The Belgica leaves for the Antarctic in 1897. From Amundsen’s perspective, the best thing about the expedition is its American doctor, Frederick Cook, who had explored Greenland with Robert Peary. Amundsen sets about gleaning everything that he can about polar travel from the Peary-trained Cook.
Otherwise, the expedition is mostly a disaster, teetering at times on the brink of their annihilation. The pack ice proves too much of an obstacle for de Gerlache to get to Cape Adare, so he decides they should become the first men to spend a winter in the Antarctic by emulating Nansen and driving the Belgica into the midst of the pack ice until the ship becomes entrapped. Unlike Nansen, de Gerlache is ill-prepared for the cold, the darkness, and, in particular, the ravages of scurvy from a diet deficient in vitamin C. Many of the men, de Gerlache included, suffer from scurvy, and in the brutal cold and dark isolation become physical and psychological wrecks. Cook saves them all by insisting that they eat seals and penguins, a rich source of vitamin C. Well, all but one: a crew member refuses to eat the seal meat and dies.
It is not just vitamin C that they lack. One of the unspoken aspects about polar exploration is the sexual deprivations it imposes upon those undertaking such missions, which are often measured in years. Arguably, those in the north might fare better than those in the south given the presence of the local Inuit. Robert Peary is with his wife only three years out of their first twenty-three years of marriage, but in addition to the two children he has with his wife, he also has an Inuit mistress and fathers at least two children with her. But there is no such salve for loneliness in the South. Yet the diaries of the men going there are characteristically silent on the subject of sex or, even, their desires for sex. Men of the Victorian era are not expected to voice such thoughts, even though, doubtless, they must have them.
The Belgica is a notable exception because Lieutenant Georges Lecointe, the second in command, produces a publication called, suggestively enough, The Ladyless South. In it, he ascribes to Amundsen the comment, “Yes, sir, I love it,” when referring to the absence of women. Through high school, university, and afterward, Amundsen had displayed little interest in the opposite sex. He exhibits an aura of monasticism mixed with a spoonful or two of misogyny, all of which ensure that he is happiest when he is on ice. He professes no need for the warmth of a woman. If Victorian values suppressed sex, or at least the overt demonstration of it, it would seem that such social mores are wasted on Amundsen: apparently, he has no need for sex anyway.
When the sun returns on July 23, 1898, the problems for the Belgica and those on board are far from over. They sit imprisoned in the pack ice with no foreseeable way out.
As the Belgica sits locked in the sea ice of Antarctica’s Graham Land, thwarted from reaching its destination of Cape Adare, Carsten Borchgrevink is setting out from England on his ship the Southern Cross on the somewhat inappropriately named British Antarctic Expedition: the money may have come from Sir George Newnes, but twenty-six of twenty-nine in the crew are Borchgrevink’s Norwegian countrymen.
It takes the Belgica seven months to finally get free of the ice. Once more, it is Frederick Cook who saves them: he proposes cutting and blasting a channel in the ice to reach an open lead of water about a mile away. On February 15, 1899, the channel opens sufficiently for the Belgica to finally start her engines and begin the tortuous journey home. By then, Borchgrevink is just two days sailing from Cape Adare.
All in all, the Belgica Expedition is a lesson to Amundsen about the importance of being prepared for conditions in the high latitudes. Perhaps most significantly of all, it gives Amundsen the excuse to contact Fridtjof Nansen after getting back to Norway.
I stood in Nansen’s villa at Liysaker and knocked on the door of his study. “Come in,” said a voice from inside. And then I stood face to face with the man who for years had loomed before me as something almost superhuman: the man who had achieved exploits which stirred every fibre of my being.
The friendship forged between these two Norwegians in that moment is destined to impact Murray Levick. Yet, in 1899, while Amundsen, Nansen, and Borchgrevink are setting in train the events that will drive Levick to become the world’s first penguin biologist, Levick himself is proving himself more capable than Amundsen in at least one regard. He is studying medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, and although he does not distinguish himself as a great student, he is at least sticking with his studies. There are no indications, however, that thoughts of Antarctica have ever crossed his mind and, certainly, no penguins.
Ironically, while Levick has left behind so little evidence of himself, the two ships that were the first to penetrate the Ross Sea—arguably the initial step in the train of events leading Murray Levick to Cape Adare—continue to reveal themselves despite nearly 170 years passing since they were lost and sunk during Franklin’s expedition.
It is September 3, 2016. History repeats. A Canadian expedition finds the HMS Terror sitting in eighty feet of water in Victoria Strait, some sixty miles due north of where the Erebus had been found almost exactly two years earlier. Appropriately enough, it is found in Terror Bay off the coast of King William Island. Apart from a coating of kelp and other marine life, it is similarly well preserved.
Notes left by the crew reveal the Erebus and Terror became locked in the ice on September 12, 1846, and two years later those still surviving out of the original 129-member crew abandoned the ships. Yet none lived long enough to be found and rescued. It is a fate that so easily could have befallen de Gerlache and the men of the Belgica were it not for Frederick Cook’s ingenuity.
Carsten Borchgrevink, as he crashes through the pack ice on the Southern Cross during his approach to Cape Adare, is much better prepared than either Franklin or de Gerlache, but he is not prepared for Cape Adare itself. It has been the lure of Antarctica, the mystique of the unknown frozen continent, which had taken him to Cape Adare in the first place and is bringing him back again now. It is the same lure that will eventually bring men like Scott and Levick there and, ultimately, me. Yet Borchgrevink and his men will come to loathe the place.
Some lure!
PART TWO
ALL ROADS LEAD TO CAPE ADARE
Divorce
We are told, overtly and covertly, that monogamy is our natural state. Marriage ceremonies and the Christian Church don’t just extol monogamy as a virtue, they demand it “till death do us part.” And, to a certain extent, we scientists have contributed to this view too. For sure, male red deer and bull elephant seals are obvious exceptions where polygamy reigns. But in those creatures where secondary sexual characteristics like antlers, enormous size, or red breasts are absent, leaving males and females essentially looking alike (monomorphic in the lingua franca of the scientist), scientists argue that mating with one long-term partner is not a marriage of convenience so much as, biologically, the best policy. This is because in animals where the sexes look alike, they are often monogamous and, when a pair breed together, like so many things, “practice” really does “make perfect”: experienced pairs have a higher likelihood of breeding success compared to newly formed pairs.
If you believe the cartoonists, no animals look more alike than do penguins. And there is an element of truth to that: the evidence suggests that visual clues alone are not enough for male penguins to distinguish females, let alone individuals. On average, males are, typically, somewhat bigger than females but there is so much overlap between the sexes that it is not a reliable guide to who likes being on top. Might this partially account for Levick’s and my observed instances of homosexual mountings: mistaken identity?
There is apparently no strong evolutionary advantage for characteristics like large size or ostentatious plumage in male penguins that might allow them to compete for females. That is because nearly all males, irrespective of whether they are the penguin equivalent of Don Juan or Quasimodo, get to breed and get to breed only once.
This is a consequence of where penguins feed (the sea) compa
red to where they breed (the land). No female penguin could manage alone if she were required to lay the eggs, incubate the eggs, and then simultaneously brood the chicks while also getting food for them and herself. It is a problem peculiar not just to penguins but nearly all seabirds, and it is the reason why virtually all seabirds are monogamous and, therefore, monomorphic. A male penguin cannot afford to leave his partner to pursue other females if he is to be successful in an evolutionary sense: he must remain with his partner and help her to raise their offspring.
Furthermore, the longer a pair stays together, the greater is the likelihood that their prior experience of breeding together will better enable them to fledge their chicks successfully. Consequently, even the scientists joined in the chant that penguins mate for life.
But, when all the participants in a soap opera look identical, it is hard to see the opera, let alone the soap.
CHAPTER FOUR
FIRST OBSERVATIONS
It is February 17, 1899. The small whaling ship Southern Cross, after battling dense pack ice and storms for over seven weeks, makes its way into the unexpectedly open and ice-free waters of Robertson Bay at Cape Adare. The crew finds itself in an amphitheater formed by dark, stupendously steep mountains. Gravity-defying glaciers cling to their sides. Gigantic crevices, big enough to easily swallow the entire ship, are clearly visible from its deck. Beyond the mountain tops lies the interior of Antarctica and the wind that bears down on them comes from there, cold and fierce. It feels more prison than sanctuary. There is just one place where they can manage a landing: a flat spit of land that is all but deserted of the penguins that had covered it when Carsten Borchgrevink first set foot there five years earlier. Borchgrevink’s men are impressed, but not in a good way:
It seemed, at a distance, so small and inhospitable that some of my staff felt constrained to remark at first sight of the place, that if it was there I proposed to live for a year, they had better send letters of farewell back with the vessel.
They use whale boats to ferry equipment, food, and seventy dogs ashore. They take two weeks to establish their camp which they named “Ridley Beach,” during which time they are belted by gales and pelted by rocks. At times they are unable to stand in the near-constant wind. A prefabricated wooden hut of Norwegian design, dark and solid, is erected upon the remains of penguin nests. Then, on March 2, 1899, the ship sails away to spend the winter in New Zealand, while Borchgrevink and his nine men are left alone: the most isolated men in the world, vying to become the first humans to winter on the Antarctic continent; that is, if they can survive that long.
All does not go quite to plan. It is mercilessly cold and windy, not the benign place that Borchgrevink had supposed from his earlier visit. There is little structure or discipline and the men become moody and morose. During winter, the sea freezes in Robertson Bay and around Cape Adare. Borchgrevink, bravely, undertakes several weeks of sledging, exploring the surrounding area during the heart of the Antarctic winter, when he and his two Finnish Laplander companions, Per Savio and Ole Must, are without sunlight and in temperatures that drop as low as -52°F. The cold is exaggerated greatly by the incessant wind. After the winter, however, the ice in Robertson Bay breaks out, and the men find the opportunities for sledging and exploring are limited by the surrounding mountains. There is nowhere they can go. They are trapped.
The expedition has a zoologist, Nicolai Hanson, who had been a contemporary of Roald Amundsen at Kristiania University, although he has the distinction of having actually graduated. Hanson is a handsome man with thick, wavy dark hair, a rock for a chin, and a thick mustache that, in the Antarctic, he wears in combination with a thick goatee. He married not long before leaving for Antarctica and left behind a pregnant wife. His daughter, Johanne, was born just over a month after his departure.
Given their enforced internment in the midst of the penguin colony on the spit at Cape Adare, which Borchgrevink has named Ridley Camp, it is certain that Hanson would have set about conducting the world’s first study of penguins. But tragedy strikes. Hanson had become very ill on the five-month journey from England to Cape Adare. Although he recovers enough to begin his zoological work when at Cape Adare, toward the end of the brutal winter, his intestinal problems return and his condition deteriorates, leaving him bedridden.
On October 14, 1899, the first Adelie penguin is spotted arriving at the Cape Adare colony to begin the new breeding season. Hanson asks to see it, and one of the men obligingly catches it and brings it to his bedside. Hanson is truly excited to see the penguin. It is the last observation he will make. Thirty minutes later, he dies.
Rather than becoming the world’s first penguin biologist, Hanson, instead, gains the far more dubious distinction of becoming the first person to be buried in Antarctica. Even that proves almost out of his reach. The Australian physicist Louis Bernacchi and the two Finnish Laplanders are sent to dig the grave in the place that Hanson has picked out for himself: on the north side of a large boulder one thousand feet up on the point of Cape Adare. The ground is frozen and almost impossible to dig so that, after working all day and breaking all their implements, they have, as Bernacchi puts it, “only succeeded in excavating to a depth of about 4 inches.” He adds wryly, “On the next day we brought up a large quantity of dynamite, and, by its aid, we were more successful.”
In exchange for the opportunity to see Adelie penguins, Hanson has lost the opportunity to ever see his daughter. The cost to his daughter proves equally high. Johanne Hanson Vogt will die in 1999, exactly one hundred years after her father is buried in the loneliest grave on Earth; an extraordinarily long time to live without a father.
When the Southern Cross finally arrives to pick up the nine surviving members of the party at the end of January 1900, the last thing they do is visit Hanson’s grave and erect a small black cross with a brass plate bearing his name. Bernacchi sums up their departure:
It was one of the most bleak and ungenial days imaginable . . . We were not sorry to leave that gelid desolate spot, our place of abode for so many dreary months.
Borchgrevink is no zoologist but, even without Hanson, he is intent on having the expedition recognized for its scientific achievements. At heart, however, Borchgrevink remains the same man who claimed to have put the first boot on the Antarctic continent: he is a man of firsts. Now back on the Southern Cross, he takes the ship south into the sea that has not been traveled since James Clark Ross discovered it in 1841 and lent it his name. Borchgrevink makes a number of “first landings” at places that would later figure large in the story of Antarctic exploration and penguin research: Mount Melbourne, Cape Washington, and Franklin Island.
Franklin Island epitomizes the strange but profound interconnectedness between those trying to explore the opposite ends of the Earth. It had been named by Ross in honor of Sir John Franklin, the Arctic explorer. The very Franklin who four years later would take Ross’s ships, Erebus and Terror (along with Ross’s friend Crozier), and attempt to pioneer the sought-after Northwest Passage. The same Franklin for whom Ross would search for two years. The same Franklin who would inspire Roald Amundsen to become a polar explorer, and whose childhood friend would then be the first to set foot on this Antarctic island named in Franklin’s honor.
On February 10, 1900, Carsten Borchgrevink adds another milestone to his collection of firsts: he becomes the first person to set foot on Ross Island. It is very nearly his last. Borchgrevink and Bernhard Jensen, the captain of the Southern Cross, land at a beach between Capes Crozier and Bird on a small headland that Borchgrevink names Cape Tennyson. Soon afterward, a large iceberg calves off from the nearby glacier and “some thousands of tons of ice fell into the sea with a terrific and reverberating roar,” creating a twenty-foot-high tidal wave. The two men are smashed against the rocky cliff at the back of the narrow beach, thumped by pieces of ice in their backs and completely swamped by the surge of water. Somehow, they manage to cling to the rocks and survival.
The
reafter, Jensen and Borchgrevink take the Southern Cross southeastward, noting the largely ice-free and gently sloping area that forms the Cape Crozier Adelie penguin colony. They follow the Ross Ice Shelf eastward, a flat and unbroken 160-foot-high sheer-walled barrier along which they sail for days until, on February 16, they make a discovery: an indentation in the shelf forming a natural harbor where a ship can be moored to the ice and access gained to the shelf itself. Borchgrevink lands on the ice shelf, another first, and with two men travels ten miles south, reaching 78°50´S, “the farthest south ever reached by man” as he will boast proudly afterward.
It is Borchgrevink’s discovery of this indentation in the Ross Ice Shelf, I realize, even more than his landing and wintering over at Cape Adare, that will become the pivotal factor in taking Murray Levick on an unexpected journey that will end with him becoming the world’s first penguin biologist.
When the Southern Cross Expedition finally arrives back in England, their reception is tepid. The country has its attention focused on a different Antarctic expedition: the forthcoming Discovery Expedition to be led by the Englishman, Robert Falcon Scott.
Borchgrevink is under an obligation to publish accounts of his expedition in George Newnes’s publications, with a direction that he should make them accessible to the readers, and consequently less scientific in tone. Arguably, a laudable goal, it is nevertheless looked down upon by Sir Clements Markham and the other fellows at the Royal Geographical Society.
A Polar Affair Page 5
