount of exultation’, headed back.23 The return leg had its share of difficulties, too: with David now ‘partially demented’, according to Mawson, Mackay urged the younger Australian to wrest leadership from his former teacher, to no avail.24 They arrived at base around four months after they had left, having covered 2,030 km (1,260 miles). Two years later, it was shown that they had come close to, but not within, the Magnetic Pole’s area of oscillation.25 However, posterity has tended to consider it near enough.
While David’s team was trekking towards one pole, Shackleton’s was aiming at another. Using Manchurian ponies rather than dogs to haul supplies, Shackleton led his team across the Barrier and up the Beardmore Glacier onto the plateau. As the journey continued, the men suffering from hunger and the hostile conditions, it became clear that they could not reach the Pole and return alive. About a week before David, Mawson and Mackay reached the Magnetic Pole, Shackleton decided to turn away from the Geographic one, but not before making a last desperate dash southwards to make sure the team reached a point within 185 km (100 nautical miles) of their goal. Marching further would have meant certain death and, as he later joked to his wife, he felt she would prefer ‘a live donkey’ to ‘a dead lion’.26
It was not the announcement of Shackleton’s failure to reach the South Pole in March 1909 but reports the following September of Frederick Cook’s and then Robert Peary’s claims to have reached the North Pole that sent Amundsen south. Amundsen was a Pole-hunter; but it was the top, not the bottom, of the world that initially lured him: ‘The regions around the North Pole – well, yes, the North Pole itself – had attracted me from childhood’. On hearing that he could not (as it then appeared) be first to the North Pole, he quickly decided ‘to turn to the right-about, and face to the South’.27 The Norwegian explorer had been in the Antarctic before, on the Belgica expedition. He also had extensive Arctic experience, having led the first expedition to negotiate the Northwest Passage early in the twentieth century, during which he spent instructive time with Inuit people. He was planning to reach the North Pole by drifting in a ship in the polar ice and had convinced the prominent explorer Fridtjof Nansen to provide his ship Fram for the purpose, when he received the startling news of its prior discovery.
Amundsen, c. 1913.
In a move that would create considerable controversy, Amundsen did not announce his abrupt change of direction, even to Nansen. According to his own account, in order to prevent media debate he initially told his plans only to his brother and the Fram’s captain.28 Most of the crew members believed they would, as per the original plans, journey southwards through the Atlantic, east round Cape Horn and thence northwards to the Arctic, starting from this location in order to exploit the ice pack’s drift. But rather than east, the ship turned west around the Cape of Good Hope, having stopped at Madeira, where the startled but willing crew was informed of the new aim, and letters were written back to Norway announcing the change. Amundsen’s brother Leon, who had met the ship in Madeira, was instructed to send (upon his return to Norway) a now-famous telegram to Scott: ‘Beg leave to inform you Fram proceeding Antarctic. Amundsen.’
This
cartoon by Frank Nankivell from Puck magazine (1909) shows the North Pole leaving the ‘Ranks of the Undiscovered’. The South Pole remains behind, along with ‘Universal Peace’ and ‘The Great American Novel’.
The Fram proceeded to the Bay of Whales, arriving in early 1910. Amundsen had decided to establish his base ‘Framheim’ not on land but on the floating Ross Ice Shelf, about 60 miles (96 km) closer to the Pole than Ross Island. He planned an early start for his southern journey the following spring: ‘If we had set out to capture this record, we must at any cost get there first. Everything must be staked on this.’29 Their first attempt in September 1911, however, was too early – the extreme cold drove the eight-man party back to base. They tried again in mid-October, with five men: Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, Oscar Wisting and Olav Bjaaland. On this second attempt, progress was much better. With all the men using skis, and dogs pulling supplies, their journey to the Pole, although it inevitably included encounters with crevasses and minor mishaps, was comparatively devoid of incident and danger.
On the afternoon of 14 December, just under two months after they left Framheim, Amundsen’s drivers called a stop: ‘They had carefully examined their sledge-meters, and they all showed the full distance – our Pole by reckoning. The goal was reached, the journey ended.’ Not quite: as described in Chapter One, Amundsen took every effort to come as close to 90 degrees south as possible. Having raised a Norwegian flag, claimed the area in the name of King Haakon VII and set up tent, he took observations and sent out skiers to ensure that one of them came near the exact spot. Eventually, on 17 December, they settled on a location, which they named ‘Polheim’. Here they set up their spare tent, finding inside it hidden messages of congratulations sewn in by their confident expedition-mates: ‘Welcome to 90°’.30 They enjoyed cigars, took photographs and left in the tent a letter to King Haakon along with a note to Scott asking him to relay it, in case they met with accident on their return leg.
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