They had reached 88° 05'S according to each of their diaries although their later figures were revised to 88° 07'S - and even Shackleton realised this would be their southernmost camp. Their goal of reaching a hundred miles from the Pole would be determined by one more march. 'Tomorrow,' wrote Marshall, 'we make our last dash without the sledge.'
Tomorrow, however, Nature had another laugh at their expense. Vicious winds roaring at ninety miles an hour kept them pinned in their tent all day. Shackleton and Wild tried to keep all their minds off their troubles by reading The Merchant of Venice aloud, but the inner thoughts were undoubtedly reflected by Marshall. 'In bags all day,' he wrote. 'Feel worse rather than better for it . . . Hope it will not obliterate our tracks for return to depot as this is almost our only hope of finding it.'
The following day it blew as hard again, the temperature dropped to — 400, and the four men lay shivering in their bags. The snow pushed on the outside of the tent, making the inner area even smaller, while the lining had become so thin that fine drift spread everywhere inside. Through it all, Shackleton had one thought. 'Suffering considerably physically from cold hands and feet and from hunger but more mentally . . . we simply lie here shivering', he wrote. 'We must do something more to the South even though food is going . . . must get within the 100 miles of the Pole.'
At 1.00 a.m. on 9 January, after howling for more than fifty hours, the wind began to ease. Sixty minutes later the party was up, and at 4.00 a.m. they left camp for their final dash. With them, they took only some biscuits and chocolate in their pockets, Queen Alexandra's flag on a bamboo pole, a camera, and a brass cylinder holding a number of the special stamps issued by the New Zealand government to help raise funds for the expedition.
They went as hard and as fast as they could, and that was very quick indeed, as the cold and the blizzard had made the surface solid, firm and good for marching. For five hours they pounded south, at times virtually running. At 9.00 a.m. they halted, and Shackleton, 'with a few well chosen words', planted the Union Jack and took possession of the region for Britain, naming it the King Edward VII Plateau. They then took two photographs to commemorate their farthest south and buried the cylinder of stamps. There was no reason to stay - indeed, every reason not to - and within a short period they had turned for the first time in months and were walking as fast as they could towards the north. It was none too soon - Adams would later state with total certainty, 'If we'd gone on one more hour, we shouldn't have got back.'
That night Shackleton succinctly recorded their achievement: 'We have shot our bolt and the tale is 88.23 S. 162 E.' They had passed the magic hundred-mile mark, and had been only ninety-seven geographic miles from the Pole. Ninety-seven miles. It was a figure that would later be disputed by people who did not believe that men so close to the end of their tether could walk sixteen miles - or was it eighteen? - in five hours. It was, in actuality, a figure that from the start was conjecture. To save weight, they had left the theodolite in camp, and their final estimation was just that: an estimation. But it was one upon which all four men agreed, and from which they would never waiver. It was an estimation that would go down in history as a fact.
Now, however, the most important facts related to the journey ahead. They were more than 700 statute miles from Cape Royds (and now that they had turned, they once again started thinking in statute miles). Moreover, they had a limited amount of time to reach base before Nimrod left. Finally, they were not only already starving, but were running out of the food they did have. It would all be a desperate gamble as to whether they could do it.
By way of a positive start, they made as good time on the return to their last camp as they had out. They reached it at 2.30 p.m., brewed a cup of tea while Marshall took a photograph, and raced on again after hurriedly packing. 'Rush we must now,' Wild recorded that night after they had travelled a remarkable total of forty miles. 'We have only 14 days short food to take us to our depot at the top of the glacier . . . a great part of it over pressure and crevasses. Tonight we celebrated our record by having an extra drop of pemmican, and a taste of sloe gin.'
Shackleton was more philosophical. 'Homeward Bound,' he wrote. 'Whatever regrets may be we have done our best. Beaten the South Record by 366 miles the North by 77 miles. Amen.'
It was truly a phenomenal record, the greatest advance toward either Pole that had ever been made. Against conditions worse than anyone could have predicted - the Barrier, the largest glacier that had ever been seen by man, and the frozen, rising, endless Plateau - they had pioneered the way to the heart of the Antarctic. They had not reached the Pole, but they had time and again accomplished the seemingly impossible. Yet, as Shackleton had written a week earlier, 'all this is not the Pole'.
What Shackleton most likely did not dwell on that night was his greatest achievement of all. Surely there had been the temptation to continue, to actually be the first to reach either end of the Earth. He could almost certainly have struggled to the Pole and gained immortality and martyrdom at the same time. It was a death that would have been applauded by many still imbued with Victorian notions of heroism. But Shackleton had turned with the Pole in his grasp, and that had taken a mettle, a fortitude, a strength of mind, character and spirit that set him apart from other heroes of his time. It was, in fact, one of the most courageous acts ever performed by an explorer.
Other explorers had died - or would die - while incautiously pursuing a goal, at the same time dragging their followers to the grave with them. But to Shackleton, the safety and well-being of those who had entrusted their lives to his care was first and foremost. He made light of this in England, responding to Emily's question of why he turned back by commenting, 'I thought you'd rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.' But on the Plateau it was a grimly serious issue, and the lives of his three comrades were ultimately his greatest concern. In hindsight, it was his success in protecting those dependent upon him that can be regarded as his crowning glory and that elevated him to a higher pantheon of heroes than other polar explorers.
In early January of 1909, however, it still remained to see if the party had turned in time. They had one advantage: the wind that had been so debilitating now became an ally. On the first full day of the return, they improvised a sail out of the floor cloth and poles of a tent, and the wind and a slight downward slope contributed to an advance of eighteen and a half miles. Equally as important, they picked up their sledge tracks, although not in the form they had expected. The snow that had been tightly compressed beneath the weight of the runners had remained when the high winds had swept away the surface drift, and the tracks comprised small raised formations creating lines running directly along their route. The next afternoon they reached the small depot in the midst of a march just short of seventeen miles. 'Thank God we picked up our depot,' Marshall wrote that night. 'Had we missed it our chances wd have been nil.'
It was not exactly time to rejoice. They had only twelve days' half rations to get back to Depot E high on the Great Glacier, a trip that had taken them seventeen days on the way out. And they were still plagued by altitude, cold, a difficult surface, dehydration and lack of food. 'We were incredibly hungry, all our thoughts dreams & conversation seemed to be of food,' Wild wrote. 'One night I dreamt I was dining with the King of Sweden . . . I had a most delicious steak in front of me & how I longed to get at it. Etiquette forbade me commence before the King, and I woke up.' It was typical of their dreams and thoughts, sleeping and waking.
'All day long we cannot help thinking about food, and at night we dream about it,' Wild wrote at another point. 'I jolly well mean to make up for all of this.'
19
THE WANDERING POLE
More than three-quarters of a century after James Clark Ross grudgingly abandoned his quest to reach the South Magnetic Pole, three men inching northward on a slowly melting iceway discussed following his example and giving up on the attainment of that same location. 'Yesterday I strongly pressed the impossibil
ity of Magnetic Pole and urged what I had understood was to be the work of the expedition provided the Mag Pole were not reasonably obtainable,' Douglas Mawson wrote: 'the coast geographic and magnetic survey with detailed geological reconnaissances at picked spots, the whole allowing us to return to Dry Valley by January ist 1909.'
Ross would have been horrified. In the summer of 1831, while serving under his uncle Sir John Ross on an expedition to discover the Northwest Passage, he led a sledge party along the rocky coast of Boothia Peninsula in the high Arctic of British North America. The journey was difficult and tedious, but he became the first person ever to reach one of the two places where a freely pivoted compass needle points vertically downward: the North Magnetic Pole. T believe I must leave it to others to imagine the elation of mind with which we found ourselves now at length arrived at this great object of our ambition,' he wrote. 'It almost seemed as if. . . our voyage and all its labours were at an end, and that nothing now remained for us but to return home and be happy for the rest of our lives.'
But the ensuing years proved Ross was not so easily contented, and his overriding ambition became notching up the other Magnetic Pole. When, as commander of the Royal Navy's Antarctic expedition of 1839-43, his discoveries opened not only vast new lands but the road to the geographic Pole, he remained unmoved. It was the South Magnetic Pole that beckoned him. Unfortunately, according to Ross' calcula- tions, it lay 160 miles inland from the coast of Victoria Land. Would that he could plant the same Union Jack there as he had in the Arctic! He had brought that one along, but miles of fast ice prevented him from finding a place to land. He was forced to retreat believing his personal grail was just beyond reach, only a friendly harbour and a quick trek away.
In the spring of 1908, such notions soon made the Northern Party of Mawson, David and Mackay contemptuous of Ross' naivete. Day upon day of relaying their sledges over slowly decaying sea ice while the sound gradually broke up to the one side and the mountains hovered over them on the other had exhausted and disheartened them. They lived with the constant fear that the fast ice might break off and sweep them out to sea. But a combination of steep mountain face and broken, pitted glacier had prevented them from advancing on real land. So they edged with agonising slowness along ice covered with a layer of snow made sticky by salt from the sea, the sledge runners gliding with the same ease as they would have through foot-deep molasses.
On 23 October 1908, within a week of leaving Cape Bernacchi, and less than three weeks out of Cape Royds, Mawson urged the change of plans, abandoning the Magnetic Pole and concentrating on pure science. 'There was great opposition,' he recorded, 'and this morning culminated in Prof offering up no alternative but Magnetic Pole, which must, he says, be done on ½ rations.' For the time being, they continued their march, the decision postponed.
Mawson had undoubtedly felt more pressure since they left Cape Bernacchi. David, serving as navigator from the lead pulling position, had suffered from snow blindness due to not wearing his goggles. He asked Mawson to take the lead, and the result was so encouraging that the younger man remained there throughout the journey. Several days later Mawson made his first discovery when they reached what had been charted as a small promontory halfway between New Harbour and the next major coastal indentation to the north, Granite Harbour. In reality, what they named Dunlop Island was separated from the mainland by a strait through which they sledged.
Man-hauling inch by inch through heavy snow that covered pointed brash ice and only grudgingly allowed them to pass, snagging their finnesko and carving out bits from the sledge, was both physically draining and frustrating. In addition, David's Victorian politeness - one might say passive-aggressive behaviour today - nearly drove the younger men round the bend. 'Yesterday morning put the cap on the chronometer question,' Mawson wrote with great irritation in late October.
The chronometer which the Commander had specially given me to look after, regulate and be responsible for, has exercised the Prof ever since I got it. He was originally sulky about it; since then adopting the celestials' tactics, he has tried diplomacy to wrest it from me. On all occasions he has asked for the time, especially 3 or 4 times in the early hours of the morning, by saying till I am sick of it 'Would you mind kindly letting me know the time from your watch presently, there is no hurry, if it would not be troubling you too much, please.' He made it so obvious every time that he wanted the watch that, much annoyed at his roundabout tactics, I gave it him to look after yesterday on condition he took full responsibility and handed it over to me at completion of journey.
After the watch came an interaction about Mawson's headwear. 'Have just found out he thinks I have lost my burberry helmet,' Mawson groused to his diary.
2 hours ago he remarked: 'Do you find that helmet warm enough today without your burberry helmet?' I answered in the affirmative, saying had had it almost as cold in Adelaide. Long silence for 2 hours. Now he says: 'I suppose you have your burberry in the bag.' I said: 'Yes, evidently you think I have lost it.' He said: 'Well, I have lately been wondering whether you had lost it or not.' That is the way of the Prof. He will take all day putting roundabout questions to one in order to get a simple Yes or No answer. This worries one almost to distraction.
David's measured, methodical actions were just as annoying and worrying, but potentially more serious. 'He is full of great words and deadly slow action,' Mawson wrote. 'The more we bustle to get a move on the more he dawdles, especially tying strings to one another and all over the sledges, which all have to come off again in unpacking . . . I cannot see how it is at all possible for us to reach the Magnetic Pole in one season under such conditions.'
The situation came to a head at the end of the month, when it had become obvious that they would not be able to reach the Magnetic Pole and return to Butter Point. In fact, it was proving apparent that any kind of return down the coast might not be possible due to the break up of the sea ice. David and Mackay agreed, however, that all else should be given up in order to reach the Magnetic Pole. So Mawson outlined a plan to preserve a full ration of sledging food for the more than 400mile journey inland; to go on half rations while next to the coast, supplemented by seal meat that they could take on the way; and upon their return to the coast to await Nimrod while again living on seal. The ideas, he recorded with no false modesty, 'were carried unanimously'.
The next day they arrived at a small granite island, where they paused for several days to repack and to develop a cooker that could burn blubber. They were soon successful, permitting them to conserve their paraffin for use on the inland passage. Mackay and David then built a cairn on the seaward end of a sheer cliff, where they left the geological samples and letters carefully stashed in a dried-milk tin tied to a flagstaff. One letter, addressed to the commander of Nimrod, indicated that they hoped by 15 December to reach the 'low sloping shore' marked on the Admiralty chart north of the Drygalski Ice Barrier (now the Drygalski Ice Tongue). There they would construct a depot and march inland to the Magnetic Pole. They would return to the depot at the 'low sloping shore' around 25 January.
As the three men would discover, there was only one problem with the plan. No area of 'low sloping shore' actually existed.
On 2 November the Northern Party started from the newly named Depot Island, but a rise in temperature and, therefore, the slushiness of the snow, limited them to two miles. In response, they decided to travel in the early hours of the morning, when the ice and snow were firmest. The following days saw slow, dull progress, creating a constant tension among them. Things not normally important took on major significance. One day Mackay was 'playing the skua' after lunch with tiny bits of food caught in the blubber lamp, when he accidentally swallowed one of the lamp's salt wicks. That evening, having been plagued by thirst throughout the afternoon, he asked if he might have some of the water that was melted down for the hoosh before the ingredients were put into it. After long debate, David and Mawson decided that, due to the unusual circumstances, t
his was acceptable, although they insisted that no precedent was being set. Offended by what he considered their grudging attitude, Mackay forcefully refused the drink. In the hasty interjections and gesticulations that followed, the pot atop the cooker was accidentally knocked off, and the water lost.
About a week from Depot Island, a blizzard descended, but the high wind and blowing snow affected the light more than the temperature, which remained warm. For two days, despite not being able to see more than a few yards, they continued to relay, moving more than ten miles. When it cleared, the outline of the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier could be seen. Named for the Swedish scientist who had led an expedition to the Weddell Sea in 1901-04, it was shown on the charts as projecting twenty miles into the sea and being twenty-four miles wide, thereby forming a serious obstacle.
It proved, however, to be not nearly so wide, and they passed over it in two days, despite having to lower their sledges down the forty-foot cliffs forming the north terminus. The pleasure of that success was somewhat offset by Mawson's calculations that the Magnetic Pole was forty miles farther inland than had been determined by Louis Bernacchi on Scott's expedition.
For the next two weeks they continued northward through their alien, aqueous world dominated by water of all forms and temperatures. They had by now significantly changed their diet, seal meat and blubber having become the staples. Although this made them feel that they were eating too high a proportion of meat, it meant there was not the slightest sign of scurvy. Concurrently, the loss of fibre due to biscuit consumption dropping from nine to three per day resulted in diarrhoea. This, in turn, added to their mutual dissatisfaction. 'The Prof is certainly a fine example of a man for his age,' Mawson wrote,
Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition Page 29
