South with the Sun

by Lynne Cox

  On October 20, Amundsen, Hanssen, Hassel, Bjaaland, and Wisting set out with four sledges and a total of fifty-two dogs (thirteen per sledge) for the real start for the South Pole. The going was anything but easy. On October 21 they were lost in a blizzard, they couldn’t see their tracks or the depots, they couldn’t tell where they were, and the area they were in was covered by crevasses. Bjaaland’s sledge began to sink into a hole in the snow that would swallow the man, dogs, and sledge.

  Instinctively, the dogs lay down and dug their claws in, but they were sinking deeper into the hole. Hanssen and Hassel snatched a rope and immediately tied it to the sledge; Bjaaland and Amundsen held on to the sledge, and the dogs and men were taken off while Hassel and Hanssen stood on the very edge of the crevasse. Just to the left of them, the ice crust was as thin as paper, and if they had stood there none of them would have escaped.

  They continued south and built their first six-foot-high beacons. They would use these as landmarks for the journey back to Framheim. At the first beacon, at 80 degrees, 23 minutes south, they shot the first dog, Hanssen’s dog, named Bone. The dog couldn’t keep up, and he would be food on the return home. They placed the beacons every eight or nine miles as they continued south. In total they built 150 beacons from nine thousand blocks of snow. The dogs were in top shape, picking up speed and moving at four and two-thirds miles per hour.

  On November 15 at 85 degrees south, Amundsen wrote that the distance from where they were to the pole and back was 683 miles. They were about to ascend into the mountains. They had taken enough food and equipment for thirty days, and they had forty-two dogs that would take them up to the polar plateau. And they would methodically slaughter the dogs until they had twelve that would take two sledges back to Framheim.

  On November 17 they began their climb through the mountains. They saw the southern Mount Nansen and Mount Don Pedro Christophersen, and they used an aneroid to measure the height of a snow terrace. They had reached four thousand feet, and they continued to the Axel Heiberg Glacier. They climbed between the two mountains, sledged through deep loose snow, and when the sun warmed the snow and it melted, they ducked for cover as avalanches roared and spun around them.

  When they rounded Mount Engelstad, Amundsen noted that the dogs seemed to know that this was their last big effort. They dug their claws in and hauled the sledges toward the southern side of Mount Engelstad. The men hoped they would see a smooth glacier ahead, but that was not to be. To the south were long ridges that ran from east to west and reached an altitude of 10,920 feet. They set up camp and shot more dogs for food.

  On December 4 they were at 87 degrees latitude trying to navigate along a plain that was an ocean of drifting snow filled with sastrugi—hardened waves of snow—and heavy snow was falling from the sky blinding them and the dogs. Hanssen somehow managed to steer his course by compass, but every time he came to rough ground the needle flew around the compass. But when they managed to take an observation and use dead reckoning he was within a mile of where they expected to be.

  Through December 7 the weather was very poor, with thick clouds, heavy snow, and fog. Amundsen hoped they would see the southern sun so they could make a solar observation and calculate how far they’d come and how much farther they had to go. Amundsen believed that they could get to the South Pole using dead reckoning, but he wondered if once they reached the South Pole, their claim would questioned. He really wanted to make a more precise observation. At 11:00 p.m. Hassel, Wisting, and Amundsen stood on the plateau, and they willed the clouds to part. Slowly, the sun melted the clouds, and they caught the sun at its highest point in the southern sky. Quickly, they made their measurements and realized that they had come up with the same results though dead reckoning and that if they had to use dead reckoning to get to the pole, they could do so. When they reached the farthest point south they continued on, past the point Shackleton had reached before he had to turn around. Amundsen was overcome with emotion, more than at any other time during the journey. Tears filled his eyes, and he wrote, “I find it impossible to express the feelings that possessed me at this moment … 88 deg 23’ was past; we were farther south than any human being had been” (South Pole, 260). The crew cheered its accomplishment and realized how much Shackleton had achieved, too.

  They continued their long march south across the nine-thousand-foot-high polar plateau, and at 3:00 p.m. on December 14, Amundsen, the crew, and seventeen of the dogs became the first beings to reach the South Pole. They planted the Norwegian flag, and Amundsen named the plain the King Haakon VII Plateau, after the king of Norway. Still, they couldn’t be completely sure that they had reached the South Pole, and they didn’t want their accomplishment to be doubted, as had occurred with the North Pole, so for the next three days they made a circle around their last camp with a radius of twelve and a half miles. And Hanssen and Bjaaland traveled four additional miles to make sure that somewhere within that circle they had reached the South Pole.

  They planted a pole in an area they named Polheim, tied a Norwegian flag to it, and left a tent in a bag and a letter addressed to the king of Norway. Amundsen knew the return could be dangerous and something could happen along the way, so he wrote to Captain Scott, who he thought would soon arrive at the South Pole himself, asking him to carry the letter back to King Haakon. The crew wrote messages to Scott and his men on leather attached to the tent that said “Good luck” and “Welcome to 90 deg.” Then they began their homeward journey, back to the Fram.

  For the next month Robert Falcon Scott and his crew would endure horrendous conditions on their trek to the South Pole. On Scott’s team was Thomas Crean, an Irishman who was one of the greatest unsung heroes of polar exploration. Crean had volunteered for Scott’s Discovery expedition (1901–04). When the Discovery became icebound in the winter of 1902 in Antarctica and the crew’s efforts failed to break her free from the ice, some of the expedition members left on a relief vessel, but Crean remained with the ship through the long dark Antarctic winter until it was freed in February 1904. Crean earned Scott’s respect and Scott recruited him for the Terra Nova expedition (1910–13), Scott’s second South Pole attempt. Crean did everything he could to support the expedition’s push to the South Pole. He saved the lives of crew members Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Lieutenant Henry Bowers when they drifted away on an ice floe. Crean managed to leap from one piece of sea ice to another until he reached the barrier and got other crew members to help rescue them. He was considered to be one of the strongest and most even-tempered of the crew, had a great sense of humor, and was always dependable, and he always went far beyond what was asked of him. He took care of the Manchurian ponies on Scott’s expedition, and later, on Shackleton’s Endurance expedition, he cared for the sled dogs and sled dog puppies. Crean thought he would be chosen to make the final push with Scott to the South Pole, but on January 4, 1912, Scott ordered him to return to base camp when they were only 168 miles from the South Pole. Crean wept. But he accepted Scott’s decision and turned north with Lashly and Evans, knowing that they had a seven-hundred-mile journey back to Hut Point. They got lost on the return to the Beardmore Glacier. They were running low on food, and they were struggling to survive. They had to move more quickly and decided to risk sliding two thousand feet down the Shackleton icefall on their sledges rather than walking for three days around the icefall. Somehow they managed to avoid enormous crevasses by only inches. They reached the barrier, but Evans was weak from scurvy and he collapsed more than one hundred miles from Hut Point. Crean thought he had died and Evans said that he felt Crean’s hot tears on his face. Crean and Lashly strapped Evans on a sledge and dragged him until they were thirty-five miles from Hut Point.

  Oscar Wisting with his dogs on the South Pole, December 14, 1911. The journey from Framheim to the South Pole and back took ninety-nine days, and they traveled about 1,864 miles.

  Left to right: Roald Amundsen, Olav Bjaaland, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, South Pole, December 14, 191
1.

  At that point they realized that they had only two days’ food remaining, and they couldn’t move fast enough with Evans to make it back to the base camp before their food ran out. Crean left Lashly with Evans and set off on his own to get a rescue party. For eighteen hours he struggled across the ice, sometimes crawling to make headway, and when he finally reached the hut, he was so worn out that he was delirious and he collapsed on the floor. The crew revived him, and he volunteered to return to the ice to rescue Evans and Lashly, but he was too weak. The other expedition members found Lashley and Evans and brought them back by dogsled.

  Scott and his party reached the South Pole a month after Amundsen, but all of them perished on their return journey to base camp. Crean was among the crew that searched for and recovered the bodies of Scott and his men.

  Crean returned to Antarctica with Ernest Shackleton on the 1914–17 Endurance expedition and rowed alongside Shackleton for eight hundred miles in the James Caird from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island. He was key to the survival of Shackleton and the entire crew of the Endurance.

  Amundsen and his men and eleven dogs arrived back in Framheim on January 25. They had traveled 1,860 miles in ninety-nine days and achieved what was then, and still is now, one of the most amazing journeys in the harshest of the world’s environments. The men and dogs opened the continent of Antarctica for all further exploration. In spite of their great success, they did not receive the celebration they anticipated. Many people in Britain believed that the challenge created by Amundsen and his crew to reach the South Pole first had forced Scott and his crew to compete against them. And they ultimately blamed Amundsen for Scott’s death. Amundsen did not accept that reasoning. He believed that he had prepared better than Scott and that was why he succeeded and Scott didn’t.

  Celebrating Amundsen, Nansen wrote an entire front-page story for the San Francisco Chronicle about Amundsen’s magnificent achievement—reaching the South Pole. Nansen explained in great detail Amundsen’s accomplishment. In the story he completely supported Amundsen for his decision to change his mind, to sail south for Antarctica rather than heading for the North Polar Sea.

  Amundsen had explained to Nansen in his letter that he needed to achieve the South Pole in order to gain the support he needed to raise more funds and sail and do research in the Arctic Ocean.

  When Amundsen returned to Norway, he immediately began working on raising funds for his attempt to sail through the Northeast Passage, and he followed up on promises that had been made by the Norwegian government to his crew. Amundsen was told that as a result of their success at reaching the South Pole, his crew would be awarded promotions, money, and jobs, but these promises were not being fulfilled.

  Amundsen was relentless in his follow-up. He had not received the money he had been promised by the government to pay his crew or to fund the Northeast Passage venture. Amundsen began a series of two hundred lectures in the United States and Canada. He also wrote to Nansen to enlist his help.

  Nansen wrote back and told Amundsen that he was focused on little things, and that he was afraid that Amundsen had lost sight of his big goal of exploring the Northeast Passage. Amundsen in frustration wrote back to Nansen and asked him again for his help. Amundsen felt he had not been fairly treated by Adrien de Gerlache on his first Antarctica journey, and he had learned from that experience and wanted to make sure that his crew, the one that had reached the South Pole and achieved that success, would gain the money and recognition that they deserved.

  Amundsen wrote to Nansen that he felt that it would have a great effect on his plans for the future. He believed it was impossible to start the new expedition based on broken promises.

  In a dramatic letter, on April 2, 1913, Nansen wrote back to Amundsen. This correspondence was different than any other between the two men. Nansen wrote that he was sad to hear that Amundsen was unhappy and his life had been stressful, and he wondered if Amundsen might give up the expedition. He asked Amundsen: “How would it look if you called off the expedition now?”

  Nansen exploded and his writing changed; his words were scribbled, scratched out, underlined, and entire backs of pages were written on, and then scratched out. He wrote: “I have really done my best for you and your expedition.”

  Nansen continued that he had made a larger sacrifice for Amundsen than anyone alive. He said that he had planned to attempt to be the first to the South Pole. He considered this the completion of his life’s work, but he realized that Norway couldn’t support both of their expeditions. When Amundsen wrote to him and informed him that he had changed his plans to go to the South Pole before the Polar Sea, Nansen said that he and his colleagues worked to get more money from the government for Amundsen’s Polar Sea expedition. Nansen said he did this because he believed that Amundsen’s research in the Polar Sea would be of greater scientific importance than Nansen’s own goal of achieving the South Pole.

  Nansen wrote:

  I with a bleeding heart gave up the plan that I for so long prepared, and which should have filled my life—to the advantage of your trip, because I regarded this as the most important thing to do, and by right Norway would contribute the most. You were younger and had this great life work in front of you, whereby you could contribute something considerable as I could seek other tasks. Yes that was how it was, but what it still cost me to cut off what I had planned for so long and became attached to.… Many regards, and [I] wish you were soon through with this exhausting lecture-life.

  Yours Sincerely, Fridtjof Nansen.

  The new prime minister, Gunnar Knudsen, wrote to Amundsen and gave him the impression that he was going to fulfill the government’s promises. On April 26, 1913, Amundsen wrote to Nansen from Brainerd, Minnesota, and asked Nansen not to be angry with him. He would put all of his energy into the Northeast Passage expedition, and he asked if he could get instructions from Nansen for the Northeast Passage like he had for the Gjøa expedition. He wrote that he would really appreciate Nansen’s help.

  Nansen replied:

  June 6, 1913

  Dear Amundsen

  Your letter of April 26 made me glad. I see that I have taken your previous letter too heavy. But the case was that your letter scared me very much. I didn’t understand what you meant, and if you really thought you were thinking of giving up the whole expedition, if the things you mentioned couldn’t be arranged, and so I was afraid that you maybe were about to take a step that could ruin a lot of the honor you have won. I meant that it was my duty to take the matter so seriously and expose my view of this as I did, as I said in the letter I thought that in the exhausting life you lead you could easily lose perspective and the small could be too big. I see that this was superfluous, and my words could have been saved, but it looked a little dreary that you would stop all the preparations from the expedition.

  Now I will not write more live now really good, or at least as good as you can with all this stress, hopefully you are soon on your way home and a hearty welcome home. Hopefully I will see you here.…

  Yours devoted, yours sincerely, Fridtjof Nansen.

  The emotional storm passed between the two men, and their friendship grew stronger. Without a hesitation Nansen did all he could to help Amundsen prepare for the Northeast Passage. But by 1914 it was too dangerous for Amundsen to leave port. It was the beginning of World War I.

  CHAPTER 17

  Darkness and Light

  German submarines threatened all shipping in European waters. Amundsen delayed his departure, and he realized that the Fram was too old to attempt the voyage. He had the Maud built and purchased a Farman biplane to explore the Arctic ice fields from the air. The ship was christened on June 7, 1917, but the seas were still unsafe. A Norwegian merchant ship had been sunk without warning by a German submarine in the North Sea. In protest Amundsen returned the medals he had been awarded by the German kaiser for his success in reaching the South Pole.

  By 1918 Amundsen had plotted out his course. He
would sail north along the Norwegian coast, along the northern coast of Europe, past the northernmost tip of Asia, Cape Chelyskin, around the New Siberian Islands, and into the Bering Strait, but the threat of submarine attack had not diminished. Admiral William Sowden Sims of the U.S. Navy was aware of Amundsen’s plans. He sent Amundsen intelligence about when the German submarines would be patrolling the Arctic Sea and when they would be returning to bases to resupply.

  On July 15, 1918, Amundsen and his crew of ten Norwegians sailed north into the Arctic Sea. By September 9 they reached Cape Chelyskin, but by September 13, they were locked in ice in Maud Harbor. Here, Amundsen experienced a series of mishaps including one that nearly cost him his life. On a morning walk, while holding one of his dogs in his arms and walking down the ship’s ramp, he slipped on ice, fell, saw stars, felt excruciating pain, and realized he had broken his shoulder. The pain, swelling, and shock were so intense that he was in bed for eight days.

  Fridtjof Nansen, his daughter Liv Nansen Hoyer, and Roald Amundsen, April 1918, Washington, D.C., after the trade board gave license to the Maud expedition.

  A couple of months later, on November 8, Amundsen went for another morning walk with his dog Jacob, and he heard something strange nearby. He realized the sound was the heavy breathing of a polar bear. The bear had been chasing Jacob to divert his attention and get him away from her cub. When the bear saw Amundsen, she lashed out at him with her massive paw and took him down with a powerful blow.