A Polar Affair

by Lloyd Spencer Davis

  . . . the film reinforces monogamous heterosexual nuclear family structures as an innate and desirable part of life.

  Nothing can be further from the truth. Emperor penguins are by far the least faithful of any penguins, with 85 percent divorcing their partner and taking up with a brand-new one from one year to the next. Without a nest site to act as a rendezvous point from one year to the next, as we observed to be so important for the reunification of Adelie penguin pairs, and with pressure to initiate breeding as soon as possible, it is more luck than love that enables the relatively few pairs of Emperor penguins to reunite from one year to the next. Rather than being icons for love, Emperor penguins should be the patron saints of divorce.

  And yet, the impression persists today—as much as it did during the winter of 1911, when Levick sat on his bed by the darkened window at Cape Adare, dreaming of writing a novel—that penguins mate for life.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE RELUCTANT PENGUIN BIOLOGIST

  Murray Levick is unaware of the calamitous events taking place at Cape Crozier beyond his darkened window. He and the rest of the Northern Party spend the winter at Cape Adare making preparations for their own sledging journeys, which will begin in the spring. That is, until calamity strikes their party again in its oddly familiar way.

  Until now, Levick has done little by way of his secondary function as a zoologist. Instead, he has concentrated mainly on his photography, taking over Borchgrevink’s hut for a darkroom. What notes he writes in his big blue Zoological notebook are perfunctory at best.

  When they had arrived at Cape Adare, it had been near the end of the penguins’ breeding season. Most chicks had fledged, and the adults had either moved elsewhere to molt or hung about at Cape Adare waiting for their new set of feathers to grow. Levick noted that there were only about 1,500 Adelie penguins remaining in the colony on February 18. The remaining chicks, which had yet to fledge, seemed unlikely to survive: they begged from any adult and seemed, to Levick, to have been abandoned by their parents. By March 12 there were no fledgling chicks left, leaving only about three hundred adults in the colony, including just thirty that had still to complete their molt. The last penguins he saw were on April 6: six of them. He killed four of them for food. Not exactly the portents for becoming the world’s first serious penguin biologist.

  He does not see another live penguin until September 19 when four Emperor penguins visit Cape Adare. As he writes, in a way that appears starker when written in his cursive script in the blue-black ink, “I killed them all.”

  Whatever reticence Levick may have admitted to killing penguins seems well and truly behind him. Yet there are still the hints of a penguin scientist with a moral heart that whiles away the dark winter hours at Cape Adare (or “Cape Adair” as he, curiously, spells it).

  After his initial observations of the dwindling penguin numbers, he wrote in his Zoological Notes mainly about three species of petrels, and some protozoans that he recovered by melting ice, complete with colored pencil drawings. He shows no interest in penguins until August 12, when he dissects a female fledgling penguin that he had found frozen two days earlier. It is completely emaciated, containing no fat and its stomach is full of “surprisingly large” basalt stones and nothing else. The lot of a late fledgling chick is evidently not a kind one.

  But Cape Adare has its own peculiarly unkind fate reserved for the six men that occupy the new hut on Ridley Beach that winter.

  It is the evening of August 15, 1911. A gale that has been blasting Ridley Beach increases in intensity to hurricane proportions. In an environment where its human inhabitants have rarely known a day without a fierce wind blowing, Dickason describes it as, “the hardest blow we have had.”

  It is freezing inside the hut, even with the fire going, and the men get into their eiderdowns. Outside the hut is being pelted with wind-driven rocks and Dickason must crawl on his hands and knees when taking the meteorological measurements. The men fear, as Cherry-Garrard and his companions had feared a month earlier when lying in their igloo during a similarly ferocious storm, that the roof may not hold. Indeed, the roof is blown off their storeroom, which had been Borchgrevink’s storeroom originally. Their meteorological station and many of its instruments are destroyed. However, all that pales into insignificance for them when compared to the most devastating consequence of the storm.

  In the morning, Dickason goes outside the hut only to return quickly with the news that the sea ice, which had formed in Robertson Bay over the winter, has been completely blown away. It is Priestley who sums up the gut-wrenching implications of this for them:

  . . . we gazed seaward this morning and realized the astounding fact that the sea ice beyond the bay, our only hope for any future sledging, had gone out during the night.

  Once more their mission to go exploring has been thwarted. First at the Bay of Whales, that area of the Ross Ice Shelf discovered by the Norwegian Borchgrevink and subsequently occupied by his childhood playmate. Second, here at the place where men first set foot on Antarctica and overwintered on the continent: and yes, that Borchgrevink again. The guy whose storeroom they have usurped seems to haunt their every move. The sea ice had been their only plan, their only possible route to the northwest, their only possible pathway to map and explore hitherto untouched areas of the Antarctic continent—areas that are now destined to remain unexplored, untouched, and unmapped, while they remain marooned on a tiny triangular spit of land about two square miles in area until the Terra Nova can come back to collect them sometime in the New Year.

  Cape Adare sits at the tip of a long needle-like point of land, some twenty-five miles in length, that forms the eastern side of Robertson Bay. Directly opposite Ridley Beach, some twenty miles away on the western side of Robertson Bay, is Cape Wood. That is where the Northern Party had hoped to begin their exploration of the Antarctic coastline to the west of there. Crossing the ice-covered Robertson Bay had been their route to Cape Wood. Yet, even as Levick acknowledges that the storm has delivered “the most awful blow to our hopes of sledging along the coast,” had it happened ten days later when a sledging party consisting of Campbell, Priestly, Abbott, and Dickason was scheduled to be out on the ice attempting to get to Cape Wood, they “would have certainly been dead men.”

  If there is a sliver of hope left for the Northern Party and their quest for exploration, it is that a narrow strip of sea ice still hugs the coastline to their south. Rather than going directly to Cape Wood across Robertson Bay, it may be possible to make their way, cautiously, around the coastline, pulling sleds along the sea ice that remains stuck to the shoreline. It will make for a much longer journey and one where they will need to be ever mindful that the remaining ice does not break out too.

  It is September 8, 1911. While Levick and the other members of the Northern Party have been preparing to head out around the edges of the recently ice-free Robertson Bay, at Framheim, Roald Amundsen has been desperate to get his push to the South Pole underway. He is worried that Scott may start early, and while the ponies are probably unable to get underway when the air is still frozen with the brutal winter cold, the motor sledges might give Scott an advantage in that regard. Originally, Amundsen had planned to leave on November 1, but his worry about his rival causes him to move the date forward, to the day when the sun will make its first appearance after a winter of darkness: August 24. However, Hjalmar Johansen, the veteran who had traveled with Nansen in a bid to get to the North Pole and had been beaten back after departing too early when conditions were too cold, disagrees.

  We cannot leave as long as the temperature keeps so low . . . it will be terrible for the dogs.

  During the days leading up to their planned departure, the temperature stays below -58°F. Even so, Amundsen orders that the sledges, which have been packed and waiting for a month already, be moved outside in preparation for their departure. The cold and wind does delay them, but on this day, September 8, 1911, with the temperature now up to -35°F,
they set off: seven sledges, eight men, and eighty-seven dogs. One dog needs to be shot soon afterward because she comes into heat, causing chaos among the other dogs. For the first few days, the going is good and they cover a satisfying fifteen miles each day. But then, the temperature drops from uncomfortably cold to life-threateningly cold, even with all their “eskimo” gear. It is -69°F. Amundsen is forced to accept that they have begun too early. The dogs are suffering with frostbitten paws. Two dogs freeze to death when they lie down. The men are not much better: several of them have frostbitten feet.

  On the return to Framheim, with more storms and cold weather threatening, Amundsen orders that they cover the last forty miles in one go. They had previously unloaded much of their food and gear at their 80°S depot, so the sledges are light and the dogs are keen to get back now they sense that they are heading for home. Amundsen and two others set off first with two of the sledges, covering the forty miles to Framheim in just nine hours. Those behind him do not fare nearly so well: their feet are frostbitten and their dogs are faltering. Two arrive a couple of hours after Amundsen and then another sometime after that. However, the last two, Johansen and Kristian Prestrud, are still out on the Ross Ice Shelf—the barrier ice—without food or fuel.

  Prestrud’s dogs are unable to pull. He is on skis now, with badly frostbitten feet, moving awkwardly and close to exhaustion. Johansen stays with him and together they press on, arriving at Framheim eight and a half hours after Amundsen, in darkness and in fog, with the temperature now at -60°F. They have had nothing to eat for over nineteen hours and are well and truly on the other side of the line that normally demarks death.

  At breakfast, Johansen berates Amundsen for going off and leaving his men.

  I don’t call it an expedition. It’s panic.

  Faced with such a challenge to his leadership, with his aim of becoming the first man to get to the South Pole hanging in the balance, Amundsen acts decisively. He tells Johansen and Prestrud that they will now not be part of the Polar Party. They must, instead, explore King Edward VII Land, the place that had been the initial object of the orders given by Scott to Campbell, Levick, and the rest of the Eastern Party. Adding salt to the wound, the young and largely inexperienced Prestrud will be in charge.

  Johansen refuses, demanding a written order, which Amundsen duly gives him that evening:

  I find it most correct with the good of the expedition in view—to dismiss you from the journey to the South Pole . . .

  Johansen is defeated. He becomes morose and a gloom settles over Framheim. Amundsen will barely speak to Johansen again. Amundsen is desperately worried about Scott’s motor sledges, but he dare not depart again until his men’s frostbitten feet are better, four of whom are bedridden for ten days. He asks one of them to accompany Johansen and Prestrud to King Edward VII Land.

  It is September 8, 1911. On the same day that the Norwegians are setting out on their thwarted attempt to get to the South Pole, the six men of the erstwhile Eastern Party shut up their hut at Cape Adare and, instead of King Edward VII Land, which, ironically, the Norwegians will now have for themselves, they set off with much more modest targets in their sights. Levick and Browning pull one sledge. They are to go only as far as Warning Glacier—due south of Cape Adare—to do some photography, while the other party, pulling two sledges, carries on to Cape Wood and then explores the coastline beyond that to Cape North. Dickason, unnerved by the storm that took away most of the sea-ice, leaves a note to the effect that should another storm take away the ice they are traveling on, “Rings” is to pass on his diary to his mother.

  Levick and Browning set up their tent on the sea ice in front of the glacier, but that night they get hit by just such a severe storm and by the second night, they realize that the ice on which they are camped is cracking. Levick describes it as “the most trying night I have ever spent” with the “ice rising and falling under us.” It is too windy to attempt to shift their tent to the shore, so Levick and Browning take turns keeping watch, ready to abandon the tent and carry their sleeping bags, some food, and a Primus stove if they must make a run for it. In a lull, they manage to get out, grab some quick photos, and then retreat back to their hut.

  Meanwhile, Campbell and the others are not affected by the storm even though they are only a few miles away. However, as they approach Cape Wood, the going gets really hard: they sink to their waists in heavy snow drift. While they manage to get to Cape Wood, they realize that they do not have enough food left to do any exploration. They depot what food they have left and return to the hut, arriving there on September 18.

  Campbell’s plan is to set out again on October 4, 1911, this time carrying more food. Levick and Browning accompany them part of the way once more. Thereafter, Levick takes photographs of the glaciers and Admiralty Range of mountains that can be seen from around the edges of Robertson Bay to supplement the work Priestley is doing on geology. They have instructions to kill a seal and leave the meat in a cave for Campbell’s party to use on their return leg. On October 9, they see a female Weddell seal that has given birth to a pup near Abbey Cave. The next morning, they kill and butcher both. “A heartless business,” as Levick calls it, but he justifies it as a kind of necessary cruelty.

  By contrast, he is not prepared for the evidence of unnecessary cruelty he finds later that same day. He and Browning have managed to pull their sledge as far as Duke of York Island, at the head of Robertson Bay. They set up camp on the sea ice but in a valley coming down to the ice, there are signs of an Adelie penguin colony. Levick sets off by himself, wearing just his finnesko—a soft boot made of reindeer skin—on the stony soil. The going is difficult and he does not wish to travel too far. Even so, he is brought to an abrupt halt. As he describes it in his Zoological Notes:

  A dead black throated penguin lay with a rope tied round one of its legs, the other end being made fast to a large stone. The poor bird had evidently died of starvation after many days of struggle to get away back to the sea, for it lay in that direction, on its breast with its head stretched seawards, at the fullest extension of the rope. Its breast bone stuck out in its emaciated breast.

  This loathsome little atrocity can only be attributed to one of the members of the Borchgravinks (sic) party who visited Duke of York Island ten years ago, and is worth recording if only as scientific evidence of the wanton cruelty to which some men can descend.

  Onboard the Shokalskiy, I have with me a copy of Borchgrevink’s book First on the Antarctic Continent. Indeed, Borchgrevink had made a sledging trip to Duke of York Island and camped in Crescent Bay, just as did Levick. Crucially, this was in December 1899 when the penguins would have been ashore breeding. Borchgrevink makes no mention of the incident of tying a penguin up, or even, the presence of penguins at Duke of York Island.

  However, he does write about an event that took place soon afterward on December 21:

  . . . the Finn Savio conceived rather a good idea of amusing himself; he caught a penguin, made a string fast to its legs, took it on board his kayak, and used it as motor power. The penguin dived and pulled Per and the kayak about at a great pace . . .

  Borchgrevink never traveled anywhere without his two Finns. Hence, it seems likely that it was Per Savio who had tied up the penguin at Duke of York Island as a sort of precursor to his later means of “amusing himself.”

  How deeply this atrocity affects Levick is hard to judge. Perplexingly, he seems not to have mentioned it to the other men and, like other material that is written in his Zoological Notes, despite his stated intention to record the event for scientific posterity, he keeps it hidden.

  It is on the day that Levick and Browning get back to the hut, October 13, 1911, that he sees the first Adelie penguin arriving at Cape Adare for the new breeding season. Levick records this in his big blue-covered book of Zoological Notes, underlining it with a flourish of his fountain pen as if to emphasize its importance. Indeed, by the time Campbell’s party gets back to the hut one week la
ter, as Priestley notes:

  Levick had started on a series of systematic notes, which are probably the most thorough that have ever been made on the habits of the Adélie penguin.

  Levick’s path forward is now clear: he should study the penguins.

  Have been reading up all I can find about penguins . . . My great ambition now is to work them up thoroughly and write a book on them when I get back.

  Stranded at “Cape Adair,” with time on his hands, Levick has resigned himself to conducting research on the penguins as a way to fill in the days. He photographs them and makes copious notes in what will be, as Priestley has already realized, the first systematic study of the breeding behavior of any penguins.

  The men are left in no doubt as to Levick’s rigor as a scientist. He has provided a notebook in the hut for the men to record any interesting zoological observations about penguins, other birds, seals, whales, or anything else. He prefaces the notebook with the following rules:

  1.Never write down anything as a fact unless you are absolutely certain. If you are not quite sure, say ‘I think I saw’ instead of ‘I saw,’ or ‘I think it was’ instead of ‘It was,’ but make it clear whether you are a little doubtful or very doubtful.

  2.In observing animals disturb them as little as possible. This especially applies to the arrival of the penguins, as it is most important to allow them to settle down naturally without interference from us, and to the giant petrels, which became wilder last autumn after we had hunted them.

  3.Notes on the most trivial incidents are often of great value, but only when written with a scrupulous regard to accuracy.

  N.B.–Please remember that we have every reason to believe that birds feel pain as much as we do, and that it is well worth half an hour’s laborious chase to kill a wounded skua rather than to let it die a slow death.