It is January 7, 2012. Douglas Mawson is writing history: he has discovered a new part of Antarctica with a safe harbor between rocky outcrops and islets, which he names Commonwealth Bay. The head of the bay he names Cape Denison. All around, the rocky shores are covered with Adelie penguins, Weddell seals, and their chicks and pups. It is calm and warm. Mawson chooses to set up his main base here, while the Aurora will take a smaller party to set up a second base to the west before returning to Hobart for the winter.
As picturesque and pleasant as Commonwealth Bay is on the day he arrives, Mawson will discover that he has opted to build his hut at the windiest place on earth. That discovery is quick in coming: while they are unloading the ship a vicious wind gives them a welcoming taste of what is to come. The captain of the Aurora, John King Davis, will write:
Nothing I had experienced in the Ross Sea or in any other part of the world came up to the gales and blizzards of Commonwealth Bay for sudden violence and frequency.
It is January 8, 1912. After a “pleasant and uneventful trip,” according to Priestley, down the Victoria Land coast, the Terra Nova reaches Evans Coves in Terra Nova Bay. The bay had been named after the ship by Scott during the Discovery Expedition when the Terra Nova, together with the relief ship Morning, had come to McMurdo Sound to try to help free the Discovery, which was locked in the frozen sea ice at Hut Point. Opposite them now is the 8,990-foot Mount Nansen, which had also been named by Scott during the Discovery Expedition as a way of acknowledging the assistance of Fritjof Nansen. Ironic, really, because at that very moment Scott is struggling to man-haul his way to the South Pole after Nansen’s protégé, Amundsen, who using the dogs Nansen had advocated that Scott should use, had already gotten there over three weeks earlier.
When Levick and the others are dropped off, the pack ice is thick and barely passable, at first blocking their way from reaching the shore at all. It takes them several attempts before they are able to find open water and land at Evans Coves. The men transport their gear from the Terra Nova half a mile across the sea ice to a piedmont. Then they are left alone with two sledges and enough food and equipment for five of weeks exploring. They are to be picked up by the Terra Nova on February 18. They have taken another four weeks of skeleton rations in case the ship should be delayed in getting to them, but this has never been a serious consideration because, as Priestley puts it, “we would all have sworn that if there was one place along the coast which would be accessible in February, this would be the one.”
The reason for their unbridled confidence is the Drygalski Ice Tongue lying at the southern edge of Terra Nova Bay. It is the giant glacier of ice that I had witnessed when first flying down to Antarctica; a massive frozen river of ice that pokes out into the Ross Sea for over forty miles from the coast, causing the pack ice and bergs to “bank up” on its southern side, and then to “stream northwards” from its tip, “well away from the land,” as Priestly puts it.
Antarctica is not, however, a place where survival is best based upon assumptions.
The Shokalskiy moves slowly along the sides of the Drygalski Ice Tongue. This tip of the glacier is enormous, jutting out into the sea for forty-three miles and being up to fifteen miles wide. Up close, it looks like a mini Ross Ice Shelf. On its northern side, we edge around beautifully sculpted bergs: old bergs that have been weathered by the sun and water, reflecting turquoise blue from their undersides. They seem to have been trapped there in the protected eddies on the side of the ice tongue sheltered from the southerly winds that blow from the South Pole. Three Adelie penguins sit on the scalloped blue-green terrace of one particularly astonishing one. The waters of the Ross Sea lap at their feet like it is a Mediterranean resort.
It is a fine day and Terra Nova Bay has a benign feel to it: the exposed rock, the glaciers, the icebergs, and the cone-like perfection of the extinct volcano to the north, Mount Melbourne, make it seem more like a theme park version of Antarctica than, like Commonwealth Bay, one of the most inhospitable places this side of Hell. The open blue waters of the Ross Sea gently slap the rocky shore and the Ross Sea itself has the least amount of pack ice in it since records had begun. Access for us is easy through the open water.
The men of the Northern Party are all excited because here, at last, they can really make their mark. The land north of the Drygalski Ice Tongue is completely unexplored. Campbell decides to split the party in two. He, Priestley, and Dickason shall form the main exploring party, surveying the area around Mount Melbourne and collecting geological specimens. Meanwhile, Levick is to lead a secondary party consisting of himself, Browning, and Abbott to explore the area to the southeast of what would become known as the Campbell Glacier.
It does not all go well. Levick misinterprets Campbell’s instructions and fails to meet up with him at their designated rendezvous point. Peeved, Campbell leaves to explore the area around what will become known as the Priestley Glacier. It is there that he makes an important find: a piece of sandstone containing the fossilized trunk of a tree: it is proof positive that in the past Antarctica was covered with forest. The geologist Priestley is ecstatic:
. . . during the past ages the Antarctic has possessed a climate much more genial than that of England at the present day . . .
Levick’s party, meanwhile, blunders along, trying to catch up. In doing so, they get caught up in a wretched field of crevasses. Even so, Levick is happy with the rock and lichen specimens he is able to collect.
And, as these explorers take from the environment, they also add to it. In addition to the Priestley Glacier, the large glacier running southwest from Mount Melbourne is to be named the Campbell Glacier, while three smallish peaks standing in a line to the southwest of Mount Melbourne are named after the three men: Mount Dickason (6,660 feet), Mount Browning (2,500 feet), and Mount Abbott (3,346 feet). Notably, the short Dickason is with Priestley and Campbell and his peak is twice the size of the tall Abbott, who is tenting with Levick. Levick, being an officer, receives an even greater honor: Mount Levick, to the northwest of Mount Melbourne, stands at 7,840 feet.
It is the afternoon of January 16, 1912. The five British men push on. They are now within a day’s march of the pole when Bowers spots an unusual mound of ice, which he at first takes to be a cairn, but then dismisses it as strastugi. Thirty minutes later, he sees a black speck and the worst fears of the men are confirmed: it is one of Amundsen’s sledge runners with a black flag tied to it. In the snow they see sledge tracks, ski tracks, and dog prints. “This told us the whole story,” writes Scott that evening.
At 6:30 P.M. the next day, January 17, 1912, Scott and his men finally arrive at the South Pole, thirty-four days after Amundsen. The complete extent of their devastation and disappointment is captured by Scott in his diary entry that day:
Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.
The next day, their new readings show that the actual pole is located three and a half miles away. They find the Norwegian’s tent one-and-a-half miles from their calculated position for the pole, exactly as the Norwegians had calculated it too. Inside Scott finds the note to him and the letter to King Haakon VII, which he takes. He leaves his own note to say they have been there. Then at lunch, when half a mile from their calculated position for the pole, they go about the dreary business of building a cairn, flying the Union Jack, and taking a photo of themselves. If ever a photo is worth a thousand words, Bowers’s photo is it: the look of dejection is captured on the faces of five men who seem bereft of elation despite having reached their goal. They look cold, sad, done in.
A half mile later they find another of Amundsen’s sledge runners, which Scott remarks:
I imagine it was intended to mark the exact spot of the Pole as near as the Norwegians could fix it.
In an ironical twist, whether from pique or necessity, the Englishmen take the Norwegian’s sledge runner marking the exact position of the South Pole, to hel
p fashion a sail for the journey back. They are hoping to be assisted by the nearly continuous southerly winds.
Then they leave, Scott’s mood now as low as the temperature.
Well, we have turned our back now on the goal of our ambition and must face our 800 miles of solid dragging—and good-bye to most of the daydreams!
The real problem for Scott and his men is not that they must turn away from the goal of their ambition and their daydreams, it is the eight hundred miles of solid dragging that lie between them and safety. In contrast to the Norwegians, they are weak and suffering because of inadequate rations and a lack of vitamins. They are developing scurvy. The largest of them, Petty Officer Taffy Evans, a mountain of a man, and from the outset the strongest of them all, gets the same rations as the rest of them. If they are inadequate for the smallest of them, they are pitiful for him. He is suffering the most and his condition is exacerbated because Scott’s plan had called for him to change the runners of the sledge from twelve-foot ones to ten-foot ones when they were on the plateau; a process that took him many hours to accomplish and damaged his hands badly from the cold. He fingers are covered now in large painful blisters from frostbite.
But there is another problem lurking too: the weather. That window in the Antarctic summer when conditions are relatively benign seems to be closing.
It is now January 24, 1912, and already, in the six days since leaving the pole, they have experienced two gale force blizzards, with the current one keeping them in their tent on the plateau. Bowers writes that they are “thinning” and “get hungrier daily.” The worsening weather is now a real worry for Scott:
Is the weather breaking up? If so, God help us, with the tremendous summit journey and scant food.
Scott simply does not have the reserves to allow for such contingencies as delays due to weather.
It is January 25, 1912, 4:00 A.M. Amundsen and his party of four other men, two sledges, and, by then, eleven dogs arrive back at Framheim having traveled very quickly, often covering twenty, thirty, even up to forty miles in a day. They have covered the journey of 1,680 miles in just ninety-nine days. All the men are in good condition. In fact, when Amundsen weighs himself, he finds that he has put on weight during the journey, so well supplied with food have they been. Waiting for them, in addition to the cook, who had stayed at Framheim throughout, are Johansen, Prestrud, and Jørgen Stubberud, who have become the first humans to set foot on King Edward VII Land, having robbed Campbell, Levick, and the others of that honor. Best of all, from Amundsen’s perspective, the Fram is tied up and waiting for them.
Four days later, on January 30, 1912, Amundsen closes and locks the door of Framheim. They load their thirty-nine remaining dogs on board Fram and then cast off, leaving Antarctica to the penguins and setting their compass for Hobart in Australia.
They have spent much of the last few days cleaning Framheim. Unlike the huts at Capes Adare and Royds, they leave theirs spotless. It does not matter. No one will ever visit Framheim again.
It is late 1961. I am just seven, just hearing for the first time—at least the first time that I can remember—a tale of Antarctica presented to me as a grand tragedy in which Scott is the heroic character and a colorless figure called Amundsen plays a bit part as the foreign spoiler.
Sometime around that moment, a large piece of the Ross Ice Shelf in the Bay of Whales, a piece containing Framheim, calves off the shelf. It is similar to the calving of the ice shelf that had seen Borchgrevink’s original inlet and Scott’s Balloon Bight disappear. The enormous piece of ice breaks into smaller icebergs, which are transported west by the prevailing currents. Eventually, they break down completely.
Framheim now, fittingly, lies somewhere under the Ross Sea, that body of water that had been first discovered by James Clark Ross, who would go in search of John Franklin, whose loss, in turn, would spark the boyhood dreams of Roald Amundsen and eventually bring him here. It was like the sun going full circle around the apex of the pole: a curious sight, indeed.
And the answer to your question, Roald, is no, nothing more topsy-turvy can be imagined.
It is March 2000. The Ross Ice Shelf this time calves off what is the largest iceberg ever recorded. At 183 miles in length, it is about the size of Jamaica. Named B-15 by scientists exercising an objective methodology, of which Levick might have approved, it drifts westward in the same currents that had propelled the one containing Framheim. Eventually, the largest chunk of it, now designated, with equal imagination, B-15A, crashes into Ross Island along with another big berg it has dislodged by clonking into the ice shelf just beforehand. This second, smaller berg goes by the moniker C-16.
Unfortunately for the penguins breeding on Ross Island at Capes Bird, Crozier, and Royds, B-15A and C-16 become grounded; stuck fast. They are so massive that they alter the marine environment, preventing the winds and currents from breaking up the surface of the sea after it has frozen during winter.
As a consequence, the Adelie penguins breeding at the Ross Island colonies must walk up to eighty miles across the ice to get access to the sea and their food. If this is hard for them, it is devastating for their chicks. Parents take much longer on their trips to get to get food: whereas, as Levick had noted, parents would normally be away from the nest only a day or two once the chicks hatch, now they are taking three, four, five, or more days. And when they do arrive back at their nests, they bring much less food in their stomachs that they are able to regurgitate to their starving chicks.
During the 2000–2001 breeding season, there is almost total breeding failure for the penguins on Ross Island. Their penguin chicks are on the receiving end of the same cruel reality experienced by Scott eighty-eight years earlier: Antarctica is no place to be without enough food.
Even though Murray Levick had to leave Cape Adare when the oldest penguin chicks were little more than three weeks of age, he managed to make two remarkably perceptive observations about the change in the penguins’ breeding behavior that occurs at that time, which he reported in his book:
The first of these is that the chick’s downy coats become thick enough to protect them from cold without the warmth of the parent; and the second that as the chicks grow they require an ever-increasing quantity of food, and at the age of about a fortnight this demand becomes too great for one bird to cope with.
The chicks start to form crèches within the subcolony. “The individual care of the chicks by their parents is abandoned, and in place of this, colonies start to 'pool' their offspring, which are herded together into clumps or 'crèches,' each of which is guarded by a few old birds, the rest being free to go and forage.”
However, after this, Levick’s scientific logic lets him down. He assumed that the adult penguins cooperated to feed all the chicks in the crèche. Had he marked the chicks and adults, he would have seen that parents feed only their own chicks.
It is my first summer in Antarctica. 1977. Faced with the necessity of coming up quickly with a research project on Adelie penguins so that I may preserve my chance of going, I choose to focus on the crèching behavior of their chicks. Everything I have done at Cape Bird until the chicks start crèching has really been just filling in time; a prelude to my proposed study.
Crèches are assumed to keep chicks warm and protect them. Not all penguins crèche, but the Antarctic penguins mostly do. In Emperor penguins, it clearly has a thermoregulatory role: even the adults of that species huddle tightly together, which is understandable when breeding in the Antarctic winter.
However, I find that by the time the Adelie penguin chicks are two weeks of age, their finely feathered down insulates them so well that in the relatively benign weather of midsummer in Antarctica, on all but the very coldest days, the chicks hang out as loose coalitions without any bodily contact that could provide thermal benefits. I discover, instead, that the primary determinant of whether chicks will crèche is not the weather, but the number of adults in the subcolony. If there are enough adults around, they
may not even bother crèching, no matter how old they are.
The adult birds do not feed any chicks that are not their own, and they may not even chase skuas away that are attacking a nearby chick. However, by their mere presence, the adults provide passive protection when chicks are left in crèches by their parents that are away at sea trying frantically to collect enough food.
What influences the number of adults ashore is a rather curious phenomenon called the Reoccupation Period. This is a time when the number of adults in the colony rises again due to an influx of adult birds that either had not been able to secure a mate during the courtship period or had failed in their breeding attempt soon afterward. These non-breeders and failed breeders come back to the colony about the time that the chicks are hatching and typically stay for several weeks. During this time, they go about the business of “practicing” breeding. They establish nests in the subcolonies. They ecstatic display. They establish partnerships. They even copulate. But they never produce any eggs. It is all a sham; at best, a practice run.
The Shokalskiy now is being buffeted by strong winds in Terra Nova Bay, as the Disneyland version of Antarctica is replaced by the real one. Even with a good many of my seasick pills in me, it is all I can do to read Levick’s manuscript, the one found by Douglas, one more time.
Levick calls the unemployed birds that frequent the colony during the Reoccupation Period, “hooligans,” and as is his way, he assumes that these are mostly “cocks,” when, in fact, both males and females show up to the colony during the Reoccupation Period. Levick, however, has nothing but contempt for the behavior of the male unemployed birds, noting that they fornicate with chicks that are without their parents, oftentimes killing them in the process.
A Polar Affair Page 21
