To the South Pole
Dogs will eat dogs; Ponies only eat hay.
And so in 1912 Norway’s Roald Amundsen beat England’s Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole by 33 days.
Surrounded by water, England is an island and so began her seafaring discoveries in the 1400s. Looking to trade with the Far East, the English joined the Portuguese and Spaniards. Portugal sailed east to Asia’s Spice Islands. Spain sailed west and unlocked the riches of Central and South America. England also sailed west, but her search for a northwest passage with Cabot, Frobisher, Davis and Hudson found only a cold, inhospitable continent and the abundance of fish did not support further outlays of private capital.
Yet as Spain squandered its New World wealth, England was growing rich through commerce and piracy and took the upper hand when it bested the Spanish Armada in 1588. Henry VII, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I now gained dominance of the seas for England and Elizabeth knighted both Sir Frances Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh for their seafaring exploits.
The Age of Discovery was waning as the 20th Century arrived. Only the foreboding, inhospitable Poles at the ends of the earth remained unexplored. Yet there remained men obsessed with its discovery. From the Renaissance, literature of medieval knighthood has included “chivalric romance”. The exploits of brave explorers bringing renown to themselves and country have been with us since Marco Polo.
Gallant, distinguished men sallying forth into the unknown with valor, generosity and high-mindedness constituted the code of conduct.
There were men of such caliber who had attempted the Poles and were ready to again.
The ‘Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration’ was underway, and a coveted prize awaited.
In 1909 Robert Perry with Matthew Henson reached the North Pole on their sixth attempt.
The North had been won and attention turned to the South.
Robert Falcon Scott had attempted to reach the South Pole in 1902 but sub-zero conditions and Ill health had ended the expedition. With financial help from the British Admiralty he sailed again on June 15, 1910 aboard the ‘Terra Nova’.
Roald Amundsen, a respected Norwegian explorer, was determined to beat the British expedition to the South Pole but kept his plans secret after he heard that Perry had taken the northern prize. Neither man acknowledged this as a race. Having arrived at Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf, Scott landed at McMurdo Sound and Amundsen at the Bay of Whales, 440 miles apart. After both parties spent months setting up supply drops en route for the return trek. both men with teams of five departed for the Pole with Amundsen having a three-week head start. Amundsen returned to his base camp January 25, 1912, in 99 days having covered 1400 nautical miles. Scott arrived at the South Pole on January 17, disappointed to discover Amundsen had beaten him. Scott’s return trek was slow and tortuous. On the last day of his life, and 11 miles short of a resupply drop that likely would have saved him, he lay in his tent with his two remaining partners and as his cohorts buried under their sleeping bags for the last time, Scott unzipped his bag and opened his jacket to hasten death. Scott’s return across the ice had been met with exhaustion, hunger and crippling cold. He was discovered in his tent, still set, by his ship’s crew six months later. Had he not relied on ponies and mechanized sleds for the attempt but rather on faster moving dogs better suited for cold weather travel as had Amundsen, Scott’s fate may well have been different.
Ernest Shackleton was interested in the South Pole as well. He had been on two polar expeditions, the first under Scott as third officer during Scott’s Discovery Expedition of
1901-1904. During the Nimrod Expedition of 1907-1909 Shackleton marched to 88*S, only 97 miles from the South Pole and the farthest south any one had been. On his return to England he was knighted by King Edward VII, becoming Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Now in 1912 with Amundsen having reached the South Pole, Shackleton determined to cross Antarctica from sea to sea via the Pole. He made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917. Looking for crew, he posted the following:
His plan was to cross the continent from the Weddell Sea via the Pole to McMurdo Sound.
In his words the trip, “remained but one main great object of Antarctic journeying – the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea”. The plan was audacious; the South Pole had been visited by only 10 men, five of them dying on their return trek. The Expedition also involved a sea approach different from previous attempts. Rather than head south from New Zealand to McMurdo, Shackleton would sail through the South Atlantic to the sub Antarctic island of South Georgia and from there west towards Cape Horn at South America’s tip. A second supply ship, the Aurora, would sail south from New Zealand to pick up the explorers once they had crossed the continent.
Shackleton’s ship, “Endurance”, would head for the Weddell Sea just to the east of Palmer Land, part of the Antarctic Peninsula, the land closest to South America. In 1820 Nathaniel Palmer had discovered the mainland of Antarctica. He was a sealer from Stonington, CT and as seals became scarce in the Southern Ocean, he sailed further and further south. His feat would demonstrate the extent of the Connecticut seal trade twenty years before Nantucket became renowned for its whaling fleet. Palmer’s home in Stonington still stands and is an historic house museum and a National Historic Landmark.
Much is made of the overland exploits of the Antarctic explorers but getting there was a feat in itself. The Weddell Sea sits at 73 degrees South Latitude and to battle the southern ocean upwind through the “Roaring Forties” and “Furious Fifties” degrees of Latitude in a bluff bowed, square rigged ship took remarkable seamanship. Captain William Bligh of “Bounty” fame, having been an officer under Captain Cook, was sent back to Tahiti in 1789 to gather breadfruit to deliver to the English colonies in the Caribbean. The Bounty spent 6 weeks battling for passage through the Drake Passage around Cape Horn and the 3000 remaining miles to Tahiti. Bligh was unsuccessful, turned around and 38 weeks and 17000 miles later now sailing downwind arrived at his destination. No wonder he had difficulty gathering his crew to return to the ship for the passage home. Perhaps a reason for the mutiny shortly thereafter.
The primary reason the Cape Horn passage is so dangerous is the lack of land at that latitude. The eastwardly spinning earth drags wind and wave with it and no continents disturb its flow. The towering Andes Mountains running down the west coast of South America disappear under the Drake Passage at the continent’s foot. But they continue underwater as a hard resistant ridge and reappear at Palmer Land, the Antarctic Peninsula.
Now the wide stretch of the South Pacific ocean making up and moving east over thousands of miles is confined by land both north and south with the water’s depth quickly reduced. The result is ravaging winds and towering seas. Add bitter cold, slippery decks, frozen canvas sails and the ship in a maelstrom. Sailing upwind and upcurrent against this can prove impossible.
Through this and with the help of a coal-fired steam engine, Endurance made her way to the Weddell Sea, described by historian, Thomas R. Henry, in his 1950 book,
“The White Continent” as follows,“according to the testimony of all who have sailed through its berg-filled waters, the most treacherous and dismal region on earth.”
And so it proved for Shackleton and Endurance, for shortly after entering the Sea the ship became stuck in the pack ice. The crew soon had to abandon Endurance as it was being crushed. The men then lived on the drifting ice floes of the Weddell Sea for 5 months subsisting on seal and penguin meat. As the ice flows broke apart the 28-man crew launched three salvaged lifeboats and after 7 harrowing days arrived at desolate Elephant Island. They had not set foot on solid ground for 497 days.
Realising that help would not be arriving, that they would not be found, Shackleton took 5 men and in the James Caird, one of the lifeboats, headed out into the world’s stormiest ocean for a 16-day ,800 mile passage to South Georgia Island. Once there he and two crew in 36 hours trekked across the island’s unmapped mountains and glaciers, a feat modern mountaineers find remarkable. Arriving at a whaling station on the island’s other side, after 4 attempts over 4 months and through the pack ice blocking his way, Shackleton was able to return to Elephant Island and rescue all the 22 men he had left behind. Shackleton’s rescue of his crew is regarded as one of the greatest survival and leadership feats in maritime history.
In 2022, Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, was found 2 miles deep in the Weddell Sea, four miles south from the final position recorded by the ship’s captain. The ship was in a “brilliant state of preservation,” sitting upright on the seabed with its name clearly visible on the stern.
