The South Pole - Roald Amundsen (ebook reader for laptop TXT) 📗

same day they had a narrow escape of being squeezed in the ice. Fortunately the enormous block of ice passed under the vessel and lifted her up without doing her any damage. Otherwise, the first part of the winter passed off well.

Afterwards sickness appeared, and threatened the most serious danger to the expedition — scurvy and insanity. One of them by itself would have been bad enough. Scurvy especially increased, and did such havoc that finally there was not a single man who escaped being attacked by this fearful disease.

Cook’s behaviour at this time won the respect and devotion of all. It is not too much to say that Cook was the most popular man of the expedition, and he deserved it. From morning to night he was occupied with his many patients, and when the sun returned it happened not infrequently that, after a strenuous day’s work, the doctor sacrificed his night’s sleep to go hunting seals and penguins, in order to provide the fresh meat that was so greatly needed by all.

On July 22 the sun returned.

It was not a pleasant sight that it shone upon. The Antarctic winter had set its mark upon all, and green, wasted faces stared at the returning light.

Time went on, and the summer arrived. They waited day by day to see a change in the ice. But no; the ice they had entered so light-heartedly was not to be so easy to get out of again.

New Year’s Day came and went without any change in the ice.

The situation now began to be seriously threatening. Another winter in the ice would mean death and destruction on a large scale. Disease and insufficient nourishment would soon make an end of most of the ship’s company.

Again Cook came to the aid of the expedition.

In conjunction with Racovitza he had thought out a very ingenious way of sawing a channel, and thus reaching the nearest lead. The proposal was submitted to the leader of the expedition and accepted by him; both the plan and the method of carrying it out were well considered.

After three weeks’ hard work, day and night, they at last reached the lead.

Cook was incontestably the leading spirit in this work, and gained such honour among the members of the expedition that I think it just to mention it. Upright, honourable, capable, and conscientious in the extreme — such is the memory we retain of Frederick A. Cook from those days.

Little did his comrades suspect that a few years later he would be regarded as one of the greatest humbugs the world has ever seen. This is a psychological enigma well worth studying to those who care to do so.

But the Belgica was not yet clear of the ice. After having worked her way out into the lead and a little way on, she was stopped by absolutely close pack, within sight of the open sea.

For a whole month the expedition lay here, reaping the same experiences as Ross on his second voyage with the Erebus and Terror. The immense seas raised the heavy ice high in the air, and flung it against the sides of the vessel. That month was a hell upon earth. Strangely enough, the Belgica escaped undamaged, and steamed into Punta Arenas in the Straits of Magellan on March 28, 1899.

Modern scientific Antarctic exploration had now been initiated, and de Gerlache had won his place for all time in the first rank of Antarctic explorers.

While the Belgica was trying her hardest to get out of the ice, another vessel was making equally strenuous efforts to get in. This was the Southern Cross, the ship of the English expedition, under the leadership of Carstens Borchgrevink. This expedition’s field of work lay on the opposite side of the Pole, in Ross’s footsteps.

On February 11, 1899, the Southern Cross entered Ross Sea in lat. 70�

S. and long. 174� E., nearly sixty years after Ross had left it.

A party was landed at Cape Adare, where it wintered. The ship wintered in New Zealand.

In January, 1900, the land party was taken off, and an examination of the Barrier was carried out with the vessel. This expedition succeeded for the first time in ascending the Barrier, which from Ross’s day had been looked upon as inaccessible. The Barrier formed a little bight at the spot where the landing was made, and the ice sloped gradually down to the sea.

We must acknowledge that by ascending the Barrier, Borchgrevink opened a way to the south, and threw aside the greatest obstacle to the expeditions that followed. The Southern Cross returned to civilization in March, 1900.

The Valdivia’s expedition, under Professor Chun, of Leipzig, must be mentioned, though in our day it can hardly be regarded as an Antarctic expedition. On this voyage the position of Bouvet Island was established once for all as lat. 54� 26’ S., long. 3� 24’ E.

The ice was followed from long. 8� E. to 58� E., as closely as the vessel could venture to approach. Abundance of oceanographical material was brought home.

Antarctic exploration now shoots rapidly ahead, and the twentieth century opens with the splendidly equipped British and German expeditions in the Discovery and the Gauss, both national undertakings.

Captain Robert F. Scott was given command of the Discovery’s expedition, and it could not have been placed in better hands.

The second in command was Lieutenant Armitage, who had taken part in the Jackson-Harmsworth North Polar expedition.

The other officers were Royds, Barne, and Shackleton.

Lieutenant Skelton was chief engineer and photographer to the expedition. Two surgeons were on board — Dr. Koettlitz, a former member of the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition, and Dr. Wilson. The latter was also the artist of the expedition. Bernacchi was the physicist, Hodgson the biologist, and Ferrar the geologist.

On August 6, 1901, the expedition left Cowes, and arrived at Simon’s Bay on October 3. On the 14th it sailed again for New Zealand.

The official plan was to determine as accurately as possible the nature and extent of the South Polar lands that might be found, and to make a magnetic survey. It was left to the leader of the expedition to decide whether it should winter in the ice.

It was arranged beforehand that a relief ship should visit and communicate with the expedition in the following year.

The first ice was met with in the neighbourhood of the Antarctic Circle on January 1, 1902, and a few days later the open Ross Sea was reached. After several landings had been made at Cape Adare and other points, the Discovery made a very interesting examination of the Barrier to the eastward. At this part of the voyage King Edward VII. Land was discovered, but the thick ice-floes prevented the expedition from landing. On the way back the ship entered the same bight that Borchgrevink had visited in 1900, and a balloon ascent was made on the Barrier. The bay was called Balloon Inlet.

From here the ship returned to McMurdo Bay, so named by Ross. Here the Discovery wintered, in a far higher latitude than any previous expedition. In the course of the autumn it was discovered that the land on which the expedition had its winter quarters was an island, separated from the mainland by McMurdo Sound. It was given the name of Ross Island.

Sledge journeys began with the spring. Depots were laid down, and the final march to the South was begun on November 2, 1902, by Scott, Shackleton, and Wilson.

They had nineteen dogs to begin with. On November 27 they passed the 80th parallel. Owing to the nature of the ground their progress was not rapid; the highest latitude was reached on December 30 — 82�

17’ S. New land was discovered — a continuation of South Victoria Land. One summit after another rose higher and higher to the south.

The return journey was a difficult one. The dogs succumbed one after another, and the men themselves had to draw the sledges. It went well enough so long as all were in health; but suddenly Shackleton was incapacitated by scurvy, and there were only two left to pull the sledges.

On February 3 they reached the ship again, after an absence of ninety-three days.

Meanwhile Armitage and Skelton had reached, for the first time in history, the high Antarctic inland plateau at an altitude of 9,000

feet above the sea.

The relief ship Morning had left Lyttelton on December 9. On her way south Scott Island was discovered, and on January 25 the Discovery’s masts were seen. But McMurdo Sound lay icebound all that year, and the Morning returned home on March 3.

The expedition passed a second winter in the ice, and in the following spring Captain Scott led a sledge journey to the west on the ice plateau. In January, 1904, the Morning returned, accompanied by the Terra Nova, formerly a Newfoundland sealing vessel. They brought orders from home that the Discovery was to be abandoned if she could not be got out. Preparations were made for carrying out the order, but finally, after explosives had been used, a sudden break-up of the ice set the vessel free.

All the coal that could be spared was put on board the Discovery from the relief ships, and Scott carried his researches further. If at that time he had had more coal, it is probable that this active explorer would have accomplished even greater things than he did. Wilkes’s “Ringgold’s Knoll” and “Eld’s Peak” were wiped off the map, and nothing was seen of “Cape Hudson,” though the Discovery passed well within sight of its supposed position.

On March 14 Scott anchored in Ross Harbour, Auckland Islands. With rich results, the expedition returned home in September, 1904.

Meanwhile the German expedition under Professor Erich von Drygalski had been doing excellent work in another quarter.

The plan of the expedition was to explore the Antarctic regions to the south of Kerguelen Land, after having first built a station on that island and landed a scientific staff, who were to work there, while the main expedition proceeded into the ice. Its ship, the Gauss, had been built at Kiel with the Fram as a model.

The Gauss’s navigator was Captain Hans Ruser, a skilful seaman of the Hamburg-American line.

Drygalski had chosen his scientific staff with knowledge and care, and it is certain that he could not have obtained better assistants.

The expedition left Kiel on August 11, 1901, bound for Cape Town. An extraordinarily complete oceanographical, meteorological, and magnetic survey was made during this part of the voyage.

After visiting the Crozet Islands, the Gauss anchored in Royal Sound, Kerguelen Land, on December 31. The expedition stayed here a month, and then steered for the south to explore the regions between Kemp Land and Knox Land. They had already encountered a number of bergs in lat. 60� S.

On February 14 they made a sounding of 1,730 fathoms near the supposed position of Wilkes’s Termination Land. Progress was very slow hereabout on account of the thick floes.

Suddenly, on February 19, they had a sounding of 132 fathoms, and on the morning of February 21 land was sighted, entirely covered with ice and snow. A violent storm took the Gauss by surprise, collected a mass of icebergs around her, and filled up the intervening space with floes, so that there could be no question of making any way. They had to swallow the bitter pill, and prepare to spend the winter where they were.

Observatories were built of ice, and sledge journeys were undertaken as soon as the surface permitted. They reached land in three and a half days, and there discovered a bare mountain, about 1,000 feet high, fifty miles from the ship. The land was named Kaiser Wilhelm II. Land, and the mountain the Gaussberg.

They occupied