1912 Read online

  1912

  Professor Chris Turney is an Australian and British Earth scientist, and an ARC Laureate Fellow in climate change at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of Ice, Mud and Blood: Lessons from Climates Past and Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened, as well as numerous scientific papers and magazine articles. In 2007 he was awarded the Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal for outstanding young Quaternary scientists, and in 2009 he received the Geological Society of London’s Bigsby Medal for services to geology.

  www.christurney.com

  COUNTERPOINT

  BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

  Copyright © Chris Turney 2012

  Maps copyright © Elaine Nipper 2012

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Photo of British expedition member and dog driver Anton Omelchenko below the Barne Glacier (Mount Erebus, Ross Island), December 1911, by Herbert Ponting, courtesy of the Scott Polar Research Institute (P2005/5/647); photo of king penguin, South Georgia, 2011, by Chris Turney; photo of Chris Turney in 1912 explorer gear © John Murray / Crossing the Line Films

  Cover design by WH Chong. Text design by WH Chong & Imogen Stubbs. Typeset by J&M Typesetting.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-61902-137-2

  COUNTERPOINT

  1919 Fifth Street

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.counterpointpress.com

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  To my grandparents Jim and Bunty,

  whose hard work and tales of

  adventure continue to inspire me

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER 1: Looking Polewards

  Early Ventures South

  CHAPTER 2: An Audacious Plan

  Ernest Shackleton and the British Antarctic Expedition, 1907–1909

  CHAPTER 3: A New Land

  Robert Scott and the Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–1913

  CHAPTER 4: Of Reindeer, Ponies and Automobiles

  Roald Amundsen and the Norwegian Bid for the South Pole, 1910–1912

  CHAPTER 5: The Dash Patrol

  Nobu Shirase and the Japanese South Polar Expedition, 1910–1912

  CHAPTER 6: Locked In

  Wilhelm Filchner and the Second German Antarctic Expedition, 1911–1912

  CHAPTER 7: Ice-cold in Denison

  Douglas Mawson and the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911–1913

  CHAPTER 8: Martyrs to Gondwanaland

  The Cost of Scientific Exploration

  POSTSCRIPT

  APPENDIX: Lord Curzon’s Notes

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  SOURCES

  INDEX

  INTRODUCTION

  People, perhaps, still exist who believe that it is of no importance to explore the unknown polar regions. This, of course, shows ignorance. It is hardly necessary to mention here of what scientific importance it is that these regions should be thoroughly explored.

  FRIDTJOF NANSEN (1861–1930)

  It’s early January 2011 and I’m sitting in a four-engine Iluyshin transporter plane ten thousand metres above the Southern Ocean, heading towards one of the Earth’s most remote places. The cabin is packed with fifty-odd passengers, fuel, equipment and the most eclectic range of clothing I’ve ever seen—multi-coloured jackets, salopettes, and gloves and hats of all shapes and sizes, in anticipation of sub-freezing temperatures. Unlike most of my fellow travellers, who are heading off for a couple of weeks of climbing, skiing or kiting over ice and snow, I’m about to fulfil a lifelong dream: to research the geological and climatic history of a remarkable part of the world.

  A few hours earlier we were standing on an airstrip in the relatively balmy city of Punta Arenas, in southern Chile, threatening to break out in a sweat. Now we’re hurtling along in what feels like an oversized Soviet coffin and about to land on a worryingly narrow strip of ice. The pitch of the engine suddenly changes, and we know we’re getting close. We take our seats, necks craned to see the fast-approaching mountains and snow.

  A slight bounce and we’re down on an ice runway at a frigid 79° South. The engines drop to a low whine and we taxi to two blue containers that mark the Union Glacier airbase, our new home. The rear cargo doors open up: brilliant light and freezing air pour into the hold. There’s a collective intake of breath. We’re in Antarctica, and all it took was four hours.

  In 1897 an exasperated John Campbell, Duke of Argyll, declared in London, a ‘very large area of the surface of our small planet is still almost unknown to us. That it should be so seems almost a reproach to our civilisation.’ Atlases at the turn of the century only hinted at what lay at the end of a world populated by one and a half billion people. Almost everything south of 50° was described as an Unexplored Region and the vast space left embarrassingly empty.

  The dawn of the modern age saw major advances in science, technology, engineering, social reform and politics. Nations were talking to one another with a new confidence, and the world suddenly seemed smaller. And yet, despite the progress made during the Victorian era, the uncertainty over what lay south grated. When the Edwardian world looked to the other side of the planet, it did not know what was there.

  While the likes of David Livingstone, Alexander von Humboldt and John Hanning Speke had blazed a trail through Africa and the New World, reaching ever further inland and becoming household names in the process, few western explorers had ventured to the Antarctic Circle. Little was known about it, beyond hearsay: it was a region of wilderness and extremes, of rough and icy seas that took ships on a mere whim, of wild animals in the depths. Imagination and fancy filled any disagreeable gaps in knowledge, for only a handful of adventurers had penetrated this inhospitable region and returned to tell a plausible tale. The Antarctic remained stubbornly off the map, save for a smattering of islands and disconnected coastlines—many of them considered highly suspect—peppering a swathe of white.

  Never has a continent been more misunderstood. Antarctica is on a scale hard to grasp: at over fourteen million square kilometres, it is second only to Russia in coverage of the Earth’s surface and bigger than all the countries of Europe combined. It is the world’s highest continent, with an average altitude of 2300 metres. It contains more than seventy per cent of the world’s freshwater, locked up as thirty million cubic kilometres of snow and ice—which, if melted, would raise the planet’s seas by an estimated sixty-five metres, easily flooding the likes of Sydney, London and New York. The bitterly cold air on its upper surface contains virtually no moisture, making the Antarctic interior the world’s largest desert, while the rocks that make up the rest of the continent span almost the entire age of the Earth. The wildlife along its fringes is some of the most diverse on the planet.

  Yet its human history is short: Antarctica was the last continent to be discovered and explored. We have only ventured there in the past two centuries. Land was sighted for the first time in 1820, landfall was made in 1821 and people stayed for their first winter in 1899. Even the Ellsworth Mountains, where I was working in early 2011, were not explored properly until the 1960s.

  In ancient times the Greeks believed there must be a land in the south to counterbalance the Arctic. They coined the word Antarktikos, ‘Opposite the Bear’, referring
to the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear, which hung over the northern sky. When Antarctica was finally discovered, explorers commonly made comparisons to the polar north—often with disastrous consequences for their expeditions. Over time, as scientific methods became established, a unique land of ice, snow and rock revealed itself. By the turn of the twentieth century enough information had been pieced together to suggest a continent lay in these polar waters. Reports were made of seemingly endless coastlines, of isolated mountain ranges and volcanoes, of ice shelves and glacier tongues that jutted tens of kilometres into the Southern Ocean. Here was a new frontier, a continent untouched by humankind, waiting to be explored—and claimed.

  Disparate groups of would-be explorers, scientists and cartographers were soon dispatched south, to see what else might be down there. The early twentieth century’s Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration was born. But explorers did not battle sub-zero temperatures and ice-scarred landscapes just to conquer land, bag a pole or grow an impressive beard. These expeditionary teams—even those intent on scoring a geographical first—went south to scientifically explore the new continent. The pursuit of glory was not enough: a scientific case had to be made to national academies and societies, to ensure the financial support the expeditions so desperately needed. The explorers wanted to understand what made Antarctica tick, and set off intending to bring back sledge-loads of rocks, plant and animal remains, and measurements of the air, snow and ice.

  By 1912 five national teams, representing the old and new worlds, were diligently venturing beyond the edge of the known world. Although the British expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian effort are the best known today, there were others: Nobu Shirase for Japan, Wilhelm Filchner for Germany, and Douglas Mawson for Australia and New Zealand. Their discoveries not only enthralled the world: they changed our understanding of the planet. During this one year, at the height of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, the door to Antarctica was flung open. A frozen continent shaped by climatic extremes, and inhabited by wildlife and vegetation hitherto unknown to science, was uncovered. Feats of endurance, self-sacrifice and technological innovation laid the foundations for contemporary scientific exploration.

  Regaled with tales of derring-do, the public became excited by what was being discovered in Antarctica. The expeditions of 1912 went to great lengths to publicise their findings through books, lecture tours, newspaper articles and interviews, records, radio and films—all were used as widely as possible, with varying degrees of success. The blend of research and exploration was a high point in science communication, as the different Antarctic teams strove to enthral and educate those at home.

  Over the following decades, though, the tragic events of the era came to overshadow the amazing work accomplished, and much of this work was forgotten outside the small Antarctic scientific community. By drawing on my own experiences in the south and the rich source material from the time, I hope to illustrate why the centenary of this scientific exploration is worth celebrating, and how 1912 heralded the dawn of a new age in our understanding of the natural world.

  CHAPTER 1

  LOOKING POLEWARDS

  Early Ventures South

  No man will be a sailor who had contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned…A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

  SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709–1784)

  In 1520 the explorer Ferdinand Magellan was one year into his quest to find a westward route from the Atlantic to the Spice Islands of the western Pacific. The expedition to the Indonesian islands known today as the Moluccas was funded by the Spanish, in an attempt to break Venice’s stranglehold on the lucrative European spice trade. Leading a Spanish-financed and-crewed expedition was a major undertaking for the Portuguese captain. Not only had he lost a ship, dashed against the rocks while surveying, but he was constantly staving off the threat of mutiny. Reaching 53°S off the southeast coast of South America, Magellan found a passage that he hoped would allow his four wooden vessels to sail to the other side of the Americas.

  Magellan’s crew were not thrilled to find themselves beating a path down the 570-kilometre-long strait. Their journey was arduous: wild seas and ‘williwaw’ winds roared off the land, a ship was lost through desertion, and fire-loving locals came perilously close to attacking. Thirty-eight days later, though, the three surviving ships reached the other side of the Americas having negotiated a passage through the ‘Land of Fire’, Tierra del Fuego. The strain was almost too much for Magellan, who reputedly broke down and cried: against tremendous odds he had sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and into the relatively peaceful Pacific.

  From a survivor’s account of the voyage, the world learned that the Strait of Magellan is ‘surrounded by very great and high mountains covered with snow’. Magellan’s travels appeared to confirm the existence of the mythical continent on the southern side of the strait, Antarktikos—or, as it later became known, Terra Australis Incognita, the ‘Unknown South Land’. However, the great navigator did not live to enjoy the fame his discoveries brought, dying—as did most members of the expedition—on the way back to Spain.

  Tales of what lay to the south had fascinated ancient and medieval Europe. Stories were told of Prester John, a Christian king who ruled over a fantastical country surrounded by pagan states in the Far East, and within which four rivers of Paradise flowed from an inaccessible mountain of great height at the centre. For centuries speculation about the south continued, untroubled by evidence.

  The sixteenth century saw expeditions geared for trade and territorial expansion ploughing new routes into the Southern Ocean. Magellan provided the first point on the map, and cartographers around the world enthusiastically incorporated his discoveries. Terra Australis Incognita was an ideal home for the undiscovered Christian country and, using stories of Prester John and others, mapmakers prepared frighteningly detailed charts of the supercontinent’s alleged coastline and vast interior. This fantasy persisted over the next hundred years or so, connecting the southern part of Tierra del Fuego, northern Australia and sometimes even Indonesia.

  Half a century after Magellan discovered the strait that bears his name, an English adventurer stumbled on the fact that something was amiss. Sir Francis Drake is best known today for playing bowls when the Spanish Armada sought to invade England during the heady summer of 1588, but a decade earlier he was halfway to emulating Magellan’s achievement of circumnavigating the globe, and this time surviving. Drake had steered through the strait in a swift seventeen days, and with a happier crew than his unfortunate predecessor, before a huge northwesterly gale blew up. He was pushed back around the tip of South America, considerably further south than anticipated. Where Terra Australis Incognita should have been, there was just sea: the great continent in the south was, it seemed, a lot smaller than most had imagined.

  Competition in the Netherlands soon led to a spate of discoveries. With the Dutch East India Company holding a strictly enforced monopoly on the only known trade routes of the time, the Strait of Magellan and the south African Cape of Good Hope, other explorers set out to search for an alternative trade route: a Southwest Passage. In 1599 ships in a small Dutch fleet searching off the South American coast for this fabled path became separated, and the Dutch captain Dirk Gerritsz of the Blijde Boodschap reportedly found himself at 64°S, where he saw a land of high mountains covered in snow, ‘like Norway’. No one knew what to do with this finding, and it was largely dismissed. However, another expedition, led by Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten, was not so easy to ignore. In 1616 the two Dutchmen showed it was possible to sail around Tierra del Fuego, and in doing so discovered a mountainous land in the fog that appeared to be a peninsula. This Staten Land seemed to confirm Drake’s discovery, and it pushed the northern coastline of Terra Australis Incognita further south.

  These discoveries took some time
to filter through. Explorers and cartographers were reluctant to give up on the idea of a southern landmass, and they continued to join up small pockets of land across vast areas of the southern hemisphere, desperate to make sense of what lay there. A classic example is the Dutchman Abel Tasman, who in 1642 became the first European to sail along the southern coast of Australia, discovering Tasmania in the process. On reaching what we know as New Zealand, Tasman proclaimed his find Staten Land, believing it was connected to the same landmass his compatriots had seen in 1616. The following year the South Atlantic Staten Land was found to be just a small island with plenty more sea to the south. The supposed southern continent was becoming ever smaller.

  With unsubstantiated reports and wild rumour continuing to emanate from the south, one of the greatest explorers came to the fore. Captain James Cook was appointed by the oldest scientific society in the world, the prestigious Royal Society in London, to make a thorough search for Terra Australis Incognita. On his first voyage he had sailed around New Zealand and shown there was yet more sea polewards. On his second Pacific expedition, between 1772 and 1775, Cook took the HMS Resolution further south, probing for a route through the sea ice and bergs. He was hundreds of kilometres inside the Antarctic Circle—and decades ahead of his time. Cooped up for months on a small wooden vessel dwarfed by towering icebergs that seemed to fill the ocean, Cook and the crew were increasingly on edge. Eventually it was too much: having reached 71°S, Cook turned the Resolution and headed for home.

  Having worked his way through the icebergs and circumnavigating Antarctica without seeing it, Cook returned to Britain with tales of new islands and large seal colonies, pack ice and freezing conditions in the Southern Ocean. His achievement attracted attention around the world. At most longitudes, Cook’s record southern latitude is actually part of the Antarctic continent. Cook had pushed the limits of his craft—and men—as far as possible, but was in the wrong area to see any land; he was desperately unlucky not to discover Antarctica.