1912 Read online

  International interest continued in the polar regions, but a tragedy soon unfolded in the north that would leave the south largely forgotten. Since the time of Magellan, explorers had probed the Arctic for a new route to the Pacific from the North Atlantic, without the trouble of going south to wrestle with the wild seas surrounding Tierra del Fuego. The so-called Northwest Passage was the hoped-for navigable ocean route from the Atlantic along the largely unmapped Canadian Arctic coastline, shaving thousands of kilometres off the journey in the process.

  In 1845, a few years after Ross’s return to Britain, the polar veteran Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin took the newly refurbished Erebus and Terror to make a new search for the Northwest Passage. Both vessels had been refitted with steam engines and reinforced with iron plating; but they were never heard from again. Over the next two decades some twenty expeditions were sent out to discover what had happened to Franklin and his 129 men. What had worked for Ross had failed for Franklin: the two ships had been caught by sea ice, and sank. The survivors tried to make their way south, only to perish shortly after. Tales among the local Inuit spoke of the last expedition members committing cannibalism and eating the leather of their own boots.

  The silver lining to these gruesome discoveries was that much of the Canadian coastline was mapped. With a newly discovered interest in this region, governments around the Arctic intensified their exploration efforts—mostly led by Scandinavian and American teams, who pushed ever further north. At the other end of the world, however, things would become moribund for the next fifty years.

  The only major effort in the south took place between 1872 and 1876, as part of HMS Challenger’s 130,000-kilometre voyage to explore the world’s oceans. It was arguably the crowning achievement of Victorian oceanography. Lavishly funded by the British government, the Challenger briefly visited the Southern Ocean as part of its circumnavigation and made one surprising contribution to Antarctic research. Rather than driving into the sea ice and bergs—something for which it was ill-equipped—the expedition dredged the seabed near the Antarctic Circle, pulling up a rich mixture of rocks, the make-up of which suggested a land of continental proportions did indeed lie in the south. Scientists suggested it covered an area of eight million square kilometres. Now all that was needed was for someone to go and explore it.

  In 1827 one of the most influential institutions in Antarctic exploration and research began life as the dining group of a London gentleman’s club. The Travellers Club in Pall Mall met regularly in the Thatched House, a roomy, high-ceilinged public house in St James. Surrounded by portraits and chandeliers, members would regale each other with stories of the new lands they had visited.

  By 1830 the group had decided it needed a new scientific institution, the Geographical Society of London, ‘whose sole object should be the promotion and diffusion of that most important and entertaining branch of knowledge, geography’. Thanks to the excellent connections of its government and industrial members, the society received royal patronage within two months of its founding and was renamed the Royal Geographic Society, affectionately shortened to RGS. Writing in apparently high spirits, members declared in the new society’s prospectus that geography was ‘a copious source of rational amusement’.

  The RGS soon made a call for observations of foreign lands:

  The routes, for example, which travellers may have pursued through portions of countries hitherto but imperfectly known, or inaccurately described, the objects of Natural History that may have presented themselves, the meteorological and magnetic phenomena that may have been observed, the nature of the soil and its products, of its forests, rivers, plains, mountains and other general features of its surface; but above all, the latitudes and longitudes of particular places which the Resident or Traveller may have had the means of determining to a degree of precision on which he may rely; such notices of detached portions of the Earth’s surface, where as regular surveys cannot be held, are of extreme importance, as furnishing the only means by which any thing approaching to correctness in our general maps can be attained.

  The RGS would then print ‘new, interesting and useful facts and discoveries to its members and the public in cheap form’. Guides on how to make observations were produced for would-be explorers, the best known of which was Hints to Travellers. Costing just a few shillings, its hundred pages contain recommendations for ‘a person who, for the first time in his life, proposes to explore a wild country’. There is a wonderfully eclectic range of instruments suggested for the budding explorer, including those you might expect, such as thermometers, barometers and sextants, through to the more extreme, like a double-barrelled gun for the ‘collection of objects of natural history’. The society was leading the charge in exploration, and its mission chimed with the ambitions of the rapidly expanding Empire. Membership soared into the thousands.

  Not everyone was impressed with the society as it became more successful. ‘I hate the claptrap and flattery and flummery of the Royal Geographical [Society], with its utter want of Science and craving for popularity and excitement,’ grumbled Joseph Hooker in the midst of sensationalised reports about Livingstone’s exploration of Africa in 1864. And the criticism was compounded by the view that the society was not keeping up with the times. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the RGS remained a bastion of male membership: hardly in keeping with the dawn of the modern era.

  In 1892 the society’s council announced it had approved the admission of twenty-two female fellows. Learned societies around the world were doing likewise, yet the decision dismayed many RGS fellows, one of whom observed, ‘I should be very sorry to see this Society governed by ladies.’ The upset fellows succeeded in overturning the decision the following year. The scandal was widely reported, and letters justifying the decision were published in the press. Lord Curzon, who later became viceroy of India and, perversely, the RGS president who finally admitted female fellows to the society in 1913, wrote: ‘We contest in toto the general capability of women to contribute to scientific geographic knowledge. Their sex and training render them equally unfitted for exploration; and the genus of professional female globe-trotters with which America has lately familiarized us is one of the horrors of the latter end of the nineteenth century.’ Those female fellows who had been elected were allowed to stay, but no more were admitted for two decades.

  The ensuing fallout was a turning point in Antarctic exploration. Sir Clements Markham was a seasoned member of the RGS who had earlier served as its secretary for twenty-five years. A naval veteran of the Arctic, a midshipman on one of the many British quests to find Sir John Franklin, Markham lived and breathed geography. When he was just thirty he had successfully smuggled seeds of the cinchona tree—containing precious quinine, the only known anti-malarial drug at the time—out of South America and over to India. There the British mixed tonic water containing quinine with gin to make it more drinkable, and the gin and tonic was born.

  While on a trip in the Mediterranean, Markham found himself elected as an uncontroversial president, someone who would be acceptable to both sides. Ever the pragmatist, the new president set about focusing the attention of RGS members and the public on something that would take their minds off ‘the Lady problem’—a project dear to his heart, the exploration of Antarctica. Some years later Markham explained the campaign in a message to Lord Curzon: ‘You well remember the trouble about the admission of females…We were on the brink of a great secession…I believed, rightly or wrongly, that the only way to restore the Society’s credit was to undertake some great enterprise in the cause of geography. I chose the Antarctic Regions. It was a risk, for failure would leave us worse than before. All depended on the leader of the expedition.’

  By 1895 the Royal Geographic Society and the Royal Society had formed a joint committee to campaign for a British Antarctic expedition, and in that year the Sixth International Geographical Congress in London declared ‘that the exploration of the Antarctic Regions is the gr
eatest piece of geographical exploration still to be undertaken. That in view of the additions to knowledge in almost every branch of science which would result from such a scientific exploration the Congress recommends that the scientific societies throughout the world should urge in whatever way seems to them most effective, that this work should be undertaken before the close of the century.’ Markham devoted his presidency to furthering this cause—which makes you wonder what would have happened to British Antarctic exploration had the society approved the admission of female fellows a few years earlier.

  The HMS Challenger oceanographer John Murray, a friend of Markham’s, was a vigorous proponent of Antarctic exploration: ‘We must, if possible, have two ships, with landing parties for stations on shore, and with a recognized scientific leader and staff on board of each ship…The difficulties which at present surround this undertaking are fundamentally those of money.’ And therein lay the problem: the estimated cost was £150,000, equivalent to more than US$20 million today. The infamous expedition of 1860 led by Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills to cross Australia was still relatively fresh in people’s minds. Sponsored by the Royal Society of Victoria, it was the most expensive in Australian history, costing £60,000—and seven lives, including those of its leaders. In spite of nationalistic pride, governments were not keen to bankroll high-risk ventures. Murray’s figures put the proposed work in the south at the most expensive end of scientific exploration. Public subscription would be vital.

  The International Geographical Congress’s declaration sparked the Heroic Age, a period of feverish exploration. Norway, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, France and a nationalistically minded Scotland joined Britain in the quest to discover the south. Despite the competition, most countries were supportive of one another. Almost all agreed in advance to have different spheres of operation when exploring the region: before 1912, expeditions rarely saw anyone else when they were operating in the Antarctic.

  The earliest attempts were considerably smaller affairs than that envisaged by Murray, and relied largely on private funds. One of the first was the 1897–1899 Belgian Antarctic Expedition, led by the naval officer Adrien de Gerlache in the Belgica. De Gerlache ignored Ross’s discoveries and set out south from Tierra del Fuego. He had intended to make an attempt on the South Magnetic Pole, but abandoned the plan when time ran out. Instead, his expedition inadvertently became the first to spend a winter in the Antarctic region when the Belgica was locked in sea ice at 70°S, west of a landmass that appeared to be a continuation of Trinity and Palmer lands.

  The crew endured a winter of darkness for which they were poorly prepared. Fortunately, two characters who would later play significant roles in the events of 1912 were on board: the Norwegian first mate Roald Amundsen and the American expedition doctor Frederick Cook. Crew members started complaining of the symptoms of the dreaded disease of vitamin deficiency, scurvy. Bleeding gums, loose teeth and swollen limbs could easily prove fatal. But, amazingly, only two people died. Cook, with Amundsen’s support, probably saved most of de Gerlache’s crew by feeding them fresh seal meat—which, with its relatively high vitamin C levels, if not overcooked, restored those who ate it to health. The expedition returned home, and an important lesson about the value of fresh meat in surviving the south had been learned.

  The first British attempt following the International Geographical Congress’s call was another privately funded affair. When the Norwegian Carsten Borchgrevink laid out his plans to lead an expedition south between 1898 and 1900, Markham and the Royal Geographical Society kept their distance. Borchgrevink had been to Antarctica on a sealing expedition just a couple of years earlier, and had shot to fame when he became one of the first to step foot on the continent. But a Norwegian schoolmaster and seaman was not to be taken seriously by learned men in London. Still, by October 1897 Borchgrevink had secured £35,000 from Sir George Newnes, a newspaper baron, who insisted the expedition fly under a British flag.

  The largely Scandinavian team took with them three British and Australian scientists, and returned to Cape Adare in northern Victoria Land, the site of Borchgrevink’s first steps. Relations between the Norwegian and the rest of the men became so bad that at one point the leader produced a notice which declared, ‘the following things would be considered mutiny: to oppose C.E.B. [Borchgrevink] or induce others to do so, to speak ill of C.E.B., to ridicule Mr. C.E.B. or his work, to try and force C.E.B. to alter contracts.’ Somehow they soldiered on, and in 1899 the expedition became the first to winter on the Antarctic continent. At the end the Australian Louis Bernacchi—in charge of magnetic measurements—said, ‘We are not sorry to leave this gelid, desolate spot, our place of abode for so many dreary months!’

  The following summer they sailed on towards the Great Ice Barrier and reached what the papers described as ‘Furthest South with sledge – record – 78 deg. 58 min.’ It had been some time since anyone had spoken publicly of trying for the South Geographic Pole. The race was on, if you were in search of fame and perhaps fortune.

  The British were not overly concerned with the geographic pole, although there was no doubting this was a good way of raising public interest. The official aim was to discover more about this new land in the south, not merely to reach what many felt was an arbitrary spot on the ground. By lobbying and cajoling where necessary, Markham and Murray managed to secure enough funds from private benefactors and the government of the day to get an officially sanctioned British expedition. Most of the money came from the industrialist Llewellyn Longstaff, who offered £25,000, with the government offering a further £45,000. Britain’s National Antarctic Expedition was born.

  Markham had for some years maintained a list of young naval officers with the potential to lead the new initiative. The Royal Navy had led polar exploration since the end of the Napoleonic Wars: young officers, it was believed, could be explorers and serve science at the same time. As Admiral Sir Richard Hamilton, another veteran of the search for Franklin, remarked in 1906: ‘It was the belief of all of us, then the rising generation of 1850, that polar exploration was essentially the work of young men in full possession of their physical powers, with, of course, a fair amount of knowledge of various sciences…The most experienced whaling captain cannot foresee the rapid changes in ice-movements. So inexperience is not as heavily handicapped in the ice as elsewhere. The power of instant decision is what is required.’

  In 1899, two days after advertising for a leader of the National Antarctic Expedition, Markham ran into Robert Falcon Scott, a 31-year-old torpedo officer on leave in London. Encouraged by Markham, Scott applied for the position and was appointed leader—his enthusiasm trumping his polar inexperience.

  The National Antarctic Expedition began to take shape. But the alliance between the Royal Geographic Society and the Royal Society, its co-sponsors, was not an easy one. The RGS wished to concentrate on geographical discovery, while the Royal Society wanted to put more resources into scientific observation. Sir Clements Markham considered dedicated scientists undesirable camp followers, ‘mud larkers’ who impeded the business of discovery by pottering in the field.

  The Royal Society had considered Scott to be the leader of the expedition for the journey to Antarctica, and envisaged a trained scientist being the leader on the ice. After all, this was a scientific expedition—or so the Royal Society thought. Professor John Walter Gregory was appointed scientific director. A geologist, he had worked from the tropics to the Arctic and achieved fame as an explorer, naming Africa’s Great Rift Valley during one of his sojourns. In anticipation of the rich scientific rewards to be had in the south, Gregory made a call for research ideas in the journal Nature. Unfortunately, the two men were not natural teammates. Gregory complained that Scott had ‘no knowledge of expedition equipment…On questions of furs, sledges, ski etc, his ignorance is appalling…he does not seem at all conscious of these facts or inclined to get [the] experience necessary.’ Scott seemed likely to resign over who was in cha
rge. Markham weighed in, and instead the Royal Society’s candidate fell on his sword. With Gregory gone, Scott was now in sole charge of what threatened to become a ‘naval adventure’. The relationship between science and exploration had not got off to a good start.

  Nonetheless, Scott tried to recruit as much scientific expertise as possible. One of those he attempted to take south was a rising star in polar research, the Scot William Speirs Bruce. Full of scientific and nationalist zeal, he had experience of polar waters in both hemispheres. Keen to take his own group south, Bruce turned down Scott’s approach. Instead, he raised private funds, controversially named his effort the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition and set off in his ship, the Scotia, in 1902. Two years later Bruce returned home a hero, and described exploring the seas and weather of the Weddell Sea, including discovering a new coastline he called Coats Land after one of his major sponsors. Finding the pack ice too thick, he could not penetrate as far south as Weddell, and vowed to go back. Markham described the Scottish effort as ‘mischievous rivalry’, and never forgave Bruce for it.

  Meanwhile, Markham had organised the publication of The Antarctic Manual before the official British expedition headed south. Meant as a guide for naval officers and scientists, the Manual described the history, scientific questions and methods required in the south. It provides a fascinating insight into what was known of the Antarctic at the beginning of the twentieth century: expedition members were to research the ice within glaciers, investigate the saltiness of seawater and acquire skill in ‘ski running’; they were advised which geological samples they should bring home, and that ‘a sandwich of frozen bear’s blubber and biscuit is palatable enough.’