Amundsen on the Front Page

Amundsen's victory was front page news around the world. See the New York Times treatments from March 8th and 9th, 1912 below. Amundsen actually reached the pole 3 months earlier, in mid-December, 1911, but then he had to sail halfway across the world to let anyone know about it. News of Scott's death wouldn't come for several more months.

These articles come from the Historical New York Times database. If you have a Winchester library card you can get full access here: www.winpublib.org/elibrary/databases.

Birdie Bowers: Fifth Wheel

Scholars (and everyone else) point to January 3rd, 1912 as the date of Scott's fatal mistake. A decision that would lead five men to their deaths. (Scott made a lot of fatal mistakes but this one was probably the worst.)

After a month on the barrier, and weeks climbing up the Beardmore Glacier, Scott stands on the polar plateau, at the start of the final leg of the journey. Scott's diary for January 3rd reads - "Within 150 miles of our goal. Tonight I decided to reorganise, [...] Bowers is to come into our tent and we proceed as a 5-man unit to-morrow."

At that time, polar journeys were only made possible by strategically placing food and supplies in depots along the route ahead of time. Scott's journey consisted of a complicated series of depot journeys and support parties all coordinated to place a 4-man team on the plateau with enough food and supplies to complete the final dash to the pole. So after 2 years of calculating, portioning, and depoting food and supplies for 4 men, Scott decided, literally at the last minute, to take a 5th man to the pole: Henry Robertson "Birdie" Bowers.

Huntford speculates that Bowers was added to the polar party to serve as navigator, as none of the 4 original members were capable of astronomical navigation; an unbelievable oversight on Scott's part considering walking on the featureless plateau is akin to sailing on the ocean. For comparison, Amundsen brought 4 navigators to the pole.

To his credit as navigator, Bowers found the South Pole.

Where am I?

Scott and Amundsen took different, but very similar, routes to the South Pole. Their bases were both on the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, which they called the "Great Ice Barrier." Most expeditions used to start here because the Barrier is a huge floating ice shelf. It's perfectly flat and easy to travel on. It's basically a giant, frozen bay that cuts deep into the continent, giving explorers a shortcut to the Pole. It's on the bottom of the map below. White is land, gray is sea ice.

Approaching the edge of the Barrier was like sailing into a 100 foot wall of ice.

Amundsen and Scott landed on opposite sides of the Barrier and, more or less, walked due south toward the Pole. Amundsen's route was about 100 miles shorter, but it was uncharted. Scott's route was longer, but had already been mapped, removing much of the danger, and equally as important, the anxiety of the unknown. 

Below, Amundsen's route is on the left and Scott's is on the right. The Barrier, in gray, would be open ocean if it wasn't frozen solid. Where the Barrier meets the land stand the towering Transantarctic Mountains with the smooth high plain of the Antarctic Plateau behind. 

The journey itself consists of three parts - the long, relatively easy trudge on the flat Barrier (~400 miles), the crossing of the Transantarctic Mountains (~100 miles), and the high-altitude Plateau journey (~300 miles). The crossing of the mountains is the shortest, but most dangerous leg.

Rather than climb the mountains, Scott and Amundsen used giant glaciers as their "roads to the pole." 

Scott's Route: The Beardmore Glacier, previously mapped and climbed by Ernest Shackleton.

Amundsen's Route: The Axel-Heiberg Glacier. Never before seen by human beings.

Walking to the South Pole

The distance from the coast of Antarctica to the pole is about 700 miles each way. This is roughly the distance between Boston and Detroit. The vast majority of the route is entirely flat, white, and featureless. You will see no animals and no plants. It's freezing cold and the sun never sets. You are walking for 90 days.

The South Pole Today

South Pole Temp at time of writing: -81 degrees F. 

When Amundsen got to the south pole, there was nothing there. When Scott got there all he found was the stuff that Amundsen left behind a few weeks before.

Now, the giant "Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station" is home to 200 scientists (50 in the winter.) The station is a giant complex of buildings with its own airport. It sits in the middle of a featureless white plain on the antarctic plateau.

It's very cool. It used to be a dome, but now it's a big building on stilts. They even put up a goofy striped pole with a silver ball on top.

(scientists having fun)

SOUTH POLE LINKS

• Official Station Website 
• Unofficial Station Website 
• South Pole Webcam (usually broken) 
• Newspaper: The Antarctic Sun 

FUN FACTS

• It's dark for 6 months of the year and light for the rest. 
• Winter = March through September 
• Summer = September through March
  

Roland Huntford Hates Robert Falcon Scott

There is a distinct slant to this book in favor of Amundsen. There are a couple reasons for that.

Roland Huntford has spent the better part of his career dismantling the legacy of Robert Falcon Scott. Scott was basically a British naval officer who decided to get rich and famous by going to the south pole. He had no cold-weather experience, and no particular interest in the pole itself. He was just a plucky British guy with the right rank and a lot of determination.

But what he did was craft an image of himself as a heroic amateur explorer who, by way of luck, grit, and  British happy-go-lucky attitude, took on the most daunting challenge of his time. He did this through public speaking, political connections, friends in high places, and, most importantly, writing. Scott wrote books and made himself look very good. He also wrote his diaries in full-knowledge that they'd be published. So he left some of the bad parts out, glossed over difficulties, and presented a willfully distorted version of his cheery British exploration party.

In truth, says Huntford, Scott was a shockingly unprepared explorer and a terrible leader who marched his men to certain death. And he killed a bunch of ponies and WHY would you bring ponies to the south pole?

By placing Scott's diary (long-winded, out of order, full of complicated plans, countless accidents and missteps, ponies, zero margins of error, etc.) next to Amundsen's diary (precise, short, dry, frankly boring, describing a perfectly executed trip to the pole with basically no trouble at all), Huntford is trying to use Scott's own words to destroy him.

Huntford has been slammed for his take-downs of Scott because everyone loves the idea of the heroic/flawed Scott-figure. Amundsen was too good. He was too boring and he didn't have any crazy British adventures in the snow. So by using the diaries to prove his point for him, Huntford keeps his hands clean. Although, he does lay it on pretty thick in the footnotes. And the 30 page introduction tears Scott down before you even get to the diaries.

Race for the South Pole: Some Background Info

The year was 1910 and the world had been thoroughly explored, with one glaring exception: The South Pole. The Pole was the goal and the first man to reach it was guaranteed fame, fortune, and honor. Two men set out in ships, within weeks of each other, to claim the pole and immortality via history books.

Neither knew the other's plans. So, one important point: As Huntford puts it - "It is difficult now to conceive of the isolation possible on the earth before time and space were annihilated by instant communication." As those ships left port they "might have been adrift out in the cosmos...more alone than any space capsule today."

Imagine their surprise when, in a place where there are literally no people for thousands of miles, one ship sailed into a bay and found another already anchored there.

A race!

This is a story about two men, Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen, but behind their every move lies the ghostly presence of a third. A man who, two years before, had come within spitting distance of the pole. A man who proved it was possible. A man who found the way and drew the map. A man who became the first human being to see, and travel on, the South Polar Plateau. A man who came up just few miles short. The man. Ernest Shackleton.


THE EXPLORERS

Ernest Shackleton. Irish.

Farthest South: 88° 23′ S

Robert Falcon Scott. English.

Farthest South: 90° S

Roald Amundsen. Norwegian.

Farthest South: 90° S

Hey, guess who won.

Hey, guess who died.

Selection for March & April

First off, apologies for my lazy posting on the Lepore book. It's been busy here at the Library! Have you seen the new website? -- winpublib.org -- Lots of work, but now we'll move on to a different book and maybe I'll be better with the blog. I'll be better, probably!

So, I thought Story of America was pretty good and I learned a lot of interesting things. It definitely just felt like reading a bunch of New Yorker articles but that's exactly what it is.

ANYWAY

Goodbye Jill Lepore, hello Roland Huntford. This time we are visiting my all-time favorite genre which is "Heroic Accounts of South Pole Exploration." If you're going to know one author in the "Heroic Accounts of South Pole Exploration" genre it should probably be Roland Huntford. The man has written the standard biographies of all the great polar explorers from the early 1900s: Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen, and Nansen.  He is the authority. And he looks so nice:

I've read a bunch of these polar explorer books -- See list here -- but I haven't read this one yet. It's called "Race for the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen." It is the epic story of 2 men who raced to be the first to stand at the south pole. Both made it out, but one didn't make it back. The book puts their diaries side by side.

Get stoked, y'all