Polar Exploration

B

The Heroic Age

Norwegian-born explorer Carsten Borchgrevink led the first expedition to winter on the Antarctic mainland. Borchgrevink’s British-funded expedition sailed on the Southern Cross, a powerful converted Norwegian whaler, and made landfall at Cape Adare in February 1899. There they set up a base for the 10 men who would stay the winter. They also mapped the coast of Victoria Land and the Ross Sea. The Southern Cross left in March, as the complete darkness of the southern winter approached. After the ship returned in January 1900, Borchgrevink and William Colbeck, a British naval officer and navigator, explored the area around Mount Erebus and Mount Terror. Using sledges and dog teams—the first Antarctic expedition to do so—they established a “farthest south” record of latitude 78°50’ on the Ross Ice Shelf, and thus opened the way to the South Pole. Despite these successes, the men had endured extreme hardships during the long, dark winter, and one had died from illness. One of the party, Tasmanian physicist Louis Bernacchi, wrote in his diary, “May I never pass another twelve months in similar conditions and surroundings.”

This expedition and the turn of the 20th century ushered in the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, when scientific curiosity and nationalistic rivalries intermingled as motives. The idea of a Heroic Age of exploration was promoted by Britain’s Royal Geographical Society, under its president Sir Clements Markham, and the Royal Society, represented by John Murray. Under their sponsorship, the British National Antarctic Expedition sailed in 1901 in the Discovery, under the command of an unknown and inexperienced torpedo officer in the Royal Navy, Robert Falcon Scott, the personal choice of Markham. Also on board were three other naval officers and two officers of the merchant marine, one of whom was Ernest Shackleton. The physicist Bernacchi, recruited for his previous Antarctic experience and scientific knowledge, also joined the expedition despite his earlier misgivings.

Scott, with his companions Ernest Shackleton and the expedition’s doctor, Edward Wilson, trekked 320 km (200 mi) across the Ross Ice Shelf toward the South Pole, achieving a record latitude of 81°17' south, 800 km (500 mi) from the pole and farther south than any previous attempt. Difficulties with the dog sledges and an outbreak of scurvy forced them to turn back. Later, Scott made a second sledging journey up the Ferrar Glacier and on to the Polar Plateau, reaching an altitude of some 2,750 m (9,000 ft), having traveled 1,165 km (725 mi) in 59 days. Shackleton, suffering from scurvy, was reluctantly evacuated on a relief and supply ship, the Morning, in March 1903, but would later establish a great polar career. Scott’s expedition remained in Antarctica until February 1904, amassing valuable new scientific and exploratory information. By the time they left, Scott was already determined to lead a second expedition to Antarctica.

C

International Competition

Also working in Antarctica at the same time were German, Swedish, Scottish, and French expeditions, led by, respectively, Erich von Drygalski, Otto Nordenskjöld (nephew of the Arctic explorer), William Spiers Bruce, and Jean-Baptiste Charcot. Shackleton returned to the Antarctic in 1907 aboard the Nimrod. This expedition made the first ascent of Mount Erebus, putting six men on the summit (3,794 m/12,448 ft above sea level); sent three men including Douglas Mawson on a journey that located the magnetic South Pole; and nearly reached the geographic South Pole itself. The latter journey was undertaken by Shackleton, J. B. Adams, Eric Marshall, and Frank Wild, who took with them four ponies, four sledges, light equipment, and provisions for 91 days. Blizzards, shortage of food, and dysentery terminated their attempt, but they did achieve a great advance (to latitude 88°23’ south) on the previous record, and got to within 179 km (111 mi) of the pole before Shackleton wisely and courageously insisted they turn back.

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D

The Race to the South Pole

Much has been written about the “race to the pole” between British explorer Scott and Norwegian explorer Amundsen. Circumstances brought the two explorers to Antarctica at the same time, and with the same goal. Both struck out for the South Pole in October 1911. Amundsen left his winter quarters at the Bay of Whales, an indentation in the Ross Ice Shelf, with four Norwegian colleagues and dog-hauled sledges. They found a completely new route up the Axel Heiberg Glacier and became the first to reach the South Pole, on December 14, 1911. The entire party returned safely to their base.

Scott and his team of four other men set out from McMurdo Sound without the assistance of dogs to haul their sledges. They reached the pole on January 17, 1912, only to find the Norwegian flag staked there. It was a desolate enough place to have struggled to attain without, as Scott wrote, the “reward of priority.” On the return journey, all five men in Scott’s party died from starvation and exhaustion, only 18 km (11 mi) from a depot of supplies. There were a number of causes of the disaster, including Scott’s decision to not use dogs, which had greatly aided the speed and efficiency of Amundsen’s expedition, and to conduct scientific research, loading his sledge with some 16 kg (35 lb) of rocks and fossils he had quarried out of the Beardmore Glacier.

E

After Reaching the South Pole

Antarctic exploration after the conquest of the pole continued to provide new challenges. In 1911-1912 Wilhelm Filchner led the German South Polar Expedition, discovering the Luitpold Coast and the Filchner Ice Shelf. From 1911 to 1914, the Australian expedition led by Douglas Mawson in the Aurora explored the area between Victoria Land and Kaiser Wilhelm II Land. During a long sledge journey, Mawson’s two companions died and he struggled back to Cape Denison, dragging half a sledge, the other half of which he had discarded to lessen his burden.

In 1916 the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which was to attempt a crossing of the continent, set sail in the Endurance under the leadership of (then Sir) Ernest Shackleton. Before even reaching shore, the ship became stuck in the ice of the Weddell Sea and eventually sank. Shackleton and five men made a heroic journey of 1,280 km (800 mi) from Elephant Island (one of the South Shetland Islands) to South Georgia, in an open boat only 6 m (20 ft) long, to get help. Shackleton reported that the voyage was “one of supreme strife amid heaving waters” in the Southern Ocean, which “lived up to its evil winter reputation.” They then made a hazardous traverse of the mountainous island to a remote whaling station on its far side. Their heroic and successful rescue effort was a remarkable feat that established Shackleton’s courage and leadership qualities forever in the history of polar exploration. Known affectionately to his crew as “The Boss,” Shackleton never lost a human life.

Aircraft were used to explore the continent from the 1920s and 1930s. In the same period American interest in the Antarctic revived. Richard Byrd established the Little America camps near the Bay of Whales, wintering alone as well as making important flights across the continent. A first flight over the South Pole was made on November 29, 1929, by Byrd and Bernt Balchen. In November 1935 Lincoln Ellsworth (who ten years earlier had been on the first flight with Amundsen over the North Pole) made the first airplane flight across the Antarctic, from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea.

Large-scale, systematic exploration of the continent began after World War II (1939-1945) with American mapping operations, the activity climaxing in the International Geophysical Year (IGY, 1957-1958), when many important expeditions were mounted, including the long-postponed first crossing of the continent, undertaken by the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by Sir Vivian Fuchs and including Sir Edmund Hillary among its members. They completed their journey, in snow tractors, in 99 days.

In 1961 many of the countries involved in the IGY expeditions signed the Antarctic Treaty, which preserved the continent from commercial development and dedicated it to scientific research. By the end of the century there were permanent scientific bases in Antarctica manned by personnel from a dozen different countries and cooperating in the cause of research. Since the Antarctic Treaty, many expeditions have sought to reach the poles, or explore the polar regions, in new ways, experimenting with different sources of locomotion and different levels of outside support. British explorers Ranulph Fiennes and Charles Burton used snowmobiles during the Transglobe Expedition of 1972-1982, in which they became the first explorers to reach both poles on a single circumnavigation of the globe.

VI

Competing Approaches to Exploration

One of the constant elements in the story of the exploration of both polar regions is the contrast between two essentially different views of how to go about the process of exploration. One approach fought against the natural environment, while the other sought to work within its limitations.

Some European explorers took a pragmatic approach, realizing they could learn life-saving techniques from the Inuit people who had lived successfully in the hostile Arctic environment for millennia. The first Europeans to learn from the Inuit were fur traders, whose interests were in commerce rather than glory. Later, explorers such as Samuel Hearne, Alexander Mackenzie, and John Rae employed Inuit-based survival skills that often eluded their navy-trained contemporaries. The great Scandinavian explorers, fostered in the ascetic Nordic tradition of outdoor activities in a harsh environment, also adapted easily to this pragmatic approach. Toward the end of the 19th century, their American colleagues began to follow suit.

One of the leading exponents of this approach to exploration was the Canadian-born American anthropologist Viljalmur Stefansson. From 1906 to 1918 he traveled thousands of kilometers surveying and mapping in the high Canadian Arctic, studying the Inuit people and living almost exclusively off the land and sea. Although emulating the Inuit life had obvious logical advantages, it also had clear limitations for Europeans who had not grown up in the harsh Arctic environment. Wally Herbert and his team on the British Trans-Arctic Expedition (1968-1969), sledging with dogs that they fed a diet of pemmican, encountered only 3 polar bears, 12 ringed seals, and 20 birds in 5 months on the ice. They felt it “very fortunate that we had not trusted in Stefansson’s theory and relied solely on hunting in order to survive.” Traveling so far from land over the ice, however, they were encountering problems that not even the Inuit would have.

British explorer Scott exemplified the opposite approach to exploration, which was rooted in the tradition of the Royal Navy. Scott firmly believed that one ought to reach the pole on foot and unaided. In this “purist” approach he reflected the Royal Navy’s attitude that using the travel and survival techniques of the Inuit people was somehow cheating, and that the test of character involved in doing things the traditional naval way was more important than a successful outcome—even if it meant the explorers had to endure appalling and completely unnecessary hardships. This attitude had led directly to the deaths of hundreds of explorers during the 19th century, and it contributed to Scott’s own death.

The difference in the two approaches is also evident in the explorers’ attitudes toward using animals. Scott was reluctant to use aids such as sledging dogs, and his inexperience with using them led to disappointing experiences that only strengthened his opinion. Using dogs inevitably meant killing some to feed the others, and Scott regarded this necessity as extremely cruel rather than practical. In contrast, Norwegian explorer Amundsen put sledging dogs “first and last,” valuing and caring for them during their lives and, when the time came, unhesitatingly using them for food to speed the party on its way.

In the end, it was the Inuit-based approach that proved most successful, not only in reaching both poles first, but in doing so with far less hardship and loss of human life. However, the naval tradition, which reached its apotheosis in the Heroic Age expeditions in the Antarctic, provided at least a part of what it set out to do: It tested the character of those involved to the limit, and set examples of courage, determination, and self-sacrifice that still haunt the imagination today.

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