p. 51“reaching 78°50´S, ‘the farthest south ever reached by man’ as he will boast proudly afterward.”; Borchgrevink, First on the Antarctic Continent.
p. 51“We all watched the life of the penguins with the utmost interest, and I believe and hope that some of us learnt something from their habits and characteristics”; Ibid.
p. 55“many of their number form ‘their nests on the steep hillsides, even to a height of 1,000 feet”; Scott, The Voyage of the ‘Discovery’.
p. 55“He is equally impressed with the first human nest, noting that Borchgrevink’s hut ‘is in very good condition’”; Ibid.
p. 55“There is always something sad in contemplating the deserted dwellings of mankind, under whatever conditions the inhabitants may have left.”; Ibid.
p. 55“There were literally millions of them. It simply stunk like hell, and the noise was deafening.”; Beau Riffenburgh, Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition: The Voyage of the Nimrod (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005).
p. 56“The honour of being the first aeronaut to make an ascent in the Antarctic regions, perhaps somewhat selfishly, I chose for myself.”; Scott, The Voyage of the ‘Discovery’.
p. 56“The Captain, knowing nothing whatever about the business, insisted on going up first and through no fault of his own came back safely.”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 58“it left in each one of our small party an unconquerable aversion to the employment of dogs in this ruthless fashion”; Scott, The Voyage of the ‘Discovery’.
FIVE: BOYHOOD DREAMS
p. 66“we find the Emperor penguin hatching out its chicks in the coldest month of the whole Antarctic year”; Edward A. Wilson. Appendix II. On the Whales, Seals, and Birds of Ross Sea and South Victoria Land, in The Voyage of the ‘Discovery’ (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1905), 352–374.
p. 72“and about how superior dogs were to what he called the ‘futile toil’ of man-hauling.”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 72“We ourselves tried some substantial steaks and found the meat excellent.” Ibid.
p. 72“Amundsen hoists the Gjoa’s flag and they ‘went by the grave in solemn silence.’”; Amundsen, The North West Passage.
p. 72“The North-West Passage had been accomplished—my dream from childhood.”; Ibid.
SIX: LOST OPPORTUNITIES
p. 76“In 1907, Ernest Shackleton is determined to prove himself ‘a better man than Scott.’”; Peter Fitzsimons, Mawson and the Ice Men of the Heroic Age: Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen (Australia: William Heinemann, 2011).
p. 76“McMurdo Sound and the Ross Island area of Antarctica, which he regards as his ‘own field,’ as he puts it.”; Robert Falcon Scott, letter to Ernest Shackleton, March 18, 1907, Scott Polar Research Institute, MS1456/23.
p. 80“To the biologist, no more uninviting desert is imaginable than Cape Royds”; James Murray, Appendix One. Biology: Notes by James Murray, Biologist of the Expedition, in The Heart of the Antarctic: Being the Story of the British Antarctic Expedition 1907–1909 (London: William Heinemann, 1909).
p. 80“There is endless interest in watching them, the dignified Emperor, dignified notwithstanding his clumsy waddle”; Ibid.
p. 85“the Adelie appears to be entirely moral in his domestic arrangements”; Ibid.
SEVEN: COURTSHIP
p. 90“Throw up your cap & shout & sing triumphantly, meseems we are in a fair way to achieve my end.”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 91“As he put it in a letter to her, it is ‘a man’s way to want a woman altogether to himself.’”; Michael Smith, Shackleton: By Endurance We Conquer (Cork, Ireland: The Collins Press, 2014).
p. 91“Though the grip of the frost may be cruel and relentless its icy hold”; Eleanor Harding, “Shackleton’s Secret Lover: Polar Explorer Was So Smitten He Named a Mountain after Her,” Daily Mail, November 12, 2011.
p. 92“It is mounted in silver metal with a small plaque that reads ‘Summit Mount Hope’”; Ibid.
EIGHT: DECEPTION
p. 101“to ‘reach the South Pole and secure for the British Empire the honor of that achievement.’”; Diana Preston, A First Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998).
p. 102“its primary focus is ‘oceanographic investigation’ rather than being first to the North Pole”; Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1909, 14.
p. 102“‘a mystic look softened his eyes, the look of a man who saw a vision.’”; Hugh Robert Mill, The Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1923).
p. 104“a loose page has been inserted merely saying, ‘The Pole at last!!!’”; Boyce Rensberger, “National Geographic Reverses, Agrees Adm. Peary Missed North Pole,” Washington Post, September 18, 1988.
p. 106“I am preparing a purely Scientific Expedition to operate along the coast of Antarctica commencing in 1911”; Ernest Shackleton, letter to Robert Falcon Scott, February 21, 1910, Scott Polar Research Institute, MS367/17/2.
p. 109“We left Cardiff weather fine and calm.”; Victor Campbell, The Wicked Mate: The Antarctic Diary of Victor Campbell, an Account of the Northern Party on Captain Scott’s Last Expedition from the Original Manuscript in the Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland (Alburgh, UK: Bluntisham Books/Erskine Press, 1988).
p. 110“He would call it ‘the bitterest moment in my life.’”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 111“I beg your forgiveness for what I have done”; Ibid.
NINE: THE EASTERN PARTY
p. 113“He seems quite incapable of learning anything fresh”; Katherine Lambert, ‘Hell with a Capital H’: An Epic Story of Antarctic Survival (London: Pimlico, 2002).
p. 115“I hope it will never fall to my lot to have more than one wife at a time to look after.”; Edward Wilson, Diary of the Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic 1910–1912 (London: Blandford Press, 1972).
p. 115“BEG LEAVE TO INFORM YOU FRAM PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC AMUNDSEN”; Tryggve Gran, The Norwegian with Scott: Tryggve Gran’s Antarctic Diary 1910–1913, edited by Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith, translated by Ellen Johanne McGhie (London: HMSO Books, 1984).
p. 115“Nansen’s reply is even more concise than Amundsen’s cable had been: UNKNOWN.”; Ibid.
p. 116“I think most of us feel regrets a (sic) leaving New Zealand, as we have all made friends”; George Murray Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen: Antarctic Journal November 1910–January 1912 (Perth: Freemantle Press, 2013).
p. 117“there was more blood and hair flying about the hotel than you would see in a Chicago slaughter house in a month”; Titus Oates, letter to his mother, November 23, 1910, Scott Polar Research Institute, MS1016/337/1.
p. 119“Campbell notes that, ‘We must hope for fine passage,’ but that is not to be.”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 119“which as Campbell nonchalantly observes is, “very slow work as the men were constantly being washed off their legs”; Ibid.
p. 120“More tender than beef steak and quite as good to eat”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 120“a really first class bird—rather like blackcock to taste, but a good deal better”; Ibid.
p. 120“the men sang, ‘in a horrible discordant manner to Adelie penguins that had gathered about the stationary ship”; Ibid.
p. 120“the penguins stood around, ‘cawing and bowing their appreciation.’”; Ibid.
p. 120“Herbert Ponting, the expedition’s photographer, or ‘camera artist’”; Lambert, ‘Hell with a Capital H.’
p. 121“Levick admiringly notes, ‘To his great credit he saved his camera and tripod.’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 121“I find I can’t get any information out of Ponting—He won’t give anything away.”; Ibid.
p. 121“Always I have had the feeling that Cape Royds has been permanently vulgarized.”; Meredith Hooper, The Longest Winter: Scott’s Other Heroes (London: John Murray, 2010).
p. 122“‘There is no tra
il of Shackleton there,’ he says to her”; Ibid.
p. 122“In the middle of the hut was a long table with the remains of their last meal”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 122“Priestley, who found the experience of going back to the hut where he had lived ‘very eerie.’”; Lambert, ‘Hell with a Capital H.’
p. 122“I expect to see people come in through the door after a walk over the surrounding hills”; Ibid.
p. 122“adult birds ‘bringing in food for their little downy youngsters’; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 122“been so well described by Wilson in his ‘Discovery’ reports that it is no good repeating them here . . .’”; Ibid.
p. 124“At least Priestley is glad to have ‘set the matter at rest finally.’”; Hooper, The Longest Winter.
p. 124“after he is woken and rushes on deck with the rest, ‘None of us needed to be told that it was the “Fram.”’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 125“all of them now waving their arms like ‘incurable lunatics.’”; Roald Amundsen, The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the “Fram,” 1910–1912. Translated from the Norwegian by A. G. Chater (London: John Murray, 1912).
p. 125“We had talked of the possibility of meeting the Terra Nova . . . but it was a great surprise all the same.”; Ibid.
p. 125“He looks older than Campbell expected, a ‘fine looking man’ with ‘hair nearly white.’”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 125“I think that no incident was so suggestive of the possibilities latent in these teams as the arrival of Amundsen at the side of the Terra Nova.”; Raymond E. Priestley, Antarctic Adventure: Scott’s Northern Party (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1914).
p. 125“The principal trump-card of the Norwegians was undoubtedly their splendid dogs.”; Ibid.
p. 126“We found them all men of the of the very best type, and got on very well.”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 126“others argue against it on the grounds that, ‘the feelings between the two expeditions must be strained’”; Ibid.
p. 126“In summing it up in his diary, he writes, ‘This has been a wonderful day.’”; Ibid.
PART THREE: CAPE ADARE
TEN: THE NORTHERN PARTY
p. 132“On this little patch of peninsular (sic), about a triangular mile in extent, we are absolute prisoners”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 132“Campbell wrote wryly in his log, ‘No sign of a possible landing anywhere.’”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 132“Borchgrevink’s hut is still standing there ‘in good preservation’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 133“the sixteen carcasses of mutton they have unloaded from the ship are ‘covered with green mould.’”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 133“I am sorry to say that a great many visitors we knock on the head and put in the larder”; Ibid.
p. 133“shown up at the hut in his fancy new suit of feathers only to be ‘taken for a stranger and killed’ by the men”; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 133“the men move into their new quarters with much fanfare that includes ‘a great house warming”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 134“dear little things, and I hate having to kill them”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 135“The blizzards are only ‘a pleasant rest’ for the dogs”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 135“They are curled snugly under the snow and at meal times issue from steaming warm holes.”; Ibid.
p. 135“Meanwhile, the ponies are suffering: ‘so frozen they can hardly eat,’ observes Gran”; Gran, The Norwegian with Scott.
p. 135“But Scott will not tolerate perpetuating ‘this cruelty to animals,’ as he calls it”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 135“Oates says, ‘I’m afraid you will regret it, Sir.’”; Ibid.
p. 136“Bowers may well lament that he is left ‘carrying a blood stained pick-axe instead of leading the pony’”; Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910–1913 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1922).
p. 136“to protect the ponies from the cold, ‘It makes a late start necessary for next year.’”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 140“It surprises me very much to hear that Captain Scott has landed a party at Cape Adare”; Daily Mail, March 28, 1911, 9.
p. 140“For an hour or so we were furiously angry, and were possessed with an insane sense that we must go straight to the Bay of Whales”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
ELEVEN: THE WORST JOURNEY
p. 142“they manage to celebrate in style with champagne, brandy, cigars, and ‘an extended sing-song’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 142“Inside the hut are orgies. We are very merry—and indeed why not?”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 143“It took two men to get one man into his harness, and was all they could do, for the canvas was frozen”; Ibid.
p. 144“The horror of the nineteen days it takes us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier”; Ibid.
p. 144“writes Cherry-Garrard, ‘but when your body chatters you may call yourself cold.’”; Ibid.
p. 146“they try again, this time near the middle of the day when the darkness is not so ‘pitchy black.’”; Ibid.
p. 146“After indescribable effort and hardship we were witnessing a marvel of the natural world”; Ibid.
p. 147“we on this journey were already beginning to think of death as a friend”; Ibid.
p. 147“it was blowing as though the world was having a fit of hysterics”; Ibid.
p. 149“In these poor birds the maternal side seems to have necessarily swamped the other functions of life”; Ibid.
p. 150“I might have speculated on my chances of going to Heaven; but candidly I did not care”; Ibid.
TWELVE: THE RELUCTANT PENGUIN BIOLOGIST
p. 154“As he writes, in a way that appears starker when written in his cursive script in the blue-black ink, ‘I killed them all’”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 154“and its stomach is full of ‘surprisingly large’ basalt stones and nothing else”; Ibid.
p. 154“Dickason describes it as, ‘the hardest blow we have had’”; Harry Dickason, Penguins and Primus: An Account of the Northern Expedition June 1910–February 1913 (Perth: Australian Capital Equity/Freemantle Press, 2013).
p. 155“we gazed seaward this morning and realized the astounding fact that the sea ice beyond the bay”; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 156“attempting to get to Cape Wood, they ‘would have certainly been dead men’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 156“We cannot leave as long as the temperature keeps so low . . . it will be terrible for the dogs”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 157“I don’t call it an expedition. It’s panic.”; Ibid.
p. 158“I find it most correct with the good of the expedition in view—to dismiss you from the journey to the South Pole”; Ibid.
p. 159“Levick describes it as ‘the most trying night I have ever spent’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 159“‘A heartless business,’ as Levick calls it, but he justifies it as a kind of necessary cruelty.”; Ibid.
p. 160“A dead black throated penguin lay with a rope tied round one of its legs”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 160“the Finn Savio conceived rather a good idea of amusing himself”; Borchgrevink, First on the Antarctic Continent.
p. 161“Levick had started on a series of systematic notes, which are probably the most thorough that have ever been made; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 161“Have been reading up all I can find about penguins”; Lambert, ‘Hell with a Capital H.’
p. 162“Never write down anything as a fact unless you are absolutely certain.”; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 162“he thinks much less of the men who wou
ld perpetrate what he calls, the “scene of tragedy I saw”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 163“each with about fifty couples, for special observation”; Ibid.
p. 163“intention is to remove all the eggs from this group as they are layed (sic)”; Ibid.
p. 163“A couple of minutes after I removed the eggs, the owners seemed to have forgotten the incident entirely”; Ibid.
p. 164“He describes Levick as ‘the slowest man I’ve ever met’”; Hooper, The Longest Winter.
THIRTEEN: THE RACE BEGINS
p. 166“It is ‘a brilliant test,’ he notes, of their meticulous precautions and preparations.”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 166“they are, as Amundsen records on October 24, 1911, ‘enjoying life.’”; Ibid.
p. 167“A more unpromising lot of ponies to start a journey such as ours it would be almost impossible to conceive”; Titus Oates, Note, October 31, 1911, Scott Polar Research Institute, MS1317/2.
p. 167“Scott realizes now what awful cripples our ponies are and carries a face like a tired old sea boat in consequence”; Michael Smith, I Am Just Going Outside: Captain Oates–Antarctic Tragedy (Staplehurst, UK: Spellmount Ltd., 2008); but see Huntford, Scott and Amundsen, who quotes “seaboot” rather than “sea boat.”
p. 168“even Scott thinks ‘Amundsen with his dogs may be doing much better.’”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 169“the penguins throughout the colony have become ‘noticeably subdued’ with very little activity at all”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 169“the penguins resume their frantic ‘love making, fighting, and building’ of their nests.”; Ibid.
p. 169“the roar of battles & thuds of blows can be heard over the entire rookery”; Ibid.
p. 169“I conclude when I see two birds fight with flippers alone, that they are cocks.”; Ibid.
p. 169“he sees a penguin with its eye ‘put out’ by another’s beak”; Ibid.
p. 169“it was not unusual to see a strange cock paying court to a mated hen in the absence of her husband”; G. Murray Levick, Antarctic Penguins: A Study of Their Social Habits (London: William Heinemann, 1914).
p. 170“the mated cock has suddenly turned up and fought the interloper”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
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