South
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Ponting filming skuas. Photographing and filming Antarctic wildlife for the first time was an important part of his and Hurley’s work. Ponting described the birds as ‘extremely noisy’ and ‘quarrelsome’.
Shackleton resolved to make no profit from his adventures until the war had finished and so Hurley’s films were not shown to the public until December 1919. That was when Shackleton’s book South was published and he began a series of twice-daily lectures lasting until May 1920, with Hurley’s film as accompaniment, at the Philharmonic Hall in London. The experience of reliving the failure of his plans and the sinking of his ship, there on the big screen twice a day, can only have been painful for Shackleton, but debts had to be paid. The film, also entitled South, was never given a normal cinema release in Britain but it was later shown in other European countries. In 1920 it was released in Australia as In the Grip of the Polar Ice, where Hurley lectured to it as it toured the country with outstanding success. The film was reissued with a soundtrack in 1933 (including additional footage taken by Hubert Wilkins on Shackleton’s later Quest expedition) under the title Endurance: The Story of a Glorious Failure, with a dignified commentary provided by Frank Worsley, captain of the Endurance.
The films of Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley have enjoyed a pre-eminence in polar cinematography on account of the story of the expeditions themselves, the outstanding quality of the photographic work in extreme conditions and the finished calibre of the feature-length documentaries that resulted. It also needs to be pointed out that the haunting qualities of the still photographs that both Ponting and Hurley took alongside the cine-film have enhanced the aura of their moving-picture record.
There were, however, other Antarctic film records made during the classical era of exploration between Borchgrevink in 1898 and Shackleton’s final voyage in 1921. It is not widely known, for instance, that Amundsen’s successful Norwegian expedition, which beat Scott to the Pole, was also filmed. Expedition member Kristian Prestrud operated the cine-camera at the main base, while Amundsen’s brother Leon appears to have filmed earlier scenes. The surviving footage shows Amundsen’s ship Fram sailing southwards, scenes of daily life on board ship, the first icebergs and the approach to the ice shelf, whales in the Bay of Whales, and scenes of life at the Framheim base camp. Prestrud himself recorded that he also filmed Amundsen and his successful polar party starting out, while Amundsen wrote that his last sight of the companions he was leaving behind was of Prestrud operating the cine-camera, gradually disappearing beyond the horizon. The scene must have borne an eerily close resemblance to Ponting’s shot of Scott and his team likewise passing into the distance, never to return.
The Amundsen films appear not to have been made up into a finished documentary but were certainly exhibited in Britain at the same time as Ponting’s, since they were included in lectures Amundsen gave in November 1912. But as with Dr Eric Marshall on Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition, a member of the party chosen for other skills had been handed the filming chores rather than the duty being given to an acknowledged expert, which made all the difference to Scott in 1910 and Shackleton in 1914. The 1910–12 Japanese expedition, led by Nobu Shirase, which explored the coastal areas of Antarctica, was filmed by operator Yasunao Taizumi. The resultant documentary, Nihon Nankyoku Tanken (1912) is of greatest interest for its nationalist tone (“Japan has left its imprint on the Antarctic continent”) and for taking to trouble to identify each of the expedition members, something not done by any other polar exploration film of this period.
Amundsen too appreciated the need for film and photographs to record his Fram expedition. He jokingly recalled, on departing for the South Pole, that ‘the last thing I saw, as we went over the top of the ridge… was a cinematograph’.
The only other cinematographer of ability to film in the Antarctic at this time was George Hubert Wilkins. Wilkins was an Australian too, who came to Britain as a newsreel cameraman and filmed the Balkan War of 1913. He next joined the Arctic expedition of Vilhjalmur Stefansson in 1913–1916, before working with Frank Hurley as an official war photographer on the Western Front in 1918. Wilkins next found himself filming the misbegotten and amateurish Cope expedition to British Graham Land in 1920 (a short film, Antarctica: On the Great White Trail South, survives), before he was selected as cinematographer to Shackleton’s half-hearted Quest expedition of 1921. After Shackleton died of a heart attack at South Georgia on the outward journey, Wilkins had the impossible task of creating an expedition documentary with its central figure dead before the first reel was over. The resultant Southwards on the ‘Quest’ is predominantly a survey of animal life on South Georgia and, in its journeyman images, reveals Wilkins was not in the same filmic class as Hurley or Ponting.
Wilkins was an adventurer rather than an artist. He would later make his name (and earn a knighthood) conducting the first flights over the Arctic and Antarctica and becoming, in 1929, the first person to film Antarctica from the air – footage that was featured in newsreels. With Shackleton’s death, however, the classical or heroic age of Antarctic exploration came to an end. One last film connected with Shackleton is worth noting. Sound films only came into regular production in the late 1920s but there were earlier experiments and, in 1921, just prior to his final expedition, Shackleton was filmed speaking about his plans by cameraman Arthur Kingston for the H Grindell Matthews sound-film system. The film has not survived.
Filming in the Antarctic of course continued beyond the time of Amundsen, Mawson, Scott and Shackleton. Commander Richard Byrd’s flights to the North Pole (1926) and South Pole (1929) were both filmed by Pathé newsreel cameramen, Willard van der Veer and Bob Donohue in the Arctic and Van der Veer and Joseph T Rucker in Antarctica, for a film released as With Byrd at the South Pole in 1930. Frank Hurley returned to the scene, filming Douglas Mawson’s 1929 Antarctic expedition (in Scott’s refurbished vessel Discovery), for a film eventually released as Southward-Ho with Mawson! Hurley filmed again with Mawson in 1930–1931 but became irritated at the short time spent on land. He complained: ‘We spent only 36½ hours on the Antarctic continent. To expect me to make a film of the Antarctic in such short time is ridiculous.’ Nevertheless, Siege of the South (which incorporated footage from the earlier film) duly followed and Hurley’s cinematography in it is thought by many to be the finest of all his Antarctic work.
The expedition film was then clearly dying out as a genre and what was to become an alternative use of cine-film was shown during the 1934–1937 British Graham Land Expedition, headed by John Rymill. The extensive film record, some 13,000 feet (3,962 metres) of 35mm film taken by Launcelot Fleming, was never edited into a would-be commercial release but simply existed as a form of scientific documentation, with an edited video version produced some 50 years later.
Commander Byrd and his team had filmed the South Pole from the air but a film camera did not arrive at the Pole itself until the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955–1958, led by Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary, and the cameras they brought now filmed in colour. The expedition was covered in two atmospheric and well-edited documentaries, Foothold on Antarctica (1956), covering the expedition up to the setting-up of the base camp, and Antarctic Crossing (1958), filmed by George Lowe and Derek Wright, which covered the successful crossing of the continent that had been Shackleton’s too-grand ambition.
Thereafter television takes over and the remote becomes familiar. Now David Attenborough has offered us the Life in the Freezer series, with wildlife cinematography vastly superior to the pioneering efforts of Ponting and Hurley, and Michael Palin can bring the South Pole to millions in their living rooms, as he did at the conclusion of his popular television series Pole to Pole. The original footage of Hurley and Ponting has been regularly recycled in television documentaries, perhaps most notably in the BBC’s excellent exploration series based around archival film, Travellers in Time. However, we need not even wait for the television schedules to bring the South Pole to us. There a
re now web cameras positioned at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, delivering constant live images from the bottom of the world for anyone who cares to click on them. The struggle is over but the still and moving images of Hurley and Ponting of the great white silence endure (and the silence of the original films only adds to the awe), enhancing the legends and entrancing us every time they are shown. As Kathleen Scott said of Ponting’s work in her introduction to his book, ‘the beauty and wonder of them never varies’.
7 ENDURANCE: 1914–1917
By Pieter van der Merwe
‘Return of the sun after the long winter darkness.’ The Endurance, photographed by Hurley in early August 1915 firmly trapped in the ice of the Weddell Sea. The sunlight shows up the ice coating her masts, yards, rigging and sails.
Shackleton arrived in London on 14 June 1909 after turning back from the South Pole, to a fanfare of public welcome. Getting within 160km (100 miles) was close enough to rate as a tremendous achievement and the press rose to the occasion. Shackleton encouraged and basked in their attention with interviews and quotable quotes. He was a splendid lecturer and skilfully played to every audience available, including Edward VII at Balmoral. The King put him on a par with Scott by raising him to CVO, and he became a national celebrity, very much in demand.
He was also deeply in debt but most of his immediate problems were solved when the government added to its own pre-election popularity with a retrospective grant of £20,000 to meet Nimrod’s expenses. The expedition had cost less than half of Scott’s with greater apparent results, and had not needed naval rescue. Shackleton had already started to write his account of it in New Zealand but was aware of his literary limitations. He engaged Edward Saunders, an excellent journalist there, to come to London as his amanuensis, to whom he dictated the story for editing and polishing as The Heart of the Antarctic.
Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.
Job 38, 29–30 (extract carried by Shackleton in the James Caird)
It appeared in November 1909, the month Shackleton was also knighted in the Birthday Honours, and was hailed as ‘book of the season’. Notwithstanding his shady brother, soon to be bankrupted and jailed for fraud, and his own erratic course in business matters, the Anglo-Irish outsider had reached a point scarcely less challenging than the Pole – a place in the heart of the English establishment. He also undertook a strenuous but profitable lecture programme throughout Britain and then on to Europe in January 1910, where he entranced both the Kaiser in Berlin and the Tsar at St Petersburg. In Oslo, Amundsen and the Norwegians honoured him for his achievement and his courage in turning back with the Pole so nearly in his grasp. America followed from March, though more with the intention of raising funds for a new expedition with Mawson to explore west of Cape Adare. His success soon cleared his main Nimrod debts and Shackletonian charisma warded off various smaller obligations, in some cases indefinitely.
But like Scott, Sir Ernest could not bear to be without a new project, especially when the Americans were reportedly reaching the North Pole and the Germans as well as Scott were preparing for the South. His own plans, however, were partly based on other business speculations, which collapsed in the downturn of confidence following Edward VII’s death in May 1910. As Mawson and others found, Shackleton the polar leader was one thing, but Shackleton the business partner was another. He obtained a £10,000 donation that Mawson believed was for the new project, but it vanished to meet old commitments and though Shackleton engineered replacement funds, their partnership did not survive. Mawson sailed in the Aurora without him.
When Scott left London to join Terra Nova in July 1910, Shackleton was among those who saw him off. The final phase of the ‘heroic age’ of polar exploration was beginning but Shackleton was left behind – frustrated, restless, unfit and with his private life unravelling. Emily was devoted and loyal but Shackleton was ill-adapted to domesticity and had always been attractive to women, which had been part of his success in raising funds. He had an intense and longstanding friendship with Elspeth Beardmore, wife of William, after whom the glacier was named. He now began a love-affair with Rosalind Chetwynd, an American who was divorced from her baronet husband and who became an actress. While he still remained firmly attached to Emily in many ways, this strange new relationship (‘Rosa’ was supported by another rich admirer) was to last for the rest of his life.
When, in March 1911, Amundsen’s arrival in the Ross Sea to challenge Scott became known in England, Shackleton refrained from its public criticism. Amundsen’s success at the Pole aroused Shackleton’s frank public admiration and his marked restraint from commenting on Scott’s failure and death was similarly notable. This contrasted with widespread British denigration of Amundsen and the ostentatious public grief over Scott. That Britain had been beaten was something Shackleton regretted. However, that Scott had not succeeded was a private compensation, not least when Scott’s Last Expedition was published in late 1913 and, to those in the know, had clearly been edited to put the disaster and its causes in the best possible light.
While attainment of the Pole had now closed one door, it had left open a last possibility for Antarctic achievement. Seeing Scott off in 1910 was Oberleutnant Wilhelm Filchner of the German General Staff in Berlin, who was planning an expedition to cross Antarctica from the Weddell Sea – a far more dangerously ice-infested bight than the relatively open Ross, and one that had already crushed Larsen’s Antarctica in 1903. He and Scott discussed the possibility of meeting at the Pole and exchanging men to make it a double crossing from both directions. The scheme was fantasy in the light of events but Filchner did sail in the Deutschland and was the discoverer of both the southern extent of the Weddell and the ice shelf that now bears his name. He also found a possible landing point at Vahsel Bay on the east side, named after the captain of his ship who died during the voyage. Filchner in fact got no further than the coast and had another narrow escape through being trapped in the Weddell’s drifting pack ice for nine months. However, his plan had revived Shackleton’s earlier idea of an Antarctic crossing by clarifying the actual distance involved – about 2,500km (1,500 miles) as the crow flies – and indicating a potential Weddell landing site.
Ocean camp. ‘This floating lump of ice … was to be our home for nearly two months.’ The emergency sledges are being prepared in case the ice broke up suddenly. Photograph by Hurley, November–December 1915.
On 29 December 1913, having already briefed King George V and obtained a secret offer of £10,000 in government ‘match-funding’ from Chancellor Lloyd George, Shackleton announced he would be organising an ‘Imperial Transantarctic Expedition’. It would be the longest sledge journey yet attempted and, in the words of The Times, would ‘re-establish the prestige of Great Britain … in Polar exploration’.
The plan, though considerably modified, was in fact based on one devised by his friend William Bruce, the Scottish explorer. This time he intended to take two ships: one that would land him at Vahsel Bay with the crossing party and another that would take a second group to McMurdo Sound to lay supply depots along the old Beardmore route to the Pole. Shackleton planned to make the crossing in 100 days, using 100 dogs. The principle was sound and worked spectacularly well in the Fuchs-Hillary crossing of 1957–1958. But even then, with the advantages of greater knowledge and mechanised transport, it took 99 days by a route of just over 3,220km (2,000 miles). On the eve of the First World War nothing was known of the terrain between the Weddell and the Pole, and even Amundsen, with dog and ski expertise far beyond Shackleton’s, had only averaged 25.7km (16 miles) a day on his polar journey of some 2,575km (1,600 miles). As regards skis, Amundsen personally persuaded Shackleton that they were indispensable to survival but, though he did some prior practice in Norway while testing equipment, including motor sledges, he still barely understood their potential. The eccentric Royal Marine Ca
ptain Thomas Orde-Lees – another Anglo-Irishman and the only competent skier of the party – was amazed when, with his polar trek already abandoned, Shackleton expressed surprise at how fast he could ski and how useful it would have been. Orde-Lees wondered ‘why he had not come to this conclusion long before and had not insisted on every man ... being able at least to move on skis at a modest five miles [8km] an hour’.
In short, the whole thing was another visionary project launched with all Shackleton’s impressive plausibility and talent for improvisation. The funds he needed were raised by his usual intricate manoeuvres, including £10,000 from Dudley Docker of the BSA Company, the government’s £10,000 and an unconditional £24,000 donation from Sir James Key Caird, a Scottish jute millionaire. The press was enthusiastic and the scheme caught a tide of patriotic aspiration to achieve some national compensation in return for Scott’s heroic defeat. There were some sceptics, including Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty. His view was that ‘Enough life and money has been spent on this sterile quest’, with the result that Orde-Lees was the only naval officer allowed to join the expedition. Scott had obtained analyses of the Discovery provisions from a government chemist: Shackleton opened proactive new ground in getting scientific advice on nutrition from the War Office, the first British explorer to do so. He also recruited a couple of army officers including Philip Brocklehurst’s brother, but the outbreak of the First World War stopped them sailing.