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OCEANS

OF *HB

WORLD

THE PACIFIC OCEAN Felix Riesenberg
THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN Russell Owen

Forthcoming:

THE MEDITERRANEAN Emil Ludwig
THE CORAL SEAS Alan J. Villiers

THE CARIBBEAN Hanson W. Baldwin

Others to be announced

BY RUSSELL QWEN

tlAPS BY STEPHEN J. VOORHIES .

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OCEANS OF

THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN

; * THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN

'"* ' " "Copyright, 1941, by RUSSELL OWEN

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be
reproduced in any form without permission of the author.

Title page photograph
Copyright by Herbert G. Ponting

PUBLISHED BY WHITTLESEY HOUSE
A division ot" the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America by
Quinn & Boden Company,, Inc.,, Rahivay, A 7 . /.

To
FREDERICK T. BIRCHALL

for reasons that he will understand.

Foreword

"Voyages toward the South Pole commenced so long ago, and
they have exercised an influence on the trend of exploration so
continuously, that a complete history of the search for the Ant-
arctic would almost be a history of geographical discovery."

HUGH R. MILL

history of the approach to the Antarctic Conti-
I nent in the last 120 years has been so complicated, so
JL filled with adventures and voyages, that it has been
impossible to describe them all. That would have been repe-
titious and tiresome, for cruises in ice-filled waters often are
alike. The only alternative was to select the voyages that
definitely added to the knowledge of the Antarctic, those
journeys which served to delineate large sections of the coast.
But, I think, the men mentioned in each one of these
chapters carried on the work of predecessors, and their dis-
coveries make eventually a connected pattern. The attack on
the Antarctic, for it has been a siege, a continuous process,
has been going on for so long that innumerable courageous
men have taken part in it from different motives. Some have
gone for trade, some for adventure, some for science, some
just for glory. Some have achieved great things; even those
who failed often have accomplished much. But not all could
be included, unless one wished to write several volumes.
That is why one will not find here the persistent and careful
work of Sir Douglas Mawson; the unusual and unheralded
achievements of those on the Norwegian ship Norvegia, who
found new coast land; the detailed account of Bellings-

vii

viii - Foreword

hausen's voyage; the considerable geographical work of the
whalers. But, with variations, they met the same adventures
and difficulties as those you will read of here.

Thanks are extended for the use of material in The Siege
of the South Pole, by Hugh R. Mill (Stokes, New York); En-
durance, by Frank A. Worsley (Cape and Smith, New York);
The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
(Dial, New York); My Life as an Explorer, by Roald Amund-
sen (Doubleday, New York); Through the First Antarctic
Night, by Frederick A. Cook (Doubleday, New York); The
Voyage of the Discovery, by Robert F. Scott (Scribner, New
York); South, by Sir Ernest H. Shackleton (Macmillan, New
York); Discovery, by Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd (Putnam,
New York).

I also wish to express my gratitude for valuable suggestions
and aid from Col. Lawrence Martin, Library of Congress;
Professor Griffith Taylor, University of Toronto; Professor
William H. Hobbs, University of Michigan; and Dr. Peter
H. Buck, Yale University.

RUSSELL OWEN.

Contents

FOREWORD yii

THE OCEAN OF MYTH 3

THE LONG QUEST 12

THE LOST CONTINENT 30

WHO DISCOVERED ANTARCTICA? 41

THE MERCHANT DISCOVERERS 63

BEGINNING OF THE GOLDEN AGE 82

WILK.ES FINDS A CONTINENT 92

ROSS FINDS THE GATEWAY 117

THE DRIFT OF THE BELGICA 136

THE RENAISSANCESCOTT'S FIRST VOYAGE 153

THE GREAT ONSLAUGHT 176

THE INDOMITABLE SHACKLETON 195

A NEW ERA 225

WHAT IS IT WORTH? 239

INDEX 245

Illustrations
PLATES

1. Adelie penguins, and a typical, although small, ant-

arctic iceberg 16

2. The beauty of the Antarctic 32

3. Adelie penguins. "What shall we do about these

people?" 64

4. The magnificent emperor penguins, somewhat

curious 64

5. The peace and beauty of the southern land 80

6. Mt. Erebus, the only known live volcano in the

Antarctic 96

7. One of the original inhabitants looks over an in-

truder 96

8 and 9. Two views of the Ross Ice Barrier, 400 miles

long, from which come the icebergs 112

10. A ship caught in the pack no way out 128

11. The crew of the Endeavor after their ship had been

crushed. Shackleton at the left 144

12. The start of Shackleton's famous 1,200-mile boat

journey through the worst ocean in the world 160

13. Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, caught in the ice

for the winter 176

xii * Illustrations

14. The last of the Endeavor 192

15. The barrier edge, 240 feet high, near Mt. Erebus 208

MAPS

1. When Cook made this circumnavigation of the

Antarctic, none of the land mass was known 25

2. Palmer was the first explorer who is known defi-

nitely to have sighted the Antarctic Continent.
Insert shows his voyage to the south 53

3. Weddell penetrated farther south than any other

man before his time, and Biscoe and Balleny
added to the outline of the land 69

4. D'Urville, French explorer, discovered a bit more

of the Antarctic 87

5. Wilkes, American explorer, traveled 1,500 miles

along the coast, sighting it at intervals, and estab-
lished that it was a continent 101

6. Ross broke into the Ross Sea through pack and

found his way barred by the great barrier 121

7. De Gerlache drifted in the fee for the first winter

night in the Antarctic and brought back valu-
able scientific information 139

8. Scott extended Ross's discoveries and first reached

the high Antarctic Plateau. Drygalski helped fill

in the continental outline 159

9. Amundsen and Scott reached the South Pole, and

Scott and his companions perished on the return
trip 179

Illustrations xiii

10. Shackleton's drift in the Weddell Sea. His ship

was crushed, but he saved all his men 201

11. Byrd discovered the east side of the Ross Sea,

sought for many years, and Ellsworth flew across
the continent 229

12. The tracks of all the expeditions mentioned in the

narrative; a cobweb of attacks on the icy ram-
parts of the land 241

THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN

The Ocean of Myth

THERE is no Antarctic Ocean on the maps. The cold
waves that beat against the Antarctic Continent are
from the southern portions of the Atlantic, Pacific,
and Indian Oceans, and in their flow around the ice-rimmed
land they mingle to form one vast gale-swept wilderness of
water. But if a body of water may be known by its character-
istics, there are few who have been to the Antarctic who
would quibble at giving a specific name to the ferocious sea
which is unique on our earth. An ocean on which float ice-
bergs thirty or forty miles long and two hundred feet high,
which is filled with pack ice in which many a ship has been
crushed, and which is beset with gales that attain a velocity
of more than a hundred miles an hour, is worthy of a desig-
nation of its own even if the map makers have been unable
to find a reasonable line of demarcation for it. Most oceans
are bounded by land, but the Antarctic Ocean begins only
where more benign oceans end. When a ship meets a berg
longer than Manhattan Island, there is no doubt that it is
not in the Pacific, the Atlantic, or the Indian Ocean. It is in
the Antarctic.

So let us draw an imaginary line about it, a line that fol-
lows no fixed parallel, no boundaries, but which includes
within it everything that makes the Antarctic Ocean distinc-
tive. Within that line will be found the things that have re-
pulsed men's efforts and that have tugged at their imagina-
tions and their emotions for centuries. There will be found
winds that blow so hard that a ship under a steam engine go-
ing full speed ahead has been blown backward so that her

3

4 The Antarctic Ocean

wake has gone forward past her bow; winds that have coated
a small ship with 200 tons of ice so that it nearly foundered;
huge icebergs against which ships have been driven and by
rare seamanship have fought their way free; blizzards that
blind the sailor listening desperately for the sound of break-
ers on icy cliffs; pack that growls and throws cakes of ice
weighing tons against the bulwarks. Then the sea is gray
and dark and lifts high to clutch the tiny vessel, and men
slip on the decks and grasp frantically at anything near them
with frozen hands, and "the wind's like a whetted knife/ 1
Around them are obscurity and the threat of unknown
things, for there are few soundings in the Antarctic, and
there are many reefs not on the charts.

But this ocean has its moments of rare beauty. There are
days in the pack when the wind howls through the rigging
and the ship is motionless because the ice damps the sea, snow
drifts horizontally before the gale, and there is the feeling
of being alone in a vast white sepulcher. There is no such
isolation elsewhere in the world. Nothing within hundreds
of miles but ice and sea, and the living sea is shut off by the
white plain that vanishes a few yards beyond the side of the
ship. Man is helpless. He can only wait, wait for the storm
to end, for the ice to open, to let him move again as a sen-
tient thing toward his goal. But while he is caught in the
ice, he must wait for the unpredictable Antarctic to free him
once more.

When the wind dies down he may still lie awhile in the
white silence. Around him are shadows. Above the ice lift
hummocks and vague shapes, half seen through the mist.
There is not a sound except the lost voices of men beating
against emptiness. White wings of birds drift through the
half-light, swinging swiftly like dim ghosts. Then the mist
lifts, the blue sky breaks through the clouds, the sun shines
warm, comforting, and you bask in it as when a boy you sat
in the sun against the barn in the first warm days of spring.

The Ocean of Myth 5

Flashes of light come back from uplifted ice, bergs caught in
the pack glowing with color reflected from a sky that is like
a magnificent batik of green and crimson and yellow and
blue.

That is when the Antarctic offers a pageant of beauty un-
equaled anywhere else in the world, and one who has seen
it can never forget. And the ship finds its way somehow
through the ice, into open seas that are as calm as a yachts-
man's dream, and danger is far away, even though it may
lurk in tomorrow's evening. One never knows.

Until a little more than one hundred years ago the Ant-
arctic was the most fabulous ocean since the Phoenician sail-
ors, who probably rounded Africa, returned home with tales
of monstrous things in the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
It was guessed at even before it was seen. The Greek phi-
losophers, with their ideas of a symmetrical, spherical earth,
postulated an Antarctic Continent even while the known
world extended only slightly beyond the shores of the Medi-
terranean. Aristotle had argued that the earth was round be-
cause of the shadow cast upon the moon, and the approxi-
mate size of the earth was calculated by Eratosthenes, who
argued that the habitable world of the Greeks occupied only
one-quarter of it. Therefore, there must be three other hab-
itable land masses to conform to the philosophy of sym-
metry. It was an astonishing idea.

H. R. Mill, in his splendid book The Siege of the South
Pole, says that "the legacy of Greek wisdom to Christendom
was the fact that the Earth is a globe and the belief that the
southern hemisphere of that globe contained habitable land
which could never be reached."

But long after the speculation of philosophers had led to
the conception of a south polar ocean or continent, after the
voyages of those who followed Columbus west had penetrated
beyond Cape Horn to the Pacific, the legendary and awesome
aspect of the Antarctic continued to dominate the minds of

6 The Antarctic Ocean

men. It is hard to believe that so short a time as one hundred
years ago the Antarctic was regarded much in the light of
St. Brandon's mystic isle. But so it is. Legend and fact and
fancy have been a part of the history of the Antarctic, largely
because of those storms and snows and waving curtains of
mist which act as guardians of the south.

There is a legend that a Polynesian voyager was the first
to see the icebergs of the Antarctic. These native navigators
who traversed the Pacific in their big canoes, really ships
nearly one hundred feet long, driven by paddle and sail,
had reached many of the South Sea islands soon after the
beginning of the Christian era. Among them, about A.D. 650,
was an adventurous soul named Hui-te-rangiora. He may be
only a part of Polynesian mythology, but there is one fact in
the legend that is hard to disbelieve. It is easy to invent folk
stories, but it is hard to invent something that cannot be
known except by experience.

It may have been that Hui-te-rangiora had heard of New
Zealand in his home at the Cook Islands from the story of
Te Aratanga-nuku, another explorer of his race who had
glimpsed the land which they later called "The Long White
Cloud" a far more beautiful name than New Zealand lying
upon the waters of the South Pacific, and that he hoped to
reach it. One day he pushed out to sea and steered south. It
was only about two hundred years after the fall of the Roman
Empire, about the time Mohammed died, and two hundred
years before King Alfred of Britain. Hui-te-rangiora had no
sextant, no compass, no chronometer. How the Polynesians
navigated, for they did so with astonishing accuracy, is still
doubtful, although they probably used the prevailing winds
and the stars as their chief guides.

Hui-te-rangiora kept his ship afloat in the stormy waters,
in latitudes where it almost always blows a full gale, for the
early Polynesians were the greatest sailors of their time. Some
of the Polynesian canoes were double, with a platform be-

The Ocean of Myth 7

tween, on which fire was kept and food cooked, and some
were long single vessels with an outrigger. Which kind Hui-
te-rangiora used can only be conjectured, but probably the
single canoe would have been more suited to his purpose.
Whatever his vessel, it was not the sort of craft with which
anyone would now venture south of New Zealand.

How far Hui-te-rangiora penetrated the bleak, gray, storm-
driven seas we can only guess, but there came a time when he
found something white floating on the ocean. It was prob-
ably an iceberg that had drifted far north in an unusual sea-
son, for icebergs have come far from their parent land in
that ocean, and have been seen not far south of New Zealand.
He had never seen anything like it before the possibility is
that he had never seen ice. The only white thing he knew
that floated was arrowroot, and so he called this ocean "Tai-
uka-a-pia." Tai is sea, uka (huka) is froth or sea foam, a is
like, and pia is arrowroot. And after one glimpse at it he
turned back for the Cook Islands, gladly exchanging ice for
warmth, and breadfruit and coconuts for the remnants of
food on which he must have been feeding during his voyage.
He missed New Zealand altogether.

Dr. Peter H. Buck, who is partly Polynesian and is a lead-
ing authority on the history of Polynesian voyages and mi-
grations, does not think that Hui-te-rangiora got very far
south.

"My own feeling," he wrote the author, "is that Polynesian
voyagers when they struck cold weather by getting too far
south would turn north again because of their scanty cloth-
ing. I think that the Roratongans heard of the frozen sea, ice-
bergs, bull kelp, and sea lions from missionaries, traders, or
whalers after European contact and that they incorporated
their details in the legends of Te Aratanga-nuku and Hui-
te-rangiora, who were undoubtedly great sailors who did
voyage into the sea south of Rapa."

But there still remains the possibility that Hui-te-rangiora

8 - The Antarctic Ocean

went far enough south, say, of Campbell Island, to meet a
disintegrating iceberg and that he didn't like it. It was cer-
tainly a big chunk of arrowroot.

In Europe men's minds played with the idea of an Ant-
arctic Continent and of an open Antarctic sea. There were
some who thought that the south polar region was torrid,
others that it was an ice-filled sea. A map was drawn to show
an open sea surrounded by a ringlike continent, and it was
even suggested that one could sail quite to the South Pole, a
belief that did not die until 1840. The belief in an open sea
was no more strange than the fairly modern hypothesis that
there was a lost continent in the Arctic Ocean.

The hold that the Antarctic had on the imagination of
men was shown by the result of the voyage of George Shel-
voke, who in 1719 was driven south of 60 degrees by a storm,
as many mariners had been forced south before him. But
Shelvoke touched off something, for his experience inspired
Coleridge to write "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
Shelvoke did not want to go south, and the thought of find-
ing a continent was farthest from his mind. But he wrote
well, and his narrative was widely read. While he was off the
River Plate in South America, he observed in the ocean long
cylinders of white jelly "appearing like white snakes," and
one may recall Coleridge's lines:

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon a slimy sea.

When he got south of Cape Horn he was pushed south by
a heavy wind until ice froze on the rigging; there were
"prodigious seas," "misty weather," and "islands of ice."

"In short," says Shelvoke, "one would think it impossible
that anything living could subsist in so rigid a climate, and
indeed we all observed that we had not the sight of one fish
of any kind since we were come to the southward of the
Straits of Le Maire [south of Cape Horn], nor one sea-bird ex-

The Ocean of Myth 9

cepting a disconsolate black albatross, who accompanied us
for several days, hovering about us as if he had lost himself,
till Halley (my second captain) observing, in one of his mel-
ancholy fits, that this bird was always hovering near us,
imagined, from his colour, that it might be some ill omen.
That which, I suppose, induced him the more to encourage
his superstition was the continued series of contrary tempes-
tuous winds, which had oppressed us ever since we got into
this sea. But be that as it would, he, after some fruitless at-
tempts, at length shot the albatross, not doubting (perhaps)
that we should have a fair wind after that."

But Halley was one of those lineal descendants of the early
sailors who used to see the devil shove his hand up out of the
ocean after a ship passed the Pillars of Hercules and went
into the equatorial region of monsters and boiling water.
Killing the albatross did not help. The head winds continued
for some time, long after the albatross was killed, which
gave Coleridge the idea for his famous poem:

The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the blast,
And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken
The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around:

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,

Like noises in a swoundl

The odd thing is that Shelvoke did not mention that the
icebergs were green. Usually they are just gray or white, or
reflect the sky, and the grottoes in them eaten by the waves

10 The Antarctic Ocean

are dark on dull days and a deep ultramarine blue in the sun.
But there are times when holes in icebergs appear green, and
Coleridge seemed to sense this. Also, showing how little was
known of the Antarctic, Gustave Dore, who once illustrated
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," sketched polar bears
on the ice around the ship, and there are no polar bears in
the Antarctic.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable examples of the fasci-
nation that the Antarctic had for speculative minds is that
both Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne wrote novels about
it, books which are little known now. About 1838 Poe, in-
spired perhaps by the discoveries of the New England sealers
who had glimpsed Antarctic mountains a few years before,
wrote a story called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
Pym put out from New England on a whaler for the Ant-
arctic. After many adventures the ship met icebergs beyond
73 degrees south.

Inasmuch as only James Weddell, a British navy man, had
been that far south in the sea that bears his name, apparently
Poe took off from the end of Weddell's story. After passing
the icebergs at this point Pym's ship went on into an open
sea. A pelican was seen and shot, and as there are no pelicans
in the Antarctic, he must have got Shelvoke's story mixed up
in its ornithology. Pym also saw a bear, which perhaps helped
Dore make his mistake. He found an island, and when he left
it, went on beyond the 84th degree of latitude, which, of
course, is impossible. The air had become warmer. A strong
current helped the boat along on a milky sea which became
hot, and ash began to fall.

A curtain of vapor spread over the southern horizon a
curtain that can be seen at some parts of the Antarctic at
certain times of the year; it is really fog and as the boat went
faster and faster toward a cataract a flock of huge white birds
went by, crying tekK4i. Before the cataract was reached,
there appeared on the mouth of the gulf a veiled human

The Ocean of Myth II

figure, greater than any on earth, of the whiteness of snow.

That was written eighteen years after a Yankee sealer had
seen the Antarctic Continent, and seven years after another
part of the mainland had been seen by Biscoe.

So interested was Verne in this narrative that he wrote a
sequel to it, called An Antarctic Mystery, a short time after
the mainland had been seen by British and American expe-
ditions. So little was known of the Antarctic even then that
Verne invented a huge lodestone somewhere near the vicin-
ity of what is now known to be the Ross Sea again showing
his uncanny intuition the only practicable entrance into the
Antarctic Continent, and had Arthur Gordon Pym drawn to
it by the rifle swung across his shoulders. He was found
pinned high up on the rock frozen to death.

This mixture of fact and fantasy about the Antarctic per-
sisted for hundreds of years. Somewhat more was known
about the Arctic, but the Arctic could be approached by
land, as well as by sea, whereas between civilization and the
desolate continent to the south were leagues of wind-
whipped ocean filled with ice. And it was that which for so
long kept the Antarctic inviolate.

The Long Quest

THERE have been few ideas to which men have clung
with more tenacity than that of a Southern Continent.
Originally merely a metaphysical hypothesis it domi-
nated the minds of explorers for centuries. After the New
World had been discovered it seemed to the savants more
than ever necessary that a "third world" should exist to bal-
ance the other two, else the world would be unstable and
would roll over.

Ptolemy, the famous Greek geographer, drew a map show-
ing a continuous land from Africa to the Malay Peninsula,
making an inland sea of the Indian Ocean. Leonardo da
Vinci, that wizard of the early sixteenth century, placed a
continent at the south almost included within the Antarctic
Circle, coming closer to the truth than any others. He could
not have known, but that he was able to guess so accurately
is merely another awesome recognition of his almost super-'
human intellect.

When Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good
Hope in 1497, he proved Ptolemy to be wrong. But in 1520
Magellan sailed through the strait that bears his name, find-
ing a way into the Pacific, and reported seeing land to the
south which he called Tierra del Fuego. This discovery
again gave strength to the idea of a southern land. The map
of Orentius Finne, published in 1531, was undoubtedly in-
fluenced by Magellan's discovery, for it shows a huge conti-
nent reaching almost to the tropics in the Indian Ocean,
but coming closest to South America, so close as almost to
touch it.

12

The Long Quest 13

But perhaps one of the most remarkable of all these maps
is that of Ortelius, published as late as 1570, which shows
Terra Australis stretching clear around the world at the base
of the southern hemisphere, almost touching Australia and
Cape Horn, a bit farther from the Cape of Good Hope, and
approaching the Dutch East Indies. There was no sugges-
tion of doubt in the map of Ortelius, and what makes it even
more interesting, and shows how he must have been influ-
enced by the Greek school of geographers, is that he filled
practically the entire Arctic Ocean with a continent which
just missed the shores of America, Europe, and Asia. There
was balance for you.

J^ Within the last twenty years men have been looking for

Jthat Arctic land, and although the area in which it may

possibly exist has been tremendously cut down, there are

' those who even now think that somewhere in the northern

O^ ocean lies a large island. Nothing dies harder than a supposi-

Q tion difficult to disprove.

The approximation of imagination to fact in the Antarctic
is one of those things which arouse infinite speculation. The
old geographers placed their Terra Australis Incognita closer

{TSfo the southern tip of South America than anywhere else,
. and it is a fact that the Antarctic land does approach South

> C\A.merica much closer than any other continent.

' These old maps must have intrigued many an ancient ma-

s riner, and that they did not press farther south from Cape
Horn is probably explained by the terrific gales for which
the Cape is noted, and the forbidding ice-filled seas. The first
seekers for Terra Australis (Australis means southern) had
no desire to reach an fee-clad coast, where nothing human
could support itself; they longed for a land of temperate cli-
mate, rich in gold and silver and precious stones, where
there was an abundance of food, a land populated by mil-
lions of people who according to the fancy of the explorer

14 * The Antarctic Ocean

might be exploited as slaves, or redeemed for the greater
glory of the church.

When the blizzards froze ropes in their hands and covered
the decks with ice-Mark Twain once satirized these stories
by having a man's shadow freeze to the deck when he stood
still for a few moments-they turned north for happier hunt-
ing grounds. The Antarctic was not to be wooed successfully
at first by anyone who approached it with a motive other
than unselfish curiosity.

After Magellan, there followed one of the strangest periods
in all oceanic exploration, in which religious fanatics, hard-
headed merchants, and roistering buccaneers, all had a part.
Some of them deliberately sought Terra Australis Incognita,
but even those to whom it was not ah essential ultima Thule
kept a weather eye open for signs of the vast continent in
which nearly all believed. During two and a half centuries
after Magellan, hopeful and deluded explorers thought they
had found the edge of Terra Australis every time they
sighted a large island. Indeed some active imaginations
placed the outline of a continent in parts of the Pacific where
land had never been sighted, and many a learned mono-
graph was published urging that expeditions follow up "dis-
coveries" that had never been made.

Such a memorial was that of Dr. Juan Luis Arias to Philip
III of Spain, made at the instance of the Franciscans in Chile
who wished to convert the heathen before they were reached
by the English and Dutch heretics. Dr. Arias told, among
other things, of the remarkable discovery by Juan Fernandez
of a land west of Chile in latitude 40 degrees, "a very fertile
and agreeable continent" inhabited by gentle and hospitable
people. This was far southwest of the actual island found by
Fernandez.

The first discovery that seemed to bear out the theory of
a southern continent was made on the western side of the
Pacific, where Portuguese and Spanish navigators stumbled

The Long Quest 15

upon New Guinea. Yfiigo Ortiz de Retes followed the coast
for hundreds of miles without coming to an end, and de-
cided this was undoubtedly part of Terra Australis. Forty
years later, in 1567, Pedro de Sarmiento induced the Viceroy
of Peru to fit out an expedition to search for the southern
continent, and Alvaro de Mendana, nephew of the Viceroy,
was appointed commander. He found the Solomon Islands,
and a little gold, and concluded that they were connected by
land to New Guinea.

Then appeared the first Englishman to venture into low
latitudes, Sir Francis Drake, the boldest buccaneer of his
time, who cared nothing for the Pope's Line of Demarcation
that gave the New World and most of the Pacific to the
Spaniards. He was the kind of man who might have pene-
trated far into the Antarctic if he had had the desire. As it
was, he was driven by a storm down to about 57 degrees
south after passing the Strait of Magellan. This was the
farthest south yet attained, and if Drake had been fired by
the ambition to discover the southern continent he might
have come very close to it.

But he was out for plunder and there were no rich Spanish
galleons waiting among the icebergs. So he bore north again
until he sighted land which, from the descriptions of the
chaplain, Francis Fletcher, was in the latitude of 56 degrees
south. He "came finally to the uttermost part of the land
towards the South Pole; the extreme cape or cliff lying nearly
under 56 degrees S., beyond which neither continent nor
island was to be seen; indeed the Atlantic and the Pacific
Oceans here unite in the free and unconfined open/'

There seems no doubt that Drake had come from the
south to Cape Horn, later discovered by Le Maire and Schou-
ten in, 1615, but his observation apparently was lost with the
Cape Horn winds and nobody realized its importance. In
fact, the English freebooter had his mind on other things,
and although he appreciated the fact that he had been on the

16 The Antarctic Ocean

southernmost point of the American continent, had thrown
himself down over the edge of the cliff in exultation, he later
thought so little of his achievement that he did not even
bother to give the point a name.

But if Drake was possessed of a thoroughly mundane de-
sire to fill his ship with Spanish gold-which he did-and
had no time for exploration, the temperamental and imag-
inative Latins were fired by the thought of greater conquests.
It was a day when men sought land for the sake of power,
and it seemed obvious that the nation that could annex the
great southern continent would secure untold riches.

The church, also, was not averse to gaining spiritual do-
minion over the unknown lands. There arose an unsurpassed
pleader in the person of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who
had been a pilot with Mendana on his second voyage. Quiros
is an enigma. Whether he was a rogue or a true religious
fanatic is difficult to determine. The probability is that in
him were combined the fervid curiosity of the explorer with
an equally burning religious zeal. Certainly no stranger fig-
ure has ever stepped into the history of exploration, and it
is Quiros who now engages our attention.

Quiros first appealed to the Pope for aid, telling of the
millions of benighted heathen who awaited redemption in
their rich southern land. That he had never seen either
them or the land did not deter Quiros. So eloquent was he
that the Pope sent him to Philip of Spain, and as he had
appealed to the Pope in the name of the heathen, so he ap-
pealed to the cupidity of Philip. He promised the king riches
such as dwarfed all the wealth of America, and said that
"the hidden part is one-fourth of the world, and of such
capacity that double the kingdoms and provinces of which
your Majesty is the Lord could fit into it." No wonder Philip
was moved to grant Quiros' petition.

So the evangelist-pilot set out with three ships from Callao
in December, 1605, to explore the coast of Terra Australis

A
bo

I
I

The Long Quest 17

from Tierra del Fuego to New Guinea, for obviously the
land must extend that far in the Pacific. He was accompa-
nied by six Franciscan missionaries. One cannot help think-
ing of Anatole France's Penguin Island. If the poor priests
had only known what the real continent was like, and that
if they reached Terra Australis their only proselytes would
have been seals and penguins! Quiros finally reached some
islands now known as the New Hebrides, but which he took
to be part of the unknown continent. He gave it the name
of Austrialia del Espiritu Santo. (The name Austrialia, not
Australis, was bestowed because Philip III was also Arch-
duke of Austria.)

Having done a good job of exploration, Quiros then pro-
ceeded to go slightly mad. The most superficial examination
would have shown him that he had discovered islands, not
a mainland, but nothing could persuade him that he had
not discovered a continent.

He landed and set up a cross, and took possession in the
names of the Holy Trinity, the Pope, the Franciscans, and
the King of Spain. He kissed the ground, and said: "O Land,
sought for so long, intended to be found by many, and so
desired by me." He took possession of "this bay, named the
Bay of St. Philip and St. James, and of its port named Santa
Cruz, and of the site on which is to be founded the city of
New Jerusalem, in latitude 15 degrees, 10 minutes, and of
all the lands which I sighted and am going to sight, and
of all this region of the south as far as the Pole, which from
this time shall be called Austrialia del Espiritu Santo, with
all its dependencies and belongings/*

The natives did not want to be converted, and the rob-
bing of their villages and the seizure of three young boys
by Quiros did not speak well for his Christianity. So after
misadventures he left, and returned to South America. Tor-
res, his second in command, discovered the strait that bears
his name, proving that New Guinea was not part of the

18 The Antarctic Ocean

southern continent. But to his death Quiros insisted that the
land he discovered was richer than all other Spanish posses-
sions in the New World and as large as Europe and part of
Asia.

Soon after Quiros, the Dutch set out from Java for New
Holland, as Australia was then called. They outlined part
of the northwest coast, and Tasman, the greatest of them,
actually sailed around the southern part of Australia with-
out sighting any land except the island of Tasmania, which
is named for him. He also reached the west coast of New
Zealand, which he called Staten Land, and which he thought
might reach as far as Cape Horn. He was sure it was part of
the southern continent.

Much later in the seventeenth century many English buc-
caneers rounded the Horn and were driven south to high
latitudes, and so were a number of Dutch navigators. Edwin
Swift Balch in Antarctica says that there was a statement
published in Amsterdam in 1622 to the effect that there was
land in 64 degrees south, south of Cape Horn, and that it
was mountainous and resembled the coast of Norway. As
Balch says, the land is there, possibly the South Shetlands,
or even land farther to the south and east, and it does re-
semble Norway. "It seems/' he adds, "as if it must be ac-
cepted as true that someone sighted some of the islands of
West Antarctica before the year 1622." But this report ap-
parently received little attention, for the belief grew that
there was no possibility of reaching the continent to the
south of Cape Horn.

In 1721, however, Jacob Roggeveen, sent out by the Dutch
East India Company, reported reaching 64 degrees 58 min-
utes south, and he was convinced that land lay south of him
because of the abundance of pack ice, then thought to form
only near land, and the number of birds.

Men kept nibbling away at the southern unknown, but
they found only infinitesimal bits of land. Lozier Bouvet, a

The Long Quest 19

French naval officer, reported finding Cape Circumcision on
an island which later could not be discovered by Cook but
which is probably Bouvet Island. He did cut down the area
in which a continent might have been. The abundance of
seals and penguins on the ice along which Bouvet coasted
were to him signs of land, and these observations were later
used by French philosophers to buttress the argument that
land did exist somewhere in the far south. Charles de Brosses,
who compiled a history of the search for Terra Australis in
1756, said that:

"The most celebrated of modern sovereigns will be he who
gives his name to the Southern World. This enterprise can
only be carried out by a king or a state; it is beyond the re-
sources of an individual or of a company, for a company
seeks before everything profit and immediate profit."

If de Brosses could see the way in which the Antarctic is
now divided up into claims, with several nations, including
the United States, attempting to stake out that ice-covered
and forbidding territory, he would undoubtedly be aston-
ished at the magnitude of the country and the extent of the
task. But he was right in assuming that only a state might
successfully subjugate Terra Australis. It has not yet been
accomplished, although the work done by the Russian gov-
ernment in the Arctic shows that when the resources of a
state are used in the determined conquest of a polar area
there are few obstacles that cannot be overcome. But there
is not much to reward men in the Antarctic, outside of scien-
tific research and adventure. Even de Brosses thought that
difficulties presented by the ice would become less as the
explorer got farther south the old fallacy of a temperate
and habitable land would not down.

It was this unshakable faith, or hope, which led the French
to send out an expedition headed by Marion-Dufresne, who
found the Marion and Crozet Islands, outposts of the Ant-
arctic. And Yves Joseph de Kerguelen-Tremarec, a French-

20 The Antarctic Ocean

man, was encouraged to seek a fair southern continent. He
sailed south from Mauritius in 1772 and found land in 49
degrees 40 minutes south, along which he coasted for about
forty miles until he was blown off by a gale. This quick
glimpse of land so far south was enough to persuade Ker-
guelen that he had found that which he sought. When he
returned home he rhapsodized over it in a manner reminis-
cent of Quiros:

"The lands which I have had the happiness to discover
appear to form the central mass of the Antarctic continent.
The latitude in which it lies promises all the crops of the
Mother Country from which the islands are too remote to
derive fresh supplies. No doubt wood, minerals, diamonds,
rubies, precious stones and marble will be found. ... If
men of a different species are not discovered at least there
will be people in a state of nature living in their primitive
manner, ignorant alike of offense or remorse, knowing noth-
ing of the artifices of civilized society. In short South France
will furnish marvellous physical and moral spectacles/'

Kerguelen was led astray by the latitude in which he had
found land. It had not yet been thoroughly appreciated that
the southern hemisphere was actually somewhat colder than
the northern, not only due to the vast ice-covered continent
to the south of which nothing was yet known but also to
the fact that the Antarctic winter is actually a few days
longer than the northern winter, because the Antarctic sum-
mer takes place when the earth is farthest from the sun and
its motion in the elliptic is slower. When Kerguelen found
land in the approximate latitude of Paris, he could hardly
be blamed for going so far astray as to think that it might
have a temperate climate.

But he was doomed to disillusion. He went back to his
South France, went ashore and found a less hospitable land
than northern Greenland presents in the summertime, for
Peary reports having heard a bee buzzing in Greenland about

The Long Quest 21

the short-lived flowers, and there are no bees where Ker-
guelen went. He changed the name of the frigid, wind-swept
mass of rock and ice to the Land of Desolation, but it is on
the charts as Kerguelen Land. It was not even part of a con-
tinent, for Cook had passed south of it before his return. It
is but right that the land Kerguelen discovered should be
his monument, for his courage was as great as his imagina-
tion, and Kerguelen Land is famous in Antarctic annals.

The British then decided that something must be done
about this southern continent. Men had thrust south to a
considerable distance at widely separated points, but there
was a tremendous ocean area between New Zealand and
South America that had not been traversed. Nobody had
sailed around Terra Australis in high southern latitudes.
There still persisted a belief that the southern continent
was attached to some known lands. And if so, and it were
habitable, the English wanted it. If there were habitable
islands on its fringe, they wanted those.

When the Exeter drew away from her battle with the
Admiral Graf Spee off Montevideo (Dec. 13, 1939) she went
to the Falklands for temporary repairs. These islands, colo-
nized by Bougainville, the famous French explorer of the
Pacific, were handed over by him at the command of his
government to Byron, the British explorer of the Pacific,
in 1765. The Falklands were held to be the key to the Pacific.

When Shackleton, after his famous journey from Elephant
Island, after being wrecked in the Antarctic, went ashore on
South Georgia, he landed on an island rediscovered by Cook
and claimed by him, as had been directed by the British ad-
miralty. And there are two British claims to sectors in the
Antarctic Continent, between which lies the land claimed
by the American explorers, Byrd and Ellsworth. (Land in
one of these sectors, the Falkland dependency, was first seen
by an American sealer, and there has been much controversy
over it, as will be seen later.) But Cook was sent out to find

22 The Antarctic Ocean

the mythical continent and be the first to claim it, and al-
though he did not do so he established himself as the greatest
explorer the world has ever known.

When Captain James Cook was sent to look for Terra
Australis in July of 1772 he had but recently returned from
a voyage to Tahiti to observe a transit of Venus, a voyage
on which he included the circumnavigation of New Zealand,
first seen by Tasman, and proved it to be two islands. He
also explored the east and northeast coast of Australia for
some distance, and confirmed the discovery of Torres that
New Guinea had no land connection to the south. He
brought back the most complete record of research and ob-
servation of any explorer up to his time. It rather startled
the admiralty. So when it was suggested that an expedition
be sent south to settle this question of a southern continent,
Cook was obviously the man to lead it.

One of the most enthusiastic supporters of such a venture
was an irascible person named Alexander Dalrymple, who
had become convinced of the existence of a southern land,
and whose exuberant prophecies show how little was known
even as late as 1772, when he suggested such an investiga-
tion. He wanted to lead the expedition himself, and well
he might if he believed that:

"The number of inhabitants in the Southern Continent
is probably more than 50 millions, considering the extent,
from the eastern part discovered by Juan Fernandez, to the
western coast seen by Tasman, is about 100 deg. of longitude,
which in the latitude of 40 deg. amounts to 4596 geographic,
or 5323 statute miles. This is a greater extent than the whole
civilized part of Asia, from Turkey to the eastern extremity
of China. There is at present no trade from Europe thither,
though the scraps from this table would be sufficient to main-
tain the power, dominion, and sovereignty of Britain, by
employing all its manufacturers and ships."
And yet, with two sectors of Antarctica established as Eng-

The Long Quest 23

lish by Orders in Council, all that England has ever gotten
out of the territory are sealskins, seal oil for lamps, and in
recent years whale oil for soap. Of course, that amounts to
something, but compared to Dalrymple's vaporings, it is
practically nothing.

What Cook thought of all this is not known. He was a
sailor and an officer in the King's Navy. A tall, six-foot man,
not given to superficial enthusiasms, he had earned his rank
and reputation by a real scientific curiosity and an intense
application to the details that make a voyage of discovery
valuable. He combined the daring of the hardy navigator
with the caution of one who wishes to conserve his observa-
tions and get them home. He was a leader of remarkable
quality, all too rare in men of more fervid imagination, and
his men were willing to follow him anywhere he wanted to
go, despite shoals, gale, or ice. Reciprocally, he looked out
for their welfare, knowing that a healthy and contented
crew can best be relied upon to follow orders to the last
extremity, and there were no ships up to his time that were
so well-provisioned and equipped, or kept so clean and free
o damp. Cook was the first man to conquer scurvy, that
scourge of early explorers by sea.

On this voyage Cook had two vessels, the Resolution, of
462 tons and 112 men under his own command, and the
Adventure, commanded by Lieutenant Tobias Furneaux, of
336 tons and 81 men. They were stout, ship-rigged vessels,
suitable to cope with ice and southern gales. They were pro-
visioned for two years; the meat was salt pork and beef, but
they also carried preserved vegetables, soups, sugar, and
sweet worts, which Cook had decided were antiscorbutic.

The chronometer had just been invented, and Cook had
several of them for ascertaining longitude. Although he made
a few serious errors, most of his observations were astonish-
ingly accurate. There were no time signals by radio in those
days, and if the rate of a chronometer became somewhat

24 * The Antarctic Ocean

fickle, there was no way to check it. But Cook was a genius
at navigation, largely because of his capacity for thorough-
ness.

He sailed from Plymouth on July 13, 1772, and left Cape
Town on Nov. 22, headed for the Cape Circumcision re-
ported by Bouvet. He never found it, and later sailed over
the site given by Bouvet's observations, which shows how
far out a conscientious mariner like Bouvet could get in
those days. It will be seen as this narrative progresses that
positions were frequently wrong, and that unfortunately
men sometimes saw land where there was none. But "seeing
things" which are not there is even now not unusual in the
polar regions.

The ships met gale after gale, the livestock died of cold,
and in 50 degrees 40 minutes ice was met, so much that it
stretched to the east and west and south as far as the eye
could see. So Cook sailed north again, and then south, work-
ing his way as far into the ice as he could go while pushing
to the west. When he was stopped by ice, and found him-
self surrounded by huge bergs that, in the Antarctic mist,
seemed like land, he again turned his ship and headed east
and south. The ship was coated with ice, the rigging became
like ropes of crackling crystal, the cold wind cut through
clothing, and moisture condensed everywhere in the ship,
despite the use of stoves.

Christmas was celebrated by a jolly, if somewhat bibu-
lous, party, and a Scotchman played on his bagpipes, perhaps
under the lee of an iceberg which sent some extraordinary
Celtic echoes back to the ship. Rain, sleet, and snow fell
on the sturdy ships, which continually dodged between
floating islands of ice that could be as dangerous as a lee
shore of granite. But on Jan. 17, 1773, the Antarctic Circle
was crossed for the first time. That mythical land of Quiros
was proved to be the frigid zone of the ancient Greeks, and
so far as Cook could see there was not even land below the

20 WEST LONGITUDE

SOUTH '
AMERICA

FALKLAND is.

DEC.

\o

JAN. 30,
1774

SOUTH
POLE

FEB.
1773 t

Map l.-When Cook made this circumnavigation of the Antarctic, none of
the land mass was known.

26 The Antarctic Ocean

mystic circle. But bergs, and a barrier of ice, again drove
him north.

When he turned north, he had actually been south of
the latitude of Enderby Land in the Antarctic, but a little
too far to the west. If he had been more fortunate, he might
have raised this land and been the actual discoverer of the
Antarctic, but luck was against him, as it has been against
many men who have tried to push their way through the icy
ramparts of the southern continent. Ice plays no favorites,
it is bad one year and yielding the next, and discovery has
waited on its whims.

So Cook went north again looking for the islands found
by Marion and Kerguelen, without sighting them. He
reached a point almost midway between them in the same
latitude, and then turned southeast again, passing between
Kerguelen Island and the Antarctic coast, a passage that defi-
nitely ended the French discoverer's hope that he had found
a southern continent. From there on his ships with their
weary crews, longing for warmth and fresh food and the
solid feel of land under their unsteady feet, worked their
way to the east along the 60th parallel, until they turned
east for New Zealand. They had earned a respite.

After searching for several months for the mythical conti-
nent of Quiros and Dalrymple in Pacific waters farther
north, and after a visit to Tahiti, Cook returned to New
Zealand and set out once more, on Nov. 26, 1773, for the
south. He held to the southeast and met the ice in 62 de-
grees 10 minutes south, which is farther north than it has
often been found by later explorers.

In fact, Cook's voyages in, the Antarctic seem to have been
during years of unusually heavy ice. But he pushed on east-
ward in a zigzag course until he again sailed south of the
Antarctic Circle on Dec. 15. One cannot avoid speculating
as to what might have happened if he had found during
this period so little ice that he might have shoved his way

The Long Quest 27

through into the Ross Sea, or even approached the coast of
Victoria Land. The girdle of pack ice that binds the Ross
Sea, the only practicable gateway to the continent in that
region, is not always wide. Some ships have been through it
in a few hours. But it was undoubtedly heavy that year, as it
was in 1928 and 1930 on the occasions when the writer went
through it. The first season it was 240 miles wide, probably
looking much as Cook saw it, a vast solid plain studded
with bergs glistening in the sun, or lying gray and grim
under the clouds. No wonder it dismayed Cook at a time
when there was no sure proof that land lay beyond, the
prize of a continent worth taking risks to reach.

So Cook turned north again to 47 degrees 50 seconds south
in 123 degrees west longitude, proving that there was no
land connection between New Zealand and Cape Horn.
Then south again stubbornly butting against the ice until
on Jan. 30, 1774, the ship was stopped by an ice field that
was solid as far as the eye could see. It was Cook's farthest
south, 71 degrees 10 minutes in longitude 106 degrees 54
minutes west. Not until a few years ago was that record
surpassed on that shore of the continent. Said Cook:

"I will not say that it was impossible anywhere to get
farther to the south; but attempting it would have been a
rash and dangerous enterprise, and which, I believe, no man
in my situation would have thought of. It was, indeed, my
opinion, as well as the opinion of most on board, that this
ice extended quite to the pole, or perhaps joined on some
land to which it had been fixed from the earliest time. . . .

"As we drew near this ice some penguins were heard but
not seen; and but few other birds, or anything that could
induce us to think any land was near. And yet I think there
must be some to the south behind this ice; but if there is, it
can afford no better retreat for seals or any other animals
than the ice itself, with which it must be wholly covered.

"I, who had ambition not only to go farther than anyone

28 The Antarctic Ocean

had been before, but as far as it was possible for man to go,
was not sorry at meeting with this interruption, as it in some
measure relieved us, at least shortened the dangers and hard-
ships inseparable from the navigation of the southern polar
regions. Since, therefore, we could not proceed one inch far-
ther to the south, no other reason need be assigned for my
tacking and standing back to the north."

He left the ice and sleet and blinding gales that had so
tried both him and his men and turned the ship into a damp
and chilly cave, and headed north for Juan Fernandez Land,
which he proved did not exist. He stopped at Easter Island,
that mysterious place of strange statues, and then went on
to Tahiti. And just to check up on the vaporings of Quiros
he called at Austrialia del Espiritu Santo and proved, what
Quiros might easily have done, that it was merely a small
archipelago. He renamed the group New Hebrides, as it is
known to this day.

After another stop at New Zealand, which Cook seemed
to have an especial liking for, and which made an excellent
base for his extended voyages in the Pacific, he headed for
home. But this time he ran clear across the southern Pacific
to Tierra del Fuego, running his easting down, as later skip-
pers called it, and after rounding the Horn he discovered the
Isle of Georgia, an even more typical Antarctic land than
Kerguelen Island. Its gaunt, ice-covered cliffs and its snow-
capped peaks and glaciers resembled Greenland. It was even
more forbidding, for there was not a bit of vegetation ex-
cept a coarse long grass and a mosslike plant in the rocks.
But Cook took possession of it, and later it became a whaling
station, and the place where the great explorer Shackleton
died and is buried.

Cook again turned south but was blocked by pack ice and
bergs in 60 degrees south; taking a northerly course, he ran
into some islands which he called Sandwich Land. Although
he could not get near enough to tell whether the peaks he

The Long Quest 29

saw were islands or continuous land, he felt that to the
south there might be an extensive land otherwise, why all
the ice? He could not know that he was at that point much
farther from the Antarctic Continent than he had been many
times before. So he put about for Cape Town, having en-
circled Antarctica and having wiped off the map all the
mythical lands of the early map makers except the Antarctic
Continent itself. And as to that he had no delusions, saying:

"Countries condemned to everlasting rigidity by Nature,
never to yield to the warmth of the sun, for whose wild
and desolate aspect I find no words; such are the countries
we have discovered; what then may those resemble which
lie still further to the south? . . . Should anyone possess the
resolution and the fortitude to elucidate this point by push-
ing yet further south than I have done, I shall not envy him
the fame of his discovery, but I make bold to declare that the
world will derive no benefit from it."

Except for scientific achievements and the money derived
from whaling, Cook was right in assuming that there was
little benefit to be derived from penetrating the veil of mist
and the ramparts of ice that hid the Antarctic Continent.
But he was wrong in assuming that there was no fame worth
having in pushing farther than he did. Men have won im-
mortality in defying the Antarctic, some of them have re-
mained there in their frozen shrouds, and others have ac-
quired rank and fortune because they did what Cook, the
greatest of all explorers, could not have possibly done. But
there have been few who have dared and achieved so much.

The Lost Continent

as Cook seemed to realize, there was a continent
behind the barrier of ice that repelled him. It is the
strangest and one of the largest continents on earth.
The United States, all of Mexico, and part of Canada could
be contained within its boundaries. It is nearly circular, fol-
lowing somewhat roughly the outline of the Antarctic Circle,
with two deep indentations, the Ross Sea and the Weddell
Sea. Only the Ross Sea is a practicable entrance for ships.

The continent is almost entirely covered by ice of unde-
termined thickness, probably thousands of feet in some
places. If all of it melted, it would raise the level of the seas
to a point where many seacoast cities would be inundated.
Only parts of New York would be habitable. And the prob-
abilities are that the Antarctic is slowly getting warmer and
melting. But that is something for generations a few thou-
sand years from now to worry about.

The Antarctic the name is derived from the Greek words
anti (opposite) and arktos (bear), the bear being in the con-
stellation that contains the North Staris the most isolated
continent on earth. It is isolated not only because of the
storms and ice that make it inaccessible, but because of the
ocean depths that surround it. Although the Antarctic Ocean
is not now recognized on the charts although it used to be
before the continent was discovered there are Antarctic
Basins on all sides of the continent except where the
Kerguelen-Gaussberg Ridge runs down from Kerguelen
Island, and where Drake Strait, south of Cape Horn, runs
to the east into the relatively shallow area between the South

30

The Lost Continent 31

Orkneys and the South Sandwich Islands. Elsewhere, the con-
tinental shelf drops off abruptly into deep water punctuated
by tremendous depths.

The Antarctic is a lone continent, physically, as well as
actually, the only one on earth. Asia and America are sep-
arated at Bering Strait by only forty-two miles, with an island
between. But the nearest point to Antarctica from any other
continent is Cape Horn, and that is 600 miles away through
some of the worst water in the world.

There is another odd thing about the Antarctic. The aver-
age altitude for this area of over 5,500,000 square miles is
probably about 5,000 feet. One says "probably" because so
much of the Antarctic is unknown. But the polar plateau,
discovered by Shackleton, is more than 9,000 feet, and Sir
Edgeworth David on his trip to the Magnetic Pole on
Shackleton's first expedition found an elevation there of be-
tween 6,000 and 7,000 feet. Lincoln Ellsworth, on his flight
from Palmer Land to Little America, found an altitude
which indicates that the altitude for the entire continent is
probably 2,000 or 3,000 feet higher than Asia, which averages
3,200 feet. It is a huge dome-shaped continent of snow and
ice, ice that has filled in between its mountain ranges, as
the mountain fringe of Greenland encloses a cup of ice
about 8,000 feet high.

But opposite the Antarctic is the Arctic Ocean, a basin
about 9,000 feet deep, surrounded by land. Why .should the
earth be pushed in on one end and out on the other in this
way? Is there some physical correspondence there which may
be explained? There have been geologists who have tried to
explain this strange phenomenon by suggesting that as the
earth shrinks it is adopting a tetrahedral formation, with
the South Pole as the apex. But that does not seem reason-
able to other equally distinguished geologists.

There remains the fact that all large bodies of water are

32 The Antarctic Ocean

antipodal to large bodies of land, with a few minor excep-
tions, due largely to the fact that the Pacific Ocean, which
occupies half of the earth's surface, balances land masses on
the other side. And so it is that the Antarctic Continent bal-
ances the Arctic depression at the north, despite the fact that
the Arctic coasts are not symmetrical and that the Arctic
basin is not nearly so large as the Antarctic Continent. When
one realizes that these heights and depths of 10,000 feet are
mere pin pricks on the surface of a world of 8,000 miles
diameter, their significance can be laid to chance or to some
other fascinating theory, such as that of the drift of conti-
nents.

For there are those who believe that at one time the Ant-
arctic was possibly joined to Africa, South America, and
Australia. Whatever one may guess as to its origin, it is ob-
vious that it was so far back in the realm of time and its
history is so hidden beneath its snowy and icy covering that
it will be a long time before geologists solve its mysteries.

There seems little doubt, however, that at one time the
Antarctic had a warm and humid climate. Inasmuch as it is
generally conceded that this earth was once molten, grad-
ually cooled, and for a long time was extremely hot, that
is not strange. Moisture and heat and vegetation are needed
to make coal, and coal has been found within 300 miles of
the South Pole. There is a long seam of it running from
there to the north, and in it have been found fossil wood
and the remains of plant forms. It also seems probable that
at one period in its history the Antarctic was warmer than it
is now, for otherwise it is difficult to explain the fact that
there was in former times a much greater deposit of snow
than at present. Glacial moraines and lines formed by ice
have been found hundreds of feet above the present level of
ice on mountainsides. How did they get there? The geologist
guesses that it was warmer then, that there was a greater

The Lost Continent 33

snow deposit for comparatively little snow falls in Antarctica
nowand that in later years, with colder weather, the evapo-
ration of snow, the ablation of wind and sun, has been
faster than the snowfall.

There is no doubt that Captain Scott found the famous
Ross Ice Barrier much farther to the south than it had been
observed by Ross, its discoverer. And in the last few years
Lincoln Ellsworth, an amateur but observant geologist, has
found indications that the Antarctic is again getting warmer.
As has been said, the Antarctic is a region of contradictions
and open to limitless speculation, and one man's guess is as
good as another's.

The Antarctic Continent is also the only continent where
a day is a year long. In those regions some 700-odd miles
from the pole, where most explorers have spent the winter,
the sun shines for about four months. Not that the day and
night are divided sharply; they are not. When one arrives
in the Antarctic, say in the Ross Sea, it is generally about
the middle of summer. The sun shines all the time, circling
in a flat arc about the horizon. It gets lower and lower and
a little after the middle of April disappears.

For some time before the sun disappears there have been
the magnificent sunsets peculiar to the Antarctic, when the
sun is surrounded by false suns and halos, when gold drips
from a rough-edged golden sphere to the snow plain below
and ripples like waves on a lake, when the sky is colored
with red and green and blue segments with the great, soft
disk of the sun in the center. There is no sight like it in
the world. And then the sun gradually falls below the hori-
zon, and for weeks the light gets fainter and fainter while
in the north a little remains to show that somewhere at noon
there is warmth. One who has thought that there is com-
plete darkness during the Antarctic night is always aston-
ished at the reluctance of this little disk of pale light to

34 The Antarctic Ocean

vanish completely. Of course, it does on cloudy nights, and
in the middle of the winter.

Then it begins to come back again, and there are months
when the sky to the north gets warmer and warmer, until
the red, swollen sun stares above the horizon a few moments
before disappearing, and the next day comes up again to
remain a little longer, until finally it again travels in a tilted
circle about the horizon to warm and bring comfort to those
poor creatures who have been living in darkness. The return
of the sun can be appreciated only by those who have been
without it for months, who have watched its faint glow in
the north, who have longed for warmth again to creep into
them from the sky. But it takes a year to complete this cycle,
a year that is as a day.

When one thinks of warmth coming back again, it may be
well to consider what are the temperatures of the Antarctic.
There are colder places where men have lived northern Si-
beria, for instance. It is sometimes as cold in Minnesota or
Wisconsin or some parts of Canada, which are well popu-
lated, as it is a good part of the time in the Antarctic. But
all these regions have their summer warmth. Northern Can-
ada is hot in summertime, people suffer from the heat in
Alaska and Siberia, but in the Antarctic the temperature
never gets above freezing except in the region just south of
Cape Horn or in some parts of the seacoast.

No expedition on the Ross Sea has ever known tempera-
tures above freezing while they were on land or ice. Ordi-
narily, after a winter there, a few degrees above zero seem
hot, and men can be seen taking sun baths, stripped to the
waist. It is the continuous cold that makes the region unique.
In places where men have lived the temperature goes down
to 74 or 76 below zero. A month of an average of 60 below
is not uncommon.

It is this abnormal year-round temperature that makes the
continent so unusual. It accounts for its silence. There is no

The Lost Continent 35

living indigenous thing in all Antarctica except the emperor
penguin. In the summer as well as in the winter, when one
gets away from an encampment, there is no sound. It is the
silent continent. When the wind blows from the dark moun-
tains in the winter, when it howls around the ventilators and
the anemometer stays, then one is filled with a sense of awe
and wonders what strange caverns it came through, what
wastes it wandered over, and where it is going.

But aside from the wind, and the blinding drift, there is
silence. A silence so profound that the footsteps of men two
or three miles away are heard, their voices engaged in casual
conversation almost carry the words, and the crunch of snow
underfoot is loud.

I remember a Norwegian sailor one day, riding with me
on a sled behind dogs, who said suddenly: "I can hear my
heart. It is so still." There is no sound in the Antarctic
when the wind does not blow, because there is nothing to
make sound. Two miles away behind an icy cliff one sum-
mer, we heard the seals in their nursery barking.

And so you have this dome-shaped land of mystery, de-
spite the inroads made on it by airplanes and dogsleds, still
a land that is little known. We know some of its magnifi-
cent mountain ranges, running along the east and west sides
of the Ross Sea, with their glaciers spilling down into the
water, we know its great ice shelves where are born the vast
bergs that move so majestically to the north, we know that
in the interior there are mountains running across the foot
of the Ross Ice Shelf and along the coast of the Ross Sea,
we know the Antarctic holds one live volcano, Mt. Erebus,
which spits fire into the winter darkness, we know a few
outlines of its vast surface but much of it is yet beyond
the reach of man. What may be under its ice covering is a
matter for conjecture. But it is a magnet that has drawn
men and will draw them until all its great expanse is charted.

36 The Antarctic Ocean

A sympathetic historian, Walter Hayward, once called it
"The Last Continent of Adventure." It will be that for a
long time.

The only life that is seen in the Antarctic is in the sum-
mertime, when the petrels, the skua gulls, the seals, and the
penguins break the monotony of icy plains reaching to the
sea. And the whales who blow continuously off the shore,
in the rich, shrimp-filled waters.

The petrels are usually the snowy kind, their only black
spots being their eyes and their beaks. One can row up to
an ice cake on which they are perched, and all that will
be seen are tiny dark spots, their bodies blending perfectly
into the gray-white background.

The skua gulls, which are nasty things, scavengers and
with other habits unnecessary to mention, inhabit the edge
of the shore ice in the summertime.

The whales are of several kinds, the most numerous be-
ing the fin whales along the edge of the pack ice, and the
killer whales, with their high, triangular fins, their dirty-
colored underbodies and their mouthful of teeth. They are
the sharks of the Antarctic, tigers of the sea. The big blue
whales, sought by the whaling factories, are magnificent
creatures of about 100 tons and nearly 100 feet long, the
largest mammals that have ever lived.

The seals are nothing like the northern seals. The Eskimo
hunts his seal with the utmost caution, always expecting him
at the slightest alarm to pop overboard and disappear. The
Antarctic seals, most of them, lie on the ice in a kind of
stupor, completely indifferent to those who approach them,
and making all sorts of incredible sounds. If they raise their
heads with difficulty at the approach of a stranger, it is only
to drop them again sleepily and, after giving vent to a com-
bined whistling, gurgling, and grunting, relapse into another
seal daydream.

The Lost Continent 37

They have never, since they were nearly exterminated in
the islands surrounding the Antarctic Continent, been afraid
of anything while they were on the ice. Their enemies, the
killer whales, are in the sea. Man is regarded as a nuisance
and quite harmless, for they see him seldom. So explorers,
who need them for food, find it difficult to kill them. Who
could stab a nice, fat hobo in the back!

The penguins are different, what all explorers remember
gleefully, particularly the Adelies. These are the little fel-
lows, about eighteen inches high, and as full of curiosity
and devilment as a wire-haired puppy. Their shirt fronts are
white, their backs a shiny black, their general sartorial ap-
pearance being that of the well-dressed man about town, with
a manner of walking that out-Chaplins Chaplin. They have
a sense of humor, I am sure; they stick their nose into every-
body's business, and they are afraid of nothing on earth.

When we first went ashore on the floating ice at the Bay
of Whales, about ten miles from Little America, in 1929,
an airplane was assembled as soon as possible and sent on a
few flights. As it was ready to take off on the third or fourth
flight, an Adelie penguin popped up out of the water they
swim so fast that a leap of a few feet onto the ice is nothing
at all and after shaking its flippers and its ducklike tail,
started on a run for the plane. This was a strange bird, it
thought.

Tlie motor was turning over slowly as the pilot warmed
it up, and the Adelie got almost to the tail surface of the
plane, running in that breathless way they have, when the
engine was opened wide for the take-off. A cloud of snow
blew back, the little penguin was engulfed, and when next
seen he was turning end over end until he landed with a
complete lack of dignity on his feet. He waggled his flippers,
stalked to the edge of the ice, and dove overboard,

I am sure they have a sense of humor because of some of
the games they play. Here is one that I have never seen de-

38 The Antarctic Ocean

scribed even by much more competent observers who have
seen them in their rookeries.

One day I came upon a group of penguins surrounding
a little hillock of snow. One of their comrades was standing
on top of the pile, preening his feathers occasionally, and
for the most part gazing away into space as if totally ob-
livious of his friends below. He would turn around, look
at the sky, heave a sort of penguin sigh, so it seemed, and
relapse into boredom.

All this time his fellows below watched him intently. They
let him get away with it for quite a while, and after five or
ten minutes another Ad&ie would waddle up the snow pile,
push him off, and also stand in a rather kingly dominance
of the small world it surveyed. The displaced penguin would
join the ranks below and be just as curious and respectful
and intent in watching until another bird went up and as-
sumed the throne after a healthy shove. This would go on
for an hour or two. It must have been a game, and they
must have got some sort of fun out of it. They made one
think of extremely mischievous children.

It is not at all unusual for one of them to run at a dog
team that is lying on the snow and run through it rapidly,
pecking as it goes. The dogs do not quite realize that they
have been insulted until the penguin has passed and is
preening itself at a safe distance, laughing internally at the
fight in which the dogs mix up themselves and harness so
that it is twenty minutes' work to get them straightened out.

And if one wants to see human curiosity at its ultimate-
and the word "human" is used deliberately because of the
human qualities of these delightful creatures there is noth-
ing like watching an Adlie observing a man digging a hole
in the snow. The shovel, the hole, the man's movements,
are incredible. It will stand on the edge, almost in line with
the shovel, bending its head to look at the snow, turning its
bright little eyes, with their white outlines, up to the digger,

The Lost Continent 39

and back again, in a fierce concentration of astonished pre-
occupation.

They are the sentinels of the frozen land, the first crea-
tures one meets in the pack. They follow the ship, dropping
off an ice floe, popping out on another after an underwater
swim, waddling with all their Chaplinesque might to an-
other open bit of water, and squawking defiance. One of
the funniest sights ever seen is a tiny Adelie yelling at a
17,000-ton ship in the ice pack. Plucky they would tackle a
tank.

The emperor penguins are different. They are large birds,
eighty pounds or more sometimes, and as dignified as their
name. They are beautifully marked in purple and gold
around their head and bill, and their shirt fronts are mag-
nificent expanses of white on which they ski more rapidly
than they can walk. Emperors will travel long distances, but
when they want to get anywhere in a hurry they get down
on that marvelous shirt front and propel themselves with
feet and flippers.

They will stand and regard strangers with a disconcerting
calm. Their manners are flawless. No emperor will ever
come up to you without bending his head and neck in a
most deferential bow. They will bow to the dogs, to Adelie
penguins, to an inquisitive explorer, to anyone with whom
they are not on intimate terms. One sometimes feels, on
meeting them, that it would only be polite to take off one's
hat and bow in return. They are perhaps the hardiest crea-
tures on earth. They hatch their eggs at 70 degrees below
zero, or more, in the middle of winter. And they can almost
knock a man out with a blow of a flipper to the chin, or
break an arm. They are slow to wrath, but not to be trifled
with.

Magnificent creatures, these penguins, both the Ad&ies
and the emperors. Perhaps thousands of years ago they had
wings; now their flippers are scaly and used only for swim-

40 The Antarctic Ocean

ming. But they are probably the only descendants of the
original inhabitants of a land where birds could fly and crea-
tures swim, where trees grew and there were warm mists, a
land that has congealed and hidden nearly all its early his-
tory. The penguins and the ice and the craggy mountains
remain above the ice; below it is buried a geological past
that men still seek to solve. A strange, lost continent that
appeals to the imagination, that has called to men since
the first days of exploration, that will defy them for many
years to come. But it is this very mystery that has brought
about the invasion of the Antarctic Ocean.

Who Discovered Antarctica?

THE gray and black fogs that drift among the icebergs
off the shore of the southern continent are no more
confusing than the records with which one tries to
penetrate the mystery of who first found this icebound land,
who first saw its jagged black mountains etched with snow,
or first looked upon its snowy cliffs that hid the land beneath.
Men had stumbled upon islands, but the continent had
eluded them, and, to indicate how difficult such explora-
tion may be, it was not until 1936 that it was definitely de-
termined by John Rymill, a British explorer, that the long
peninsula that stretches out from the Antarctic toward Cape
Horn is really part of the mainland and not a group of
islands. Discoveries are elusive in the Antarctic; the deter-
mination of fact often waits long upon continued and dis-
appointed effort.

It was this peninsula that was first the object of attack
more than 120 years ago. The argument as to who saw it
first has been for many years, particularly in the twentieth
century, a matter of acrimonious debate between American
and British scientists. Unfortunately, the science of geogra-
phy is not one that rests upon absolute postulates until all
the land reported has been surveyed, attached, and definitely
placed in its position.

Many of the first discoverers in the Antarctic were much
less concerned with geographical knowledge than they were
with sealing or whaling, and their logbooks often bewilder
rather than aid the inquirer. It is for this reason that verbal
brickbats are even now being tossed back and forth across

41

42 The Antarctic Ocean

the Atlantic in phrases that are not used in polite society.
When one geographer of the United States calls another a
forger of maps, and refers to a British explorer as a liar, it
is not remarkable that a British reply should toss back the
retort uncourteous.

The last word and it seems definitive in this contest was
issued as late as October, 1940, in The Geographical Review
of the American Geographical Society, showing how an old
controversy can hang on and eventually be resolved. It must
be added that its author, Colonel Lawrence Martin, of the
Library of Congress, employs none of the vituperation that
had made the question of who discovered the Antarctic a
more bitter subject than the famous Peary-Cook argument
over who first reached the North Pole. The Peary-Cook af-
fair was settled long ago, but this little matter of who did
what 120 years ago is still very much alive in academic
circles.

It so happens that one of two men undoubtedly was the
first to see Antarctica. One of the two was English, Captain
Edward Bransfield, and the other was an American sealer,
Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer. The weight of evidence in-
clines to Captain Palmer as first having seen the mainland,
but Captain Bransfield came so close to it that he might be
given a little more fame than his Yankee rivals would ascribe
to him. Still the journey there began long before either of
them had an opportunity to make a record of their voyages.

There is so far no definite record of when American or
British sealers first went to the South Shetlands, which are
the outposts of the Antarctic in their longitudes. A German
professor, Heinrich Berghaus, a distinguished geographer,
suggests that American sealers had been at work in the South
Shetlands since 1812. Undoubtedly, both sealers and whalers
from New England had been south in the Atlantic before
that time.

They had ranged far, sailing around the Horn to whale

Who Discovered Antarctica? 43

and seal in the Pacific, as Captain Edmund Fanning tells in
his Voyages. That one of them might have lighted upon the
South Shetlands is not at all unlikely, no more so than that
they should have suppressed their discovery. Whalers and
sealers did not disclose the places where they might find a
cargo for their holds. It was possible, however, that a whaler,
brushing the South Shetlands, might have told a friend en-
gaged in sealing of the herds to be found there, or that a
sealer might have mentioned to a whaling crony that there
was a good ground for sperm whales somewhere off a certain
coast.

Captain Fanning tells frankly of being told by a whaler,
whom he knew, of the vast seal herds on Massafuero in the
southern Pacific. So it is not impossible that a whaler chasing
the cachalot into the South Atlantic might have found the
South Shetlands, and kept quiet about them. These discov-
eries were sometimes not entered in the logs, and even in
recent times Norwegian whalers in the Antarctic have kept
their whaling grounds a profound secret.

When the first Byrd expedition was heading toward the
whaler that was to tow the old wooden ship through the
ice, we were not permitted for days to send our position lest
other whalers discover where our friends were catching
whales. These reticences, however, do not aid in clearing
up the mysteries of the early Antarctic discoveries. They
only make it reasonable to suppose that a lot more was
known about the outlying Antarctic in the first decade of the
nineteenth century than the logbooks reveal.

Such definite reports of sealing islands in the Antarctic
apparently reached the United States that in 1812 Captain
Edmund Fanning, who at that time probably knew as much
about those seas as any other man, was appointed to head
a government expedition to explore the southern oceans.
War between Great Britain and the United States ended

44 The Antarctic Ocean

that venture, but when that dispute was over the sealers
headed south again in ever-increasing numbers.

What they found may not be known in its entirety for
many years, but the first definite Antarctic discovery came
in February, 1819, when William Smith, in the brig
Williams, made a wide sweep to the southward to aid him
in rounding the Horn. On Feb. 19 he thought he saw land,
and lay to until daylight when he again stood south. Land
in 62 degrees 40 minutes south latitude, and 60 degrees west
longitude, was unmistakable. However, he was not out for
discovery, and not wishing to endanger his cargo, he hauled
away for the northward and resumed his voyage to Valpa-
raiso, Chile. When he told of seeing land in the far south,
he was laughed at. When he got a cargo for Montevideo
in June, midwinter in the Antarctic, he again went south,
but did not see the land, which in view of weather condi-
tions is not surprising.

At Montevideo, also, Smith's story was received with in-
credulity, although a group of Americans offered to charter
his ship if he would give them the exact location of the
islands. Sealing was then a very profitable business, and the
rivalry between British and American sealers was keen. From
the time of Fanning's first voyage around the Horn to
Canton, China, seals usually brought tremendous sums. Skins
frequently sold at f 5 each, so greatly did the Chinese man-
darins covet them, although the price occasionally dropped
to fifty cents because of an oversupply.

One ship took 45,000 skins at the Falklands and South
Fernandez, sold them in China for $90,000, and brought
back goods that sold for $260,000 in the New York market.
Even the forecastle hands made $1,200 each from that voy-
age.

And here is one of those incomprehensible things that
show how badly Antarctic history is confused, for it is re-
corded that one year after Smith first landed on the South

Who Discovered Antarctica? 45

Shetlands, in the season of 1820-1821, sealers took 250,000
seals from the South Shetlands, of which Americans took
150,000, and the Stonington sealers took 88,000. The Ston-
ington ships also carried 1,500 barrels of sea-elephant oil,
worth $10 a barrel. In 1821 there were thirty American ships
sealing in the South Shetlands, only two years after Smith
discovered them.

What does this mean? No wonder Smith, lacking knowl-
edge of other discoveries, tried to keep his landfall to him-
self. But the fact that American sealers were so close on his
heels suggests strongly that Smith was not the first or the
only one to discover the islands before 1820. Still he is the
discoverer of record.

On a return trip to Chile in October, 1819, Smith reached
the southland again. He sent a boat ashore and claimed the
islands for Great Britain, calling them New South Britain,
although he later changed the name to New South Shetland,
because they were in the same latitude as the Shetland Isles
in the north. It has frequently been assumed that Smith be-
lieved he had found the continent and not a series of islands,
and the name Antarctic Continent was applied to the land
by German geographers. Even Nordenskjold, the famous
Swedish explorer, said that Smith was "the first who in a
most indisputable manner made acquaintance with a part
of the Antarctic Continent."

Nordenskjold's mistake was probably due to the fact that
Smith spoke of having seen the mainland, apparently be-
lieving that the islands were a connected bit of land. It is
known that he did not get anywhere near the mainland, and
even he had some doubts as to whether he had found islands
or a main land mass.

After cruising along the coast for 250 miles Smith went
on to Valparaiso, and this time Englishmen believed he was
telling the truth. The British naval commander, Captain W.
H. Shirreffwhose name is perpetuated in the Antarctic on

46 The Antarctic Ocean

a cape of Livingston Island was not slow to act when he
heard Smith's story. He realized that in it lay not only op-
portunities for the British sealers, but also that the islands
might be another Falklands, recently abandoned, useful both
politically and militarily. Any station that controlled the
Strait of Le Maire and the entrance from the Atlantic to the
Pacific was not to be overlooked by a naval officer.

But, first, it was necessary to know something about these
strange, ice-covered islands, their white jagged peaks rising
from the sea. Shirreff chartered the Williams, and, although
Smith apparently went along as pilot, in charge was Edward
Bransfield, Master, R.N., with three midshipmen of H.M.S.
Andromache, Poynter, Blake, and Bone. Also aboard was
Dr. Adam Young of H.M.S. Slaney, who has left a vague and
sketchy account of the voyage, one of only two accounts
known to exist.

This was the first expedition fitted out solely for Antarctic
exploration, and it might really be called a scientific expedi-
tion in view of Bransfield's instructions. He was ordered to
determine whether the land consisted of islands, or was part
of a continent (which again indicates that Smith thought he
had seen the mainland, but wasn't too sure about it) and to
"determine if connected with Southern Thule and Sandwich
Land," He was to learn, also, if sperm whales, otters, and
seals existed, the resources of the country for supporting a
colony, and if inhabited to note the "character, habits, dresses
and customs of the inhabitants, to whom you must display
every friendly disposition." He was to note the rivers,
streams, and lakes of fresh and salt water, specimens of plants,
and to take possession in the name of His Majesty George III.

Could anything reveal more clearly the abysmal ignorance
of the Antarctic even in those days, only a little more than
100 years ago!

Bransfield's voyage shows again how chance may deprive
an explorer of a great prize. He reached the South Shetlands

Who Discovered Antarctica? * 47

on Jan. 16, 1820, and cruised among the islands, charting
them, until Mar. 21. A record of part of this expedition is
contained in Dr. Young's account, but another, and anony-
mous record, is contained in The Literary Gazette and Jour-
nal of the Belles Lettres, in November, 1821, near enough to
the date of discovery to be received with credulity. This tells
of Bransfield being in the strait between the South Shetlands
the strait that still bears his name and the continent, on
Jan. 30, in 63 degrees 16 minutes south latitude, and 60 de-
grees 28 minutes west longitude, which would put them just
south of Livingston Island, or Friesland, as it was known to
American sealers at that time. They turned south, and, the
account goes on:

"At three o'clock in the afternoon . . . the haze clearing,
they very unexpectedly saw land to the S. W., and at four
o'clock were encompassed by islands, spreading from N. E. to
E. The whole of these formed a prospect the most gloomy
that can be imagined, and the only cheer the sight afforded
was the idea that this might be the long-sought Southern
Continent, as land was undoubtedly seen in latitude 64 de-
grees and trending to the eastward. In this bay or gulph
there was a multitude of whales, and a quantity of seaweed,
apparently fresh from the rocks. A round island was called
Tower Island, latitude 63 degrees, 29 minutes, longitude 60
degrees, 34 minutes and the land Trinity Land, in compli-
ment to the Trinity Board."

From there they sailed northeast and landed on Clarence
Island. It seems pretty clear from this account and Colonel
Lawrence Martin, who has made a most exhaustive study of
the subject, believes so that Bransfield saw Trinity Island,
at least. The Gazette account describes a gulf south and east
of Trinity Island, which exists, and speaks of land running
eastward, as it does. The shore line runs just a little north
of 64 degrees, where he claims to have seen land. Given the
authenticity of this account, which was written soon after

48 The Antarctic Ocean

the end of the voyage, it is possible that Bransfield did see
the mainland.

At least he saw Trinity Island, which still bears the name
he gave it, and Trinity is separated from the mainland by a
very narrow strait. Columbus is credited with discovering
America in 1492 although the Norsemen probably saw it
first and nobody disputes the Columbus claim merely be-
cause he first landed on San Salvador and did not see the
mainland on that first voyage. Surely, Bransfield deserves a
little better than the vituperation that has been heaped upon
him.

Dr. Young's report does not agree with the report in The
Literary Gazette., although he does speak of finding a gulf
"nearly 150 miles in depth, out of which we had some diffi-
culty in finding our way back again/' That is an interesting
observation, for it could apply only to Bransfield Strait, and
if the doctor said it was 150 miles in depth it is obvious that
Bransfield penetrated it for some distance, possibly to the
southward. It is only about forty miles from where Brans-
field turned South to Trinity Island. The other 110 miles
would just about take him out of Bransfield Strait to the
east.

The British admiralty has even been accused of faking a
map to show Bransfield's discoveries. All the data are con-
fusing, and one can interpret them in many ways. If it is
contended that the doctor's 150 miles applies only to the
length of Bransfield Strait, the ship must have traversed it
from one end to the other, and certainly would not have
"turned back again" after reaching the open. The doctor
was obviously more interested in flora and fauna than in
geography. One can only guess. It is a most unfortunate
controversy, but it seems a pity that so much bitterness
should be heaped upon British geographers when there is so
little to support the criticism.

There are two minor incidents of that voyage although

Who Discovered Antarctica? 49

they may have taken place on Smith's first landing on the
South Shetlands that are worth repeating, even if they have
been overlooked by the learned gentlemen who quarrel over
charts. On Half Moon Beach in Blythe Bay, Smith found
the anchor stock, sails, booms, and spars of a Spanish ship
that had left Spain many years before, and had never been
heard from. Of the crew there is no record that he found
remains; probably they abandoned ship farther north.

While on shore for the record says Smith landed on the
Seal Islands some of his men pitched a tent, and the ship's
cat having been taken ashore, perhaps to cheer her up and
relieve her of a diet of rats, made the tent her headquar-
ters. Along came a penguin and discovered the cat, and they
made friends as was evident by the contented purrs of the
cat, probably because the penguin smelled fishy. Every day
the penguin went to sea to feed, and every day it came back.
Whether it brought its new friend a shrimp or two is not re-
corded. The sailors shut the tent door, but the penguin
crawled underneath the edge of the canvas. Anyone who
knows penguins and their curiosity will hardly doubt this
story. As for the cat, the penguin smelled good, and if pussy
had tried to claw that penguin she would have had the sur-
prise of her life, for a penguin can fight with beak and flip-
pers in a way to be respected by anyone.

The first known voyage by an American ship to the South
Shetlands has about it an aura of romance mingled with fact,
which is difficult to disentangle. In July, 1819, a few months
before Smith made his landing on the islands and surveyed
them for some distance, the brig Hersilia sailed from Ston-
ington, Connecticut, under the command of James P. Shef-
field. Her second mate was a young man named Nathaniel
Brown Palmer, whose exploits at sea are almost as legendary
as those of Crockett and Bowie on land. But Palmer is the
first one whose sighting of the Antarctic Continent can be
proved.

50 The Antarctic Ocean

The story of how the Hersilia reached the Shetlands is
worthy of any dime novel. The ship touched at the Falk-
lands, and then went in search of the Auroras, those islands
often reported and never found, but which were probably
the Shag Rocks. On the Falklands young Nat Palmer was
left to kill bullocks for provisions. While he was there, a
ship called the Espirito Santo came in from Buenos Aires,
and Palmer piloted her into the harbor and supplied her
with fresh meat. Before she sailed, the captain told Palmer
that he was on his way to a place where there were thou-
sands of seal, but would not say where it was. (This account
is based on a narrative by Mrs. Richard Fanning Loper,
late of Stonington, who was a favorite niece of Palmer, and
to whom he told many tales of his voyages.)

A few days after the Espirito Santo sailed, the Hersilia
returned, and young Nat told Sheffield that he could follow
the other ship. He did so, and discovered the crew of the
Espirito Santo killing seal. Far from being annoyed, the
British captain of the Spanish-named ship was so filled with
admiration at Palmer's astuteness that when his own ship
was filled, his crew helped fill the hold of the Hersilia.

Now, with all regard for the ability of Palmer, who was
one of the ablest men who ever sailed out of Stonington,
and who later commanded China clippers, that story is a
bit too romantic. It does not quite jibe with the fact that
the next year there were thirty American sealers in the South
Shetlands. If the Hersilia 3 's captain was the first American
sealer ever to learn of the South Shetlands, it is not likely
that he would have told thirty other sealing captains of his
good fortune.

Somewhere there must have been a Nantucket whaler in
the woodpile, or else a lot of sealers had a look at a crystal
ball that told them where to find new herds. Perhaps old
Captain Edmund Fanning had information that came to him
from some source unknown, for the Hersilia was owned by

Who Discovered Antarctica? 51

his brother, William, or perhaps an indiscreet whaler
dropped a hint. These possibilities sound much more plausi-
ble than the romantic story of Nat Palmer's following a ship
into unknown waters after three days and coming upon her
in a group of widely distributed islands. It is very easy to
miss a known landmark in the Antarctic.

That doubt about his tracking of the Espirito Santo, how-
ever, does not detract in the least from Nat Palmer's ac-
complishments. He came of tough, seagoing Yankee stock,
and it was not by chance that after he discovered the Ant-
arctic Continent, he went on to become a famous clipper
captain, and finally a member of his state legislature, and a
pillar of Connecticut society. He was a little more than six
feet tall, with light complexion and light hair, a powerful,
sinewy man, quick as a cat on his feet, and possessed of a
daring initiative that made him notable even on this first
voyage when he was only twenty years old. He came from
a town that was the greatest of sealing towns in New Eng-
land, and a famous shipbuilding center, Stonington, Con-
necticut.

He was born Aug. 8, 1799, the son of Nathaniel Palmer
and Mercy Brown. His father was a shipbuilder, and Nat
played in the yards where hulls were built of oak, and masts
and spars and ribs were shaped with thin axes in the old-
fashioned manner of the men who turned out some of the
fastest sailing ships that have ever graced the sea. Later Nat
Palmer designed ships himself and sailed them. It was natural
that in his home town he should have heard the story of
Edmund Fanning, of the 100,000 skins he had taken to Can-
ton in the Betsey.

They were tough folk, these Stonington men. They re-
joiced in the tale of how they beat off a British fleet in
the War of 1812, a fleet under the command of Sir Thomas
M. Hardy, Nelson's captain, to whom Nelson said, as he was
dying at Trafalgar, "Kiss me, Hardy."

52 The Antarctic Ocean

Hardy's fleet had been sent to blockade the mouth of
Long Island Sound, for blockade runners were bringing in
flour worth $7 to $14 a barrel. In August, 1814, Hardy at-
tacked Stonington with the 74-gun ship Ramilies, the 44-gun
frigate Pactolus, the 22-gun brig Despatch, and the bomb
brig Terror. There were 140 cannon against the two old
18-pounders and a 4-pounder that the Stonington men had
for their defense. The Terror threw 200-pound shells.
Rockets were thrown ashore to fire the town, and towns-
men calmly put them out. When Hardy's men tried to land,
the 18-pounders and a 4-pounder knocked the boats to
pieces. After three days the British gave it up. In Stoning-
ton one man had been killed, but no houses had been de-
stroyed, although fifteen tons of shells were picked up in
the town.

That was the kind of background Nat Palmer came from,
that and the tales of the whalers and sealers who put out
every year for the southern and Pacific hunting grounds.
Perhaps some can remember hair-seal trunks. A lot of those
skins came from Stonington. When Nat was fourteen, he
shipped on a coaster, and remained in this trade until he
became second mate of the Hersilia. It used to be said of
him that he could smell his way through a fog, and he had
that uncanny method of orienting himself at sea by dead
reckoning which is the heritage of only great sailors. His
trip on the Hersilia was profitable, for she brought back
10,000 skins, worth $2 each, and John R. Spears, Palmer's
first biographer (Colonel Lawrence Martin is now writing
a more detailed and accurate account of his life), estimates
that Nat's share was $560 for eight months' work, not bad
in those days.

It was only natural that Nat Palmer should have been a
member of the fleet that left Stonington the next year,
1820, for another trip to the South Shetlands. This time
he was Captain Nat, as he was to be known the rest of his

Map 2. Palmer was the first explorer who is known definitely to have sighted
the Antarctic Continent. Insert shows his voyage to the south.

54 The Antarctic Ocean

life, in charge of the sloop Hero, one of five ships in the
sailing fleet, all under the command of Captain Benjamin
Pendleton, master of the brig Frederick. The Hero was a
tiny vessel for such an expedition, only 44 tons, a little over
forty-seven feet long, sixteen feet ten inches in beam, and
drawing six feet nine inches. But she was handy for scouting
and ferrying sealskins. She required skillful handling in a
following sea, but although Captain Nat was then only
twenty-one he was an excellent sailor. The Hero carried
spare rudder braces and pintles, and 200 sheets of sheathing
copper.

Life was not easy on a sealer in those days. There was
no fire except for cooking; the inner walls of the ship dripped
continually in low latitudes from condensation due to the
cold temperature of the sea. The cabins were cold and
cheerless, and the only way to get warm was to get into damp
bunks and wait for body heat to do its duty. Crews were
often left on shore to get seals, and they lived on penguin
eggs and seal meat.

Even on the ship the food was none too good. It consisted
of hard navy bread, salt beef and pork, dried white beans
and peas, codfish, corn meal, corn, potatoes, dried apples,
rice flour, coffee, sugar, vinegar, mustard, tea, pepper, and
several barrels of rum and gin. The sealers, as many ex-
plorers since, liked tea and coffee in the cold weather, and
enjoyed the heart and liver of seals. It was a hard, rough
life that called for stamina and determination, and no or-
dinary landsman could have enjoyed it for a minute. But
these Stonington sealers went back year after year, daring
the fog and gales, the heaving pack ice, and the drifting
bergs, in small, damp ships that smelled to high heaven.

The Stonington fleet arrived at Presidents Harbor, on
the northwest tip of Friesland, or Livingston Island (some
day the changing place names of this part of the Antarctic,
discovered and rediscovered, named and renamed, will be

Who Discovered Antarctica? 55

cleared up) on Nov. 12, 1820. It was soon found that there
were no seals to be had, at a point where the Hersilia had
taken so many the season before. Two days later there was
a conference on the Hero, between Captain Pendleton, Cap-
tain Dunbar, and Captain Nat, and it shows how much con-
fidence was placed in Nat that his commanding officer should
have come aboard his small ship for the conference. Captain
Nat was apparently told to go and look for more seal islands.
There were five ships waiting for cargoes, with nary a seal
in sight. So he put off.

Apparently Captain Nat went through the strait between
Friesland and Snow Island, and turned south to Deception
Island, which he discovered, a volcanic island with a land-
locked harbor, where the water is sometimes so warm that,
as Captain Pendleton said, you could stand on the ice and
cook an, egg in the water. (The penguins seemed to like
the warm water, which may explain the migration of some
of them up the west coast of South America to the Gala-
pagos.) Captain Nat discovered this harbor on Nov. 15, and
that day climbed the hills overlooking Port Williams, as it
was known, although many have misnamed it Yankee Har-
bor, and saw land to the southward. His niece, Mrs. Loper,
recalls that he always had remarkable eyesight, and the
mountainous mainland only fifty miles away might easily be
visible on a clear day. So on Nov. 16, the next day, Captain
Nat wrote:

"Got underweigh; at 10 we were clear from the Harbor
stood over for the Land Course S by E % E Ends with fresh
Breezes and Pleasant/'

That logbook is now in the Library of Congress in Wash-
ington. It was bound with canvas by Captain Nat and the
canvas looks as fresh as the day he put it there. It was a
standard log, called The Seaman's Journal, Being an Easy
and Correct Method of Keeping the Daily Reckoning of a
Ship During the Course of her Voyage. There was a picture

56 The Antarctic Ocean

of a ship under sail, and the name of the printer and man
who sold it, Samuel A. Burtus, at his bookstore and "Lot-
tery Office," No. 19 Peck Slip, corner of Water Street, New
York. On the canvas cover Captain Nat drew in ink the
picture of a schooner under sail.

The handwriting is small and neat, and even at this day
easily read except where it is faded or has been worn by
handling. The spelling is fairly correct. Opposite the first
page is a list of places which Captain Nat apparently wished
to put down as places he discovered, including Deception
Island. The first entry is not on the first page, but at the
bottom of the cover page opposite, showing that he sailed
from Stonington on July 31, 1820. The first regular entry is
Aug. 1, which many have taken as the date of his departure.

There have been few manuscripts so carelessly read as
this of Captain Palmer's description of his voyage from De-
ception Island toward the "Land" to the southward. His
first biographer overlooks it entirely. The tiny Hero crossed
Bransfield Strait from Deception Island in about ten hours,
a distance of forty miles. The record for Friday, Nov. 17,
is as follows, the parts in brackets being the interpolations
of Colonel Martin:

"These 24 hours commence with fresh Breezes from SWest
and Pleasant at 8 P M got over under the Land [Trinity
Island] found the sea was filled with imense Ice Bergs at
12 [midnight on the calendar day of November 17] hove Too
under the Jib Laid off & on until morning at 4AM [on
the calendar day of November 18, 1820] made sail in shore
and Discovered a strait Trending SSW & NNE it was
Literally filled with ice and the shore inaccessible we thought
it not Prudent to Venture in ice Bore away to the Nothard
& saw 2 small islands and the shore every where Perpendicu-
lar we stood across towards friesland [Friesland or Smith's
or Livingston Island] Course NNW the Latditude of the

Who Discovered Antarctica? * 57

mouth of the strait was 63-45 S Ends with fine weather wind
at SSW."

Some very nice work was done to show that Palmer ap-
proached Trinity Island rather than the mainland on this
first course, as his course has been checked by the United
States Hydrographic Office, and the magnetic variations since
1820 were found to have been about 25 degrees east, the
basis for proving his course.

The strait he discovered was the Orleans Channel, lying
between the Antarctic mainland and Trinity Island. *The
compass directions he gives for the Channel leave no doubt
as to its position, for it is the only channel lying south-
southwest and north-northeast in that particular spot. His
reference to getting under the land undoubtedly refers to
getting under Trinity Island at the mouth of Orleans Chan-
nel. He must have seen the mainland, only a short distance
away and much higher than Trinity Island.

It appears conclusively that even though Bransfield came
very close to seeing the mainland, it was Palmer who actually
saw it. The day after he got under Trinity Island he made
sail for the shore and found it "inaccessible."

With young Captain Nat when he made this momentous
discovery were four men: Phineas Wilcox, the mate, twenty-
eight years old; Richard Fanning Loper, second mate,
twenty-one years old; Stanton L. Burdick, seaman, sixteen
years old; and Peter Harvey, seaman, a Negro, thirty-one
years old and the oldest man aboard. A tiny ship and a
youthful crew to discover such a continent, but Yankees
went to sea in those days as soon as they were big enough
to go aloft or tail onto a rope.

After looking over the "inaccessible" shores, where there
were no seal, and only a few sea leopards, Palmer sailed due
north. He saw two small islands, Ohlin and Tower Island,
which had been seen by Bransfield, and went on to find
Yankee Sound, now called McFarlane's Sound, between

58 The Antarctic Ocean

Friesland and Greenwich Islands. There also he discovered
Yankee Harbor, a fairly good anchorage, where there were
beaches covered with seal. Yankee Harbor has frequently,
and erroneously, been placed on Deception Island.

It was not long before the young captain of the Hero
was off on another cruise, after ferrying seals from the
beaches to the larger ships. Palmer was the handy man of
the fleet, but it was as their scout that he showed his ability
for getting in and out of strange waters, and finding new
lands. An old manuscript memorandum in the Library of
Congress containing quotations from the logbook of the
Frederick, Captain Pendleton's ship, mentions that "the
sloop Hero Capt. N. B. Palmer Sailed to Eastward to look
for more seal Is'ds," on Jan. 14, 1821. The memorandum
continues: "same log book says on Jany 28th/21 [1821] 6
A M the sloop came in after examining North East and
South West to their satisfaction for seal found none." So
laconically did Captain Pendleton record the second voyage
of exploration of the Hero, a voyage even more remarkable
than the first, and lasting only two weeks.

There are almost no records of anything except weather
in the logbook of the Hero for this period, for master as
well as crew were all standing watch, and as they were sail-
ing in unknown and treacherous waters, they were interested
only in navigation and seals. But from a number of sources
there has been put together in fairly convincing form a rec-
ord that indicates that Palmer sailed down the coast of the
land that bears his name, inside Anvers Island, the Biscoe
Islands, and Adelaide Island, and to Marguerite Bay in 68
degrees south.

If only he had left a map of his course. He may have made
one, and even made more extensive notes than are found
in the log of the Hero } for the house in Stonington contain-
ing many of his records burned down years ago, and it is
only by good fortune that the Hero's log survives. That he

Who Discovered Antarctica? 59

probably did make notes and a chart is indicated by an-
other remarkable story worthy of the Palmer saga. Indeed,
there are so many extraordinary things ascribed to young
Nat Palmer that one almost hesitates to record them. This
one is confirmed in several ways. The oldest published ac-
count of it is in Farming's Voyages, and as Fanning was a
Stonington man and had an interest in Pendleton's fleet,
and also must have been a companion of Palmer when both
men were ashore, his version must be given credence.

"On the Hero's return passage to Yankee Harbor she
got becalmed in a thick fog between the South Shetlands
and the newly discovered continent, but nearest the former/'
wrote Fanning. "When this began to clear away Captain
Palmer was surprised to find his little barque between a
frigate and a sloop of war, and instantly run up the United
States' flag; the frigate and the sloop of war then set the
Russian colors. Soon after this a boat was seen pulling from
the commodore's ship for the Hero, and when alongside,
the lieutenant presented an invitation from his commodore
for Captain Pendleton [he means Palmer] to go on board;
this, of course, was accepted. These ships he then found
were the two discovery ships sent out by the Emperor Alex-
ander of Russia, on a voyage round the world.

"To the commodore's interrogatory if he had any knowl-
edge of those islands then in sight, and what they were,
Captain Pendleton replied, he was well acquainted with
them, and that they were the South Shetlands, at the same
time making a tender of his services to pilot the ships into
a good harbor at Deception Island, the nearest by, where
water and refreshments such as the island afforded could be
obtained; he also informing the Russian officer that his
vessel belonged to a fleet of five sail, out of Stonington,
under command of Captain B. Pendleton, and then at anchor
at Yankee Harbor, who would most cheerfully render any
assistance in his power.

60 The Antarctic Ocean

"The commodore thanked him kindly, 'but previous to
our being enveloped in the fog/ said he, 'we had sight of
those islands, and concluded we had made a discovery, but
behold, when the fog lifts, to my great surprise, here is an
American vessel apparently in as fine order as if it were
but yesterday she had left the United States; not only this,
but her master is ready to pilot my vessels into port; we
must surrender the palm to you Americans/ continued he,
very flatteringly.

"His astonishment was yet more increased when Captain
Palmer informed him of the existence of an immense ex-
tent of land to the south, whose mountains might be seen
from the masthead when the fog should clear away entirely.
Captain Palmer, while on board the frigate, was entertained
in the most friendly manner, and the commodore was so
forcibly struck with the circumstances of the case, that he
named the coast then to the south Palmer's Land; by this
name it is recorded on the recent Russian and English
charts and maps which have been published since the return
of these ships.

"The situation of the different vessels may be seen by the
plate; they were at the time of the lifting of the fog and its
going off to the eastward, to the south, and in sight of the
Shetland Islands, but nearest to Deception Island. In their
immediate neighborhood were many ice islands, some of
greater and some of less dimensions, while far off to the
south, the icy tops of some two or three of the mountains
on Palmer's Land could be faintly seen; the wind at the
time was moderate, and both the ships and the little sloop
were moving along under full sail."

This account, published in 1833, and despite its minor
errorsfor which Fanning is famous undoubtedly relates
one of the strangest encounters of ships at sea. The Russian,
of course, was Admiral Bellingshausen, who had circum-
navigated the continent, passed within the Antarctic Circle

Who Discovered Antarctica? 61

several times at points not crossed by Cook, and who had
discovered Alexander I Land and Peter I Island. His ac-
count of his voyage has never been translated in its entirety,
but a German summary of it shows that Bellingshausen
mentions his meeting with Palmer. Palmer also told the
story years later in Hong Kong, and through the years it
was embellished with more and more conversation and
flowery words until the later versions would lose their au-
thenticity if it were not for earlier confirmation.

For this reason the writer prefers Fanning's account, crude
as it is. Some of the accounts, such as the one where Bellings-
hausen is quoted as saying: "What shall I say to my master?
What will he think of me? But be that as it may, my grief
is your joy; wear your laurels with my sincere prayers for
your welfare. I name the land you have discovered in honor
of yourself, noble boy, Palmer's Land," make Palmer sound
like a pompous ass or a Horatio Alger hero, which he cer-
tainly was not. Krusenstern, the famous Russian geographer,
put Palmer Land on his map as the result of this meeting.

The battle of the maps and memorandum as to whether
Bransfield or Palmer first saw the mainland will go on for
some time.

Unfortunately for Bransfield his log is not in existence,
and it is difficult to prove his case from the contemporary
accounts. They indicate that he saw land and I do not be-
lieve they were faked, having an allergy for that word after
its reckless use in this controversy. At least one eminent
geographer in this country believes that Bransfield saw
Trinity Island, and if it were clear enough for him to do
that, only a miracle, one of those Edgar Allan Poe fogs,
could have kept him from seeing the much higher main-
land, separated by four miles from Trinity Island.

But Nat Palmer's log is in existence, and no one can
read it dispassionately without coming to the conclusion
that he is the first recorded discoverer to see land south and

62 * The Antarctic Ocean

east of Trinity. We don't know about Bransfield; we do
know that Palmer stood over for the "Land." And in view
of his record, he simply could not help discovering land and
harbors, even though all he was interested in was seals. So
Palmer Land it is, although another name was to be given
to it later.

The Merchant Discoverers

THERE are few men in the history of polar explora-
tion who have been more vilified with less reason
than James Weddell, son of a Lanarkshire uphol-
sterer.

Much has been made of WeddelFs temperamental early
career. He entered the merchant marine, got into a dispute
with his captain and knocked him down, which is mutiny
in any language. So he was turned over to the Royal Navy,
and eventually became a master. After Waterloo the size of
the British navy was reduced and Weddell was glad to take
command of the brig Jane, of 160 tons, in which he sur-
veyed the South Shetlands and rediscovered the South
Orkneys, and also searched vainly for the elusive Aurora
Islands, which have never yet been found. He came to the
conclusion that the Spaniards who reported the Auroras
had seen some rock-discolored bergs -such as Weddell had
seen himself aground on the Shag Rocks. It is as good a
theory as any.

Before going on with Weddell it would be well to make
a point that has always seemed inconsistent with the vitu-
perations of some of those who write polar history. It has
been asserted, and not mildly, by some American chroniclers
that Weddell was a liar in claiming to have reached 74
degrees 15 minutes south in the sea that bears his name,
because no other ship has ever penetrated that far in the
longitude that Weddell claimed.

It so happens that on either side of this longitude both
Shackleton and Filchner have gone much farther south than

63

64 The Antarctic Ocean

did Weddell. Shackleton lost his ship; Filchner was luckier
and did not. But the mere fact that Weddell is the only
man of credibility who penetrated the Weddell Sea to 74
degrees south in the longitude he gives is no reason for im-
pugning his veracity. As a matter of fact, his severest critic
is one who is ten degrees out in his record of the longitude
of Weddell's course to the south.

But that is beside the point. Anyone who lays down a
hard and fast rule about ice conditions, either in the Arctic
or the Antarctic, is laying himself open to some vigorous
counterattacks. For instance, it is common knowledge among
polar explorers that ice conditions on the east coast of Green-
land vary so greatly from year to year that no ship captain
can predict just how far north he can get.

When Cook first stuck a bowsprit over the pack ice near
the Ross Sea in the Antarctic, he found it much farther
north than it has been in this century, and so heavy that
he did not attempt to enter it, and nobody can say that
Captain James Cook was timid. And yet, later explorers have
been able to find their way through that pack in a few
hours.

When I was with the first Byrd expedition in the Ant-
arctic, it did not seem possible that any sailing ship could
get through the heavy and wide pack in time to get us out
in February of 1930, and it was only by extraordinary luck
and good seamanship that the old wooden ship did buck
her way south and escape foundering. On the way north a
few days later we passed through heavy pack by the good
fortune of finding a strait through the ice, with the wind at
our stern, although the pack was then badly broken up. We
could probably have gotten out without much difficulty
even if that river through the ice had not been found. But
Weddell is accused of lying when he says that he found open
water at 74 degrees 15 minutes south, which is a lot farther
north than Little America.

(Wide World)
Plate 3.-Adclie penguins. "What shall we do about these people?"

(Wide World)
Plate 4. The magnificent emperor penguins, somewhat curious.

The Merchant Discoverers 65

The Weddell Sea does have a bad reputation. No ship
has ever been able to push through the pack to the shelf
ice and lie there with immunity, as is possible in the Ross
Sea, on the other side of the continent. The currents in
the Weddell Sea move in such a way that a ship is much
more apt to be caught and crushed than in the Ross Sea.
But there are years in all polar seas when the ice disappears,
when either currents or the wind or an unusually warm
summer dissipates it.

Apparently 1823 was one of these seasons, for Edwin Swift
Balch, an American who did some valuable research on
early Antarctic exploration nearly forty years ago, says that
1823 was the most open season in the annals of the Ant-
arctic, and that was the year which Weddell put on his
chart for his farthest south. In his narrative he says it was
in 1822, which seems improbable from a context that was
rather vague as to dates. As for Weddell's own reputation,
we can quote an American, Captain Benjamin Morrell one
of the most vainglorious seafaring men of his time, but
whose egoistic vaporings make his appreciation of his Eng-
lish rival all the more worth while that he knew Weddell
as:

"A most excellent officer, and a highly worthy man: justly
extolled as an active, correct and enterprising navigator.
Being familiar with danger in its most appalling form, every
emergency finds him cool, steady and undaunted. He is, in
short, an honour to his country and to human nature. I
speak with confidence, for I know him."

There is also the tribute of his Commander on the Avon
brig in 1812, afterward Admiral of the Fleet, Sir George
Sartorius, who said of him in 1839 that he considered Wed-
dell "one of the most efficient and trustworthy officers I
have met with in the course of my professional life." And
a portrait of Weddell in the Royal Geographical Society
showing a man with a firm, sensitive mouth, luminous eyes,

66 The Antarctic Ocean

and a broad intelligent forehead, does not look like the pic-
ture of anyone who would deliberately invent a voyage, no
matter how preposterous it may seem to others who have
attempted vainly to follow his track.

It would not be necessary to support Weddell in this
manner if he had not been subject to such bitter attack
from other sources without definite knowledge of what ice
conditions were in the Weddell Sea in 1823. If one studies
the map of the American Geographical Society, it will be
seen that the pack-ice outlines within and beyond that sea
vary tremendously. Balch, from some investigation he prob-
ably made in logs of American sealers and whalers, found
that 1823 was an open year, Ross, D'Urville, and Nordens-
kjold all tried in later years to follow WeddelFs track with-
out success.

It may be recalled that Shackleton went to the Bay of
Whales in the Ross Sea on his first expedition to the Ant-
arctic as leader, and gave up any thought of landing because
ice was fast in the bay for twenty miles inland. Also he found
that a huge piece of the barrier that he had observed when
there with Scott's first expedition had broken off, which did
not speak well for the stability of the barrier. Later, Amund-
sen, who reached the South Pole from the Bay of Whales,
found the bay also closed but cruised off it for a day or two
until the ice all went out. He crowed a bit at his perspicacity,
but when Byrd went there on his first expedition the ice
did not go out of the bay either in the first summer season
or the second. On his second expedition it went out much
farther, and the basin on the barrier on which the first camp
stood broke loose and moved up and down within the cir-
cumscribing ice, a happening that had taken place before,
as was all too obvious to those of us who went down into
the circular crevasse around the basin of floating ice at the
time of the first expedition. When Ellsworth went to the
Bay of Whales, the entire bay broke up without warning

The Merchant Discoverers 67

and his plane was so badly damaged that he had to abandon
any thought of flying that year. So one never knows.

Because of these varying conditions it seems unfair to
call Weddell a liar when one was not on his ship.

He was a careful observer, and in his narrative of his
southern journey to the farthest latitude yet reached, he is
meticulous in noting ice formations. One of the largest
seals in the Antarctic is named for him, and he brought back
to England the first specimen of the sea leopard to be studied
scientifically in Europe. Since he has been accused of "fak-
ing," it might be interesting to quote a reproachful para-
graph from his book, in which he regrets not finding "South
Iceland" in 63 degrees 21 minutes south latitude and 45
degrees 22 minutes west longitude. South Iceland was the
name originally given by the Yankee sealers to the South
Shetlands, which are much farther north, but somebody had
placed their position in the spot where Weddell searched
for them. There were many grave discrepancies in those
days. Said Weddell:

"It is much to be regretted that any man should be so
ill-advised as to propagate hydrographical falsehoods, and
I pity those who, when they meet with an appearance that
is likely to throw some light on the state of the globe, are
led through pusillanimity to forego the examination of It.
But the extreme reluctance I have to excite painful feelings
anywhere, restrains me from dealing that just censure which
is due to many of my fellow seamen who, by negligence,
narrow views of pecuniary interest, or timidity, have omitted
many practicable investigations, the want of which continues
to be felt by the nation, and more especially by merchants
and ship owners."

It is probable that Weddell was talking about English-
men, not Americans, and although his reproach is pontifical
and somewhat pompous and self-righteous, it seems to this
reader, at least, that it is the expression of a man who was

68 * The Antarctic Ocean

not fundamentally a fraud. Out of some experience with
explorers I have come to the conclusion that although they
may repress much, they seldom invent anything. There are
a few notorious exceptions to that generalization which
prove the rule, but the average explorer of reasonable in-
telligence knows that geography will eventually catch up
with him.

Weddell was out for seals primarily, and so when he
found that the South Orkneys did not yield many, he went
south for land, hoping to find a new sealing ground that
would enable him to fill his ships quickly. By Jan. 27, 1823,
he had gone southeast of the South Orkneys to 65 degrees
south, but not finding any land he turned north again in
the hope that if he did find a new island he would be able
to get all the seals he wanted. And thereby James Weddell
probably missed his greatest opportunity, for if he had kept
on south he might have found his open sea, and he would
have had enough provisions to keep going much farther
than he could go later. But he turned north, when there
was no land to be seen, and sought land between the Ork-
neys and Sandwich Land. He didn't find any.

In his wanderings about 61 south he had found heavy ice,
although he was only 100 miles from land, and he con-
cluded that Captain Cook was right when that master ex-
plorer decided that field ice is formed only near land. This
had a strong effect on his later push to the south. "Had I
not known/' said Weddell, "of the existence of South Shet-
land, I might have fallen into the commonly received error,
that this ice proceeded continuously from the South Pole."

The two little ships wandering around in the fog, partly
in the twilight gloom of the approaching winter, made
heavy going. They often hove to at night or in fog because
Weddell wanted to make sure that he did not miss an island.
He was once called on deck by the second officer who re-
ported breakers, but Weddell concluded that the "breakers"

Map 3. Weddell penetrated farther south than any other man before his
time, and Biscoe and Balleny added to the outline of the land.

70 The Antarctic Ocean

were merely the spouts of whales in the ghostly fog, and
when the air cleared there was no land in sight.

Once he saw what looked like a rock, and the lead was
cast without finding bottom. The rock turned out to be a
dead whale. Spots are deceiving in the Antarctic; there is
nothing quite so eerie as a south polar fog over a sea filled
with ice. All this time those on the two tiny ships were
looking for seals. Whenever they thought they saw land, it
turned out to be icebergs, which Weddell called "ice is-
lands."

On Feb. 1, 1823, he was in 58 degrees 50 minutes south
latitude, 38 degrees 51 minutes west longitude, and after
conferring with Matthew Brisbane, captain of the Beaufoy,
a cutter, Weddell turned southeast. He offered ten pounds
to the man who would first sight land, and they reported
fog banks, clouds, and icebergs. Sometimes, in order to
make sure the lookout was wrong, Weddell would sail
through a bank of black fog.

Weddell gave up any hope of finding land to the east
of the Orkneys and determined to go due south. It was not
so momentous a decision as might have been expected, for
the ice was not heavy. There were dense fogs and gales and
wet decks, and the men had colds and rheumatism. The
cookstove was put below decks on the Jane to warm the
ship and enable the men to dry their clothes, and Weddell
issued three wineglasses of rum a day.

Once the Jane almost rammed an iceberg in the fog.
Weddell found that the best way to get around icebergs
was to windward, because the wind blew the smaller, dis-
integrating pieces to leeward. A rock was sighted, but it
turned out to be an iceberg, its north side full of black earth.
That encouraged Weddell in his belief that land must be
near.

On Feb. 11, at 65 degrees 32 minutes south, he found
that the current had set the ships to the north and west,

The Merchant Discoverers 71

which surprised him as the usual current in the Antarctic
he had found to be to the east. However, he was merely
anticipating later explorers, who also found this north and
west current, a fact that might help to substantiate Wed-
dell's story. On the eighteenth the weather was "remarkably
fine/' Both thermometers had been broken, but he did not
think it was colder than it had been at 61 degrees south in
December.

"Not a particle of ice of any description was to be seen."

(Weddell put that in his book in large type to emphasize
it. It might at least be taken as indicating his own surprise,
but most of his critics do not comment on the fact.)

"The evening was mild and serene, and had it not been
for reflections that probably we should have obstacles to
contend with in our passage northward, through the ice, our
situation might have been envied."

On the twentieth it was clear, with a fresh south wind,
which, had he known it, was from the cold land he was
seeking.

"The atmosphere became very clear [and this confirms
his position, as clear air almost always follows a strong wind
from the ice-covered Antarctic], and nothing like land was to
be seen. Three ice-islands were in sight from the deck and
one other from the mast-head. On one we perceived a great
number of penguins roosted. Our latitude at this time, 20th
February, 1822 [obviously a misprint for the correct year,
1823] was 74 degrees 15 minutes, and longitude 34 degrees
16 minutes 45 seconds; the wind blowing fresh at south,
prevented what I most desired, our making further progress
in that direction. I would willingly have explored the S. W.
quarter, but taking into consideration the lateness of the
season, and that we had to pass homewards through 1,000
miles of sea strewed with ice islands, with long nights and
probably attended with fogs, I could not determine other-

72 The Antarctic Ocean

wise than to take advantage of this favorable wind for re-
turning.

"I much regretted that circumstance had not allowed me
to proceed to the southward, when in the latitude of 65 de-
grees, on the 27th of January, as I should then have had
sufficient time to examine this sea to my satisfaction.

"Situated however as I actually was, my attention was
naturally roused to observe any phenomena which might
be considered interesting to science. I was well aware that
the making of scientific observations in this unfrequented
part of the globe was a very desirable object, and conse-
quently the more lamented my not being well supplied
with the instruments with which ships fitted out for dis-
covery are generally provided."

It is submitted that that statement does not sound like
the expression of a man who would deliberately fake a voy-
age. His little ships were not fitted out to withstand a winter
in the ice; they were hardly suitable for such an adven-
turous plunge into unknown waters. The crew was bitterly
disappointed at not finding land or seals, and Weddell tried
to cheer them by firing a salute, hoisting the colors, and
serving out extra rum. The sea was named after King George
IV, but the name has been changed to the Weddell Sea, and
that it still remains on the maps is some indication that there
are those, even in this country, who do not completely be-
lieve that Weddell made it all up.

The ships made their way back to South Georgia, and
then to the Falklands, where they spent the winter. In
October, 1823, they sailed for the South Shetlands, and en-
countered heavy pack ice in 62 degrees south. When they
sighted the islands, late in the month, they were hit by one
of those terrific Antarctic gales which come up without warn-
ing and coat the ship with ice. Everything movable was swept
overboard, the deck, bulwarks, and rigging became a solid
mass of ice, the rudder was frozen fast, and ice on the fore-

The Merchant Discoverers 73

castle and bowsprit and martingale brought the ship down
so far that she could hardly rise above the seas. (The same
thing happened to Byrd's ship, the City of New York, on
its trip south to bring out the members of the first expedi-
tion. Ships can be sunk by accumulated ice.) The crew of
Weddell's ship did not have good clothing; what they had
started with was worn-out, and the captain parted even
with his blankets to make stockings for his men. But they
weathered the storm, despite many injuries, and after giving
up the struggle to reach the South Shetlands, they made their
way to Cape Horn and the islands off Tierra del Fuego,
where they found some seals before sailing for England.

Weddell, like other navigators of the period, believed
that there was a large land mass somewhere south of the
South Shetlands. He sketched a vague Trinity Land, and
put down the edge of a continent south of the Shetlands,
which he called "South Shetland." Palmer Land was then
on some charts also. That he did not find the continent, and
that other discoveries overlapped and have since been dis-
puted, is not surprising when his voyage is weighed im-
partially. There wasn't much known then about the Ant-
arctic Continent; some farsighted seamen believed that it was
there, but even those who had sighted its fringes did not
know what they had found. James Weddell should go down
in history as a man who did his best under grave difficulties,
and had a most astonishing bit of luck, luck for which he
has been abused ever since. And luck plays a big part in
polar exploration.

There is a corner of the Antarctic in the Indian Ocean
sector, about due south from Madagascar, called Enderby
Land. Probably few people know anything about it or how
it got its name. But it has the distinction of being named
after one of a small group of men like the American Captain
Fanning and the English Enderby Brothers who were in-

74 The Antarctic Ocean

terested in more than whale oil and sealskins. Not that they
would pass up a dollar or pound that came their way, but
they also felt that when they were in unknown waters they
owed something to geographical knowledge.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century the ships
of Enderby Brothers sailed into far southern latitudes.
Charles Enderby was an original Fellow of the Royal Geo-
graphical Society in 1830 and was interested in its work for
forty-seven years. As a result of this interest in scientific
work the Enderbys chose their ship captains partly for their
education and training, many of them being ex-naval officers.
They were instructed to do more than hunt seals, and that
if they saw something that might be of value to the world,
and particularly to Britain, to record it. As a result these
ships sailed on what were voyages of exploration as much as
profit, and frequently the pecuniary returns were much less
than the intangible but valuable bits of information brought
back.

One of the Enderbys' captains was a retired master in
the Royal Navy, named John Biscoe, whose name is still on
Antarctic charts. He sailed from England in 1830 in the
brig Tula, accompanied by a fifty-ton cutter, the Lively, for
experience had proved that these small ships were useful
in scouting along the edge of the ice where a larger vessel
might get into danger. Perhaps the Hero of Captain Palmer
was the first of these little ships to go south, but they became
a part of every expedition for a time. Biscoe found his
cutter, however, a decided handicap because it was always
getting lost and was finally wrecked.

Biscoe's entire first voyage was beset with difficulties and
dangerous encounters with the ice, as well as storm. The
full fury of the Antarctic was let loose on his small ships,
occasionally for three or four days at a time, and he escaped
wreck by miracles. After attempting vainly to reach the Sand-
wich Islands through fields of ice where the ships scraped

The Merchant Discoverers 75

over sunken pieces, Biscoe gave it up and headed to the
eastward, beating against the wind.

On Jan. 22 he crossed the Antarctic Circle in 1 degree
east, and altogether he sailed for nearly fifty degrees within
the Circle. On Jan. 28 he reached his farthest south, 69
degrees south in 10 degrees 43 minutes east, and was then
within a comparatively short distance of the coast. But he
did not see it.

Close to land and in the edge of the pack ice as he was,
he frequently had narrow escapes, one of which he describes:

"At 6 p. m., while standing to the southward, we sud-
denly, on the weather clearing up, found ourselves com-
pletely beset with large pieces of drift ice. The helm was
immediately put down, and by the careful management of
the sails we were enabled to pass through two large pieces,
of about the size of our hull, which showed under the bows
just as the headyards were hauled, the vacancy between
just sufficient to admit the vessel through; the cutter being
a short distance astern, avoided the danger."

One never knows what will pop out of an Antarctic fog.
I remember moving slowly for hours in the half-light of
an Antarctic night, shrouded in fog, huge pieces of drift
ice looming up occasionally on either side, in as eerie an
atmosphere as can be imagined. It was like moving through
some ice-strewn puragatory, where nothing lived or moved
except our two ships feeling their way slowly along. The
feeling of helpless isolation is indescribable. A cold, dead,
ice-cluttered sea. But that is the common portion of all, at
some time or other, of those who go down to the Antarctic
in ships, and they are fortunate if it is not blowing a gale
at the same time, with a blizzard instead of fog.

Biscoe held on to the east, sometimes in severe gales,
with weather so thick that he could not see chunks of ice
until they were nearly aboard, any one of which might have
sunk him, and seas breaking over his vessel and coating it

76 The Antarctic Ocean

with ice. On Feb. 28, after two days of storm, they were
able to make to the southward, and from latitude 66 degrees
south and longitude 47 degrees 20 minutes east, he saw some
black mountain summits standing above the snow.

For two days the ships tried to make their way through
pack ice and bergs, and Biscoe named a prominent head-
land, undoubtedly land, Cape Ann. Before it could be
reached, however, another storm broke, the cutter disap-
peared, boats were swept away, the bulwarks smashed, and
the crew were so worn-out by cold that they could hardly
hold to the ropes. The brig finally drove with the wind, and
for five days faced disaster. When the hurricane ended, one
of those storms that so often arise viciously out of the high,
snow-covered continent, the Tula was a wreck, and had
been driven 120 miles.

Biscoe tried to get south again, and did once more sight
Cape Ann, but his crew were exhausted. Several of the men
had lost the use of their legs from scurvy. Summer was over,
the air rapidly getting colder, and the ship was covered with
ice, both hull and ropes. He had stuck it out until Apr. 4,
much later than any ship should stay in those latitudes. On
the twenty-sixth only one member of the crew was able to
stand, and the ship was worked by the captain, the two
mates, a boy, and the one seaman. But finally the Tula
dropped anchor off Hobart Town in Tasmania, where Biscoe
met the cutter Eliza, in command of Captain Weddell.

The Lively, cutter, was separated from the Tula by storm
but remained in the high latitudes until the ship's company
was reduced to Captain Avery, one seaman, and a boy with
an injured hand. They landed not far from Melbourne, and
the cutter drifted away and was found washed ashore two
weeks later.

The stouthearted Biscoe was not dismayed by these mis-
adventures, however. In October, 1831, the two vessels were
at sea again, repaired and remanned. It speaks well for the

The Merchant Discoverers 77

hardihood of sailors that after two such crippled ships should
come into harbor, other men would be found eager and
willing to sail in them again to such bitter seas. There was
always the possibility of large profit from sealing, and when
have seamen ever failed to long fo'r an adventure!

This time Biscoe spent three months sealing off the coasts
of New Zealand and the Chatham and Bounty Islands. On
the way home Biscoe stood to the southward to look for
land west and south of the South Shetlands. It is one of the
oddities of this early exploration that explorers seldom knew
what their predecessors had accomplished. It was partly, of
course, because sealers kept their own counsel as to lands
they found, but it was also partly due to faulty means of
communicating scientific and geographical achievements. In-
ternational jealousies, both scientific and commercial, pre-
vented the communication of new discoveries. Biscoe was
sailing for the land previously seen by Palmer and, probably,
by Bransfield.

On Jan. 28 they were south of the 60th degree of latitude
in 131 degrees west, and Biscoe experienced for the first
time that extraordinary fall of the barometer that occasion-
ally takes place in the Antarctic. It went down to 27.30
inches, which would mean a hurricane almost anywhere
else, and it must have been watched with anxious eyes aboard
the Tula and the tiny cutter. But, as so often happens, the
gale did not take place. The ships went on, sometimes being
forced to the north by ice, but always turning south again,
and finally at 78 degrees west longitude, where Bellings-
hausen had turned north after finding Peter I Island and
Alexander I Land, Biscoe found open water to the south-
east, another indication of how greatly conditions may vary
from season to season.

Biscoe sighted land in 67 degrees south and 72 degrees
west, and it was called Adelaide Island, which name it still
bears. Later high mountains were seen to the southward, and

78 The Antarctic Ocean

a row of islands known as the Biscoe Islands were passed.
Again he saw high mountains to the south, and judged them
to be part of a mainland, in which supposition he was cor-
rect, as that promontory has been proved since to be main-
land. He went ashore on an island, and thinking it part of
the mainland, which it might have been, he gave it the
name of Graham Landa designation that has caused head-
aches for map makers for many years. But H. R. Mill, that
extremely fair English chronicler, whose narrative has been
of great help, says:

"As a matter of historic justice, it seems to us that Powell's
name of Palmer Land ought to be retained for the whole
group of islands, and possible continental peninsula south
of the South Shetlands, Graham Land might well be re-
stricted to the southern part of Adelaide Island, and the
other names be fixed to definite members of the group." In
which expression Mr. Mill shows himself to be a far more
objective commentator than some of his successors.

Biscoe returned to be awarded the second gold medal
presented by the Royal Geographical Society, and although
not much money was made from the sealing, the brothers
Enderby were well satisfied. He remained in the service of
the company and made other voyages, attempting several
times to push through the pack ice south of New Zealand,
which again shows his remarkable instinct for discovery, for
it was there that the greatest gateway to the Antarctic was
finally opened.

Biscoe came to some queer conclusions as to the forma-
tion of ice on the sea, believing that even the large bergs
could have been thus formed, and he seems to have felt
that ice forming on the sea extended all the way to the pole,
although he conceded that there might be land at some
points that held it together. But the exploit of John Biscoe
takes an honorable place in Antarctic annals, and by his
persistent driving south through seas that would have

The Merchant Discoverers 79

daunted a less fearless man, he was undoubtedly the first
to see the continent in the Indian sector. And when one
considers that Cook was driven back there, that is enough
glory for any man.

Then came a cruise of another of these daring sealer-
explorers that for the first time placed land within the
Antarctic Circle south of New Zealand. The Enderbys, not
discouraged by financial loss due to their skipper's interest
in exploration, sent out John Balleny in the schooner Eliza
Scott 3 accompanied by the inevitable cutter, the Sabrina,
commanded by Captain H. Freeman. They sailed from the
Thames on July 16, 1838, on a voyage that overlapped
some other momentous voyages in the Antarctic.

Balleny stopped at New Zealand, and after some difficul-
ties with his crews, sailed south, lying to for a time in a
harbor on Campbell Island, that wind- and rain-swept bit
of land south of New Zealand, where a few men still live
every year herding sheep. It is lush and green in the summer
season, but it drips dampness and the cold winds of the
southern seas sweep over it in the winter. There, by chance,
he met John Biscoe, and probably talked with him of Biscoe's
former trip on which he had sighted Enderby Land and
barely escaped destruction.

From there Balleny headed south, and as luck would
have it he went as far as 69 degrees south latitude in 172
degrees east longitude, which has been found to be fairly
near the best point for pushing through the ice pack to the
Ross Sea. If the ice had been broken that season, as it has
been since then, it is possible that Balleny, instead of Ross,
would have discovered the gateway to the Antarctic. How-
ever, he was stopped by heavy pack, and he coasted along
it to the westward where it brings up against the northern
cape of South Victoria Land. Late in the season the pack

80 * The Antarctic Ocean

is frequently open here near the land, but Balleny was a
little too early in the year.

On Feb. 9 the overcast sky cleared and Balleny found
himself at 164 degrees 30 minutes east longitude, not far
north of what we know now as South Victoria Land. He
was just north o the Antarctic Circle, and in the southwest
there was a dark spot that appeared to be land. A course
was set for it, and in the evening, while only five miles away,
it showed up as five large, high islands, with two smaller
ones.

The next day the Eliza Scott got within a mile of the
middle island, but it was so beset with ice that no landing
was possible. One of the mountains on what is known as
Young Island was 12,000 feet high, and on some of the
mountains smoke appeared, indicating that they were vol-
canoes. Everything that has been learned of them since shows
their volcanic origin. The ice came down sheer to the water,
and there was not a bay or a cove where a landing could
be made.

Further to the west Balleny again sighted land, between
the Balleny Islands and Enderby Land, which he called
Sabrina Land and which was undoubtedly part of the main
continent. He also saw a large iceberg with a huge block
of stone embedded in it, which indicated to him that it
came from land to the southward. Soon after, Balleny set
his course northward, but ran into a terrific gale in which
the cutter Sabrina was lost. It was becoming obvious that
these small vessels, valuable as they were for scouting, were
not large enough or strong enough to withstand the punish-
ment of icy Antarctic storms. Those that were lost were
probably sunk by accumulations of ice, or rammed bergs.

Balleny's discovery of the islands that bear his name
marked the end of adventure combined with sealing, which
had added so much to Antarctic knowledge. In the greater
accomplishments of larger expeditions, fitted out by gov-

The Merchant Discoverers 81

ernments, the feats of these hardy seamen in craft that now
appear so inadequate for the purpose have been somewhat
eclipsed. But they have the honor that pioneers deserve,
and it was because of their curiosity and unflagging courage
that men became once more interested in that Terra Aus-
tralis Incognita which had intrigued the ancients.

The sealers had proved that there was land in these
strange, frozen waters. How great was its extent they did
not know. There were some, as shall be seen, who still
thought they might sail to the South Pole on open seas.
But a new era in Antarctic exploration was about to open,
a glorious period, when the magnificent size of that vast
region was to be disclosed.

Beginning of the Golden Age

THE actual proof that there was an Antarctic Conti-
nent was not due to the thrusts southward of sealers,
but to a determined assault on its barriers by three
nations, France, the United States, and England, of which
the latter two were the most successful. Three expeditions,
one from each of these countries, were backed by the re-
sources of their respective governments in the six years from
1837 to 1843. The Balleny expedition was an attempt by
private individuals to do that which their government
seemed reluctant to do. But it must be remembered that
until these national expeditions headed south, there was
no definite knowledge of what lay within the Antarctic
Circle.

True, Palmer had glimpsed the land that is claimed for
him on the charts; so in all probability did Bransfield sight
Trinity Land. Bellingshausen had sighted islands, and Bis-
coe had found Enderby Land, which is a part of the main
land mass. But all their efforts had not yet confirmed the
existence of a continent. The mere fact that Ross, in 1840,
after crashing through the ice pack guarding the sea that
bears his name, thought he might be able to sail to the
South Pole, indicates how fragmentary was their knowledge.
Even Wilkes, the American explorer of the same period,
had no idea that he might sight a shore that suggested a
vast mainland behind it. When these thre expeditions
sailed, their commanders had no more idea than Palmer
that the land he had sighted was the most extraordinary
land mass on earth.

82

Beginning of the Golden Age 83

But the constant pecking away at the fringes of this con-
tinent, the sighting of land at widely separated points, had
aroused the curiosity of all the great geographical societies.
It was beginning to be realized that what the sealers had
stumbled upon might be one of the two greatest discoveries
left for man to make on this globe. (The other was the in-
terior of Africa.) Even if the land sighted consisted merely
of islands holding in place a great belt of ice with open
water toward the pole, the entrance into that "silent sea"
would be a magnificent achievement. Weddell's voyage did
much to stimulate the imagination of geographers, for his
record seems to have been widely accepted in those days.

There was another impelling motive for the resolution
to learn what lay beyond the Antarctic Circle, The hitherto
haphazard science of terrestrial magnetism had been reduced
to a formula by the famous German physicist Gauss, who
after laborious calculations had predicted that the Southern
Magnetic Pole would be found somewhere near the latitude
of 66 degrees south and longitude 146 degrees east. He was
a bit out, but when one considers that nothing was known
of the Southern Magnetic Pole at that time from actual ob-
servation, he was very near to its constantly changing posi-
tion.

The determination of lines of terrestrial magnetic varia-
tion was most important because of rapidly increasing mari-
time commerce. The influences on the needle vary all over
the world, and there are few places where it points con-
stantly in the same direction. Even the magnetic poles shift
their positions. The North Magnetic Pole had been located
by James Clark Ross, and so the Southern Magnetic Pole
was literally a lodestone that fascinated the minds of scien-
tific men in the early decades of the last century, and the
desire to locate it had great effect upon the progress of Ant-
arctic exploration.

There is nothing more dramatic in all the history of

84 The Antarctic Ocean

exploration than the nearly contemporary and progressive
southward penetration of D'Urville, Wilkes, and Ross, which
culminated in Ross's sailing parallel to a great range of
mountains tending to the south, in the discovery of a live
volcano covered with snow, and in the looming out of the
sea of that 200-foot rampart of shelf ice that barred Ross's
path to the pole.

It does not matter much who saw the mainland first.
D'Urville and Wilkes were within a few days of each other,
Ross a year later. The fact remains that these disconnected
expeditions each contributed much to the knowledge of
Antarctic geography, and laid the foundation for the solid
work to be done later by men better equipped because of
what had been bequeathed to them by their predecessors.

It was not coincidence that these three great expeditions
went south at approximately the same time. For years the
need for more extensive research in the southern hemisphere
had been recognized by the British scientific societies. In
the United States and France this effort to gain a fuller
knowledge of the Antarctic was justified only because it
might be a part of Pacific exploration, which was the major
task of both D'Urville and Wilkes. But the British expedi-
tion was definitely aimed at the South Magnetic Pole.

It was unfortunate that the three expeditions could not
have been coordinated, but national jealousies and varying
purposes made that impossible. The result was wasted effort
as well as misunderstandings and recriminations between
the leaders of the expeditions. This is the more regrettable
because they were men of similar interests, each one of them
capable of appreciating the others' abilities.

"When one looks at the records of D'Urville, Wilkes, and
Ross, there is not much to choose between them. They were
daring mariners, primarily interested in scientific research,
and men who would normally be generous in the estimates
of their rivals. But each had an unholy temper and was

Beginning of the Golden Age * 85

quick to yield to it, which caused a good deal of the ensu-
ing trouble. But, alas, this quibbling is all too common
among explorers; there are few Darwins or Wallaces among
them. They lack the contemplative detachment of the scien-
tist, and if they had it they would probably never get any-
where.

An explorer with the name of Jules Sebastien Cesar Du-
mont D'Urville should have been a romantic. One would
like to picture him standing in the weather rigging crying
out, "Damn the icebergs, go ahead." But D'Urville didn't
like icebergs. He was more interested in the flora and fauna
and people of the Pacific islands, and the ice rather bored
him. He was interested in magnetism, which led him into
an unfortunate controversy. Probably few people know, also,
that it was D'Urville's ecstatic comment on a newly un-
earthed Greek statue that led to France's acquiring the
Venus de Milo for the Louvre.

D'Urville made two long voyages of scientific exploration
in the Pacific before his Antarctic venture, on one of which
he discovered the wreck of La Perouse's lost ships, and re-
covered many relics. So voluminous were the scientific notes
of this second voyage that, with the narrative, they filled
twenty volumes. He was not a superficial worker. After the
revolution of 1830 he had the duty of taking King Charles X
from France to Scotland.

After a period of enforced retirement, during which time
he was so poor that he was compelled to cancel his subscrip-
tion to the Paris Geographical Society, which he helped to
found, he again proposed a voyage to the Pacific to complete
his ethnological and anthropological studies. The plan was
approved, and it was also suggested by King Louis-Philippe
that D'Urville go to the Antarctic in an attempt to surpass
WeddelPs southern record, D'Urville consented reluctantly
to this modification of his plan, thinking it impracticable.

86 The Antarctic Ocean

He sailed from Toulon on Sept. 7, 1837, with two cor-
vettes, the Astrolabe, which D'Urville commanded, and the
Zelee, under the command of Captain Jacquinot. The ships
were not fitted to withstand the ice, and the admirable
sketches of these men-of-war with their towering tumble-
home sides pierced with gun ports, and their lofty masts,
shows how unsuitable they were for polar work. But D'Ur-
ville did not intend to stay long in the ice if he could help
it. He himself was in poor health, as he had gout, and his
sailors laughed as he limped down to his ship and said, what
H. R. Mill translates freely, "Oh, that old chappie won't
lead us very far." D'Urville heard them and determined to
take them a lot farther than they wanted to go. Even if the
Antarctic did not appeal to him so much as his Pacific islands,
he was a doughty seaman.

After surveying Magellan Strait for a time, D'Urville set a
course for the south in an attempt to repeat Weddell's voy-
age. On Jan. 22, 1838, he reached the edge of the pack in
the Weddell Sea at 63 degrees 39 minutes south, and 44 de-
grees 47 minutes west. The ice was heavy, and D'Urville did
not get near the Antarctic Circle although the two ships
cruised about looking for an opening for nearly two months.
They were often hemmed in by the pack and by icebergs,
and were frequently beset by storms.

D'Urville's failure to make any considerable southing
caused him to disbelieve Weddell's story, which is not aston-
ishing in the circumstances. He did, however, see land in
63 degrees south, part of the same land seen by Palmer and
Biscoe, although farther to the east, and named it Louis-
Philippe Land. An island to the northeast was named Join-
ville Land, and present-day maps show a small island that
bears the name of D'Urville.

Two years were spent in the Pacific, and then he decided
to make one more attempt to reach a southern latitude. By
this time he knew that Wilkes and Ross were both heading

80

20 WEST LONGITUDE Q

SOUTH , v
AMERICA A^\^,

S.ORKNEYS-i:

0*)

D'URVILLF
JAN. 1838

LOUIS PHILIPPE"
.x.-" LAND

SOUTH
POLE

JAN.20/
1840/

\O

/

SCALE OF MILES

EAST LONCtTUOE

ISO

140

12

Map 4. D'Urville, French explorer, discovered a bit more of the Antarctic.

88 The Antarctic Ocean

toward the Magnetic Pole, and although his instructions con-
tained no orders to enter those regions, and to encroach upon
another explorer's territory is open to criticism, he wanted
France to have a greater share of Antarctic laurels. On Jan. 1,
1840, the ships sailed from Hobart Town, and D'Urville set
his course southeast in order to sail south along the line of
no magnetic variation.

After passing the Antarctic Circle he had such open water
that he hoped to reach 70 degrees south. The weather was
perfect, the sun shining on a few icebergs of apparently re-
cent birth, and with many penguins and seals in sight. On
Jan. 20 a number of officers thought they saw land to the
south, and late at night when the sun was on the southern
horizon there appeared a sharp outline ahead of what was
undoubtedly land.

The next day there was not a breath of wind, and D'Ur-
ville could see land stretching on either side as far as the
eye could reach. It was dead level, apparently 3,000 or 4,000
feet high although later found to be about 1,500 feet
without a trace of rock. The shore line was a vertical cliff of
ice, which led to the conclusion that the icebergs so recently
passed must have broken off from it. A breeze came up and
the ships coasted eastward along the face of the icy rampart
only a few miles away. On every side as they moved along
were tremendous bergs, which at times came too near the
ship for comfort.

While magnetic observers were working on the foot of a
near-by iceberg, a bit of rock was discovered near the shore.
Two boats put off, one from each ship, and that from the
Astrolabe reached the small rock island first. It was one of
eight or ten a few hundred yards from the clifflike shore of
ice, and inhabited only by penguins. However, there was no
doubt in D'Urville's mind that behind that rocky island was
a land mass hidden by ice and snow, extending for some dis-
tance east and west and inland. He named it Adelie Land

Beginning of the Golden Age 89

after his wife, and the little penguins of the Antarctic are
known as Adelie penguins.

For two days more the ships coasted along the icy cliffs,
and then were hit by one of the sudden and terrific storms
that are not infrequent in that part of the Antarctic. Sir
Douglas Mawson, who wintered there, said that at times the
wind must have reached a velocity of nearly 200 miles an
hour. The Astrolabe lost her mainsail, and both ships nar-
rowly escaped collision with the drifting bergs, but they
weathered the gale. The weather remained bad, the ideal
days they had had for so long did not return, and there were
fogs, which make navigation along the edge of the pack very
dangerous.

It was on the twenty-ninth, in thick weather, that another
ship was sighted, a brig flying the American colors, and D'Ur-
ville rightly assumed that it was one of Wilkes's vessels. It
was the Porpoise. The French flag was raised, and as the
American ship was closing fast D'Urville gave orders to make
sail so as to keep up with her and speak to her.

The commander of the Porpoise, however, thought that
the Astrolabe was trying to run away, and turned to the
south, vanishing in the fog. D'Urville later said that he
wished nothing more than to exchange greetings and learn
what the other expedition had been doing, but Wilkes's
comments on the meeting annoyed him, as they well might.
D'Urville assumed that the Americans wished to avoid con-
tact and remain secretive about their movements. Of course,
this was not the fact; it was one of those ridiculous misun-
derstandings that breed bad feeling out of nothing. Lieuten-
ant-Commander Ringgold was captain of the Porpoise, and
he made the following report to Wilkes:

"At 4h 50m, being within a mile and a half, the strangers
showed French colors: the leeward and sternmost displayed
a broad pennant: concluded now that they must be the
French discovery ships under Captain D'Urville, on a similar

90 The Antarctic Ocean

service with ourselves: desirous of speaking and exchanging
the usual and customary compliments incidental to naval
life, I closed with the strangers, desiring to pass within hail
under the flag-ship's stern. While gaining fast, and being
within musket-shot, my intentions too evident to excite a
doubt, so far from any reciprocity being evinced, I saw with
surprise sail making by boarding the main tack on board the
flag-ship. Without a moment's delay, I hauled down my
colors and bore up on my course before the wind."

Evidently Ringgold was a touchy person. He took it for
granted that D'Urville would know that his intention was
to pass under the stern within hailing distance, and also that
when D'Urville made sail it was for the purpose of running
away instead of keeping alongside. Neither of them thought
of making a signal, or waving, or even trying to hail the
other. A man in the rigging with a trumpet would have
made the intentions of each quite obvious. But the worst
construction was placed upon the incident on both sides,
and Wilkes wrote:

"It is with regret that I mention the above transaction,
and it cannot but excite the surprise of all that such a cold
repulse should have come from a French commander, when
the officers of that nation are usually so distinguished for
their politeness and attention. It was with no small excite-
ment I heard the report of it, that the vessels of two friendly
powers, alike engaged upon an arduous and hazardous serv-
ice, in so remote a region, surrounded with every danger
navigators could be liable to, should meet and pass without
even the exchange of common civilities, and exhibit none
of the kind feelings that the situation would naturally
awaken: how could the French commander know that the
brig was not in distress or in want of assistance? By refusing
to allow any communication with him, he not only com-
mitted a wanton violation of all proper feeling, but a breach

Beginning of the Golden Age 91

of the courtesy due from one nation to another. It is difficult
to imagine what could have prompted him to such a course."

All that because no signal was made. Even a musket fired
in the air would have been enough. Of such trifles is dissen-
sion born.

D'Urville saw more ice cliffs in 64 degrees 30 minutes
south and 131 degrees east, similar to those of Adelie Land,
and decided that the ice must rest on land or rocks, or a
shoal. However, an ice pack barred their way. D'Urville felt
that he had done enough in the Antarctic, and on Feb. 1,
1840, he started north and returned to France. The little
islets in front of the ice cliffs of Adelie Land were all the
actual land he had seen, but he was right in his assumption
that land must lie under the domed ice behind them.

Wilkes Finds a Continent

h "flHERE is no doubt that Charles Wilkes was one of

I the greatest explorers the United States has produced.

JL But it is equally true that most of his fellow country-
men have never heard of him.

He was the first to prove that the Antarctic was a conti-
nent, not a series of ice-locked islands, and the tracks of his
ships on the Pacific look like a cobweb. His expedition origi-
nated with one of the most fantastic theories of the earth
ever held by man, and resulted in the establishment of the
Smithsonian Institution. He took a ridiculed expedition to
sea for four years of investigation that put the United States
on the map scientifically, and came back to be court-mar-
tialed. It was ninety years after his expedition returned that
his disputed claims were proved to be correct, and that he
was shown to have been a daring and original explorer. His
whole career as an explorer is a paradox.

There has been more fuss and pother about Wilkes's voy-
ages in the Antarctic than over any other polar expedition
that ever set sail. Even the Peary-Cook controversy is mere
gentle raillery in comparison. The disputations over Palmer's
discoveries were based merely on the element of time, but
Wilkes was accused of inventing landfalls. There is a vast
difference. But, after making all allowances for possible er-
rors of observation all too frequent in the polar regions,
it is hard to understand why a man who claimed to have
coasted along nearly 1,500 miles of ice-covered land, who
was supported by most of his officers and by reasonably ac-
curate observations, should have been so bitterly criticized
by his contemporaries and those who followed him.

92

Wilkes Finds a Continent 93

His task was most difficult. When "The United States Ex-
ploring Expedition," to give it its official name, put to sea
for a four years' cruise in 1838, it had come to be regarded
with ridicule. Harley Harris Bartlett, before the American
Philosophical Society at the time of the Wilkes Centenary,
referred to the "lunatic fringe*' of the expedition's back-
ground. And it is true that it had been put together in an
atmosphere of distrust, controversy over objectives, squab-
bles for control, that would have made it notorious even if
it had not originated in one of the weirdest conceptions of
the earth ever held by mankind.

The chief promoter of the expedition in its early stages
was Jeremiah N. Reynolds, whose memorials to Congress ad-
vocating an Antarctic and Pacific expedition gave little indi-
cation of his imagination and impetuous temperament.
Reynolds first became known as a supporter of Captain John
Cleves Symmes, Jr., who wanted Congress to send an expedi-
tion south to prove that the earth was made of five concen-
tric spheres, with a hollow core and polar openings so wide
that a voyager "might pass from the outer side of the earth
over the rim and down upon the inner side a great distance
before becoming aware of the fact at all." No wonder Edgar
Allan Poe, who was fascinated by polar travels, grasped this
idea for one of his famous stories. But it is a matter for even
greater wonder that some members of Congress were in-
fluenced by it.

Reynolds later disavowed this odd theory, which is really
ages old, but his former lectures on the subject caused him
to be looked upon somewhat dubiously by naval officers, and
it was probably one of the reasons for his being refused a
part in the expedition that he did so much to get under
way. What the Stonington sealers thought of it can well be
imagined. Many a chuckle must have gone up over the stove
on a winter's night when Symmes's theory was discussed. As
a matter of fact, when the expedition was finally beginning

94 * The Antarctic Ocean

to take form, Reynolds wanted it confined to the Pacific, as
he had in his impatience gone to the Antarctic with Stoning-
ton sealers and had seen enough of it.

However, for all his queer notions, and his dream of world
empire for the American flag, it was because of Reynolds's
insistence that the Committee on Naval Affairs of the House
of Representatives authorized an Antarctic expedition in
1828. Reynolds was asked to gather data from whalers and
sealers and he reported among other things:

"That they have been beyond 70 S. latitude in a few in-
stances, in which latitude they experience moderate weather,
a clear sea, and no land or ice to the south. [About 240 miles
north of Weddell's latitude, and the same conditions de-
scribed. Either they confirmed Weddell in certain seasons,
or the old ideas would not die. There was no other place
than the Weddell Sea at that time where the Stonington men
could have gone so far south. If some of them had only left
accurate records!] They all agree that the ice to be met with
is first formed and attached to land, and that the greatest
impediment to navigation from ice will be found from 62
to 68 S., except in those meridians where they have not
been able to go far south at any time. They have seen lands
to the east of the Shetlands, but give no account of the ani-
mal or vegetable productions on any of them."

This was a most provocative report, sufficient to tempt
any nation into sending ships into that misty and little-
known region. It suggested that south of 68 degrees there
might be an open sea, the sea that Weddell had reported,
and beyond that possibly the pole it$elf, a mathematical spot
in an icdess ocean. But although it is probable that Reynolds
had come around to the theory of an open sea enclosed by
ice, held long before his time, the approaches to that ocean
no longer had much attraction for him.

He had slipped on icy decks, skirted bergs in the fog, had
laid to in the midst of grinding cakes of ice in the night, and

Wilkes Finds a Continent 95

had been isolated for a time on an island, an experience so
striking that he wrote an account of it. His thoughts now
lay more in the direction of the warmer Pacific, the coral
islands, and the whaling grounds, where American whalers
needed the protection of the flag, and where there was an
almost limitless field for geographical research, and also the
opportunity to make himself one of the vanguard of those
pursuing "national glory." From science he had turned to
aggrandizement.

After his trip to the Antarctic, Reynolds kept pounding
away at Congress and the Navy Department, with emphasis
on the Pacific, and in 1834 preparations were again made to
send out an expedition. In 1836 Congress appropriated
|300,000, and it seemed probable that Reynolds would go as
head of the civilian scientific corps. But his constant acri-
monious letters to Secretary of the Navy Dickerson, letters
published in The New York Times over the nom de plume
"Citizen," led Reynolds to be dropped from any connection
with the expedition. In these letters he continually dwelt on
the latter part of his report that told of the dangers of navi-
gation for whalers in the Pacific and the great service this
country could play in surveying there, and deprecated any
attempt to penetrate high latitudes to the south.

Most of Wilkes's work was done in the Pacific, an accom-
plishment that places him second only to Cook in his ex-
plorations there. Why Reynolds should have turned so
quickly from his first desire is hard to understand, except
that he felt more "national glory" was to be achieved in a
region where exploration was not so constantly dangerous
and uncomfortably cold.

When the appropriation was first made, several ships were
selected for the service and Commander Thomas Ap Catesby
Jones was appointed to the command of the expedition.
Lieutenant Charles Wilkes was sent to Europe to purchase
instruments; there was so much confusion attending the out-

96 The Antarctic Ocean

fitting of the expedition that he paid $1,167.50 out of his
own pocket for part of the instruments, and promised to
pay $3,248 for the others. Eventually, he had to apply to Con-
gress for the money.

(In the same way Captains Benjamin Pendleton and Na-
thaniel Palmer had to ask Congress for money to defray the
expenses of the expedition on which they took Reynolds
south, an expedition to which the Government felt it had
been committed by its instructions to Reynolds. Whether the
sealers brought home a cargo also is somewhat prob-
lematical.)

Matters drifted along until in February, 1837, Congress
asked when the expedition was going to start. Secretary Dick-
erson said that the vessels were required for urgent naval
purposes, and finally it was announced that the appropria-
tion was exhausted although nothing had been accomplished.
It seems apparent that Dickerson was never enthusiastic
about the expedition. Commodore Jones resigned. Other of-
ficers were offered the command and refused it. The expedi-
tion was so tied up in politics by this time and so far from
being ready that it was a public joke, if not a scandal. Fi-
nally, the expedition was turned over to Secretary of War
Poinsett and Secretary of the Navy Paulding, who succeeded
Dickerson, and the command was offered to Wilkes, who ac-
cepted it after certain conditions were met.

This rather lengthy preamble is necessary to show the cir-
cumstances that led to the appointment of Wilkes, and the
unhappy state of the expedition when he took command. As
he said himself:

"The successive resignations of the different officers who
had been appointed to the command, led everybody to look
upon it with disgust, and, in consequence, my road was clear,
or comparatively unembarrassed. The very things that
brought the Expedition into general disrepute, were of great

(Wide World)
Plate 6. Mt. Erebus, the only known live volcano in the Antarctic.

'

Wide World)
Plate 7. One of the original inhabitants looks over an intruder.

Wilkes Finds a Continent 97

advantage to me, for I was left to perform my duties un-
molested."

In other words, there were few who expected anything of
this pretentious venture into the unknown, and expecting
the worst most people were glad to disavow any connection
with what might very probably turn out to be a fiasco.

The choice of Wilkes was fortunate. There was probably
not another man in the navy better qualified to lead a scien-
tific exploring expedition; for out of Reynolds's vaporings
had come what he really had wanted originally, a scientific
voyage, not one to advance the flag.

Charles Wilkes was born in New York City on Apr. 3,
1798, and entered the navy as a midshipman in 1818. After
two cruises and promotion to lieutenant he was assigned to
the Naval Depot of Charts and Instruments, now the Hydro-
graphic Office. He had a naturally scientific mind, and is
said to have constructed the first observatory in this country.

He was a determined, courageous man, a stern disciplinar-
ian, and somewhat conceited and hot-tempered. Living with
him amicably on board a ship must have been difficult, and
there is no doubt that he often had disagreements, and even
quarrels, with other officers and the civilian scientists. He
himself hints at a distinct disciplinary crisis while at Orange
Harbor "in Tierra del Fuego, when he expresses "surprise,
even at this distant day, that any officers embarked in this
undertaking could have so far lost sight of their duty as to
attempt to throw obstacles in the way of the prompt execu-
tion of the duties they owed to the country, and the service
on which they were engaged, or would have allowed selfish
feelings to predominate over those for the public good.
Prompt and energetic action soon put an end to these small
difficulties."

Although the civilian scientists of the expedition did work
that has since been recognized as outstanding, Wilkes seems
to have resented their presence, even if he did not look down

98 * The Antarctic Ocean

upon them. Neither the French nor the British expeditions
could boast a similar group, for outside o Dr. Joseph Dalton
Hooker, Ross had no eminent men of science with him.
Wilkes's motives were not altogether contemptuous, for,
proud of his service, he wanted to show that naval men could
be good scientists and he wished to trust as much of the scien-
tific work to them as possible. Wilkes himself insisted that
the meteorological, hydrographical, and terrestrial magnetism
observations be made by officers. He wrote the meteorolog-
ical and hydrographical reports himself. But his attitude to-
ward the distinguished and intelligent men of his scientific
staff is shown by the fact that he himself says that he re-
frained from telling them anything as to his instructions,
or what his immediate plans were. Such a condition does not
make for harmony.

The scientific staff consisted of Horatio Hale, philologist;
Charles Pickering, naturalist; Titian Ramsey Peale, natural-
ist; Joseph Pithy Couthouy, conchologist; James Dwight
Dana, geologist; William Rich, botanist; William D. Brack-
enridge, horticulturalist; Joseph Dray ton and Alfred T.
Agate, artists. Many of these men became leaders in their
fields, and Dana, in particular, was one of the most notable
American men of science.

But the only ones to whom Wilkes pays tribute by name
in the introduction to his narrative are the artists, possibly
because of the disputes with the scientists which continued
long after the expedition returned, during the period when
the results were being tabulated. He does, however, com-
mend them for their "perseverance, industry, zeal, and strict
conformity to the rules and regulations laid down for the
government of us all," although "the essential objects of the
Expedition . . . were entirely unknown to them."

When Wilkes took charge of the expedition he found it in
a deplorable state. The men had been in service for a long
time without shore leave, although in sight of their homes,

Wilkes Finds a Continent * 99

and they were also disgruntled at being placed under the
command of a new and younger set of officers. Wilkes im-
mediately gave them shore leave, and to his delight they
returned to a man.

He found great quantities of stores, but the squadron had
been so reduced that there was difficulty in determining
what to ship and what to leave behind. The clothing for the
men to be used in the Antarctic was later found to be un-
suitable and not up to sample, due, Wilkes believed, to the
fault of contractors and inspectors both. Some of his requisi-
tions for essential things were ignored until he demanded
them. And the ships were not all in good condition.

The squadron consisted of the sloop of war Vincennes,
780 tons; sloops of war Peacock, 650 tons; the Porpoise, a
gun brig of 230 tons; the tenders Sea Gull and Flying Fish,
New York pilot boats, of 110 tons and 96 tons, and the
Relief, a store ship. Wilkes had another deck put on the
Vincennes for the protection of the men. The other ships
were in fair condition with the exception of the Peacock.
Her upper works were rotten, and she leaked like a sieve at
the beginning of the cruise. Some of her yards were also
rotten, and her pumps were in miserable condition. Appar-
ently she had not been overhauled at all in the navy yard,
and Lieutenant William H. Hudson, her commander and
second-in-command of the expedition, said of her:

"Taken as a whole, the Peacock has been fitted out (so
far as the navy yard was concerned), with less regard to
safety and convenience, than any vessel I have had anything
to do with."

But despite all these discouragements Wilkes decided that
for the honor of the country and the navy he must put to
sea. He received his sailing orders on Aug. 17, 1838, and the
next day the squadron made sail for Madeira. Said Wilkes:

"It required all the hope I could muster to outweigh the

100 * The Antarctic Ocean

intense feeling of responsibility that hung over me. I may
compare It to that of one doomed to destruction/*

Not a very cheerful point of view for a man about to lead
82 officers and 342 enlisted men into the most perilous waters
on earth, on a voyage that would last for four years. But
Charles Wilkes was not to be daunted or depressed by diffi-
culties for long. A less determined man could not have car-
ried out his mission.

With the cruise to Madeira and from there to Tierra del
Fuego we are not so much concerned. And Wilkes's first
thrust into the Antarctic was not important, except to show
him how badly his men were outfitted for polar seas. The
Peacock and the Flying Fish were ordered to go to the west-
ward toward Cook's farthest south, Ne Plus Ultra, as far as
possible, while Wilkes joined the Porpoise, and with the
Sea Gull pushed southward to Palmer Land. On the first
leg of their voyage Wilkes had an opportunity of measuring
the famous Cape Horn seas, which proved to be about thirty-
two feet high, traveling at the rate of twenty-six and a half
miles an hour. No wonder a high sea, which has about the
impact of granite, causes such havoc even on a modern steel
ship.

They did not leave Orange Harbor until Feb. 23, and the
season was much too late for successful exploration along the
Antarctic coast. They met mist and fog, sleet and snow and
rain, which coated the decks of the ships and so thickly sur-
rounded the ropes with ice that they would hardly pass
through the sheaves.

It became difficult to work the ships, and the southern
passage was abandoned, although Wilkes reached Palmer
Land. The smaller pilot boats were frequently in difficulties,
the men constantly suffering from exposure, and on several
occasions they found themselves surrounded by ice floes that
were freezing together and through which they barely forced
a passage by ramming. The Porpoise was nearly wrecked on

(20

20 WEST LONGITUDE

SOUTH
POLE

'\

V WILKES

1

\0
\f

^

CAST. UIIMUTUCW

MO

Map 5. Wilkes, American explorer, traveled 1,500 miles along the coast,
sighting it at intervals, and established that it was a continent.

102 * The Antarctic Ocean

Elephant Island, saved only by a momentary rift in the fog
that showed the desolate coast just ahead of them. It was
not a propitious start, and Wilkes and his crew must have
turned north up the west coast of South America, a voyage on
which the Sea Gull was lost, with many misgivings about
what their fate would be the next year when they pushed
south again.

After nearly a year spent in the Pacific, Wilkes went on
to Sydney, Australia, to refit. Inasmuch as it was known
then that James Clark Ross, a navigator of experience in
Arctic waters, was about to take out a thoroughly prepared
expedition to the Antarctic, the ships of Wilkes were the
subject of much curiosity. The Australians did not think
much of them.

"They inquired, whether we had compartments in our
ships to prevent us from sinking? How we intended to keep
ourselves warm? What kind of antiscorbutic we were to use?
and where were our great ice-saws? To all of these questions
I was obliged to answer, to their great apparent surprise,
that we had none, and to agree with them that we were un-
wise to attempt such service in ordinary cruising vessels; but
we had been ordered to go, and that was enough! and go we
should. This want of preparation certainly did not add to
the character for wisdom of our government . . . but they
saw us all cheerful, young, and healthy, and gave us the
character, that I found our countrymen generally bear, of
recklessness of life and limb , . . Altogether, as a gentleman
told me, most of our visitors considered us doomed to be
frozen to death. I did not anticipate such a fate, although I
must confess I felt the chances were much against us, in case
we were compelled to winter within the Antarctic."

Particularly disturbing to Wilkes was the condition of the
Peacock. Captain Hudson had reported to Wilkes:

"I feel it my duty to state to you . . . that the Peacock's
sheer-streak, to which the channels are bolted and ports

W ilkes Finds a Continent 103

hung, is perfectly decayed, fore and aft, and that all the
stanchions of the upper-deck bulwarks, are either rotten, or
in an advanced state of decay. Against these defects, however,
I feel it my duty to contend, without anticipating anything
but favorable results, but at the same time prepared for the
worst that may occur/'

Hudson's report was mild compared with that of his car-
penter, for the carpenter said that the stanchions supporting
the bulwark on the spar deck were much decayed, "and with
the exception of three or four of them, are unsafe, and not
able to support the rail and boats attached to it, under any
thing more than ordinary circumstances,"

The captain of the Peacock was an unusually brave man.
Wilkes was disturbed, also, but there was no time to make
the necessary repairs. Here is an opportunity for a just criti-
cism of Wilkes. He knew the condition of the Peacock be-
fore he left home, and he could easily have detached her
from the squadron in time to have the necessary repairs
made before the southern cruise. He was a stubborn man,
determined to carry out his orders, and he did not take this
precaution. Only by good fortune and the skill of Hudson
was the ship saved when it got into a dangerous jam in the
ice.

"We made up our minds," said Wilkes, "that it was abso-
lutely necessary for the credit of the Expedition and the
country for her to perform it [the southern cruise]; for we
were well satisfied that improper imputations and motives,
would be ascribed to us, if she did not, and was detained
undergoing repairs, in a state of inactivity, during the sea-
son for operations in the high southern latitudes. The neces-
sity I felt of subjecting so many lives in so unworthy a ship,
caused me great anxiety during the whole cruise."

That was an outcropping of what has been called by one
critic of the military services the "institutionalized mind."
Wilkes could have forgotten his orders for a few weeks, and

104 The Antarctic Ocean

given Hudson the opportunity to refit the Peacock properly.

His squadron set sail on Dec. 26, 1839, and steered south.
All hands tightened ports to secure the interior from damp-
ness as much as possible, although this cannot be done in a
wooden ship in cold latitudes. Water drips down the sides
in a constant cascade. Even a wooden ship with a boiler and
engine in it will sweat inside when in polar seas, and what
it must have been like in these thin-sided vessels with only
stoves to keep out the damp, can best be imagined. The
openings were calked, the seams covered with tarred canvas,
and strips of sheet lead nailed over all. Additional stoves
had been bought in Sydney, and thermometers were hung
up to help provide an equable temperature of about 50 de-
grees. There were four ships in the squadron, the Vincennes,
Peacock, Porpoise, and Flying Fish.

On Jan. 16, 1840, the Porpoise, Vincennes, and Peacock
were near each other, and all saw signs of land to the south-
ward. It was not pack, but a high mountainous and jagged-
land. The sky was clear and the sides of the peaks partly
bare. Wilkes made a sketch of a height that he called Ring-
gold's Knoll. The next day the ship was tacking through an
obscuring fog, going fast with the wind in a rough sea, when
suddenly there was silence, no roll to the ship and the star-
tling feeling that one had run into a harbor that could not
be seen. It could only be a bay of ice. Said Wilkes:

"The feeling is awful and the uncertainty most trying thus
to enter within the icy barrier blindfolded as it were by an
impenetrable fog ... yet I was satisfied that nothing could
be gained but by pursuing this course. On we kept, until it
was reported to me, by attentive listeners, that they heard
the low and distant rustling of the ice: suddenly a dozen
voices proclaimed the barrier to be in sight, just ahead."

Somehow the ship wore around in the thick gloom, the
waves lapping audibly on the ice close at hand, only to be
headed again by ice. Time after time, in the darkness of the

W ilkes Finds a Continent 105

Antarctic twilight that passes for night at that time of year,
the maneuver was repeated and the ship finally made its
way out of the long arms of drifting ice that were enclosing
it.

On the nineteenth, Wilkes was sure that he saw land to
the southeast and southwest; high land, rising against the
horizon, which later, in view of greater knowledge, came to
have importance. From the Peacock the land seemed to tower
3,000 feet in height behind an ice island, "gray and dark/'
Wilkes called this land Cape Hudson, and it is now known
on the charts as Cape Freshfield.

It was on the day when Wilkes discovered Cape Hudson
that Captain D'Urville found land, probably at Piner's Bay,
and the priority would go to the Frenchman if it were not
for the fact that he had failed to add a day to his log when
he crossed the 180th meridian. That has been made much of
by American commentators because it put D'Urville some
hours behind Wilkes.

The only difficulty is that D'Urville actually saw rock,
while Wilkes saw a mirage, as has been pointed out by one
of the severest critics of English discoverers, William H.
Hobbs, Professor Emeritus of Geology at the University of
Michigan. Professor Hobbs, who is not only distinguished in
his own field of geology, but who has added much to the
science of meteorology in the northern hemisphere, and who
has made polar investigation a meticulous hobby, has ex-
plained Wilkes's discovery of Cape Hudson by refraction,
which will be explained later.

They came to a field of disintegrating icebergs.

"Some of the bergs were of magnificent dimensions, one-
third of a mile in length, and from one hundred and fifty
to two hundred feet in height, with sides perfectly smooth,
as though they had been chiselled. Others, again, exhibited
lofty arches of many-colored tints, leading into deep caverns,
open to the swell of the sea, which rushing in, produced

106 * The Antarctic Ocean

loud and distant thunderings. The flight of birds passing in
and out of these caverns, recalled the recollection of ruined
abbeys, castles, and caves, while here and there a bold pro-
jecting bluff, crowned with pinnacles and turrets, resembled
some Gothic keep.

"A little farther onwards would be seen a vast fissure, as if
some powerful force had rent in twain these mighty masses.
Every noise on board, even our own voices, reverberated
from the massive and pure white walls. These tabular bergs
are like masses of beautiful alabaster: a verbal description
of them can do little to convey the reality to the imagina-
tion of one who has not been among them. If an immense
city of ruined alabaster palaces can be imagined, of every
variety of shape and tint, and composed of huge piles of
buildings grouped together, with long lanes or streets wind-
ing through them, some faint idea may be formed o the
grandeur and beauty of the spectacle."

The ships moved westward and on the twenty-fourth the
Peacock got into a mess that very nearly sunk her. It will
be remembered that her upper works were rotten and that
she had not much resistance to ice. She had put into a bay
in the ice in an attempt to approach closer to the land,
which was distinctly seen the same Cape Hudson seen on
the Vincennes by Wilkes.

An attempt to box the ship off from some ice under the
bow put her aback; the ship went astern and crashed into
another mass of ice that canted her rudder so badly as to
make it unserviceable. It could not be moved. All hands
were called, and attempts to handle the ship only by her
sails proved impossible. A stage was rigged over the stern,
and it was found that the rudder could be repaired only by
unshipping it.

"In the meantime the position of the vessel was every in-
stant growing worse, surrounded as she was by masses of
floe-ice, and driving further and further into it, towards an

Wilkes Finds a Continent 107

immense wall-sided iceberg. All attempts to get the vessel
on the other tack failed, in consequence of her being so
closely encompassed, and it was therefore thought expedi-
ent to attempt to bring her head around, by hanging her to
an iceberg by the ice anchors, and thus complete what had
been partially effected by the sails. The anchor was attached,
but just at that moment the hawser was passed on board,
the ship took a start so suddenly astern, that the rope was
literally dragged out of the men's hands before they could
get a turn around the bits.

"The ship now drove stern foremost into the midst of the
huge masses of ice, striking the rudder a second time. This
blow gave it the finishing stroke, by nearly wringing off the
head, breaking two of the pintles, and the upper and lower
brace."

Then the wind began to freshen. Spars were rigged up
and down the ship's sides as fenders. Boats tried to take the
ice anchors to the ice and plant them and finally succeeded.
But the ice closed in, grinding and crushing and carrying
away the fenders, and the wind kept rising. Finally, the ice
anchors broke loose and the ship drove sternward toward an
ice island. The ship struck quartering on a piece of ice be-
tween it and the ice island, and then went stern foremost
and struck with her port quarterlarboard it was called
thenwith a "tremendous crash/'

"The first effect of this blow was to carry away the
spanker-boom, the larboard stern-davit, and to crush the
stern-boat. The starboard stern-davit was the next to receive
the shock, and as this is connected with the spar-deck bul-
warks, the whole of them were started; the knee, a rotten
one, which bound the davit to the taffrail, was broken off,
and with it all the stanchions to the plank-sheer, as far as
the gangway.

"Severe as was this shock, it happened fortunately that it
was followed by as great a rebound. This gave the vessel a

108 The Antarctic Ocean

cant to starboard, and by the timely aid of the jib and other
sails, carried her clear of the ice-island, and forced her into a
small opening. While doing this, and before the vessel had
moved half her length, an impending mass of ice and snow
fell in her wake. Had this fallen only a few seconds earlier,
it must have crushed the vessel to atoms."

By working the sails the ship was moved out of immediate
danger, but the weather was stormy, and there was little
hope of avoiding being crushed. The ship was laboring;
every few minutes something was carried away by the grind-
ing ice alongside. Boats were sent out to plant anchors so as
to warp the ship a little, or hold it fast to a large floe. Ice-
bergs alongside made the water between ship and berg a
seething cauldron of foam filled with ice particles. Finally
the ship was worked to a point where she lay in the floes, and
the ice anchors were again put out. The rudder was un-
shipped and brought aboard in two pieces, so badly was it
smashed. All the carpenters went to work on it as it lay on
the quarter-deck.

It began to snow and it seemed that the ship would be
caught there forever. But the weather cleared a little, and
by amazing seamanship, with the aid of the ice anchors and
sails, the bow was pointed toward the open sea. As they
neared it the wind increased, the sea rose, and the ice re-
doubled its shocks. Three of the chronometers were thrown
out of their sawdust beds upon their sides. Little headway
was made and the ice between the ship and the open sea
was increasing. The stem was being eaten away, but the
only thing to do was to drive the ship through the thicken-
ing ice. Finally they found themselves in clear water, "with-
out a rudder, the gripe gone, and, as was afterwards found,
the stem ground to within an inch and a half of the wood-
ends."

The carpenters repaired the rudder so that it could be
hung by only two pintles, and Captain Hudson decided

Wilkes Finds a Continent * 109

that it would be wise to go north. Two o the officers thought
the rudder might last if they stayed away from ice or ice-
bergs, but Captain Hudson decided that would not be worth
while, so he put north for Sydney. Even if the ship had
been in the best of condition when she started the cruise,
such injuries to her rudder and bow would have made her
dangerous.

After the Peacock put north the Vincennes and the
Porpoise went on, not knowing what had happened to their
companion ship. On the twenty-eighth Wilkes found him-
self entirely surrounded by icebergs, more than a hundred
of them, from one to three miles long. The land was in
plain view, undoubtedly part of the Adelie Land that D'Ur-
ville had seen. The Vincennes had made her way far into the
ice and when a gale rose Wilkes determined to retrace his
steps to the opening forty miles away. He was cut off by
bergs, however, and lost his position completely, so that the
only thing to do was to keep on the course that he hoped
would bring him to the open sea.

The ship became coated with ice from the spray, and
under reefed topsails and trysails dodged between bergs that
loomed suddenly in the gale and then dropped astern. Often
they loomed alongside so close that the ship appeared to
scrape them. The helm was constantly shifted. After a time
the ship was so covered with ice that she was almost unman-
ageable, and all hands were called. The gunner fell on the
deck and broke some ribs.

"The gale at this moment was awfuL We found we were
passing large masses of drift-ice, and ice-islands became more
numerous. At a little after one o'clock it was terrific, and
the sea was now so heavy, that I was obliged to reduce sail
still further.

"A seaman, by the name of Brooks, in endeavoring to
execute the order to furl, got on the lee yardarm, and the
sail having blown over the yard, prevented his return. Not

110 The Antarctic Ocean

being aware of his position until it was reported to me from
the forecastle, he remained there some time. On my seeing
him he appeared stiff, and clinging to the yard and lift.
Spilling-lines were at once rove, and an officer with several
men sent aloft to rescue him, which they succeeded in doing
by passing a bowline around his body and dragging him
into the top. He was almost frozen to death. Several of the
best men were completely exhausted with cold, fatigue, and
excitement, and were sent below. This added to our anxie-
ties, and but little hope remained to me of escaping: I felt
that neither prudence nor foresight could avail in protecting
the ship and crew. . . .

"We were swiftly dashing on, for I felt it necessary to
keep the ship under rapid way through the water, to en-
able her to steer and work quickly. Suddenly many voices
cried out 'Ice ahead!' then, 'On the weather bowl' and
again, 'On the lee bow and beam!' All hope of escape seemed
in a moment to vanish; return we could not, as large ice-
islands had just been passed to leeward: so we dashed on,
expecting every moment to crash.

"The ship, in an instant, from having her lee guns under
water, rose upright; and so close were we passing to leeward
of one of these huge islands, that our trysails were almost
thrown aback by the eddy wind. The helm was put up to
pay the ship off, but the proximity of those under our lee
bade me keep my course. All was now still except the distant
roar of the wild storm, that was raging behind, before, and
above us; the sea was in great agitation, and both officers
and men were in the highest degree excited.

"The ship continued on her way, and as we proceeded, a
glimmering of hope arose, for we accidentally had hit upon
a clear passage between two large ice-islands, which in fine
weather we would not dare to have ventured through. The
suspense endured while making our way between them was
intense, but of short duration; and my spirits rose as I heard

Wilkes Finds a Continent 111

the whistling of the gale grow louder and louder before us,
as we emerged from the passage. We had escaped an awful
death, and were again tempest-tost."

That was not their last bad gale, but it was their worst.
Although it was still summer in the Antarctic, the fickleness
of the weather, the sudden storms that roared down from the
domed continent, the crash of all the storm furies out of hell
tearing at the helpless ship, followed by a day or two of
warmth and pleasant seas, made Wilkes realize that he was
in a region where he could not predict even a few hours
ahead what sort of torment lay in wait for him.

The day after this storm, the sun shone on a smooth sea,
and all about the ship were icebergs. "How could we have
passed through them unharmed?" was the exclamation, as
the officers and sailors looked at the ice castles through which
they had been driving in blindness only a few hours before.
Life is like that on a sailing ship in the Antarctic; one wan-
ders in gloom before a bitter wind, and is warned of danger
only by the sound of unseen waves beating on the riven ice.

After two or three of these gales in close succession, as
the ship gradually pushed westward, dodging bergs, the men
under intense strain, the medical officers of the Vincennes
advised that the crew were in no condition to go farther.
The sick list was growing, largely from fatigue and exposure,
and Wilkes asked his officers to give their opinion as to
whether they should push on or go north. He also restored
to duty one of the surgeons who had, for some reason not
stated, been taken off the active list. This shows the tension
that must have existed. Such things are small indications of
a larger disagreement as a rule.

Being taken off the active list means that you cannot per-
form your normal duties; you may be confined to quarters
or just permitted to move about as you will and twiddle
your thumbs. It is not much fun, even though temporary.

Despite all the advice against continuing to the westward,

112 The Antarctic Ocean

and despite the growing sick list, Wilkes showed then that
even though he was a stubborn commander, he was deter-
mined and intelligent. He was confident that the men would
recover.

"I came to the conclusion, at whatever hazard to ship and
crew, that it was my duty to proceed, and not give up the
cruise until the ship should be totally disabled, or it should
be evident to all that it was impossible to persist any longer.
In bringing myself to this decision, I believe that I viewed
the case on all sides with fairness, and allowed my duty to
my country, my care for those whom it had committed to my
charge, and my responsibility to the world, each to have its
due weight."

So he went on, even though the sick list increased to thirty,
and the men had boils and ulcers. Nevertheless, they ate
well and were cheerful. They were passing high land again,
and it excited their curiosity. On Feb. 7 they saw the land
so clearly in longitude 131 degrees 40 minutes east, and lati-
tude 64 degrees 49 minutes south, that Wilkes named it Cape
Carr. Day after day, when there was good visibility the land
stood out clearly, and as the weather improved, so did the
health of the men. After seeing rocks in Piner's Bay at Adelie
Land, Wilkes had no doubt but that he had glimpsed a con-
tinent, and thereafter referred to it as "the land" or "the
Continent."

Beating along the edge of the barrier he sighted Budd
Land and North Land and Knox Land. The coast was far
inland, of course, but at one time he had a sight of seventy-
five miles of shore line, and was not at all in doubt. No-
where could he get close enough to set foot upon the land,
and neither did anyone else until the end of the century.
Toward the end of his voyage he ran across a huge ice
tongue that he named Termination Land, and which is now
known as a northern extension of the Shackleton Ice Shelf,
a formation similar to the Ross Ice Shelf.

(Wide World)

Plates 8 and 9. Two views of the Ross Ice Barrier, 400 miles long, from
which come the icebergs.

Wilkes Finds a Continent -113

Wilkes had no doubt by this time, having cruised along
1,500 miles of coast, that he had actually proved the exist-
ence of a continent. He established the existence of a rela-
tively shallow continental shelf by soundings. No open strait
was found, and he did not believe that a chain of islands
holding back ice could extend so nearly in the same parallel
of latitude. Neither could he believe that ice would not be-
come disengaged from islands, and came to the conclusion
that "there is some extensive nucleus which retains" ice
islands "in their position/'

Finally on Feb. 21, he determined to turn north, and
called the men forth to congratulate them on their good
conduct and their efforts. And he said:

"I have seldom seen so many happy faces, or such rejoic-
ings, as the announcement of my return produced. But al-
though the crew were delighted at the termination of this
dangerous cruise, not a word of impatience or discontent
had been heard during its continuance/*

This did not end Wilkes's expedition, but it did end his
Antarctic adventures, and left them so muddled that they
almost immediately became a matter of controversy. This
was not Wilkes's fault, but was the result of the unusual
conditions of polar exploration, which were then not under-
stood. Although some European geographers placed his
claims upon the map, they were soon challenged.

While Wilkes was in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand,
after returning from his second Antarctic cruise, he had an
opportunity to communicate with Captain James Clark Ross,
commanding the British expedition that soon followed the
American ships into high southern latitudes, having been
planned two years later than the American cruise. Wilkes,
in the good fellowship of a naval officer, sent Ross a letter
in which he described the ice, winds, currents, and dangers
to be anticipated, and also enclosed a chart on which he

114 The Antarctic Ocean

traced his discoveries. On this he included the appearance
of land reported by Captain Ringgold of the Porpoise and
called Ringgold's Knoll. Wilkes explained later that he had
merely put on the chart the reported position of the Balleny
Islands as given to him by Biscoe. Whatever Wilkes had
intended, the sending of this chart was the initial cause of
all the defamatory charges against him, and one cannot but
feel that Captain Ross's indignation was unjustified. He felt
that Wilkes had forestalled him, which was quite unfair,
particularly as it led to his own much greater discoveries.

But there has been an adequate explanation of Wilkes's
apparent mistakes put forward by Professor Hobbs, that
militant investigator and defender of everything American
in the polar regions. This dynamic professor of geology has
taken up the cudgels for Wilkes as energetically as he has for
Palmer, and much more efficaciously.

A number of discoverers sailed over what Ross had con-
temptuously called "Wilkes Land/' the land sighted by offi-
cers of the Wilkes expedition before Jan. 19, when Wilkes
was first sure he saw land, Cape Hudson. It was proved defi-
nitely that Cape Hudson could not exist where it was repre-
sented on the map by Wilkes, therefore all his other discov-
eries were thrown aside. Sir Douglas Mawson, the famous
Australian explorer of the Antarctic, even sailed over
Wilkes's Cape Carr, and said that Wilkes's discoveries were
false.

However, there was to be a belated triumph for Wilkes,
although he has been dead much too long to appreciate it.
Professor Hobbs points out that although there may be
much doubt about Ringgold's Knoll and some of the earlier
"sights" of land, the charge that Cape Hudson did not exist
was most serious because Wilkes was sure of it and even
sketched the high, mountainous country behind it. And he
then proceeds to prove in a most ingenious way that Wilkes
was right. It must be understood that before this century

Wilkes Finds a Continent -115

not much was known about atmospheric conditions in the
Antarctic, although some weird and beautiful aerial fantasies
had been seen.

Mawson had sledged over the land to Cape Freshfield,
and looked out to the north without seeing any land, al-
though he was 200 miles south of Cape Hudson, as reported
by Wilkes. That confirmed Wilkes's bad judgment until
1915, when the British ship Aurora^ under Captain J. R.
Stenhouse, drifted to a point only a few miles from where
Cape Hudson had been seen by Wilkes. And there, to the
south, lo and behold, was a cape, just as Wilkes had sketched
it. The next day the cape had disappeared, and there was no
land in sight. As Stenhouse entered in his journal, "No won-
der Wilkes reported land."

Professor Hobbs explains this by a polar mirage, and in
London hunted up a sketch that had been made by one of
Stenhouse's officers and that is almost exactly the same as
Wilkes's sketch of Cape Hudson. Evidently, concludes
Hobbs, and many observations in the polar regions as to the
phenomenon of mirage or looming bear him out, the pecul-
iar conditions of refraction at the time Wilkes sighted Cape
Hudson showed him a cape 230 miles away that was ap-
parently only 30 miles away. What Wilkes saw was Cape
Freshfield. There are well confirmed instances of such
mirage, or looming, at much greater distances and Captain
Bob Bartlett once saw an Iceland mountain while off the
Greenland coast.

It is amusing, but pertinent, that Professor Hobbs points
out two similar errors into which Mawson and Ross, the se-
verest critics of Wilkes, fell. Mawson in 1929-1930 mapped
about 500 miles of coast west of the tiny Wilkes Land allot-
ted to the American on the English maps. The next season
he went south again and found that the season before he
had mapped a coast at a distance of from 150 to 200 miles.
The second time he used an airplane to fly inland, and he

116 The Antarctic Ocean

found that he had mapped land so far to the north the year
before that on his second season he had sailed over it for a
distance of 400 miles.

What is more, he confirmed the existence of land where
it had been seen by Wilkes at several points west of Adelie
Land within a few miles of where Wilkes had reported it.
This, allowing for the fact that Mawson had radio time sig-
nals and Wilkes merely chronometers with indifferent rates
to guide him, is sufficient confirmation of Wilkes's discover-
ies, and led to the Australians' largely extending on their
maps the coastal area seen by Wilkes.

But the most amusing backhanded support of Wilkes re-
sulted from a mistake made by Ross, his rival as well as
critic. In 1841, when Ross had sailed into the sea that bears
his name and made the first really great Antarctic discovery,
he saw a range of mountains about thirty miles away that
he called the Parry Mountains. Sixty years later, Professor
Hobbs points out, Captain Robert Falcon Scott found no
mountains there at all, but only floating shelf ice. What
Ross had seen was a mirage of mountains 275 miles inland.

It is easy to make mistakes in the polar regions. Things
seen are not what they appear to be. Anyone who has lived
far north or south of either Circle can testify to that. And
as time goes on, Wilkes, who received the Founders* Gold
Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, is further upheld.
And it is enough fame for any man to have first established
the existence of a continent that had been a myth for ages,
to have led the first great American sea expedition, and to
have brought back material that resulted in the formation
of the Smithsonian Institution. Even if one of the early cura-
tors did grind up prehistoric bones for fertilizer, the Insti-
tution is as much a memorial to Wilkes as to James Smith-
son.

Ross Finds the Gateway

THE culmination of this golden age came when James
Clark Ross crashed through the ice pack into the sea
that bears his name, and made the most remarkable
discoveries yet achieved in the Antarctic. Ross was a great
leader and a great explorer, but one cannot study his work
in the Antarctic without being puzzled by the contrasting
lights of his character. He was brave, impetuous, guided by
a sure instinct, and could be both generous and unfair.

Ross came of a distinguished family, and before his south-
ern trip he had reached the North Magnetic Pole and planted
the British flag there. He was said to be the handsomest man
in the British navy, and was as stubborn as a mule. He was
vain also, for one cannot but be impressed by his eagerness
to reach the South Magnetic Pole when he had before him
the greatest discovery man had yet made beyond the south-
ern Circle. The magnificent mountains, the vast barrier that
also bears his name, are dismissed with a few paragraphs,
while he returns continually to his desire to be the first to
reach both magnetic poles, which, after all, would have been
a minor conquest compared to what he actually accom-
plished.

Sir John Franklin, who later perished in the Arctic, was a
staunch friend of Ross, but he mentions that Ross never en-
couraged initiative on the part of his subordinates, and that
he attempted to do everything himself. And yet he could be
gracious, and had a high sense of honor. Next to Cook he
was the greatest of the early Antarctic explorers, and he had
luck that fundamental ingredient in any great polar suc-

117

118 The Antarctic Ocean

cess. Man cannot contend unaided, cannot look and plan far
ahead, in those troubled waters. Like Weddell, he must be
more fortunate than other men to achieve great things.

The expedition had as one of its main objectives the study
of terrestrial magnetism. Ross took command of the Erebus,
on Apr. 8, 1839, and Commander Francis R. M. Crozier was
appointed to command the other ship, the Terror. They
were bombers, strongly and heavily built of wood, and with
a large hold. The Erebus was of 370 tons and the Terror of
340 tons, both of them with bluff bows, slow sailers, and
rounded so that they rolled even in a light sea.

They were by far the strongest ships that had been sent
to the Antarctic, making Wilkes's ships look like ill-found
yachts in comparison. Their scientific equipment was not
very good, and only one real scientist was aboard, Joseph
Dalton Hooker. The men and officers, with the exception
of Ross and Crozier, were said by Franklin to be merely
"run of the service" men, good sailors but not distinguished
for the work in which they were to engage. But they accom-
plished much.

They reached Hobart Town in Van Dieman's Land, now
known as Australia, on Aug. 16, 1840. The governor, by
one of life's ironies, was Sir John Franklin, whose disastrous
expedition to the north in those two ships later on was to
strew King William Land with the bones of his crews. It
was on that same King William Land, or island, that Ross
had previously reached the North Magnetic Pole. The con-
nection does not mean anything, except that the paths of
men and ships and ambitions cross in mysterious ways.

It was at Hobart that Ross first had news of the voyages
of D'Urville and Wilkes. He had had Wilkes's letter, sent
in spite of Wilkes's instructions, telling of the work of the
American expedition, and enclosing a map that was the sub-
ject of controversy for ninety years.

Ross was very much upset, which seems strange in view

Ross Finds the Gateway -119

of what he later wrote in his narrative. He said that he "felt
indebted to the kind and generous consideration of Lieuten-
ant Wilkes, the distinguished commander of the expedition,
for a long letter on various subjects, which his expedition
had suggested as likely to prove serviceable to me, under
the impression that I should still attempt to penetrate to the
southward on some of the meridians he had visited; a tracing
of his original chart accompanied his letter, showing the
great extent of his discoveries, pointing out to me those parts
of the coast which he thought we should find most easily
accessible." Ross also expressed "the deep sense of thank-
fulness I feel to him for his friendly and highly honourable
conduct."

He added that Wilkes's voyage should "excite the admira-
tion of all who are in the smallest degree acquainted with
the laborious and difficult nature of an icy navigation: but
I am grieved to be obliged to add that at the present time
they do not seem to have received either the approbation or
reward their spirited exertions merit." This was after the
return of both the Wilkes and Ross expeditions, and one
cannot help wondering how Ross could have penned those
lines in view of the fact that it was his criticism that did so
much to discredit Wilkes. Perhaps he reflected later that
he had been unfair and wished to make amends, for cer-
tainly his words were a generous tribute to a man who he
said had put nonexistent land upon a chart and sent it to
him.

The probability is that Ross's vanity and Wilkes was not
devoid of that qualitywas disturbed by the prior discoveries
of the French and American explorers, who also had their
little spat in the ice. Ross expressed surprise that they had
"forestalled" him, although his own instructions were writ-
ten a full year after those of Wilkes, and the British Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science did not even suggest
the Ross expedition until August, 1838, when Wilkes had

120 * The Antarctic Ocean

been busily preparing for some time for the American ex-
pedition, proposed ten years previously. It was one of those
unfortunate occurrences that dot all the history of explora-
tion.

As a matter of fact, Wilkes's voyage in waters where Ross
had been instructed to explore, led the Englishman to a de-
cision that immeasurably increased his fame. We know now
that if he had tried to follow Wilkes's track he would have
had little more success; that stretch of coast is icebound be-
yond the possibility of any ship's penetrating close to the
land except in a few spots. Ross had been given considerable
latitude in his instructions, much had been left to his discre-
tion. So he made a momentous decision.

"Impressed with the feeling that England had ever led in
the way of discovery in the southern as well as in the north-
ern regions, I considered it would have been inconsistent
with the preeminence she has ever maintained if we were to
follow in the footsteps of the expedition of any other nation.
I therefore resolved at once to avoid all interference with
their discoveries and selected a much more easterly meridian
(175E), on which to endeavor to penetrate to the south-
ward, and if possible reach the magnetic pole."

Out of that determination came great things, for Ross had
picked a longitude that ever since has been within a few
degrees, varying with the season, of the best route into the
Ross Sea. If he had only realized it, Wilkes had done him
a greater service than giving him a map on which some lines
were dubious; Wilkes had pushed him into an entrance to
the continent. It was the route that Scott and Shackleton
and Amundsen and Byrd have followed, not to speak of the
whalers. Ross was inclined to go there because Balleny had
found open water in 69 degrees south.

As the bluff-bowed ships swung south from desolate and
dripping Campbell Island, off the southern coast of New
Zealand, they began to see the albatross, swinging with that

"8S* / RosX*^ \

ZEALAND / nov.V TACM A

^^^^ J840 ^%JTASM^

iife iKn i>

Map 6. Ross broke Into the Ross Sea through pack and found his way
barred by the great barrier.

122 The Antarctic Ocean

indescribable gracefulness on the updrafts from the waves,
or sliding alongside the weather rail to peer with quickly
shifting eyes at the strange creatures on two legs. The alba-
tross never flaps its wings in flight, but by movement at the
tips guides itself with infallible accuracy. Ross thought the
birds promised land, but in this he was wrong, for they dis-
appear before the Antarctic pack is sighted. But when pen-
guins began to pop up on ice floes and squawk defiance,
there was reason to believe that something tangible was near
by. And then, on Dec. 31, early in the morning, they sighted
the ice pack.

An ice pack in the Antarctic is a formidable opponent.
The Ross Sea pack, while not so dangerous as some others,
is a weird phenomenon. In calm weather it lies as immobile
as a cube of ice in a highball glass, with gentle waves lapping
at the edge; in a storm the broken cakes at the edge heave
and sough, crash together and throw water in spurts between
their points of contact, and growl with a low and distant
sound. But the day Ross sighted the pack there was little
movement, and the two ships lay in front of this great bar-
rier, which held so many speculative possibilities, waiting
for wind. Ross had picked the right time of year and the
right place. He was not unfamiliar with pack, and he said:

"We had, indeed, met with the pack in a much lower lati-
tude than we had anticipated, but from the little we had
seen of it we were by no means dispirited by the early ap-
pearance of so serious an obstruction to our progress, for it
presented none of those evidences of impenetrability we had
been led to expect."

The possibility of penetration was due to the fact that
the pack did not lie against land, that on the other side of the
200-mile belt for it was that wide there was open water.
There is no predicting the condition of the pack or the time
that may be consumed in going through it. Four or five days
is not an unusually short time, and the Nimrod, Shackleton's

Ross Finds the Gateway 123

ship, went through it in twelve hours. Ross was fairly fortu-
nate, and had sufficient experience not to be alarmed by ice
in which open leads could be seen. Also his ships were strong.
The ice did not worry him. With the knowledge acquired
since his first penetration, steel ships have been conned
through pack ice that once would have been considered
deadly.

They were blown north, and made their way back south
again, and on Jan. 5 reached the pack early in the morning,
and cruised along it looking for an opening. The weather
was unsettled, and the wind blowing on the ice, conditions
that might have appalled an ordinary ship captain, but that
were just what Ross wanted. He wanted to get into that ice,
and the north wind would help.

"The signal was made to the Terror, and we bore away
before the wind, selecting the most favorable point to break
through the outer edge of the pack, which as usual, was
formed of much heavier ice than the rest, and which we
accomplished without sustaining any serious injury, although
receiving some very heavy blows."

At noon that day they were at 66 degrees 55 minutes south,
and 174 degrees 34 minutes east. They drifted to the south-
east and were blown to the north, but no longer could see
the open water. When the wind died on Jan. 8, the ice
opened and then a breeze from the north, followed by an
easterly gale, helped to force them through. Penguins fol-
lowed the ship, as they always do, waddling along on cakes
of ice, popping overboard and swimming rapidly around the
ship, showing every sign of indignant curiosity and yelping
at the intruder. On Jan. 10, the ships came out into the open
sea, and not a bit of ice was to be seen to the south.

Ross's feelings at that time may be imagined; one finds
nothing of them in his narrative. Emergence into the open
sea in the midst of the Antarctic summer is a startling ex-
perience. It is like sliding out of an icy mountain path into

124 The Antarctic Ocean

a green field where flowers grow. Ross's ships had been
bumped and pushed; the winds had howled through their
rigging as they lay in the fields of ice or rumbled across a
lead, or lake of open water, in the ice.

And then they were engulfed in fog and drifted on, and
when the fog lifted, and the sun shone again, in all its stim-
ulating warmth, there was nothing around them but water.
A soft breeze blew, and men basked in the sun on the decks,
throwing aside their heavy wraps so that they might relax
more comfortably. There is nothing quite so comforting as
the Ross Sea on a summer day, even when bits of ice drift
by, and there is no place that can more quickly be changed
into a seething terror as the icy hurricanes blow down from
the mountain peaks. But while the calm lasts it is beautiful,
and tempting.

Ross knew he was far south, much farther south than any-
body but Weddell had been before. The ice, which had
checked Cook and Bellingshausen, Wilkes and D'Urville,
was absent. It was the beginning of an epoch, the end of the
nibbling at the edges as baffled men felt their way around
the continent. Columbus must have felt the same way when
he reached land, or Magellan when he pushed his way into
the broad reaches of the Pacific. This continent, into which
Ross had found a passage, is not a small continent; it is one
of the largest on earth. Men had been confused and beaten
back by the pack.

And then came along a handsome English naval officer,
hard-boiled, stubborn enough to defy a pack, who sailed
through the barred gateway. Ross must have dreamed great
dreams the day the fog lifted and he saw himself in an open
sea. He hoped to sail to the Magnetic Pole; could he sail
to the South Pole, too? Possible. There was nothing but
water in sight.

He set his course for the Magnetic Pole, the point he
wanted to reach more than all others, but on Jan. 1 1 at 2 A.M.

Ross Finds the Gateway 125

for the sun shines all the twenty-four hours at this time of
year in those latitudes land was seen. A range of mountains
gradually lifted above the horizon, and Ross realized that he
was seeing something that no other man had ever been for-
tunate enough to glimpse, a great mountain range stretching
to the south.

The highest point he called Mt. Sabine, after one of the
most zealous supporters of the expedition. Cape Adare was
sighted, that cape which has been so famous since, and those
aboard the ships "gazed with feelings of indescribable delight
upon a scene of grandeur and magnificence far beyond any-
thing we had before seen or could have conceived." The
range of mountains was called the Admiralty Range, the in-
dividual peaks being named after the Lords of the Admiralty.

Ross and his men landed on a small island inhabited by a
vociferous and belligerent colony of penguins, which pecked
and fought against intrusipn. Possession Island, it was called.
A strong wind and heavy seas drove them off the land, and
they were in constant danger of hitting some uncharted reef
or rock, or even driving on an island, or a stranded iceberg.
The perils of fighting one's way through unknown Antarctic
waters, in mist and snow and gale and fog, even with the aid
of the not always reliable leadline, was one of the things
Ross faced constantly.

The ships beat south along the coast after the weather
cleared, but the wind was adverse and they did not make
much headway in their clumsy vessels. Once they had a slight
clearing in the fog just in time to haul away from Coulman
Island, named for the father of Ross's fiancee. Finally, a fair
wind came, and with studding sails spread the ships drove
down to the south. More mountains were seen and named-
there seemed to be no end to the range. Then on Jan. 22,
1841, the ships reached 74 degrees 20 minutes south, farther
than Weddell had gone. An extra allowance of grog was

126 The Antarctic Ocean

served, and Captain Ross spent the evening in the gun room
with his officers, drinking toasts. It was a great day.

They discovered Franklin Island, named after Sir John.
As a landing was being made, the world nearly lost a great
scientist, for Hooker slipped and fell between the boat and
the rocks. Fortunately he was not injured.

After landing at Franklin Island came the most astounding
sight of all, although Ross dismisses it with a few words.
(Later explorers have paid tribute to its beauty and rhapso-
dized over it.) On the horizon was seen a mountain from
which snow seemed to be drifting at the summit. The snow
was found to be smoke, and as the astonished men watched,
gleams of fire shot up through the smoke. They had discov-
ered a live volcano, a volcano covered with snow, more than
12,000 feet high, and which Cherry-Garrard says is the love-
liest and most peaceful mountain in the world, because of
its horizontal slopes more beautiful even than Fujiyama.
They called it Erebus, To this day it is unique, the only
living volcano on the Antarctic Continent, so far as is known,
and still erupting occasionally, in a dignified and graceful
manner.

By this time Ross knew that he was cut off from approach
by sea to the Magnetic Pole, but he had no idea how far he
might go toward the South Pole. There was land to the west
of him, to be sure, and a volcano to the south, but the hopes
of men die hard, and Ross had read too much of the ancient
beliefs, despite a natural skepticism, not to hope that after
all the old men might have been right and that there was
an open polar sea. At least he said: "We had already, in ex-
pectation, passed far beyond the eightieth degree, and had
even appointed a rendevous there." And why not, with an
open sea before one, and the traditions of hundreds of years
behind.

And then occurred a most astounding discovery. To the
left of the land on which was Mt. Erebus, there appeared a

Ross Finds the Gateway 127

white line rising out of the sea and extending as far as the
eye could see. When the ships approached it, they found it to
be a wall of ice, nearly 200 feet high, and even the phleg-
matic Ross remarks on its "extraordinary appearance/'

"What was beyond it we could not imagine."

He saw some mountains in the distance to which he gave
the name of Parry Mountains, since proved to be nonexistent,
although the appearance might be caused by refraction from
mountains far beyond, refraction that would lift them far
above any normal horizon. Ross was probably fooled by some
of the same deceptive phenomena that fooled Wilkes he saw
mountains, but much farther away than he could have imag-
ined. But the sight of the mountains was poor payment for
the disappointment of the barrier. Ross said that one might
as well try to "sail through the cliffs of Dover."

The declination of the magnetic needle showed that they
were south of the Magnetic Pole, so Ross determined to turn
eastward and coast along the barrier wall in the hope of find-
ing a way around it. Nothing so illuminates the courage and
initiative of pioneers as afterknowledge of what they were
attempting to do. Now it is common knowledge that that
barrier of ice stretches for more than 400 miles to the east,
that it cannot be penetrated except at two places by a ship,
and then for only a few miles. But Ross was the first to see it,
and the thought of an ice wall 200 feet high and 400 miles
long was incredible, or would have been if it had been sug-
gested.

So they cruised along it, and of all the dominant spectacles
on this globe that rampart is perhaps the most formidable.
It is so monstrous in its proportions that it does not excite
the senses. It merely lies there, a sharply cut, flat-topped wall,
a white cliff glinting in the sun and reflecting the darkness
of the sea, dull, heavy, ominous. Most people who see it for
the first time merely look at it; there isn't anything to say.
It is not even inspiring. It is the end of the world.

128 The Antarctic Ocean

From the masthead it was impossible to see over it. The
swell broke along its base and cut caves. Sometimes there
was a square indentation where an iceberg had broken out.
Whales played along its front, spouting and rolling in the
seas. And Ross looked at it with his officers, and the thing
stared back at them, implacable and silent. That wall re-
duces a human being to the dimensions of a slightly sentient
dwarf and leaves him wondering how such things can be in
a world that also supports palm trees with coconuts on them.

While they were gazing at the barrier, Erebus put on one
of his finest recorded shows, thro wing, up a column of smoke
200 to 300 feet in diameter to a height of about 2,000 feet.
The eruption went on in spurts half an hour apart, and the
contrast between the immobile white barrier and the pulsing
volcano on its edge must have been a sight such as few men
have ever seen. The Antarctic, in whatever phase one sees it,
always succeeds in overpowering the observer with its gran-
deur. In its calm moods it absorbs the soul and gives it peace;
in its violence it makes all human effort futile.

Soundings showed that most of the great barrier was afloat
as a matter of fact, since Ross's day it has receded to the
south nearly thirty miles. The ships beat to the eastward,
getting into pack and working out of it with difficulty. They
found a remarkable bay which has since disappeared and
went into it despite the danger from the forming of pancake
ice. It was getting late in the season. Frequently they could
not see open water from the masthead; the ice around the
ship was what Norwegians know as shish ice because of the
noise it makes as a ship goes through it.

But these bluff-bowed ships were not intended for speed,
and one needs a sharp prow and good lines, or an engine, to
get out of that sort of ice easily. Sometimes they had to lower
the boats over the bows, and the sailors would rock them
back and forth, breaking the ice so that the ships would
slowly advance. It was getting to be late in February, and

Ross Finds the Gateway 129

Ross decided to leave his new sea, a wise decision. They had
reached 167 degrees west.

He hated to turn back, even when within sight of the
mountains beyond which lay the Magnetic Pole. The flag
that had been flown at the North Magnetic Pole was in his
locker. That ambition had to be abandoned. On his north-
ward journey Ross sailed over the point where Wilkes had
put some mountains on his chart, mountains that Wilkes
later said he assumed to be the position of the land seen by
Balleny as given to him by Captain Biscoe at Sydney.

The worst of this unending discussion, which should be
forgotten eventually, is that Ross in his own narrative admits
that Wilkes saw land, but when he found that the land over
which he sailed was nonexistent, he did not put a single
discovery of Wilkes on his chart. Wilkes never claimed the
land that Ross disputed. Ross was very frank in his comment,
and Commander J. H. Aulick of the U. S. S. Yorktown heard
of it in Sydney and repeated it at Oahu in the Hawaiian
Islands, which led to a serious controversy between Wilkes,
Ross, and Aulick. It is long past, and few people know about
it, but it almost led to the complete discrediting of Wilkes,
who, in his way, was as good a man as Ross.

Ross's first voyage to the south was the high-water mark
of his endeavor. He had spent 145 days in the Antarctic, and
had come out with his men and his ships in good condition.
What he did after that proved his excellent seamanship, and
his courage, but added little to his geographical discoveries.
Ross was a splendid sailor, and so was Crozier, the captain
of the Terror. And seamanship in the Ross Sea demands not
only unusual qualities of judgment, but also the sort of dar-
ing that enables a man to take a chance when that chance
is the only way out.

After a short time in Sydney and a call at the Bay of Islands
in New Zealand, Ross put to sea again late in November of
1841. This time he made the mistake of going too far to the

130 The Antarctic Ocean

east, trying to find a way south at about 156 degrees west
longitude, probably hoping to get somewhere near Cook's
south, much farther to the east. He did not know that an
enormous amount of pack ice was there jammed around a
jutting peninsula from the Antarctic on the east side of the
Ross Sea. For three weeks he butted against the ice without
much advance.

The ships got into the pack and drifted for weeks; on Jan.
18 a gale drove them apart, and a heavy northwest gale
caused havoc. They had been moored to an ice floe, but the
hawsers broke, and the vessels kept company by firing guns
and heaving to under the shelter of an iceberg. And then:

"The sea quickly rising to a fearful height, breaking over
the loftiest bergs, we were unable any longer to hold our
ground, but were driven into the heavy pack under our lee.
Soon after midnight our ships were involved in an ocean of
rolling rocks of granite, which were dashed against them by
the waves with so much violence that their masts quivered
as if they would fall at every successive blow; and the destruc-
tion of the ships seemed inevitable from the tremendous
shocks they received. By backing and filling the sails, we
endeavored to avoid collision with the larger masses; but
this was not always possible; in the early part of the storm,
the rudder of the Erebus was so much damaged as to be no
longer of any use; and about the same time I was informed
by signal that the Terror's was completely destroyed, and
nearly torn away from the sternpost.

"We had hoped that, as we drifted deeper into the pack,
we should get beyond the reach of the tempest; but in this
we were mistaken. Hour passed away after hour without the
least mitigation of the awful circumstances in which we were
placed. Indeed, there seemed to be but little probability of
our ships holding together much longer, so frequent and
violent were the shocks they sustained. The loud crashing
noise of the straining and working of the timbers and decks,

Ross Finds the Gateway * 131

as she was driven against some of the heavier pieces, which
all the activity and exertions of our people could not pre-
vent, was sufficient to fill the stoutest heart, that was not
supported by trust in Him who controls all events, with
dismay; and I should commit an act of injustice to my com-
panions if I did not express my admiration for their conduct
on this trying occasion; throughout a period of twenty-eight
hours, during any one of which there appeared to be very
little hope that we should see another, the coolness, steady
obedience, and untiring exertions of each individual were
every way worthy of British seamen.

"The storm gained its height at 2 p.m., when the barom-
eter stood at 28.40 inches, and after that time began to rise.
Although we had been forced many miles deeper into the
pack, we could not perceive that the swell had at all subsided,
our ship still rolling and groaning amidst the heavy frag-
ments of crushing bergs, over which the ocean rolled its
mountainous waves, throwing huge masses one upon an-
other, and then again burying them deep beneath its foam-
ing waters, dashing and grinding them together with fearful
violence. The awful grandeur of such a scene can neither
be imagined nor described, far less can the feelings of those
who witnessed it be understood. . .

"The squalls came on with unabated violence, laying the
ship over on her broadside, and threatening to blow the
storm sails to pieces; fortunately they were quite new, or they
never could have withstood such terrific gusts. At this time
the Terror was so close to us, that when she rose to the top
of one wave, the Erebus was on the top of the next to lee-
ward of her; the deep chasm between them filled with heavy
rolling masses; and as the ships descended into the hollow
between the waves, the main-top-sail yard of each could be
seen just level with the crest of the intervening wave, from
the deck of the other: from this some idea may be formed

132 The Antarctic Ocean

of the height of the waves, as well as of the perilous situation
of our ships/*

The gale finally blew itself out, and the ships were fastened
to a big piece of floe while their rudders were repaired. The
pack loosened a bit on Jan. 26, and the ships struggled on
again, but after forcing their way through 800 miles of pack
they were only thirty miles south of Cook's farthest south.
They had picked one of the most difficult parts of the Ant-
arctic Ocean to penetrate, a region that was not surveyed
until one hundred years later when it was first done by air-
plane. As Ross puts it in a way that explains many vagaries
of polar exploration:

"This is only an example of the uncertainties of polar ex-
ploration in ignorance of the laws of drift-ice or the causes
which make one season differ so remarkably from another,
and there was nothing for it but to struggle on."

To struggle on in such circumstances requires the greatest
resolution. The ships eventually gained the open sea in 67
degrees 29 minutes south and 159 degrees west. Ross was
trying to hit the barrier east of where he had been on his
former trip, but as many explorers have found out since, he
was attempting a most difficult task. It was also past the
middle of February, and the Ross Sea begins to freeze over
about that time. It was so cold that a small fish that was
dashed against the bow of the Terror was frozen fast to the
ship, and buried in a block of ice. When it was chopped out
for scientific inspection, the ship's cat caught sight of it, and
the specimen vanished.

Ross got very near King Edward VII Land, later discov-
ered definitely by Scott, and Ross thought he saw mountains
to the south. The "mountains" are hardly more than low
rocky hills projecting from the snowy surface, but it would
be easy to mistake them for high mountains even though the
weather was clear when Ross saw them.

When he decided to turn back on Feb. 24, the sea was a

Ross Finds the Gateway -133

continuous sheet of new ice. If a strong southerly wind had
not come up, and every bit of sail made, including studding
sails, the ships would have been frozen in for the winter.
But his troubles were not over, for he soon after had an ad-
venture with icebergs in which he executed a maneuver that
ever since has been regarded as one of the most daring and
skillful ever performed by a sailor. He actually backed his
ship, stern first, from a berg in a howling gale.

Here is how it happened:

"A large berg was seen ahead and quite close to us; the
ship was immediately hauled to the wind on the port tack,
with the expectation of being able to weather it; but just at
this moment the Terror was observed running down upon
us, under her top-sails and foresail; and as it was impossible
for her to clear both the berg and the Erebus collision was
inevitable. We instantly hove all aback to diminish the vio-
lence of the shock; but the concussion when she struck was
such as to throw almost everyone off his feet; our bowsprit,
fore-topmast, and other smaller spars were carried away; and
the ships hanging together, entangled by their rigging, and
dashing against each other with fearful violence, were falling
down upon the weather face of the lofty berg under our lee,
against which the waves were breaking and foaming to near
the summit of its perpendicular cliffs.

"Sometimes the Terror rose high above us, almost ex-
posing her keel to view, and again descended as we in our
turn rose to the top of the wave, threatening to bury her
beneath us, while the crashing of the breaking upperworks
and boats increased the horror of the scene. Providentially
they gradually forged past each other, and separated before
we drifted down amongst the foaming breakers, and we had
the gratification of seeing her clear the end of the berg, and
of feeling that she was safe.

"But she left us completely disabled; the wreck of the
spars so encumbered the lower yards, that we were unable

134 The Antarctic Ocean

to make sail, so as to get headway on the ship; nor had we
room to wear round, being by this time so close to the berg
that the waves, when they struck against it, threw their sprays
back into the ship. The only way left for us to extricate
ourselves from this awful and appalling situation was by
resorting to the hazardous expedient of a stern board, which
nothing could justify during such a gale and with so high a
sea running, but to avert the danger which every moment
threatened us of being dashed to pieces.

"The heavy rolling of the vessel, and the probability of
the masts giving way each time the lower yard-arms struck
against the cliffs, which were towering high above our mast-
heads, rendered it a service of extreme danger to loose the
main-sail; but no sooner was the order given, than the daring
spirit of the British seaman manifested itselfthe men ran up
the rigging with as much alacrity as on any ordinary occasion;
and although more than once driven off the yard, they after
a short time succeeded in loosing the sail.

"Amidst the roar of the wind and sea, it was difficult both
to hear and to execute the orders that were given, so that it
was three-quarters of an hour before we could get the yards
braced bye, and the maintack hauled on board sharp aback
an expedient that perhaps had never before been resorted to
by seamen in such weather: but it had the desired effect;
the ship gathered sternway, plunging her stern into the sea,
washing away the gig and quarter boats, and with her lower
yard-arms scraping the rugged face of the berg, we in a few
minutes reached its western termination; the 'undertow/ as
it is called, or the reaction of the water from its vertical cliffs,
alone preventing us from being driven to atoms against it.

"No sooner had we cleared it, than another was seen di-
rectly astern of us, against which we were running; and the
difficulty now was to get the ship's head turned round and
pointed fairly through between the two bergs, the breadth
of the intervening space not exceeding three times her own

Ross Finds the Gateway 135

breadth; this, however, we happily accomplished; and in
a few minutes after getting before the wind, she dashed
through the narrow channel, between two perpendicular
walls of ice, and the foaming breakers which stretched across
it, and the next moment we were in smooth water under its
lee."

There they found the Terror, burning a blue light and
anxiously awaiting them. Probably never has there been such
a narrow escape from complete disaster in the Antarctic, and
never more consummate seamanship. Even to bump against
an iceberg in calm weather is not pleasant; what it must be
in a gale is beyond imagination. So alarming was the situ-
ation that one officer ran on deck in his nightshirt and
stood clinging to a capstan in the freezing weather.

That was the real end of Ross's adventures, for the ships
made the Falkland Islands safely, and the next season made
a fruitless cruise to the southeast of Palmer Land, down into
the fringes of the Weddell Sea. Ross was turned back by ice,
but being a good Englishman he did not cast doubt upon
Weddell, as so many others have done. He merely com-
mented out of the richness of his experience that it must
have been an open year when Weddell got so far south, and
that he was glad so venturesome a man was there to take ad-
vantage of his opportunity.

The Drift of the Belgica

AFTER Ross there was a long interlude, during which
/\ discovery was left to a few whalers, this time driven
J[ \^ by steam, which went down the east and west coasts
of Graham Land and made some interesting discoveries, al-
though their chief desire was to find the whales that had
been reported. Then in 1895 the International Geographical
Congress declared that the most important piece of geograph-
ical work remaining was the exploration of the Antarctic.
A young Belgian, Lieutenant A. de Gerlache, who for years
had been fired by a desire to enter the polar regions, organ-
ized a Belgian expedition.

His ship was a Norwegian vessel, which he named the
Belgica, of 250 tons, and built for the ice, with a stem five
feet thick. His scientific expedition was of the best, and al-
though the geographical results obtained were not startling,
what was accomplished in other scientific fields was of great
importance. The Belgica had the distinction of being the
first ship to be frozen in the ice, and those on board spent
the first Antarctic winter under the most dangerous condi-
tions. But their greatest danger came from not knowing how
to live in the Antarctic, which nearly cost them all their lives.
As it was two men became insane.

Officers and crew were of several nationalities. Most of
them were Belgians, of course, but five of the crew were Nor-
wegians. The naturalist was a Rumanian, Emile Racovitza;
Henryk Arctowski, a Russian, was geologist, oceanographer,
and meteorologist; and the doctor, anthropologist, and pho-
tographer was a man later to become famous in claiming to

136

The Drift of the Belgica 137

have reached the North Pole, Dr. Frederick A. Cook, a
Brooklyn physician. The mate was a young man destined to
great things in both polar regions, Roald Amundsen.

It may be well to speak of these last two a moment, for
different as they were they became fast friends and remained
so. Dr. Cook at that time had been on one of Peary's expedi-
tions to Greenland. He was fascinated by both the Arctic
and Antarctic, and Amundsen once told the writer that he
considered Cook one of the ablest men in the ice he had
ever known. After the famous Cook-Peary controversy as to
who had reached the North Pole, and after Cook was thor-
oughly discredited, Amundsen said he believed that Peary
got there, was sure that he did, but he would never say any-
thing critical of Cook. When Cook, who died only recently,
was convicted of fraud and sent to jail, Amundsen visited
him whenever he could. Amundsen felt that he owed his life
to Cook, that Cook extricated the Belgica from the ice. After
a visit to Cook in prison, Amundsen wrote in his short auto-
biography:

"I did not then, nor will I now, discuss the career of Dr.
Cook in his later days. I am wholly unfamiliar with the facts
that led to his imprisonment, and I have no desire to know
them or to have an opinion regarding them. . . . Whatever
Cook may have done, the Cook who did them was not the
Dr. Cook I knew as a young man, the soul of honor and
kindliness, lion-hearted in courage. Some physical misfortune
must have overtaken him to change his personality, for which
he was not responsible."

This digression seems worth while, not only as generous
praise from a great explorer, but also because of the obloquy
later heaped on Cook and his unfortunate last years. It puts
the Cook that Amundsen knew in the right perspective, for
the most readable book, and the only one in English, on
the Belgica's adventure is Cook's. Amundsen himself was on
the voyage deliberately to fit himself for a life of exploration.

138 The Antarctic Ocean

But it was an oddly assorted group of men that the Belgica
carried south, many of them able, the scientific staff of the
best, a polyglot crew if ever there was one. As Cook says,
they spoke French in the cabin, German and French in the
laboratory, and a mixture of English, Norwegian, French,
and German in the forecastle.

They left Belgium on Aug. 24, 1897, and Cook joined
them in South America. De Gerlache wasted a good deal of
time at Tierra del Fuego on scientific work, excellent in its
way, but something that could have been done later. The
result was that they did not reach the South Shetlands until
Jan. 20, 1898, very late in the season to begin exploration
in the Antarctic. However, they pushed south and discovered
and explored de Gerlache Strait, and proved that what had
been known as the Graham Land coast was really a group
of large islands, which were named Liege, Brabant, and
Antwerp. To these de Gerlache gave the name of the Palmer
Archipelago. The coast east of the islands was named Banco
Land, after the lieutenant and magnetician on the ship,

De Gerlache was confident that somewhere he would find
a large continental land mass, which probably surrounded
the South Pole, and he intended to land on it with a winter-
ing party, send the ship back, and do some sledging inland.
He had consulted Nansen, to whom everybody went in those
days, for advice on sledges and equipment. But that plan was
not to be carried out, although he headed south as near the
coast as possible, hoping to go a long way with the ship be-
fore landing. They passed many small islands on the first
part of this stage of their journey, and Cook had the privi-
lege of naming two of them although the names do not ap-
pear on the charts Brooklyn and Van Wyck, the last named
after the first mayor of Greater New York.

They attempted to reach Alexander I Island, and on the
way were beset by a terrific gale, with sleet and snow. Said
Amundsen:

FAULANO IS.

s 15J DECERLACHE

SOUTH HORN / JAN. <?
AMERICA

20 WEST LONGITUDE

/ 18997

SOUTH
POLE

60

EAST LONGITUDE

Hi

Map 7.De Gerlache drifted in the ice for the first winter night in the Ant-
arctic and brought back valuable scientific information.

140 * The Antarctic Ocean

"Ice bergs were visible in all directions. The captain
pointed to one not far distant to the north and explained
that he had been manoeuvering all through the watch to
keep the ship in the lee of this berg, which, by sheltering us
from the heaviest of the wind and swells, saved us from
being driven off our course. His instructions to me were to
continue these manoeuvers until I should be relieved for the
night watch, and to pass them on to my successor. This I
did, transmitting the instructions to the young Belgian who
took the watch. When I turned into my bunk I could feel
the ship rolling in response to the swell, which, however,
was not the tremendous heave of the main Pacific, but was
a modified rolling of the current which came around the
ice berg to us. I was rocked to sleep by this rolling motion.

"Imagine my astonishment when I awoke in the morning
and found the ship dead becalmed! Certain that something
extraordinary had happened, I hastened into my clothes and
hurried to the bridge. There I found that we were in a small
basin, ice-locked on every side by a complete circle of tower-
ing ice bergs. I asked the young Belgian how in the world
we ever got into this place. His response was that he had no
more idea of how it happened than I myself. In the darkness
of the night and the driving snowstorm, he had been unable
to keep the ice berg in view, and the ship had been driven
aimlessly by the wind, with the result that she had been
lifted on one of the mighty Pacific swells through an open-
ing between two ice bergs and had landed us in the becalmed
basin where we now lay. Nothing short of a miracle of co-
incidence had saved us from being dashed to pieces by the
bergs that formed the shallow entrance we had hurdled on
the back of that swelling wave."

While they were trying to extricate themselves from that
circle of bergs, they speculated on what the bergs looked
like, and Cook comments:

"It is curious that the eye merely sees what the mind in-

The Drift of the Belgica * 141

tends to picture. . . . The Captain points to a berg, not par-
ticularly attractive to anyone, but he insists on describing
upon it the form of a beautiful woman, chisled in walls of
alabaster. We look and try to be interested while Lecointe
grows enthusiastic, but we see only dead white cliffs. There
are some irregularities, delicate blue lines, some suggestive
hummocks, and various dark cavities, but these we see in
every berg, and with our different mental attitudes we fail
to recognize the ascribed topography of a human figure. We
dare not, however, admit our ignorance, for such a lack of
sympathetic support, especially in a sentimental subject,
would be equal to a challenge to a duel on the Belgica"

There was a huge tabular berg on which w r as a mass of ice
blocks. To Cook it looked like a statue of Lord Salisbury,
Arctowski said the sphinx, and Racovitza said it was a polar
bear. Others thought it moved. Michotte, the cook, however,
after looking through the glasses, said it looked like a pot of
boiling soup. He won.

"We can afford to dispute with the naturalist somewhat,
we can even doubt the Captain's eyesight, but we cannot
dream of endangering the good will of Michotte it is, then,
a pot of boiling soup, and I think Koren added it was "hot
stuff 1 ; even this is granted/*

After they got out from among the bergs, they went south
until they saw Alexander I Island, but were stopped by the
pack twenty miles from it. They hauled off to the west along
the pack, always trying to find an opening, occasionally see-
ing a water sky to the south. They were sure they were near
land because of the numerous birds and seals, and the cold
dry wind from the south-south-east, which they reasoned
must blow from high land, although they were not within
1,000 miles of any known land.

They were stuck for a time in 69 degrees 17 minutes south
latitude and 82 degrees 24 minutes west longitude, far to
the east of Alexander I Island, but worked loose and again

142 * The Antarctic Ocean

headed south, in and out of the ice and always working to
the west. To get out of a gale they again went south into the
pack. Tons of ice were thrown against the complaining ship,
but when the gale subsided the ice opened and again they
pushed southward. At the end of February they were at 71
degrees 22 minutes south and 84 degrees 55 minutes west,
drifting five to ten miles a day in the pack.

"It is a strange sensation," said Cook, "to know that,
blown with the winds, you are moving rapidly over an un-
known sea, and yet with nothing to indicate a movement. We
pass no fixed point, and can see no pieces of ice stir, every-
thing is quiet. The entire horizon drifts with us. We are part
of an endless frozen sea* . . . We do not know our destina-
tion, and are always conscious that we are the only human
beings to be found in the entire circumpolar region at the
bottom of the globe. It is a curious situation."

It was, indeed, and it affected them all. When on the ship
they brooded over their helplessness, but when on the ice
among the seals and penguins, even this form of lowly life,
for at least it was life, the only life they could see, they be-
came quite cheerful and contented. They had rammed into
this pack to get away from a gale, but many of the men and
some of the scientific staff thought that de Gerlache had made
only halfhearted attempts to extricate the ship, and that he
really wanted to winter in the ice, a venture for which they
were not at all fitted. They had no winter clothes to speak
of, nothing that a well-equipped ship would have for a win-
ter stay.

"Most of us have assumed the responsibility of criticizing
the management," said Cook, "and all blame the director for
entering the main body of the pack at the season's end."
But, he remarked, this talk acted as a good safety valve, and
nobody thought much of it. Even Amundsen remarked that
it was "a truly dreadful prospect."

The ship became dripping wet inside. They had hardly

The Drijt of the Belgica 143

enough lamps to light all parts of the ship, and no stoves to
dry it out. The men grew more and more gloomy and mor-
bid, and the atmosphere on the ship was such that they all
wanted to get away from each other, which was impossible.
One night, to escape the atmosphere of the ship and to see
the aurora, Cook took his sleeping bag out on the Ice. It
was quite warm, only 4 degrees below zero, but when Cook
took off his clothes and crawled into his bag, he shivered and
shook for several minutes. Then a warm glow came over
him, like the reaction from a cold shower, and he lay com-
fortably and watched the aurora and listened to the silence.

"The silence and the solitude were curiously oppressive,"
he said. When he awoke in the morning, he found that he
could not turn his head. The hood of his bag had frozen
around it until he felt as if encased in a diver's helmet, and
his hair was frozen to the mouth of the bag, where he had
arranged a hole to breathe through. While he lay there, get-
ting up courage to jerk himself loose, he heard some pen-
guins coming up to look him over. He rolled over and
peered through his hole to see them and they scampered off,
so with a yank that pulled out some hair he got free and
crawled out of his bag. When he got back to the ship, Le-
cointe, the captain, told him that he had thought Cook was
a seal and nearly shot him.

In the cabin the officers and scientists, when not at work
about the ship, tried to pass the time away by planning what
they would do when they got home. Some intended to write,
others thought of the celebrations they would have. In the
forecastle the sailors were much more interested in discuss-
ing food, fresh food, and particularly meat. They also missed
their girls. But food was uppermost, for the only fresh meat
they had at this time was penguin, and most of them didn't
like it, and some wouldn't eat it. Amundsen mentions that
Lecointe and de Gerlache had a horror of penguin, and even
gave orders that it and seal meat must not be eaten, despite

144 * The Antarctic Ocean

the danger from scurvy, but Cook continually mentions pen-
guin meat. In fact, he says of it, soon after they were frozen
in the ice:

"If it is possible to imagine a piece of beef, and odorifer-
ous codfish, and a canvas back duck, roasting in a pot, with
blood and cod-liver oil for sauce, the illustration will be
complete."

It isn't quite so bad as that, although it does taste fishy.
However, the men hated it. But they hated the Norwegian
tinned fishballs and meat balls worse, and one of the officers
who lost a bet had to eat four of the fishballs. They made
him ill for days. Amundsen and one other ate them with a
grim determination. There was no taste to them.

Most of the food they had brought with them was tinned,
and all of it soft. It lacked natural food fibers, and they
longed to get their teeth into something. So far as food was
concerned, as well as clothes, the Belgica was badly equipped.
Little thought had been given to avoiding scurvy, although
it would have been easy to do so, and they all got it before
the winter was over.

To cheer themselves, one dull day, they had a beauty con-
test based on pictures from a Paris magazine, and the points
set forth for competition showed a continental influence. It
wasn't a howling success, because it was hard to decide among
the many charms exhibited. But they finally agreed, putting
the unclad beauties aside, that Cleo de Merode and the
Princess de Chimay were the most beautiful women. That
was a long time ago those names are mere memories now-
adays.

In sharp contrast came Easter Sunday, and their thoughts
turned back to home where well-dressed men and women
were going to church on a spring morning, where there were
flowers and sunshine, and soft breezes. Around these out-
casts from civilization, alone at the bottom of the world, was
nothing but the endless pack surrounding their wet, stinking

The Drift of the Belgica 145

ship. There was no religious feeling that Easter Day, in fact
Cook remarks that he never saw anyone on board with a
Bible or Prayer Book in his hands. But that is not remark-
able on some expeditions.

By this time they had drifted far south of Peter I Island,
and the lack of pressure indicated that there was no exten-
sive land south of them. One night they saw a queer light
not far from the ship, and wondered if it were some strange
being come to visit them. The night had begun to affect
them all by this time. Amundsen, who was the biggest man
in the group and generally the best-dressed for an emer-
gency, went off on his skis to investigate. He came back
looking rather sheepish. The light had been caused by some
sort of phosphorescence in the snow, probably by sea algae,
Cook thought. They saw this several times later, and were
always puzzled and a bit startled by it; it must have been a
ghostly sight to these lost men.

Many of them were in really bad shape by this time, and
with the winter yet before them. Cook wondered, "Who will
be here to greet the returning sun?" The men didn't eat so
much, they were tired of everything, they wanted to get
away from each other more and more. They retained weight,
some even Increased In weight, but lost strength. Cook is one
doctor who has accurately described the symptoms of men
in such a situation. Their faces were puffy, their muscles soft,
their hair grew rapidly, and their skin was oily. The heart
action was irregular. They had headaches and suffered from
insomnia, although some were always sleepy. They were
dizzy, had digestive difficulties and muscular pains.

The sun disappeared on May 16, and left the men "sad
and dejected, lost in dreams of melancholy." About this time
Lieutenant Danco's heart began to fail. He had a lesion and
a slight murmur, but while the sun was warm and there was
work for him to do, he got along fairly well. Cook said that
he had undoubtedly had a bad heart for a long time with-

146 The Antarctic Ocean

out realizing it. Had he remained at home or been on an
ordinary voyage, he would have remained well for years, but
the hardships of the Belgica upset the delicate equilibrium
of his heart, and he grew steadily worse. When he went for
a walk, he had to stand still and gasp for air.

On May 31 they were in 71 degrees 36 minutes south and
87 degrees 33 minutes west, steadily drifting to the westward.
Again Cook commented on their increasing debility. They
were pale, with a greenish hue, their organs sluggish, and
both hearts and minds affected. The men were incapable of
concentration, and one sailor was forced to the verge of in-
sanity, but recovered with the return of the sun.

On Cook's birthday they had a party. The American flag
was hoisted, and Captain Lecointe and Cook put on their
dress suits for the occasion. Lecointe gave Cook a certificate
of honor which included a promise that he would repair
one pair of Cook's knitted stockings. Lecointe and Cook
nearly froze in their stiff-bosomed shirts and tight collars,
for they sat around after dinner talking about the United
States and how some day a United States of Europe would
be formed. Later Lecointe, in a spirit of bravado, went to
Ms observatory near the ship in his dress suit for the pur-
pose of taking a star sight and came back shivering so he
could hardly stand. They decided to stow the dress suits
permanently.

It was not long after this that the condition of some of
the men became alarming. Everyone aboard had scurvy, al-
though some were much more affected than others. The ship
had a coal stove, which Cook believes is much better than
any other kind of stove in the polar regions because it not
only ventilates the house properly, sucking in poisonous air,
but exposure to its direct heat acts as a tonic. He began try-
ing "baking treatments" on those who were most sick. Le-
cointe was one of them, both de Gerlache and the captain
having taken to their bunks and made their wills.

The Drift of the Belgica 147

Lecointe's recovery was uncertain; he was anemic and his
heart action was bad. Cook put him in front of the open fire
and found after an hour's treatment that he was much im-
proved. But it was a long time before Cook could persuade
him to eat penguin. At last he promised to eat as much pen-
guin as the doctor prescribed, and in a week he was com-
pletely recovered. So it was obvious that what they suffered
from mostly was a lack of fresh meat, with fresh meat all
around them.

Amundsen says that when the commander and the captain
were both confined to their beds, and the command of the
ship devolved upon him, he ordered seals excavated from
the snow alongside the ship where they had been since de
Gerlache had forbidden anyone to eat them, and that the
men recovered in a week after eating the meat. But either
Amundsen's recollection was faulty when he wrote his mem-
oirs many years later, or Cook completely misrepresented the
picture in his own book written only a short time after the
event, for Cook tells of desperate illness long after Lecointe
recovered.

Perhaps some of the men refused to eat seal, which would
reconcile the two statements. There is no doubt that there
was a great squabble about whether penguin and seal were
fit to eat or not. Amundsen, himself, was ill at this time, ac-
cording to Cook, which might account for his faulty recol-
lection.

Even the cat lost its appetite. It had bounded gaily all
over the ship while the sun was up, but when the sun went
down Nansen (the cat's name) curled up in a bunk or some
other warm place in the forecastle and became morose. It
slept most of the time and when it was disturbed would spit
and scratch. Now the lack of fresh food hadn't affected the cat
before, and it is probable that it had plenty of penguin meat.
In order to amuse Nansen a penguin was brought in, but
there were no mutual amenities between them as there had

148 * The Antarctic Ocean

been between the cat at the South Shetlands and the pen-
guin, many years before. They withdrew as far apart as pos-
sible and glared at each other. It was not long before Nansen
gave up the ghost. It must have been plain lack of sunshine
that killed him.

During all this difficult time much of the responsibility
fell on Cook. It was he who with Amundsen went after
penguins and seals, the seals especially being far from the
ship and scarce. It was difficult for the two weakened men
to drag them home. Amundsen says of Cook at this time:

"He, of all the ship's company, was the one man of unfal-
tering courage, unfailing hope, endless cheerfulness, and un-
wearied kindness. When anyone was sick, he was at his bed-
side to comfort him; when anyone was disheartened, he was
there to encourage and inspire. And not only was his faith
undaunted, but his ingenuity and enterprise were bound-
less."

(Strange that such a man should have come to such an
ignominious end. I have always thought that Cook, who had
made a splendid trip out on the ice of the North Polar sea,
and who had returned to winter on Devon Island, according
to stories told by Eskimos to the Northwest Mounted Police
who told them to me, said on his reaching Greenland that
he had gone to the North Pole without realizing what he
had committed himself to. And from that moment he had to
live up to what he had said. That one careless statement
was the beginning of his downfall, and everything that fol-
lowed was a natural consequence. He may have dwelt
moodily all that winter on Devon an achievement in itself
on his inability to raise funds for an adequate expedition,
while Peary had everything. One white man with a few
Eskimos, living off the land, on a few musk oxen and sea
lions, perhaps, thinking, thinking, thinking. I doubt if Cook
was quite himself after that winter.)

The time drew near when the sun was to appear again.

The Drift of the Belgica 149

They had watched the sky become lighter, the long twilight
that precedes the sun had lengthened every day, and the
men looked eagerly to the north, waiting and hoping for a
little warmth to steal into them from the sky. By this time
both Amundsen and Lecointe, Amundsen the strongest man
on board, showed the effects of the winter; their faces were
drawn and lined and tired. On July 23 a lopsided sun ap-
peared over the horizon for a little while, a red, huge sun,
that shot a gleam over the ice before it rolled over below
the horizon again. But it was enough.

The next day it was a little higher, and the next, until
men could feel the warmth of it, and they ran about on the
ice 'like bears/' and lay and basked in the sunshine. It had
an amazing effect; men recovered almost miraculously.

In fact, one cannot help getting the impression that there
was something more than the food conditions that reduced
them to such a pitiful state. It may have been in part that
their many races caused misunderstanding or lack of com-
radeship, for others have lived through an Antarctic night
with nothing to eat but seal meat, and being a homogeneous,
cheerful group, have come through well and fit. This was
true of Campbell's northern party with the second Scott ex-
pedition, who were in a much worse pickle than those on the
Belgica. So long as the sun shone, and there was work to do,
the polyglot society on the Belgica got along together con-
tentedly. When they were thrown completely on their own
resources, huddled together, they went to pieces. Their
troubles were psychological even more than physical.

With the return of the sun and warmth, seal hunting be-
gan in earnest, and they also found some of the big emperor
penguins. These were so heavy and the men were so weak
that it was all one man could do to drag three of them on a
sledge. But if the penguins were tied together and hauled on
their smooth feathers, six or seven could be hauled with
ease. This discovery provoked an obsession in Cook, for he

150 * The Antarctic Ocean

wanted to experiment with fastening penguin skins on the
runners of the sleds so that they could be dragged more
easily over the ice. He never seems to have gotten around
to that experiment, but he talked of it often.

They had found, quite accidentally, a way to catch pen-
guins that hardly seems sporting. A cornet was used one day
to call the men to dinner, and much to the surprise of those
on the ship the penguins also answered the call and came
right on board. After that, whenever any penguins were
needed the cornet was played lustily and the penguins would
come trooping like the rats of Hamelin, to find themselves
on the way to the cooking pot. It has been well established
since, that penguins do like music. Even seals would pop
out of the water to the ice in answer to the call, but they
didn't oblige by waddling aboard ship.

Amundsen and Cook, on one of their short trips from the
ship, took along a sailor whose mind had been affected by
the winter experience, hoping that the exercise would do
him good. But it had just the opposite effect, for when the
poor fellow got back to the ship Cook found that his mind
was hopelessly deranged.

Many miles from the ship there was a large iceberg that
interested Amundsen and Cook, although the probability is
that they wanted chiefly to get away from the ship and be by
themselves for a time. So Cook devised a tent that could be
easily put up and was quite strong, a tent of which he was
very proud, and they went off with a sledge toward the berg.
It had seemed only a few miles away when they started, but
as they marched and marched the berg seemed to recede
from them. After a whole day's journey they found them-
selves a few miles from it, only to discover their way blocked
by open water. So they camped for the night, peacefully,
on the ice, and far away from the too-familiar faces and
voices. A second time they attempted to reach the berg, but
were prevented by open water.

The Drift of the Belgica -151

But this gave Cook an idea. About half a mile ahead of
the ship was a pool of water in the midst of the almost solid
floe, and he became convinced, according to Amundsen, that
when the ice split it would break into that pool. Therefore
they must get the ship into the pool. But how? If the sun
melted the snow and ice to form a pool in one place, why
wouldn't water in a ditch absorb enough heat to weaken
the ice beneath? It was worth trying. So two long ditches
were dug from the ship to the pool, ditches in which some
water soon gathered. But the next cold spell froze the water,
and the ditches were merely lines along the surface.

Then Cook proposed sawing a channel to the pool. It
seemed a mad idea, for there were only a few four-foot saws
on board, and a ton of explosives. But everybody turned out,
weak as they were, and took turns sawing. The pieces were
cut in triangles, and after the cut had been made a stick of
tonite was used to blow them loose. At first they merely
cracked and then clung together again so that they could
not be rafted out into the large pool, but cutting off one
corner of the triangle and pushing it away remedied this
defect.

They spent weeks at the work, and it did the men good.
Their appetites increased to such an extent that they ate
seven times a day, with meat at two meals. They all enjoyed
penguin and seal now, and ate as many steaks as they could
hold. One could hardly imagine them to be the weak, gaunt
crew who had first turned out in garments fashioned from
red blankets.

"Finally the job was done/* wrote Amundsen, "and we
went to bed one night planning to tow the ship to the basin
the following morning. Imagine our horror on awakening
to discover that the pressure from the surrounding ice pack
had driven the banks of our channel together, and we were
locked in as fast as ever. Our dejection was turned to joy
shortly after, however, when a shift of wind opened the

152 The Antarctic Ocean

channel again. We now lost no time in towing the ship into
the basin/'

But the sea was still as far away as ever, and they waited,
week after week, for the ice to break. All this time they
were drifting west and somewhat to the north. Their farth-
est south in the ice had been just about on a latitude with
Cook's most southern position to the west. It had been a
remarkable drift because of the lack of pressure. Nansen had
much more pressure in the open polar sea.

When they had almost given up hope of getting free, for
the second summer was nearly at an end, and another winter
in the ice would have finished them, the ice opened and a
lane to the sea ran right through the basin. Cook had
guessed right. They started for the open, but to get there
they had to pass between two huge bergs. Let Amundsen
tell it, for it sounds incredible:

"For several days we were held as in a vise between them.
All day and all night we were subjected to a terrific grind-
ing pressure, and the noise of the ice cakes battering against
our sides and splintering off incessantly was at times so loud
as to make conversation trying. Here again Dr. Cook's in-
genuity saved the day. He had carefully preserved the skins
of the penguins we had killed, and we now made them into
mats and lowered them over the sides of the vessel, where
they took up and largely mitigated the impact of the ice."

Saved by penguin skins! Shades of Adelies and emperors!
Amundsen was a romantic, and liked to exaggerate both the
ease and difficulty of doing something. He had a sense of the
dramatic.

However, they were free once more. It was the middle of
February, 1899, and they had spent nearly a year locked in
the ice and had escaped by a penguin feather. They returned
to Punta Arenas, and so home, having accomplished little
geographically, but with a tale to tell, and with a rich
harvest of scientific observations.

The Renaissance Scoffs First Voyage

IT HAS always seemed strange that for sixty years after
Ross discovered the gateway to the Antarctic Continent
nobody made a determined effort to follow his footsteps
and determine what this strange land might be like, or how
great was its extent. This despite the fact that Wilkes had
sighted land at intervals along a tremendous coast line, that
Ross had found a magnificent stretch of mountainous land
to add to what had been seen farther to the east.

Apparently men refused the obvious evidence before them
that there must be a continent within the Antarctic Circle.
The famous voyage of the Challenger, the oceanographic
ship, under Sir George Nares, which crossed the Circle in
1874, finally bore fruit. The men on the Challenger were
exploring the edge of the continental shelf, and so many
rocks of obviously continental origin were brought up from
the sea bottom that geologists were convinced that a vast land
lay somewhere to the south. English scientists began to be
stirred again, but it was not until the turn of the century
that they did anything about it, by which time a German
expedition was also being planned, under Erich von Dry-
galski, who discovered King Wilhelm II Land.

The guiding spirit of the British expedition, which left
home in 1901 for a two years* stay in the Antarctic, was
Sir Clements Markham, who had the shrewdness and good
sense to realize that Ross had found the key to a new world.
It was at one of the meetings in 1893 while the expedition
was being discussed in leisurely fashion that the Duke of
Argyll pointed out that we knew more about the planet
Mars than about a large area of our own globe.

153

154 * The Antarctic Ocean

Sir Clements was a scientist, and interested in many things,
but he was also inquisitive as to what lay beyond the moun-
tains and the ice that Ross had seen. His instinct told him
it was worth investigating, and that the Ross Sea was the
only reasonable approach. Other nations, including Ger-
many, France, and Sweden, were sending out expeditions to
other parts of the continent, but the Ross sector was essen-
tially British.

So more than 90,000 was eventually raised, and a new
ship, the Discovery, was built. She was one of the most power-
ful ships ever built for the Antarctic, constructed not for re-
sisting pressure entirely, like the Fram, Nansen's ship, but
for crushing her way through pack ice. She was of 485 tons,
172 feet long, and 34 feet wide. Her stern was rather round,
which made her lively in a heavy following sea, but she
proved herself in every emergency.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott of the Royal Navy was ap-
pointed to command her, and on board were three men who
were to become famous in Antarctic exploration, although
this was their maiden voyage there. Indeed Scott himself
had never been in the southern ice. The three were Ernest
H. Shackleton, Dr. Edward A. Wilson, and Frank Wild, a
descendant of Captain Cook on his mother's side, who went
as a seaman. Scott does not mention Wild in his first dis-
cussion of his crew, although he does pay him tribute later
on for his coolness and qualities of leadership, but it seems
to have been Shackleton who first penetrated under Wild's
calm and unruffled exterior to the man inside.

Dr. Wilson was one of those rare characters who quietly
influence every group in which they happen to be a member.
He was a brave gentleman he died with Scott on the return
from the South Pole years later. His color sketches are the
best that have ever come out of the Antarctic; they are not
only authentic but transmit the rare beauty of that colorful
land.

The Renaissance Scott's First Voyage 155

And what of the leader himself? He is worth dwelling
upon a moment, not only because he accomplished so much,
and died so magnificently, but because his character was so
complex. Sir James Barrie once wrote an appreciation of
Scott in which he quoted from a letter that told how Scott,
then a second lieutenant, took charge of passengers on an
overcrowded ship bound from San Francisco to British Co-
lumbia, where he was to join his own ship. There was a
drunken crew and a rowdy lot of miners, and when a gale
came up the conditions on the ship were almost intolerable.
Scott, at the head of volunteers, washed and fed the babies,
cared for the helpless women, cleaned up the saloon where
they were camped, and settled arguments with his fists, when
necessary. Anyone in trouble appealed to him. And Apsley
Cherry-Garrard, who was with him on his last expedition,
and was one of those who found him, wrote:

"England knows Scott as a hero; she has little idea of him
as a man. . . . Few who knew him realized how shy and
reserved the man was, and it was partly for this reason that
he so often laid himself open to misunderstanding.

"Add to this that he was sensitive, femininely sensitive, to
a degree which might be considered a fault, and it will be
clear that leadership to such a man may be almost a martyr-
dom, and that the confidence so necessary between leader
and followers, which must of necessity be based upon mutual
knowledge and trust, becomes in itself more difficult. It
wanted an understanding man to appreciate Scott quickly;
to others knowledge came with experience. . . .

"Temperamentally he was a weak man, and might very
easily have been an irritable autocrat. As it was he had moods
and depressions which might last for weeks, and of these
there is ample evidence in his diary. The man with the nerves
gets things done, but sometimes he has a terrible time in
doing them. He cried more easily than any man I have ever
known.

156 * The Antarctic Ocean

"What pulled Scott through was character, sheer good
grain, which ran over and under and through his weaker self
and clamped it together. It would be stupid to say he had
all the virtues; he had, for instance, little sense of humour,
and he was a bad judge of men. . . . Scott was the strongest
combination of a strong mind in a strong body that I have
ever known. And this because he was so weak! Naturally so
peevish, highly strung, irritable, depressed and moody. Prac-
tically such a conquest of himself, such vitality, such push
and determination, and withal in himself such personal and
magnetic charm. His triumphs are many. . . . Surely the
greatest was that by which he conquered his weaker self, and
became the strong leader whom we went to follow and came
to love."

This was written long after Scott was dead, and none of
those who were with him on his first expedition left an
account of what he was like at that time. But it indicates
the fundamental characteristics of the man who set out to
follow the footsteps of Ross while still in his abundant
youth.

On this first voyage Scott and his companions were a
happy group of men, probably the most harmonious that has
ever gone south. Anyone who has read Scott's account of his
first voyage and the diary of his last expedition cannot but
be impressed by the contrast. The voyage of the Discovery
was a gay adventure, despite its dangers and one grim trag-
edy. There was a buoyancy of spirit in it, a comradeship, a
sense of zestful seeking, that is so often lacking in expedi-
tions. A new world lay before them and they leaned to it
eagerly.

Early in August, 1901, the Discovery headed out of Cowes,
where she had been surrounded by trim and graceful yachts,
and set sail for the south. She was a good ship, but Scott
soon found that her sturdiness did not spell speed, and
that he was lucky if he could get seven knots out of her in

The Renaissance Scott's First Voyage * 157

a fair wind, which was not bad as compared with the sailing
qualities of similar vessels. Such ships are not built for speed.

Scott took the usual route for sailing ships, around the
Cape of Good Hope, to New Zealand. Toward the end of
this stage of his voyage he got below the 60th parallel, and
eager eyes soon picked up ice. It was not long until the ship
lay becalmed in gently tossing floes and the men wondered
at the strangeness of their surroundings as ice bumped
against the side of the ship, and the cakes rose and fell with
a gentle shushing sound as the water poured over their edges.
It was a delicate introduction to the edge of the world in
which they were to spend so long a time, and they were
reluctant to leave it, but Scott knew there was much out-
fitting and provisioning to be done in New Zealand, so
pushed on until he arrived at Wellington.

The Discovery, heaped high with coal and supplies, left
that port on Christmas Eve, all on board anxious to head
south. They had one of the easiest and pleasantest voyages
to the pack yet recorded. The winds, which generally blow
great guns between New Zealand and the pack, were gentle,
almost too gentle, and they were at first beset with fog,
through which they went warily, keeping a sharp outlook
for bergs, for at that time of year they come far north. The
first berg was sighted on Jan. 2, and by evening they had
seen seventeen, although not very large ones. The next day
they crossed the Antarctic Circle, and soon found themselves
passing through loose streams of ice from the pack.

As Scott approached the pack after crossing the Circle,
he passed within a few miles of two isolated islands that were
later discovered by the captain of one of the relief ships, and
named after Scott. They could hardly have been farther
away than just below the horizon line, probably the two
loneliest islands in the world, for they rise out of a great
waste of water, the nearest Antarctic land hundreds of miles
away.

158 The Antarctic Ocean

On the first Byrd expedition we passed within three or
four miles of them, and thought at first that they were ice-
bergs. One is just a rounded piece of rock, but the other is
in the form of an elephant, with forelegs going down into
the sea, and with a trunk hanging down in front of a typical
elephant's head. The whalers said they had never seen these
islands, which I doubt, for they had hunted in that vicinity
for years, but even so we were only the second exploring
group to sight them. They are strange things to come upon
in that wilderness.

Just beyond the latitude of the islands Scott hit the main
pack, right where its northern edge has been, apparently,
since Ross first plunged into it. Now Scott was to follow him
into the little-known waters beyond. Scott was to come to the
conclusion, after spending two winters in the Antarctic and
watching the ice near the shore of the Ross Sea break up
and move north, that the pack was formed by this ice during
the early spring, and that it was largely dissipated by fall,
to be formed again the next year. But that its action and
width varies greatly from year to year, even if its northern
edge holds about the same position, is obvious from later
experiences.

As they entered the pack they at first found so much open
water that they used only sails, but soon were forced to get
up steam in both boilers to force their way through. For days
they broke through the ice from pool to pool, watching the
bird and seal life, stopping to water ship from the floes,, and
thoroughly enjoying themselves. They made only thirty or
more miles a day, although the ship bucked her way strongly
forward.

When they could, they towed nets and brought up "the
strangely beautiful forms revealed by the microscope." Dia-
toms, the grass of the sea, the fundamental source of marine
life, take on exquisite shapes when magnified so that they
may be seen. They remind one somewhat of snowflakes. But

Map 8. Scott extended Ross's discoveries and first reached the high Ant-
arctic Plateau, Drygalski helped fill in the continental outline.

160 * The Antarctic Ocean

all one can see of them with the naked eye is a brown
smudge along the water's edge of the ice. On these feed the
shrimps, on the shrimps feed little fish, on the fish feed the
penguins, on the penguins feed the sea leopards. And the
tiny crustaceans which feed on the diatoms are the food of
the greatest of all mammals, the big blue whales of the Ant-
arctic, which are sometimes 100 feet long and weigh about
a ton to the foot. So diatoms are very important, as well as
beautiful, and the enthusiastic young explorers looked and
wondered and speculated, and deduced many interesting
things that are much too scientific for treatment here.

They were living on seal meat regularly since entering
the pack, and "found it palatable." But the smell or taste
of blubber, to which they were later to be accustomed, nau-
seated them. On the eighth the southern edge of the pack
was seen, sharply defined, and they glided out into the open
water. The ice had been heavier than when Ross went
through it, but not nearly so heavy as some later expeditions
have found it. As so often happens when clear water is
reached in the Ross Sea, the clouds rolled away, the sun came
out, and they found themselves in such calm weather that
they furled their sails and used their engine.

They spliced the main brace and at dinner drank to the
future in champagne, and their happiness was not dulled
when at 10:30 that night there came the cry of "Land in
sight." The sun was shining over the southern horizon, and
to the southwest could be seen the peaks of Victoria Land,
100 miles away. They forced their way through some drift-
ing ice, and within the bay came to anchor. Naturally, it was
not long before the boats were overside, and they made their
way to the grounded floe ice along the shore, and to the
pebbled beach beyond which the AdIies met them. Near
by also was the hut used by the Southern Cross party which
had wintered there without exploring, and high up on the
hill stood the plain wooden cross over the grave of Hansen,

The Renaissance Scott's First Voyage 161

the naturalist. Beyond were the lofty summits of the ice-
covered mountains.

They had a narrow escape from disaster as soon as they
left the bay and turned south in an attempt to find a path
through the pack along the shore. They moved ahead at fair
speed for a time, but then the tide changed and the heavy
pack charged down on the ship, forcing it back toward a
point where the floes were grinding and piling up against
several grounded icebergs. For the first time they realized
how helpless a ship may be in the pack. With every bit of
steam they could obtain for the engines, the ship barely
moved.

"It was one of those hours which impress themselves for
ever on the memory," said Scott. "Above us the sun shone
in a cloudless sky, its rays were reflected from a myriad
points of the glistening pack; behind us lay the lofty snow-
clad mountains, the brown sun-kissed cliffs of the cape and
the placid glassy waters of the bay; the air about us was
almost breathlessly still; crisp, clear and sun-lit, it seemed
an atmosphere In which all Nature should rejoice; the si-
lence was broken only by the deep panting of our engines
and the slow, measured hush of the grinding floes; yet, be-
neath all ran this mighty, relentless tide, bearing us on to
possible destruction. It seemed desperately unreal that danger
should exist in the midst of so fair a scene, and as one
paced to and fro on the few feet of throbbing plank that
constituted our bridge, it was difficult to persuade oneself
that we were so completely impotent."

And then, in the mysterious way such things take place
in the Antarctic, the tide slackened, hours before a turn had
been expected, the floes parted and the ship began to move
ahead* It taught Scott a lesson, "not to undervalue the
enemy/*

After being held by a gale under Coulman Island for a
day, and landing in an inlet near Cape Jones, they continued

162 * The Antarctic Ocean

on down the coast, being continually perplexed by the aber-
rations of the compass. The compass is sluggish near the Mag-
netic Pole, and the ship was so far south that the pole was
north of them. As the southern end of the compass pointed
to the pole, the ship appeared to be sailing north, according
to the compass, although it was going south. Not only that,
but at times it was deflected wildly by the influence of vol-
canic rocks on shore, and when passing over a shallow spot.
Altogether a navigator's life near the South Magnetic Pole
is one of continued exasperation.

Soon they could see Mt. Erebus 120 miles away, and could
even see the vapor rising from the summit. The day was so
clear they could see Coulman Island to the north, a range
of vision of 240 miles, which shows how clear the Antarctic
can be when the cool dry air is blowing off the icy interior.
After running into McMurdo Sound, where they were to
winter, they turned to the east. Even this far they had been
much closer to the coast than Ross, so close as to prove the
continuity of the land, of which Ross had been somewhat
doubtful. Mt. Terror, which had been snow-covered when
Ross saw it, was found to be almost denuded of snow, which
caused Scott to wonder what had caused this change.

As they passed Cape Crozier, east of Mt. Terror, the great
barrier stretched before them as far as they could see. They
had clear, fair weather, little of the fog and gales and drift-
ing pack that beset Ross, and they clung close to the barrier
face, recording its height and every twenty-four hours taking
a sounding. It was not more than sixty or seventy feet high
at first, and they thought Ross had exaggerated its height
and its uniformity. But in a day it had risen to 240 feet.

They were fascinated by it, as nearly all have been who
have sailed not far from that magnificent wall. The altera-
tions in height, the inlets from which bergs had broken out,
and the shoaling and deepening of the ocean floor, caused
them to wonder. They passed many bergs, and two that had

The Renaissance Scott 3 s First Voyage 163

evidently just calved. So strong was the current against them
that they had to fire up their second boiler, and on two days
they made practically no headway. Occasionally they ran into
small inlets in fog, not realizing their position until they
found ice on both sides of them. If a berg had calved just
then! One of these indentations was Discovery Inlet, which
is a deep opening running to the east, and with high ice
on each side of it, although the lower end is filled with bay
ice. Scott probably did not see it all in the fog.

By Jan. 27 they were east and south of Ross's farthest po-
sition, at a point where he had reported an appearance of
land to the southeast. They could see nothing at first, and
concluded that Ross must have been deceived, although they
all felt that there must be something ahead they could
sense it. Not encountering the heavy pack that had beset
Ross they were encouraged. Everybody on deck peered ahead
or to the south, and land was more than once reported, only
to turn into clouds. Then the ice cliff turned to the east,
and they saw the shore ice gradually ascending in steps and
long slopes to where there were rounded ridges. It was un-
doubtedly land, but as Scott exclaimed: "What a land!"

As they pushed east they found themselves moving along
a series of capes, which turned out to be strange domed
islands of ice, linked to the shore by ice. Several times they
tried to pass between them and the land without success.
And at this time they had fog to add to their uncertainty.
On the evening of Jan. 30 they were about to go to dinner
when they saw several black patches above the slopes, and
they knew for the first time that they were looking at indis-
putable evidence of land, bare rock. The land was named
King Edward land, and the rocks are now known as the
Alexandra Mountains.

The next day, when the fog lifted, they found themselves
among ice islands and huge bergs, one at least six miles long.
Under the dark sky it was as if they had strolled into the

164 * The Antarctic Ocean

home of the ice giants, these lofty and ominous and blue
masses being their castles. But ahead the lifting fog also
showed them the solid pack, the sort of pack that had turned
back Ross. They pushed through a narrow channel between
two bergs, and followed the open water to the north. On the
ice sheet were hundreds of emperor penguins, which made
them think for a time that they had found a rookery. These
penguins probably account for the numbers of them that
visit the Bay of Whales farther to the west.

On the thirty-first they saw a cloud hanging low on the
horizon east-north-east, and as it was still there the next day
Scott wondered if it might not indicate land. It was probably
a cloud above the land later discovered there by Byrd. By
this time the ship was in an enclosed bay in the ice, with no
way out to the east, north, or west, so Scott had to turn back
and find the narrow channel by which he had entered. The
young ice was forming, and they could not find a landmark
in the bergs around them to give them any clear indication
of what their course should be, until suddenly they recog-
nized a feature of one of the bergs that they had formerly
passed, and with some relief they hastened to get out of a
situation that might easily have become a trap.

There seemed no hope of the pack opening, and as their
coal supply was limited they turned westward again. On the
way they got a better view of the new land and determined
that it ran up between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. They were con-
vinced that the high land extended far back, and that it was
not a collection of islands, but a connected land of consider-
able extent.

As Scott sailed west he again showed his qualifications
as an explorer. For hundreds of miles he had coasted along
the barrier, which he believed to be afloat, and had then
come to unmistakable evidences of high land. Somewhere at
the point where the floating barrier ended, and where the
land began, he reasoned, there must be an inlet where the

The Renaissance Scott's First Voyage 165

junction would be obvious. So he headed for an Inlet he had
seen on the way east and steamed into it, tying up to a wall
that was hardly more than twenty feet high. He called this
place Balloon Bight. (When Shackleton went south on his
own expedition a few years later Balloon Bight had disap-
peared, and he gave up his intention of landing and winter-
ing there. When the first Byrd expedition reached the Bay
of Whales, there was no sign of Balloon Bight from ship or
airplane.) It may be that the ice that formed the bight
broke out to make the larger Bay of Whales, which could
not have been quite so extensive then as now, or Scott
would have mentioned it. He said that the inlet had ''sev-
eral branches," which might indicate that they led to the
deep indentation at the foot of the Bay of Whales. Remem-
ber that Ross found the barrier much farther to the north,
thirty miles, at which time the bay would have been merely
a cup in the barrier.

Whatever the cause, Balloon Bight has gone. It got its
name from the fact that Scott, and later Shackleton, ascended
there in a balloon brought for the purpose of seeing as far
as possible to the south of the barrier edge. So Scott was the
first man to ascend in the Antarctic. Airplanes had not been
flown then. What would he not have given for one? From
the balloon he could see that the surface to the south rose in
gradual undulations, and a bank of cloud had all the appear-
ance of high land. But the highest land south of his position
anywhere within his possible vision is actually only an ele-
vation of about 1,000 feet of barrier surface. It is, however,
over land.

Balloon Bight was left behind and the ship headed for
McMurdo Sound, where it was to winter. No ship had ever
wintered in the Antarctic except the unfortunate Belgica,
and selecting a harbor where the Discovery could lie safe
from pressure for a year required much thought. In Mc-
Murdo Sound they were in unknown waters, and what the

166 * The Antarctic Ocean

winter conditions might be they could only imagine. They
found a little bay on the south side of Cape Armitage in
which the ship would be completely protected from pres-
sure, and in water shallow enough to keep off the bergs. It
was an ideal location,

They erected a hut on shore, the hut in which they had in-
tended to live if a safe anchorage could not be found. Now
the hut could be put to any use, as a workshop or playroom,
or even a well-provisioned shelter for those on sledging
parties if the ship should be driven off shore. While the
large hut and smaller ones were being set up, the men
learned to ski down the slopes, tried to master their dog
teams, and went on explorations on foot. It was on one of
these foot-sledging trips that the expedition had its only
disaster.

Twelve men had started from the ship on a journey to
Cape Crozier, which is a point on Ross Island below Mt.
Terror about where the barrier meets the island. After three
days they met such deep snow that only those on skis and
they had only three pair could possibly continue.

So nine men were sent back. They reached a point where
they decided to climb up and over a ridge that lay between
them and the sea, believing that it would be a shorter route.
All the men put on their frozen ski boots except two, Vince
and Hare, who could not get their boots on and continued
in their slippery fur boots. No sooner had they gained the
top of the ridge than it began to blow and the air was filled
with drift. They made for the shelter of some rocks and put
up their tents, exhausted and frostbitten.

None of these men, of course, had had any experience in
the Antarctic before. They could not get their cooking
apparatus going, and in their stiff leather boots their feet
nearly froze. Nothing more uncomfortable than a hard
leather boot can be imagined when one is forced to be in-
active in low temperatures.

The Renaissance Scott 3 s First Voyage 167

They began to fear their tents would blow away, although
they learned later that they would withstand a gale, and the
thought of the comfortable ship so near they thought it was
only a mile or two awaywas too great a temptation. Not
realizing the danger of venturing into unknown territory in
an Antarctic blizzard, they started for the ship, a man in
leather boots on either side of those wearing fur boots. In
not more than ten minutes Hare was missing in the blinding
drift. They spread out in a line to intercept him and yelled.
While they were doing this, Evans stepped on a piece of
smooth ice, fell, and shot out of sight.

Barne, in charge of the party, slid after him and soon
found himself going at a tremendous pace, but brought up
beside Evans. Next came Quartley. The three men started
forward, and found themselves at the edge of a steep precipice
beyond which was nothing but whirling snow. They did not
know it then, but it was an ice cliff that ended in the sea.
Even as they drew back in dismay, a dog came sliding down
and disappeared over the edge. They moved along the cliff
until they suddenly caught a glimpse of the sea beneath them
and realized with sinking hearts what that patch of snow
on the cornice had saved them from. They found a boulder
and sheltered themselves behind it.

The party that had been left above were gathered together
by Wild, who had the wisdom not to slide down that slope.
He did not know what had happened to the others, but any-
thing was better than to attempt the unknown from which
the men had not come back. So they headed toward the ship
again in single file, when Wild also found himself on the
edge of the cliff with the sea below. He sprang back and dug
his heels into the ice, yelling to the others to stop. All suc-
ceeded except poor Vince, who had no heels to dig in with,
and in an instant he shot forward and disappeared over the
edge.

Horror-stricken, the men stood still for a moment, and

168 * The Antarctic Ocean

then painfully made their way up the slope again. They
had only the edge and heels of their boots on which to rely,
for if they had tried to crawl they would have slipped over
the edge after Vince. How they made it they never knew.
Once in a while they found a stone frozen in the ice to
which they could cling, and eventually reached the rocky top
of the ridge. From there it was comparatively easy to find
the ship.

A whale boat, in charge of Shackleton, was sent off to
make a hopeless attempt to find Vince, while Armitage went
out with several men to hunt for the others. Barne, Evans,
and Quartley were found and guided back by Ferrar, while
Armitage went on in search of Hare, only to give up after
hunting all over the section in which he had been lost. Hope
was abandoned for him also.

But two days later, on the thirteenth of March, a bitter
month in the Antarctic, the beginning of winter, a man
was seen coming down the hill toward the ship. It was
Hare, who although weak, did not have frostbite, and who
after a drink of milk went quietly to sleep. When he was
lost he had shouted to the others that he was going back
to the sledges to put on leather boots. He couldn't find the
sledges, and made for a patch of rock where he found some
shelter and went to sleep. When he awoke he was covered
with snow, which had probably kept him from frostbite.
He recognized some landmarks, now that the storm had died
down, and started for the ship, so stiff that at first he had to
crawl on his hands and knees until warmth came back into
his chilled limbs. He had slept under the snow for thirty-
six hours! He had pulled his arms inside his blouse, cov-
ered the opening in his helmet, and the skin boots, which
had caused Vince's death, had kept his feet from freezing.

Vince was never found, and a cross was later erected to
him, like the cross over Hansen's grave, farther north.

The expedition settled down for the winter, which was

The Renaissance Scott' s First Voyage 169

to be two winters before the ship was relieved from her icy
berth, and during the two summer seasons Scott accomplished
a tremendous amount of work. Man had never blazed a trail
across the Antarctic snows. Ships had skirted it and sighted
land, had even landed at some places far apart, and one small
group had spent a winter at Cape Adare but had not ven-
tured into the interior. What lay behind the icy ramparts,
the lofty mountains, was as unknow r n as the unseen surface
of the moon. Indeed, men knew more about that half of the
moon turned toward the earth than they did about the
interior of the Antarctic. To Scott it was an explorer's para-
dise.

He made good use of his opportunities. The first summer
he sledged south across the barrier to 82 degrees 16 minutes
latitude, discovering the mountains that fringe the western
edge of the barrier, and the great glaciers that tumble down
between them. The next year he climbed up to the domed
plateau to the west, and traveled out on the 78th parallel
to 156 degrees 33 minutes east longitude, about 9,000 feet
above sea level. So he discovered the famous plateau. It was
terribly hard traveling, and the impression it made on him
was overwhelming. Before he turned back he wrote:

"We see only a few miles of ruffled snow bounded by a
vague wavy horizon, but we know that beyond that horizon
are hundreds and even thousands of miles which can offer
no change to the weary eye, while on the vast expanse that
one's mind conceives one knows that there is neither tree
nor shrub, nor any living thing, nor even inanimate rock-
nothing but this terrible limitless expanse of snow. It has been
so for countless years, and it will be so for countless more.
And we, little human insects, have started to crawl over this
awful desert, and are now bent on crawling back again.* 1

In addition to these trips, Barne went south to the moun-
tains to an inlet that bears his name, and Royds went far
out on the barrier surface to the southeast. When their second

170 - The Antarctic Ocean

summer was ended, they were laden with knowledge of this
new world, rich with the treasure they had recorded in geog-
raphy and other sciences. They had proved beyond all doubt
that the Antarctic was a continent, an astonishing continent,
although they had seen so little of it, comparatively. There
is a lightheartedness and even gaiety in this part of Scott's
narrative, which reflects the pleasure they all felt at good
work well done. It was fortunate that they had had to spend
that second year.

The Discovery was still frozen in her dock, with twenty
miles of ice between her and open water. Scott determined
to saw a channel to the sea, as those on the Belgica had tried
to do. But what a difference in the men of the two ships!
When Scott came back from his trip on the plateau, he found
his men with their clothing torn and looking like a lot of
tramps, but their faces were burned to a deep bronze. "In
each dark face one has not to wait long for the smiles which
show the white of teeth and clear healthy eyes/' And this
after two years in the Antarctic. Surely, Scott had dissipated
the terrors of merely living there. But despite the hearty co-
operation of the men, the sawing was soon given up; it was
useless.

So Scott and Wilson went on a picnic to a penguin rook-
ery, lay in the sun and watched the penguins, ate penguin
liver and seal kidneys, and decided that life in the Antarctic
was quite pleasant even though they must prepare for an-
other winter. There was plenty of food. One morning as they
sat in the tent door dreamily looking out to sea, a ship hove
In sight, so unexpectedly that Scott was startled. And then
appeared another ship. They thought the first was their relief
ship, the Morning, but what could the second be? They soon
learned.

When the Morning had gone back the year before, the
admiralty got the idea that Scott's ship would never be re-
leased, so the Morning and the Terra Nova were sent back

The RenaissanceScott's First Voyage 171

with orders for Scott to abandon the Discovery if she were
not freed from the ice, and to return home. It was a blow to
Scott, who did not want to leave the Discovery. But in the
meantime, after sighting the ships, he had gone on to the
tent of the penguin hunters who were getting a supply of
meat for the winter, and told them of the ship. They had seen
it, but were leisurely finishing their meal, and weren't in
any hurry for their mail. "We thought that would be all
right/' they said nonchalantly.

"They as good as said that life was so extremely easy and
pleasant that there was no possible object in worrying over
such a trifle as the arrival of a relief expedition. And these
are the people whom, not unnaturally, some of our friends
appear to imagine in dire straits and in need of immediate
transport to civilized conditions!'*

It was the thought of leaving the Discovery that brought
gloom to the group, perhaps the most successful group in its
objectives and the happiest expedition that has ever gone
to the polar regions. If the ice did not break out in six weeks,
they must leave the ship that had been their home for more
than two years. It was enough to make any sailor miserable.
Also it hurt their vanity to be hauled home this way, when
they felt they were perfectly able to take care of themselves.
When Scott told his men what the orders were there was
silence, and there wasn't a smile for days afterward.

The relief ships appeared on Jan. 5, 1904, but it was a
long time before there was any change in the ice. Then came
a swell that broke out the ice to within a few miles of the
Discovery, and the ship moved groaningly up and down in
its icy casing. The swell died, and Scott tried cracking the
ice with explosives, which had some effect, but not much.

It was not until Feb. 14 that the ice began to break up
fast. It all went out in a few hours as the two relief ships
battered and cracked it, helping the unseen current that was
causing this rapid disintegration. Finally, all three ships

172 The Antarctic Ocean

were close together. But the Discovery was still held by the
Ice In its little bay. Not much ice, but enough to form a
prison unless their luck held, for the ice there was fifteen
to seventeen feet thick. Two huge charges were put out
ahead and astern of the ship, and one after the other they
exploded. The ice cracked, the water gurgled through, and
on Feb. 16 the Discovery lay freely riding at anchor, ready
to sail the sea again.

"It would have been hard to find a prouder or happier
ship's company than we were that day."

Their troubles were not yet over. During all the period
the weather had been fairly good, often with sun shining
warmly down, and no wind. But the Antarctic is treacher-
ous. A strong wind sprang up, and the Terra Nova made for
the open sea. The Discovery could not follow because the
engineers were working over her boilers, pipes, and engines,
and Scott did not want to hurry them. The wind was blow-
ing the ship toward a cliff despite her anchor, and just as the
stern of the ship struck the cliff word came that there was
enough steam to go ahead slowly. They pulled up to their
anchor and got it in, and then the current stopped them.

Scott knew there was a shoal off the point which he must
clear, but as soon as he got beyond the point the ship was
caught in a swift current, whirled around, and thrown for-
ward onto the shoal. They were in an awful position, with
the gale, sea, and current all tending to drive them faster
ashore. Each time the ship lifted with a wave she came down
with a thud that shook her from end to end. Scott tried to
force the ship ahead with steam and sails, hoping that she
would lift over the narrow shoal, but soon found it hopeless.

"The situation," said Scott, "seemed to have no ray of
comfort in it. On deck the wind was howling through our
rigging, the ship was swaying helpless and rising each mo-
ment, to crash down once more on the stony bottom; the
seas were breaking heavily over the stern and sending clouds

The RenaissanceScott's First Voyage 173

of spray high up the masts; the breakers on the shore flung
the backwash over our forecastle; the water was washing to
and fro on our flooded decks. Towering above us within a
stone's throw was the rocky promontory of Hut Point; on its
summit, and clearly outlined against the sky, stood the cross
which we had erected to our shipmate. I remember thinking
how hard it seemed that we had rescued our ship only to be
beaten to pieces beneath its shadow.

"If the situation on deck was distressing, that below fairly
rivalled it. Each time that the ship descended with a sicken-
ing thud into her rocky bed the beams and decks buckled
upwards to such an extent that several of our thick glass
deadlights were cracked across, every timber creaked and
groaned, doors flew to and fro, crockery rattled, and every
loose article was thrown into some new position. With the
heavier blows one could see the whole ship temporarily dis-
torted in shape; through all and directly under one's feet
could be heard the horrible crunching and grinding of the
keel on the stones below."

The hours went by, and then came a lull in the wind.
While they were at dinner, there was a cry from the deck
that the ship was moving astern. As suddenly as the storm
had come up, it began to calm down, and so did the sea.
Curiously enough, the current had turned and was running
as swiftly south as it had been to the north. The engines
were put full astern, and slowly the ship ground her way
off the shoal and floated free again. Apparently the wind
had driven the water out of the sound, and with the lull
the water came back as fast as it went out. So strongly was
the ship built that she did not make any extra water despite
the terrific pounding she had received. Scott could not help
feeling that her release was extraordinary.

They worked all night coaling from the Terra Nova under
the shelter of a glacier tongue, and everybody scientists, offi-
cers, and men took a hand in the grubby business, till they

174 * The Antarctic Ocean

were streaked with black. But they got their coal aboard.
The Morning also gave them all the coal she could spare.
They finished coaling on the morning of Feb. 19, and the
little Morning, with just enough coal for her needs, started
for Port Ross in the Auckland Islands, where all three ships
would rendezvous before going on to New Zealand together.
The Terra Nova and the Discovery were to keep on up the
coast.

Scott was always having trouble with his pumps, and this
was one of the times. The Discovery leaked a little, due to
some defect which they never could find because of her hull
construction. The pumps refused to work soon after they
started north, and the water gained so fast that it was soon
over the stokehold plates and threatening to put the fires out,
so they were drawn. The hand pumps wouldn't work be-
cause they were still clogged with ice. Finally they found
that the bilge suction, which had been in a mass of ice when
they left, had thawed out and was clogged with ashes. When
this was remedied, the pumps worked perfectly, but for a
time the situation was serious.

Then it was found that the rudderhead was shattered, so
that there was a big lag as the rudder was turned from one
side to the other. They put into Robertson Bay and installed
their spare rudder, which was only about half the size of the
original. But it was sufficient to steer them through the
heaviest pack they had seen, some of it reaching to their
decks, big hummocky stuff. This ice covered the whole sea
south of the Balleny Islands.

Soon after, Scott was in the position where Wilkes had
plotted Eld's Peak and Ringgold's Knoll, and later Cape
Hudson. Finding these nonexistent in the position Wilkes
gave them, Scott decided that there could be no, land east-
ward of Adelie Land and gave up any idea of trying to find
it. Poor Wilkes. We know that there is land east of Adelie
Land now, lots of it, although Wilkes did not actually see it.

The RenaissanceScott's First Voyage * 175

So Scott turned north, his first expedition such a success
that Sir Clements Markham said that no polar expedition
had ever returned with "so great a harvest of results/' Scott
had opened up a field of exploration that promised great
things for years to come, had even to a certain extent shown
the way to the pole itself. He had reason to be proud.

The Great Onslaught

ATER Scott had pointed the way to the South Pole by
his southern journey which led him far into the in-
terior over the barrier ice, it was inevitable that men
should be drawn to that pathway in attempts to reach the
pole itself. Whatever may be the pull of exploration for the
sake of science, the simple unknown has always had a
stronger call to the adventurous, and the mathematical pin
points at the top and bottom of the world were irresistible
so long as they had not been reached. This is not a nautical
chapter, but it could not be omitted, for it contains briefly
the climax of centuries of effort.

These efforts filled three crowded years, from 1908 to
1911, years filled with great achievement and marked by
the greatest tragedy the Antarctic has known. Three men
took part in this onslaught, Shackleton, Scott, and Amund-
sen, great names in Antarctic history. All of them are now
dead, each passing dramatically. It is doubtful if there will
ever again be three such mighty men in their chosen field.

Shackleton was the first to seek the pole, restless soul that
he was. He left New Zealand in the Nimrod on Jan. 1, 1908.
The Nimrod was a forty-year-old sealer, grimy and smelly
when he bought her, but strong and sound when recondi-
tioned. It was fortunate that she was, for few ships have been
through such a battering as she took on the way to the pack.
Both Scott's and Shackleton's second journeys through the
howling seas between New Zealand and the pack were dismal
compared with the pleasant voyage south of the Discovery.
Shackleton was the first to have his ship towed to the pack

176

The Great Onslaught 177

to save fuel, an example later followed with success by Byrd
on his first expedition. The towing ship was the Koonya, a
small steamer.

They were hardly at sea before it began to blow, and as
the Nimrod was loaded so that she was sluggish in the water,
and also held down at the head by the heavy towing cable,
she was a wet and uncomfortable ship. Before the first night
was over, seas were breaking over her, and it was necessary
to rig life lines along the deck to keep men from being swept
overboard. A cheerful beginning! They call that region the
"roaring forties/' and rightly so, but the farther one goes
south the harder the wind roars.

They had ponies on board, a mode of travel that has since
been abandoned as impracticable, and the water washed
through their stables on the foredeck, frightening the poor
animals that were hard put to it to keep their feet. Now
and then a wave would come aboard, roar through the
stables, tear the mats out from under the ponies' feet, and
knock over their keepers. Even far aft the whinnies of the
animals were heard, as their keepers sought to calm them,
talking to them and soothing them while holding on to the
stall with one hand.

After a short lull, the wind picked up again, and this sort
of thing continued day after day. It was so bad at times that
Shackleton signaled to the Koonya to pour oil on the water,
which helped some. The Nimrod was rolling 50 degrees, a
terrific swoop. One pony was knocked over, and as it was
too weak to get up, it was shot. On Jan. 6, the winds were
of hurricane force, and even the Koonya was making bad
weather. The straining of the ship had weakened the deck
of the Nimrod so that the sailors* quarters were soaked, as
was every other place in the ship, and the seams opened
so much that the Nimrod began to make about three feet
of water an hour. The steam pumps couldn't keep up with it,
so the hand pumps were manned in two-hour shifts.

178 The Antarctic Ocean

At night even the masthead light of the Koonya would dis-
appear behind a wall of water at times, and Shackleton esti-
mated the height of the waves as forty-two feet. Everything
that could break loose had done so, and Shackleton heard a
sailor going around the deck precariously picking up pota-
toes from a broken sack, and singing, "Here we go gather-
ing nuts in May."

On Jan. 8 they had to heave to, and as they did so an
enormous wave rose up and came aboard. When those on
deck could see again, part of the starboard bulwarks had
been smashed in, and a small house on the upper deck de-
stroyed; water swept in through broken ports and rolled
across the deck, and even the handrails of the poop deck
were cracked. The galley was washed out and the fire extin-
guished.

On Jan. 1 1 an enormous sea came aboard, taking away the
starboard bulwarks forward, so that the water rushed solidly
through the stables. It shifted the starboard whaleboat from
its chocks and landed it amidships; it swept fodder and
drums of oil together on the main deck where they lurched
back and forth .until secured. Then came a respite with a
gentle wind and sun, and those on board brought up their
belongings to dry them out. They were a sorry mess.

But that was the worst of it, for they were nearly at the
pack and the weather afterward was reasonably fair. The
Koonya left them to return to New Zealand, and the Nimrod
started through the pack alone. They passed through thou-
sands of small bergs and broken pack, but did not hit the
solid pack at all. It was one of the quickest of all passages
through that icy belt, and the Nimrod was never once halted
by heavy ice.

Shackleton had intended to winter at Balloon Bight, but
when he arrived he found that the bight had disappeared,
and that there was a wide entrance where it had been, wide
and shallow. He tied up to the bay ice to think over the

Map 9. Amundsen and Scott reached the South Pole, and Scott and his
companions perished on the return trip.

180 * The Antarctic Ocean

situation. About eight miles to the south he could see rising
slopes of ice, with apparently some peaks beyond, and a
great valley that ran east and west at the bottom of the bay.
He called the place the Bay of Whales, because of the numer-
ous whales there, but decided after what had happened to
Balloon Bight that it would be a treacherous place in which
to winter. And yet at that Bay of Whales Amundsen spent a
winter, and Byrd's expeditions have spent three winters
there. What Shackleton could not know from his position
was that winter quarters there are protected by land that
rises to the south, and prevents any forward movement of
the barrier on the east side.

So he made for McMurdo Sound where he landed near
Cape Royds, and made his camp, sending the Nimrod back.
The next season he started on his trek to the pole, one of
the greatest efforts ever made. He discovered the famous
Beardmore Glacier, one of the largest in the world, reached
the polar plateau on which he was the first to put foot, and
got to 88 degrees 33 minutes south, or within ninety miles
of the pole. As he said later, he could have reached the pole,
but he would not have returned to tell about it. He had the
courage and good sense to turn back. But as an example of
manhauling over unknown territory, and finding a way up
a tremendous glacier, over countless crevasses and ice falls,
it was a magnificent job. The men fell into so many crevas-
ses, they lost count. In the meantime Edgeworth David, the
geologist, had reached the South Magnetic Pole for the first
time.

The next attempt to reach the pole was that of Amund-
sen, although actually he started from home after Scott.
Amundsen's intention had originally been to go to the North
Pole, but when in 1910 it was announced that Peary had
already reached there, he quickly altered his plans and
headed south. He had Nansen's old ship, the Fram.

The Great Onslaught -181

There has been much dispute as to whether Amundsen
deliberately set out to forestall Scott. He claimed that after
going to the expense of preparing an expedition, there was
no reason why he should not go somewhere to "maintain
my prestige as an explorer," and the Antarctic was the only
place left open to him. He sent word from Madeira to Scott
of his intention, so that the latter would know the Norwe-
gians would compete with him.

Amundsen has been much criticized for this, largely be-
cause of Scott's tragic death, but to anyone who has read
Scott's diary it is obvious that it was not discouragement at
being beaten to the pole that killed Scott, but manhauling
and bad weather and insufficient food. Except for the long
storm at the end of his return trip from the pole, he would
probably have lived. But for many years Amundsen's sudden
reversal of his announced intentions, and his easy success
while Scott was dying, caused much bitterness.

Amundsen cared little about science; he was a geographi-
cal explorer, an adventurer in the wilderness. Any cold and
difficult journey in a region where nobody else had ever
been appealed to him. On this journey his only objective
was the pole. His whole equipment, everything he took with
him, was arranged to that end. And he was probably the
fastest and most efficient polar traveler ever known.

Obviously, he could not go anywhere near Scott's base,
and he had no desire to. His eyes had been fixed for years
on that indentation in the barrier called the Bay of Whales.
He thought that Ross had seen it, knew that Scott had
glimpsed it, and felt that any bay that had lasted so long
must be protected by land. So he made for there. His trip
through the pack took only four days, even in the fat-bellied
Fram, which had not been designed for crashing her way
through ice.

When he reached the Bay of Whales he found it full of
ice, but stood on and off for a day or two until, by rare

182 The Antarctic Ocean

chance, the entire bay was emptied of ice, something that
has not happened since in the knowledge of those who have
been there. He was able to sail to the head of the bay, past
the point where Byrd would later be forced to camp because
of ice, and tied up only a short distance from where he
erected his hut. He went ashore on skis, came to a slight
elevation above the bay ice, hopped up on it, and exclaimed,
contemptuously, "So this is the great barrier."

The contrast between his outfit and Scott's could not have
been greater. Amundsen was a keenly intelligent man, who
had deliberately fitted himself at an early age to become an
explorer. His mother wanted him to become a physician,
and to please her he had spent two years in a university,
until her death. Then he went to sea to get his master's
ticket, had been south in the Belgica, which gave him some
priority over Scott in the Antarctic, and had been the first
to make the Northwest Passage. He was a powerful, disci-
plined man, to whom the unknown beckoned like a siren.
And all his knowledge and ability he had put into the prepa-
rations for this journey.

Scott's ship was jammed with men, provisions, coal, all
sorts of equipment, and ponies. The Fram, on the other
hand, used Diesel engines, and there were only nineteen
men aboard her, nine of whom were to stay ashore. Every
man aft had a cabin to himself. There was not a single extra
thing aboard to clutter up the ship, except the 116 dogs
which had the run of the deck.

Scott had sent his ship, the Terra Nova, over to the Bay
of Whales in the hope that a party might find a place to
winter there, and much to their surprise they found the
Fram tied up to the ice. Priestley and some of the others
visited the Norwegians, who returned the call, and Priestley
said of them:

"The impression they have left with me is that of a set of
men of distinctive personality, hard, and evidently inured

The Great Onslaught 183

to hardship, good goers and pleasant and good-humored. All
these qualities combine to make them very dangerous rivals,
but even did one not want to, one cannot help liking them
individually in spite of the rivalry.

"One thing I have particularly noticed is the way in which
they are refraining from getting information from us which
might be useful to them/'

Amundsen invited half of these on the Terra Nova to stay
with him and use half of his dogs, which, of course, they re-
fused. They would probably not have been able to handle
the fierce animals anyway, for Scott was always singularly
inept in his handling and feeding of dogs, which is really
not difficult. I knew a dog driver who made a 1,100-mile
trip after only a few weeks of practice with his team. But
It was these dogs which made Amundsen's trip easy com-
pared with Scott's, although any journey, even with dogs, on
the barrier and up through a glacier to the polar plateau is
desperately hard work. Dogs are the only motive power
worth while on the surface in the Antarctic; they can pull
tremendous weights, seem to enjoy it, and the men are re-
lieved of the heartbreaking work of hauling. Amundsen used
teams of ten dogs on the polar trip.

It was obvious that there was to be a race for the pole the
next season, and Amundsen would be able to start first, long
before the surface was fit for Scott's ponies. In the fall he
set out depots at 80 degrees, 81 degrees, and 82 degrees to
the south. When he started for the pole early in the summer
season he took with him sufficient provisions to establish
depots a degree apart up to 85 degrees south, which brought
him to the Queen Maud Mountains, a continuation of the
mountains seen on the left by Shackleton when he went up
the Beardmore.

Amundsen had no intention of using Shackleton's old
route; he wanted to find a new passage to the plateau, and
he found it in Axel Heiberg Glacier, a shorter glacier but

184 * The Antarctic Ocean

equally as dangerous as the Beardmore. As the weight on
the sledges was reduced, Amundsen killed dogs and fed them
to the others; at the Butcher's Camp, halfway up the glacier,
he killed a number of dogs, and the men themselves ate
some of them.

When Amundsen reached the plateau, the traveling was
nearly as easy as on the barrier, and he reached the pole on
Dec. 14, 191 L After making the necessary observations he
turned back, leaving a tent, and the Norwegian flag flying
above it. Down the glacier again, where he barely avoided
disaster at an ice precipice, and then across the barrier to
the bay. His progress was so easy, guided by the 150 beacons
of snow he had erected, and the lines of flags on either side
of the depots, that he deliberately killed time, lying in his
tent for hours when he might have been traveling. He had
said he would get back at a certain date, and he did so, even
if he had to dawdle on the way. The men rode most of the
way across the barrier on the journey home, or were towed
on their skis.

Amundsen did not have much more favorable weather
than Scott. He met the same blizzards and the same hazards,
but by using dogs he was able to conserve the energy of him-
self and his companions, and also to carry more food than
he actually needed.

How different was Scott's trip, from the very beginning.
The Terra Nova left Lyttleton on Nov. 26, 1910, and on
Dec. 1 she ran into a gale that nearly finished her. The deck
cargo worked loose from the rolling of the ship and the
pounding of waves that came aboard, until the deck was a
mess of boxes, tins of gasoline and coal, which men were
continually securing, only to have them break away again.
The ship was practically hove to, with the engines just turn-
ing over. To add to their difficulties fine coal sifted down
into the bilges where it got mixed up with grease and clogged

The Great Onslaught 185

the pumps so that they could not keep up with the water
coming aboard.

Most of this water went below through the strained decks,
where the seams were opening from the working of the ship.
The hand pumps were manned, but these also were half
choked. Water came aboard solidly over the bulwarks, and
found its way below, not only into the bilges, but into the
cabins and every part of the ship, until the wardroom was
a swamp. Part of the lee bulwarks were swept away. Things
became so desperate that three men went below, cut a hole
through the bulkhead, crawled over the coal, and down be-
low to where they could get at the suction for the pumps.
But to get at it they had to dive into the wildly swinging
water, time after time, until the suction was cleared and the
pumps worked again.

In the meantime they had been bailing with buckets,
bailing out a ship! The buckets were passed from hand to
hand to the deck, and then back again, an unending relay
that went on for hours, but it helped. When the pumps got
the water down below the fireboxes, the boiler was fired
again, and the steam pumps went into action. The waves
were carefully calculated at about thirty-five feet high, waves
that swept green and solid over the waist of the ship. Once
the ship rolled until the lee combings of the main hatch
were under water. As the ship slowly righted itself, one of
the officers said, calmly, "She won't do that often."

They met the pack on Dec. 7, farther north than it had
been met by any ship. Progress was slow and they were often
held up for days at a time. Then the pack would open, for
no apparent reason, and the ship would forge ahead again,
until once more checked by heavy ice. Their precious coal
was being used up, so that time and again they would let
their fires go out and then light them when there seemed
a chance to force a way through a crack. The ship charged
and banged and pounded away at the ice, sometimes split-

186 - The Antarctic Ocean

ting It, and more often bouncing off as if it were steel. Occa-
sionally the Terra Nova was among floes that were eight
feet above water, with hummocks as much as twenty-five feet
high, great masses of ice that would have squashed her if
there had been any pressure. But there never is in that pack.

They had a gale in the pack on Christmas, a gale that
disturbed the ice so much that they thought it was opening.
When the wind died down and the sky cleared three days
later, they saw water sky ahead, a dark shadow on the sky,
and by Dec. 30 they were in the open sea. They had come
through 400 miles of heavy pack; Amundsen, more fortu-
nate, did it in four days farther to the east.

Scott went into McMurdo Sound, where he had made his
former camp, and this time selected a spot about halfway
between his old hut and Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds.
There they unloaded for the winter and sent the Terra Nova
back to New Zealand. Scott's plan this time was to try for
the pole the next season, and he was much upset and de-
pressed when he found that Amundsen was at the Bay of
Whales, prepared for a rapid dash to the pole and back.

There is a strain of melancholy all through Scott's diary
on this expedition. His former diary was never published
as a whole, so it is impossible to compare them, but he seems
to have had on this trip a sense of foreboding which could
hardly have been with him on his former venture. As has
been said, he was a moody man at this time, often irritable.
He was the same kind and gentle Scott, but he was fre-
quently miserable.

Scott laid his depots on the barrier that fall, and the next
spring began his march south on Nov. 1, 1911 (it must be
remembered that our winter months are summer months
down below). There were four men in the polar party, Cap-
tain R. F. Scott, Dr. E. A. Wilson, Lieutenant H. R. Bowers,
known as "Birdie/* and Edgar Evans, seaman, who had
proved himself such a willing and cheerful traveler on the

The Great Onslaught 187

Discovery expedition. Several other men went as two sup-
porting parties, one to turn back on the glacier and the
other on the plateau. Scott said in his diary at the start:

"The future is in the lap of the gods; I can think of noth-
ing left undone to deserve success."

The ponies did not prove a great success, although some
of them lasted to the mountains. On the way up the Beard-
more, they wearily hauled their loads up that gigantic and
crevassed highway on a different route from Shackleton's.
They slogged on, mile after weary mile, over the deep snow
and hard sastrugi (hard ridges of snow, with cutting edges)
of the plateau, until at last they saw some ski tracks running
parallel with their own, dogs' tracks, and the remains of a
camp. They knew what that meant. Amundsen had been
ahead of them.

On Jan. 17, 1911, a full month after Amundsen, they
reached the pole and found there the tent that the Norwe-
gians had left. It was a terrible blow to Scott and his com-
panions. He was convinced that the Norwegians had found
an easy way up. So great was their depression that even the
weather bothered them more than usual. It was blowing
hard, with a curious damp chill that went to the bone. Scott
spoke of the monotony and exclaimed:

"Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for
us without the reward of priority."

They put up their "poor slighted Union Jack," took pic-
tures, and then prepared to return. "We have turned our
back now on the goal of our ambition and must face our
800 miles of solid dragging and good-bye to most of the
day-dreams!"

In contrast to Amundsen's method of erecting snow cairns
short distances apart, Scott depended on following his own
ski tracks back, and he found them often drifted over. They
got more and more hungry, and Evans was frostbitten easily,
while Gates' feet were constantly cold. As they went down

188 The Antarctic Ocean

the glacier, despite their run-down condition and weariness
Scott sent Bowers ahead on skis to get some rock specimens.
Later Wilson stopped to get more specimens and then caught
up with the party.

These rocks show as much as anything the kind of man
Scott was. They weighed nearly thirty-five pounds, but he
clung to them until the end, knowing that they should be
valuable. In them were found fossils, so inconspicuous that
they could hardly be seen, but fossils that did much to prove
the age and past history of the continent.

Evans, who had been worn out on the summit, got worse
as they came down the glacier, and hit his head in falling
into a crevasse. He became weaker and weaker, then some-
what dazed and rambling, and finally dropped back and was
found crawling on his hands and knees, his hands frostbitten
and a "wild look" in his eyes. They lifted him to his feet,
but in a few minutes he sank back again. He died quietly
that night.

They kept losing the track, and at times missed a camp.
The weather was thick and overcast, the hauling dreadfully
hard, and Scott was low in spirits. At one camp they found
a shortage of biscuits, at another a shortage of oil. These
shortages in provisions left by the supporting party have
never been explained. The fuel shortage might be explained
by leakage, but not the biscuit shortage. The pulling was so
difficult that Scott apparently became irritated at Bowers,
who, he said, had not quite the trick of hauling. Scott men-
tions that Bowers was "a little hurt at my criticisms, but I
never doubted his heart/*

They came to another food depot and found a shortage
of oil, and Gates* feet were found to be badly frostbitten.
Also they lost the track again. "God help us, we can't keep
up this pulling, that Is certain. Amongst ourselves we are
unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart
I can only guess."

The Great Onslaught 189

Gates got steadily worse, and while the others were off
hunting for tracks if they had only built cairns! Gates
would sit on the sled and try to rest his painful feet. He
never once complained, but grew more silent. From Scott's
diary:

"Sunday, March 1 ITitus Gates is very near the end, one
feels. What we or he will do, God only knows. We discussed
the matter after breakfast; he is a fine brave fellow and un-
derstands the situation, but he practically asked for advice.
Nothing could be said but to urge him to march as long as
he could. One satisfactory result to the discussion: I practi-
cally ordered Wilson to hand over the means of ending our
troubles to us, so that any one of us may know how to do
so. Wilson had no choice between doing so and our ran-
sacking the medicine case. We have 30 opium tabloids apiece
and he is left with a tube of morphine. So far the tragical
side of our story."

Things steadily became worse. The wind was against them
and the temperature was abnormally low for that time of
year, 37 degrees below zero, which is terrible weather with
a strong wind blowing. "It must near the end, but a pretty
merciful end. . . . Must fight it out to the last biscuit."
Then:

"Friday, March 16 or Saturday 17 Lost track of dates, but
think the last correct. Tragedy all along the line. At lunch,
the day before yesterday, poor Titus Gates said he couldn't
go on; he proposed we should leave him in his sleeping-bag.
That we could not do, and we induced him to come on, on
the afternoon march. In spite of its awful nature for him he
struggled on and we made a few miles. At night he was
worse and we knew that the end had come.

"Should this be found I want these facts recorded. Gates'
last thoughts were of his mother, but immediately before he
took pride in thinking that his regiment would be pleased
with the bold way in which he met his death. We can testify

190 - The Antarctic Ocean

to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks with-
out complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to
discuss outside subjects. He did not would not give up
hope till the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the
end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to
wake; but he woke in the morning yesterday. It was blow-
ing a blizzard. He said, 'I am just going outside and may be
some time. 1 He went out into the blizzard and we have not
seen him since.

"I take this opportunity of saying that we have stuck to
our sick companions to the last. In case of Edgar Evans, when
absolutely out of food and he lay insensible, the safety of
the remainder seemed to demand his abandonment, but
Providence mercifully removed him at this critical moment.
He died a natural death, and we did not leave him till two
hours after his death. We knew that poor Gates was walking
to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew
it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman. We
all hope to meet the end with a similar spirit, and assuredly
the end is not far. . . .

"We are at No 14 pony camp, only two pony marches from
One Ton Depot. We leave here our theodolite, a camera,
and Gates* sleeping bags. Diaries, &c., and geological speci-
mens carried at Wilson's special request, will be found with
us or on our sledge/*

The calm courage of that last entry is beyond all words.

"Monday, March 19 Lunch. We camped with difficulty
last night, and were dreadfully cold till after our supper of
cold pemmican and biscuit and a half a pannikin of cocoa
cooked over the spirit. Then, contrary to expectations, we got
warm and all slept well. To-day we started in the usual drag-
ging manner. Sledge dreadfully heavy. We are 15% miles
from the depot and ought to get there in three days. What
progress! We have two days 1 food but barely a day's fuel.
All our feet are getting bad Wilson's best, my right foot

The Great Onslaught 191

worst, left all right. There is no chance to nurse one's feet
till we can get hot food into us. Amputation is the least I
can hope for now, but will the trouble spread? That is the
serious question. The weather doesn't give us a chance the
wind from N. to N.W. and 40 degrees temp, to-day.

"Wednesday, March 21 Got within 11 miles of depot
Monday night; had to lay up all yesterday in severe blizzard.
To-day forlorn hope, Wilson and Bowers to depot for fuel.

"Thursday, March 22 and 23-Blizzard bad as ever Wil-
son and Bowers unable to start tomorrow last chance no
fuel and only one or two of food left must be near the end.
Have decided it will be natural we shall inarch for the
depot with or without our effects and die in our tracks.

"Thursday, March 29 Since the 21st we have had a con-
tinuous gale from W.S.W. and S.W. We had fuel to make
two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the
20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot
// miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a
scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any
better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we
are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.

"It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.

R. SCOTT.

"Last entry.

"For God's sake look after our people."

In the last days Scott wrote letters to Mrs. Wilson, to Mrs.
Bowers, Bowers's mother, to Sir James M. Barrie, Scott's
great friend, and to a number of others. The writing was
quite strong and legible even the last entry in his diary. In
a message to the public he outlined what he believed to have
been the causes of their disaster, and added:

"Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the
hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which
would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These

192 The Antarctic Ocean

rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but
surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who
are dependent on us are properly provided for/'

And so died these very gallant gentlemen.

It was a depressed group that lived through the second
winter at the base, after the ship had gone. It was evident
after a time that their leader was not coming back. In No-
vember of the next year a search party went south to try to
find some trace of them. The .tent was found on Nov. 11.
Cherry-Garrard, in his excellent book, tells in moving words
of how they were found:

"That scene can never leave my memory. We with the
dogs had seen Wright turn away from the course by himself
and the mule party swerve right-handed ahead of us. He had
seen what he thought was a cairn, and then something look-
ing black by its side. A vague kind of wonder gradually gave
way to a real alarm. We came up to them all halted. Wright
came across to us. 'It is the tent/ I do not know how he
knew. Just a waste of snow: to our right the remains of one
of last year's cairns, a mere mound; and then three feet of
bamboo sticking quite alone out of the snow, perhaps a trifle
more pointed. We walked up to it. I do not think we quite
realizednot for very long but some one reached up to a
projection of snow, and brushed it away. The green flap of
the ventilator of the tent appeared, and we knew that the
door was below.

"Two of us entered, through the funnel of the outer tent,
and through the bamboos on which was stretched the lining
of the inner tent. There \v r as some snow not muchbetween
the two linings. But inside we could see nothing the snow
had drifted out the light. There was nothing to do but to
dig the tent out. Soon we could see the outlines. There were
three men here,

"Bowers and Wilson were sleeping in their bags. Scott had
thrown back the flaps of his bag at the end. His left hand

(Underwood 6* Underwood)

Plate l4.~The last of the Endeavor.

The Great Onslaught 193

was stretched over Wilson, his lifelong friend. Beneath the
head of his bag, between the bag and the floor-cloth, was
the green wallet in which he carried his diary. The brown
books of diary were inside: and on the floor cloth were some
letters.

"Everything was tidy. The tent had been pitched as well
as ever, with the door facing down the sastrugi, the bamboos
with a good spread, the tent itself taut and ship-shape. There
was no snow inside the inner lining. There were some
loose pannikins from the cooker, the ordinary tent gear, the
personal belongings and a few more letters and records per-
sonal and scientific. Near Scott was a lamp formed from a
tin and some lamp wick off a finnesko. It had been used to
burn the little methylated spirit which remained. I think
that Scott had used it to help him to write up to the end.
I feel sure that he had died lastand once I had thought that
he would not go so far as some of the others. We never real-
ized how strong that man was, mentally and physically, until
now.

"We sorted out the gear, records, papers, diaries, spare
clothing, letters, chronometers, finnesko, socks, a flag. There
was even a book which I had lent Bill [Wilson] for the jour-
neyand he had brought it back. Somehow we learnt that
Amundsen had been to the Pole, and that they too had been
to the Pole, and both items of news seemed to be of no im-
portance whatever. There was a letter there from Amundsen
to King Haakon. There were the personal chatty little notes
we had left for them on the Beardmore how much more im-
portant to us than all the royal letters in the world.

"We dug down the bamboo which had brought us to this
place. It led to the sledge, many feet down, and had been
rigged there as a mast. And on the sledge were some more
odds and ends a piece of paper from the biscuit box: Bow-
ers* meteorological log: and the geological specimens, thirty

194 - The Antarctic Ocean

pounds of them, all of the first importance. Drifted over also
were the harnesses, skis and ski-sticks.

"Hour after hour, so it seemed to me, Atkinson sat in our
tent and read. The finder was to read the diary and then it
was to be brought home these were Scott's instructions writ-
ten on the cover. But Atkinson said he was only going to
read sufficient to know what had happened and after that
they were brought home unopened and unread. When he
had the outline we all gathered together and he read to us
the Message to the Public, and the account of Gates' death,
which Scott had expressly wished to be known.

"We never moved them. We took the bamboos of the
tent away, and the tent itself covered them. And over them
we built the cairn.

"I do not know how long we were there but when all was
finished, and the chapter of Corinthians had been read, it
was midnight of some day. The sun was dipping low above
the Pole, the Barrier was almost in shadow. And the sky was
blazing sheets and sheets of iridescent clouds. The cairn and
Cross stood dark against a glory of burnished gold."

The Indomitable Shackleton

SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON failed in the main ob-
jectives of his two Antarctic expeditions, but in his
failure he wrote a greater success than if he had reached
his ultimate goal. I regard him as the greatest of all Antarctic
leaders. He had a good deal of Scott's enthusiasm for science,
but regarded it somewhat as a means to an end. He had all
of Scott's sympathy and tenderness and understanding, was
a romantic, but had iron in his soul when pressed to the
breaking point. He always knew when to quit, and it takes
courage to quit in the Antarctic. Twice in his career he had
to make decisions on which the lives of all his men de-
pended; and he did the right thing.

What pulled him through was, as with Scott, sheer char-
acter. The man was spiritually tough, intellectually romantic,
and physically strong. He had the gift of backing his cold
and considered judgment. Somewhere I have read, and have
hunted endlessly for it, a description of him which might be
paraphrased from memory as:

'Tor scientific leadership give me Scott; for swift and ef-
ficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless
position, when there seems no way out, get down on your
knees and pray for Shackleton/*

I remember meeting Shackleton once, for I was sent to
interview him when he was planning his Weddell Sea jour-
ney. I knew little of him, or of the Antarctic, for it was some
time before the first World War. But I shall not forget him.
He was tall and broad-shouldered. His face was sharply mod-
eled, and he had keen eyes under dark brows, eyes which

195

196 The Antarctic Ocean

looked at his rather floundering interviewer with polite
amusement and kindness. He knew I didn't know what he
had done, why he had done it, or what he wanted to do,
and he guessed that the Antarctic was a dimly remote and
unknown land so far as I was concerned. He had consid-
eration, and I remember him gratefully, as one does having
seen something that was tremendous in its simplicitylike
the Antarctic itself. Shackleton was a rock; the sort of rock
men cling to when they have no hope.

But despite that great spiritual and physical strength of
his, he had lights and shades which came from his Irish back-
ground. Most people who know anything of Shackleton think
of him as a merchant sailor who became a great adventurer.
He was much more than that. The son of a teacher, of good
family, he was possessed of a vivid imagination. He tried to
dig a shaft to Australia in his father's backyard once just to
provide a quicker route than by sea, although possibly the
digging was incentive enough.

His father loved poetry, and the boy grew to love it, also.
He was apprenticed in the merchant marine when he was
sixteen and got seasick on his second voyage. He wrote
poetry, and the sight of the stars as he paced the deck at
night had so profound an effect on him that they kept him
from the petty and sometimes ignoble mischief into which
lads are tempted when on shore in a foreign port. There
was nothing soft about him; he was tough and hard and
when angry his eyes were like blue steel.

And he was ambitious. He once told a fellow officer after
he was in love: "I would like to make a name for myself
and for her/* Shackleton was of the romantic adventurer
group who make history; if he had lived in the days of chiv-
alry he would have ridden with Roland and broken many
a lance. L. D. A. Hussey, who was on the Endurance when
it was crushed in the ice, the beginning of Shackleton's great
sea epic, said of him:

The Indomitable Shackleton 197

"What appealed to me more than anything was the fact
that he was so human. He had his faults, and knew it too,
and he expected perfection in no man; but he was quite
willing to overlook what was bad and remember the good
in everyone. He had a way of compelling loyalty. We would
have gone anywhere without question just on his order. And
his personality left its mark on all our lives."

So it can be seen that this dark-browed sailor, with the
glint of humor barely showing in his eyes, was very much
of a man. Even when Shackleton was nowhere near by, his
men did not do anything which they knew he would not
have approved. I know no better tribute.

When I saw him, for the first and only time, I did not
know this of him, unfortunately. Now he lies under a stone
cairn on South Georgia, and it will be a long time before
we see his like again.

Shackleton had always been interested in polar adventure,
and when Scott was organizing his first expedition, Shackle-
ton applied for a post and was accepted. He was already
known as an excellent ship's officer, as a man who would un-
doubtedly make his mark at sea. But the Antarctic appealed
to him. It is significant that one of his closest companions
on the expedition was Dr. Wilson, Scott's second-in-com-
mand, and probably one of the finest characters who ever
went south of the Circle. Wilson was the backbone of the
group, the one to whom everybody, including Scott, turned
when they were perplexed or in trouble.

Shackleton used to go to him with questions on faith and
religion, this huge man who was to lead others being dis-
turbed about his own thoughts. With Wilson, Shackleton
helped get out the South Polar Times, a paper so highbrow
that it was abandoned. It contained some of Wilson's most
beautiful sketches and Shackleton wrote verse for it not ter-
ribly good, but not bad. His companions recalled that
"Shackle" or "Cautious Jack," as he was called, was never

198 - The Antarctic Ocean

at a loss for a quotation, that poetry was always on his lips,
and that he loved Browning best. Once he and another man
took part in a poetry contest to determine who was more
popular, Browning or Tennyson, and "Shackle" won for
Browning by one vote.

He went on Scott's inland sledging journey, and despite
the fact that he was one of the strongest men in the group,
he got scurvy badly and on the latter part of the journey
home had to be pulled on a sledge. Scott and Wilson saved
his life. Scott's rations were never sufficient for manhauling,
and Shackleton's huge frame probably demanded much more
than the daily fare.

On his own first expedition to the Antarctic, he discov-
ered the famous Beardmore Glacier, up which he traveled to
the polar plateau, and got within ninety-seven miles of the
South Pole. He had the wisdom to turn back, so that his
rations would last. He often saidbefore the Scott tragedy
that he could have reached the pole but that he would not
have returned to tell about it. Another branch of that expe-
dition reached the South Magnetic Pole for the first time,
and Shackleton discovered more Antarctic land than all his
predecessors. On the South Magnetic Pole journey was a
young man named Douglas Mawson, later to lead an expedi-
tion to Adelie Land.

It is interesting to observe how leaders in the Antarctic
grew out of other expeditions, probably not such an extraor-
dinary result. It indicates the effect the limitless and desolate
places south of the Circle have on certain types of men.
Shackleton was a subordinate on Scott's first expedition, and
went on to lead two of his own. Mawson was a subordinate
on Shackleton's first expedition, later led his own expedition
south to one of the most vicious spots on the continent, and
ever since has been poking around the edges o that most dif-
ficult part of the Antarctic coast south of his homeland of
Australia the coast first discovered by Wilkes. Mawson has

The Indomitable Shackle ton * 199

contributed a tremendous amount of scientific knowledge
about that region, for he is fundamentally a scientist.

These men grew out of other organizations, and because
of their experience and ability came to achieve great results.
But one always wonders whether their real purpose was not
to go back to the strange seas and icy land. The ice tugs at
one's heartstrings, whatever those who have not seen it may
say; mei> return because they want to be there. Its beauty,
its aloofness, its weird isolation, are compelling. In the midst
of discomfort and danger one can find peace, so rare.

Explorers talk of science, but they mean the wish to be
where other people cannot go. Perhaps, some day, somebody
will explain this call of the ice, for it is the call of immo-
bility, of silence, of death, and of a beauty one can realize
only by being fortunate enough to have seen it.

For his Weddell Sea trip Shackleton planned just the sort
of expedition that might be expected of a poet-adventurer.
Having been within a few miles of the pole, which Scott and
Amundsen later reached, he contemplated on this expedi-
tion a journey across Antarctica, a trifling journey of 1,800
miles in a wilderness of snow where nothing could be found
to support life. It was a plan so bold that no explorer since
has attempted it on the surface.

Of course, bases were to be carried inland from the Ross
Sea sector, so that he would find food and fuel after passing
the pole and these bases were laid down but he had to as-
sume that no disaster would overtake the base-laying party,
and that in the midst of a white desolation he would be able
to find a tiny cache, marked, perhaps, with a flag. The prob-
abilities are that if he had been able to establish a base on
the Weddell Sea side he would have succeeded. He had
learned by bitter experience that men travel best with dogs,
not by manhauling or with ponies, in the Antarctic, and he
had modeled his sledging journey after the pattern of

200 * The Antarctic Ocean

Amundsen. It is a pity that he could not have carried it out,
although his failure led to a polar epic.

His ship, the Endurance, sailed from London Aug. 1, 1914.
Off Margate he anchored and there heard that war was to be
declared. He offered the sendees of his men and himself as
a unit, but Winston Churchill told him to go ahead, and
the King sent for him and gave him a Union Jack to carry
on the expedition. And so for nearly two years Shackleton
and his men knew nothing about the war; when they re-
turned many of them were plunged into it and died, as did
members of Scott's expedition.

He knew what he faced in the Weddell Sea, that that ice-
filled ocean was "notoriously inhospitable," and that the
ice circled so that it jammed against the east coast, forming
heavier pressure than is found in any other part of the Ant-
arctic Ocean. He hoped, inasmuch as Weddell and Filchner
had both been far south, that he would be able to find a
harbor somewhere, or if not, that he could land his dogs
and supplies and send the ship back to South Georgia. It
was a gamble.

Shackleton found early on his voyage into the Weddell
Sea that he had an unusually heavy ice year to contend with.
He met heavy pack ice on the edge of the Weddell Sea. The
ship was caught in it and a heavy swell threw huge pieces
against the sides and bows. This was early in December, and
the ship circled, retreated, and advanced again, gradually
working its way down along the eastern shore of the Wed-
dell Sea.

They rammed through ice, conning the ship with a sema-
phore, and Shackleton records one amusing moment when
the captain yelled back to a scientist at the wheel for every-
body with muscle takes turns at this strenuous exercise
"Why in Paradise don't you port?" and the answer came
back: *Tm blowing my nose." Once, as happens occasion-

IQO

140

1 50

20 WEST L0NCITUDEO

v SHACKLETOM

^S. SANDWICH/
GROUP

'1SK

s -^ Y *-ft-v

"^

k COAST

SOUTH
POLE

i

<%

Map I0.-Shackleton*s drift in the Weddell Sea. His ship was crushed, but he
saved all his men.

202 < The Antarctic Ocean

ally, a man was thrown clear over the wheel when ice struck
the rudder.

Early In January the ship reached open water and ran
southward for a hundred miles, with big blue whales blow-
ing alongside, but then hit pack again at about the same
time that land was seen. It was Coats' Land, discovered by
W. S. Bruce, of the Scotia expedition. Soon after, new land
was seen, which Shackleton named Caird Coast. In it was a
huge glacier, with a bay in the ice foot that would have af-
forded an excellent landing place leading up to the barrier
beyond. Later, Shackleton had reason to regret that he had
not landed there, but his desire to push as far south as pos-
sible in order to cut his sledging distance urged him by.

Late in January the land was clear to the south and east
and only about sixteen miles away, but the movement of the
pack and the heavy ice around the Endurance forbade any
attempt to land there. The ice gathered around the ship as
it drifted south and east, and late in February, on the twenty-
second, the ship reached her farthest south, 77 degrees lati-
tude in longitude 35 degrees west.

"I could not doubt now/' he said, "that the Endurance
was confined for the winter. Gentle breezes from the east,
south, and south-west did not disturb the hardening floes.
The seals were disappearing and the birds were leaving us.
The land showed still in fair weather on the distant horizon,
but it was beyond our reach now, and regrets for havens
that lay behind us were vain."

The Endurance was doomed.

At first there was no great apprehension, for Shackleton
believed that the ship would drift west and north, and if
subjected to pressure, as was inevitable, would lift above it.
He kept the loose ice alongside cleared away so there would
be nothing to check the lift of the ship as the ice came to-
gether around and under her. But early in April the grind-
ing and growling ice made those on board realize that they

The Indomitable Shackle ton 203

might have underestimated the crushing power of the Wed-
dell Sea in winter. At one time they began to drift toward
a stranded berg, where they could see the ice splitting and
piling up. If the ship once got into that mess, it would be
lost in no time. Once the ship drifted to within seven miles
of the berg and Shackleton could see ice piled up sixty feet
against its side. But finally the current drifted the ship to
one side, and before the end of the month the berg had dis-
appeared. The sun set on May 1, and the long winter began.

"One feels our helplessness as the long winter night closes
upon us. By this time, if fortune had smiled upon the Ex-
pedition, we would have been comfortably and securely es-
tablished in a shore base, with depots laid to the south and
plans made for the long march in the spring and summer.
Where will we make a landing now? ... In the meantime
we must wait."

They had an amusing experience with some emperor pen-
guins about this time. Several men headed off a few of the
largest and shut them up in an igloo for the night. Soon
after five other emperors were seen. When Kerr tried to seize
one, the penguin knocked him down and jumped on his
chest. That may seem unbelievable to those who have not
seen an emperor penguin in action, but they weigh eighty
or more pounds, and a blow from one of their scaly flippers
will nearly knock a man out. The men finally caught a pen-
guin that weighed eighty-five pounds, bound his bill, and
two men led him to the ship 'like an inebriated old man."

The calm and cold weather that had trapped the Endur-
ance by bringing about an early cementing of the pack, con-
tinued and the ship drifted slowly north-north-west. Shackle-
ton's mind was perplexed by the difficulties confronting him,
for no human will could control the inexorable movement
of the floes. He kept his usual calm demeanor, but in the
mornings he was sometimes pretty gruff. But he did not
allow his mind to dwell too long on the uncertainties of the

204 The Antarctic Ocean

future, and the spirits of the men remained remarkably high.
They were a good crew. They ran races on the ice, played
games, and had a celebration whenever there was an excuse
for one. Given enough food and shelter, the polar night is
not nearly so bad as might be assumed. But there were
ahead days when there was no shelter, when every hour
was filled with danger.

The ice began to press on the ship in July. Far away
could be heard rumblings of breaking ice, as it rafted and
piled up, a sound like distant, heavy surf. Cracks appeared
and all the sledges were taken aboard the ship. About the
time the northern horizon began to be lighted by the re-
turning sun, early in August, the big floe in which the ship
had been "docked" all winter broke up, and the Endurance
was pushed around and nipped a few times. Then heavy
pressure began, the rudder was damaged, and beams buckled
slightly.

"The effects of the pressure around were awe-inspiring.
Mighty blocks of ice, gripped between meeting floes, rose
slowly till they jumped like cherry-stones squeezed between
thumb and finger. The pressure of millions of tons of mov-
ing ice was crushing and smashing inexorably. If the ship
was once gripped firmly her fate would be sealed."

As if in mockery, during this period of increasing peril
the pack was beautiful.

"The distant pack is thrown up into towering barrier-like
cliffs, which are reflected in blue lakes and lanes of water
at their base. Great white and golden cities of Oriental ap-
pearance at close intervals along these cliff-tops indicate dis-
tant bergs, some not previously known to us. Floating above
these are wavering violet and creamy lines of still more re-
mote bergs and pack. The lines rise and fall, tremble, dissi-
pate, and reappear in an endless transformation scene. The
southern pack and bergs, catching the sun's rays, are golden,
but to the north the ice-masses are purple. Here the bergs

The Indomitable Shackleton 205

assume changing forms, first a castle, then a balloon just clear
of the horizon, that changes swiftly into an immense mush-
room, a mosque, or a cathedral."

But in this beautiful, almost fairylike environment, were
building up destroying forces in the ice that wracked the
Endurance. Under this sky that would have charmed a
painter was going on the crushing power of ice that no ship
ever built has been able to withstand. Beams and deck planks
buckled, the sides opened and closed again, the worried ship
was thrown out of the pack to lie on its side on the ice and
dropped again. Fires were put out when the ship heeled to
30 degrees so that coals would not start fires, men ate sit-
ting on the floor, with their feet against bulkheads, to keep
from sliding. And in a few hours the ship would be upright
again. No vessel ever withstood more torture, not even Nan-
sen's magnificent F ram in the Arctic, but no thing of wood
or steel could have lived indefinitely under the grinding
force of those huge ice floes.

Men went about their work cheerily. They did what must
be done, and did it with the spirit of those who do not know
what may happen, but who face disaster with the knowledge
that they are doing their best. Hurley took his pictures of
the canted ship. Wild, imperturbable as usual, stood beside
the silent Shackleton and watched the ominous power of the
ice with a cold eye. They were a great team, those two.

Early in July Shackleton had predicted what was to hap-
pen. Frank Worsley, captain of the Endurance, tells about
it in his interesting narrative, one of the most human and
frank that have come out of the Antarctic. He and Shackle-
ton and Wild were sitting in Shackleton's cabin while the
gale shrieked outside and the ship quivered like a wounded
thing. Worsley was new to the ice, the other two were veter-
ans. Shackleton looked at Worsley and said:

"She's pretty near her end."

206 The Antarctic Ocean

"You mean that the ship willgo?" Worsley said to the
commander.

"I do/' was the answer. "The ship can't live in this,
Skipper/* said Shackleton. "You had better make up your
mind that it is only a question of time. Wild and I know
how you feel about the Endurance, but what the ice gets,
the ice keeps/*

"Yes, but we are not going to let the ice get us/' said
Wild.

"We shall hang on as long as we can," said Shackleton.
"It is hard enough on the men as it is. Without a ship in
which to shelter from these blizzards, and in this continuous
cold-"

Then came a sailor to announce that a diversion, a play,
was about to start, and Shackleton looked up at him calmly
and said he would be there in five minutes. He had an-
nounced the doom of his ship, guessed at what lay before
himhe could never have known all the dangers they were
to encounterand then went to the play to laugh heartily,
while the ship groaned and the wind howled through the
rigging.

But it was not until October that the end began to be
obvious to all. The currents that forced the ice to the west
and north, toward the land, began to create areas of dis-
turbance that spread rapidly toward the ship. Those aboard
could see them coming. Ice floes piled on ice floes, rammed
up and broke and became a mass of confused detail, each
with a jagged point directed at the ship. The solid ice be-
came more and more broken. The whole mass of the field
in which the Endurance lay began to yield. As the ship
shivered and beams buckled, even the dogs seemed to feel
the tension and were strangely nervous and quiet.

Cracks opened and frost smoke appeared from them, as
the water met the colder air, mist which drifts up like smoke
from a chimney along the line of cleavage. It looked at

The Indomitable Shackleton 207

times "like a prairie fire/' drifting off in dark masses. The
temperature jumped from 10 degrees below zero to nearly
the freezing point, uncomfortably warm, and disturbing.
Seals, penguins, and whales reappeared and played about in
the cracks.

"The pressure-ridges, massive and threatening, testified
to the overwhelming nature of the forces that were at work.
Huge blocks of ice, weighing many tons, were lifted into
the air and tossed aside as other masses rose beneath them.
We were helpless intruders in a strange world, our lives de-
pendent upon the play of grim elementary forces that made
a mock of our puny efforts."

Greater pressure developed on Oct. 25. The ship bent like
a bow, her sides opened, and water poured in. Shackleton
had the boats, provisions, and sledges put overside on the
ice. A few emperor penguins came out of a crack and walked
toward the ship uttering cries like a dirge, sounds that the
men had never before heard from them. Two days later the
ship was crushed beyond any hope that it might be used
again, and it was abandoned.

"It is hard to write what I feel/' said Shackleton. "To a
sailor his ship is more than a floating home, and in the
Endurance I had centered ambitions, hopes, and desires.
Now, straining and groaning, her timbers cracking and her
wounds gaping, she is slowly giving up her sentient life at
the very outset of her career."

The death of a ship is a terrible thing to watch. To her
commander it is like watching the death throes of one who
is intimate and deeply loved. A sinking ship is a sad sight,
but the sight of a ship torn to pieces, buckling and snap-
ping, fighting to the end, is something that anyone who
loves ships would give anything to avoid.

But more than the loss of the plucky Endurance was the
predicament of the men. The ship had drifted about 1,500

208 The Antarctic Ocean

miles. It was 346 miles across the milling ice to the nearest
stores, left by an Argentine relief ship in 1902, stores pur-
chased by Shackleton. And it was farther, much farther, to
any land from which there might be hope of rescue. So
when the Endurance went down, as she finally did, after
being caught in her icy tomb for many days, her crew were
in about as desperate a situation as ever explorers have
known. And it was then that Shackleton showed his courage,
his judgment, and his moral grandeur.

Even the seamen took their predicament cheerily. They
watched the sides crushed, the masts sway, and one of the
crew said happily:

"Damn, we'll have to pack our portmantles."

But as for Shackleton:

"The thoughts that came to me as I walked up and down
in the darkness were not particularly cheerful. The task now
was to assure the safety of the party. . . . The task was
likely to be long and strenuous, and an ordered mind and
a clear programme were essential if we were to come through
without loss of life."

Shackleton at first hoped that he could sledge to Graham
Land. Everything possible was taken out of the ship before
she sank, and they had sufficient food, but it was essential
to cut down weight to the minimum, and to provide an ex-
ample Shackleton threw away a gold watch, a gold cigarette
case, and some sovereigns. You can't eat gold. He kept the
flyleaf of the Bible that Queen Mary had given to the ship,
and the page of Job containing the verse:

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.

The night the ship sank, Shackleton said to Worsley that
he wished the Admiralty had let them get into the war be-

The Indomitable Shackleton 209

fore undertaking the expedition, that the men would be
safer on a battleship, anyway.

After a desperate effort to pull the boats across the floes
toward the land, Shackleton wisely gave up the idea, be-
cause progress was slow and the men were worn out. So they
picked out the biggest floe they could find and settled down
on it. They lived on seals and penguins until the creatures
left them for the more hospitable north. Twenty-eight men
and three boats stranded far beyond any human aid! Even
killer whales poked their heads up in the few open places
in the ice, and made life unpleasant, for these killers can
break an ordinary ice floe from beneath.

Once when Shackleton was drifted away on a piece of
broken ice, a killer snorted alongside as the boat was
launched, and anyone who has ever looked a killer whale in
the eye at short range is seeing something very unpleasant.
I happened to be chased onto the ice by two of them, with
four companions, and it was slightly nerve-racking. These
men met them time after time.

In March, 1916, after they had drifted 2,000 miles in the
pack ice since being beset, they saw Joinville Land, only
sixty miles away. But they knew that close to the land leads
opened and closed quickly, that the boats might be crushed
or separated, and Shackleton determined not to take the risk.
A little farther to the north lay clear water. The men were
disappointed, but they had such faith in their leader that
they suppressed their feelings.

Emergencies arose almost daily. As Worsley says:

"Two bergs had been moving towards us in the night.
Suddenly, at sunrise, these accelerated their speed and came
charging towards us, ploughing through the great masses of
pack-ice as though these had been tissue paper. Bergs of this
size weigh over a million tons apiece, so that nothing stands
any chance against them. Imagine each to represent the
weight of forty battleships; our floe was being charged by

210 * The Antarctic Ocean

the equivalent of a fleet of eighty men-of-war. Huge floes
were lifted and flung aside by the cliff-like fronts of these
monsters, while others \v T ere ground to fragments. For miles
behind them there was a wake of chaos, floe piled on floe
and crashing in all directions. Our camp was straight in
their path and it seemed as though destruction was inevi-
table.

"Shackleton, clinging to what then seemed a forlorn hope,
had all preparations made to try to move out of their track,
although this would necessitate leaving all our supplies, since
it would have been impossible to transport them in the time.
Nearer and nearer the mountains of ice approached. We
stood together watching them, Shackleton waiting to give
the word which would send us scrambling over the heaving
ice-floes on which we should have small chance of escaping
starvation. He was quite cool, and smoking a cigarette.

"Suddenly, some freak or eddy of the current or was it
some greater Power? swept the bergs off on a new line. The
danger was over. But fresh ones followed swiftly/'

The ice floe cracked underneath a tent, and the two pieces
separated. Shackleton looked down into the crack and saw a
man in his sleeping bag, just his head above water. With a
tremendous heave Shackleton pulled him out just before the
two halves of the floe closed again with a crash. And the
sailor grumbled about losing his tobacco!

When the floe reached open water, Shackleton decided to
run in the boats for the northern tip of the Antarctic Conti-
nent, which lies south of Cape Horn, but finding that that
was impossible due to the currents and storms, he laid his
course for Elephant Island. The men huddled together for
warmth, winter was setting in, with its storms and sleet, and
ice formed on the boats. They were so miserable under their
meager covering of a tent fabric that they often crawled out
just to stand up and smoke and be more uncomfortable, to
the point where they became ntimb and didn't mind so much

The Indomitable Shackleton 211

the biting wind and wet clothes. A lot of them were sea-
sick. They couldn't get fresh water, and chewed raw seal
meat to get the blood.

When they finally sighted Elephant Island, owing to Wors-
ley's good navigation with only occasional glimpses of the
sun or stars, they landed at a beach that was exposed to any
heavy gale, and with a high wall of rock behind them.

"Thank God I haven't killed one of my men," said Shackle-
ton. "I knew that one more night of exposure would do for
some of them."

And Worsley said:

"As I looked at him I realized with something of a shock,
all that the ordeal had meant to him. His forehead was
scarred with lines, his face was haggard, and his shoulders,
so often hunched for battle, were now bowed as those of an
old man."

He soon threw that mood off, but Shackleton had a feel-
ing of responsibility for his men that has never been dupli-
cated. Other men talk about it, but Shackleton meant it.

"Shackleton has always insisted that the ultimate responsi-
bility for anything that befell us was his and his only/' said
Worsley. "But until then I had not understood the painful
seriousness with which he viewed his relation, to us. My view
was that we were all grown men, going of our own free wills
on this expedition, and that it was up to us to bear whatever
was coming to us. Not so Shackleton. His idea was that we
had trusted him, that we had placed ourselves in his hands,
and that should anything happen to any one of us, he was
morally responsible."

They wondered about their position, and found they
couldn't possibly stay where they were. They moved seven
miles to the west where they found a doubtful beach that
might shelter them. The gales tore their tents to pieces and
they upturned a boat and lived under that. Even so they
had to pile rocks on her and pack snow around to keep her

212 The Antarctic Ocean

from being blown away. They ate stews of penguin meat,
limpets, and seaweed, the latter proving a good tonic.

Shackleton decided that he must reach a point where he
could get a ship. The food supply was not sufficient. But

"If things went wrong it might be said that I had aban-
doned them," he said.

So he told them his plan, and said it was a forlorn hope
in winter to make a long journey in a small boat. He asked
for volunteers, and every man offered to go. "Thank you,
men," said Shackleton, after a long pause.

There were five chosen to make the journey, 1,000 miles
away to South Georgia, in the worst ocean in the world,
and in a boat only twenty-two feet long. They were Worsley,
Tom Crean, Timothy McCarthy, McNeish, the carpenter,
and Vincent, the boatswain. Bligh's journey in the South
Pacific, after the mutiny of the Bounty, was longer, but
Bligh did not have the conditions to face that these men
did. It is probably the greatest small-boat journey in marine
history, greater even than some that were made by whalers in
the Pacific after their ships were sunk.

The small boat they used was named the James Gaird,
and it now is in a museum in England. It was double-ended,
like a whaleboat, and was light and buoyant. The tanks were
taken out and her seams filled with lampwick. The mast
from another boat was lashed along her keel to stiffen her.
She was ballasted with more than a ton of rock, which
Worsley protested because it made the boat too heavy, and
later Shackleton agreed that less ballast would have been
advisable.

Then they got ready to push off. It was a hard task. Those
going in the boat knew that they might never reach inhab-
ited land; those who stayed knew that if the boat did not
succeed they were doomed. So they talked about what would
happen when the boat came back in a month.

Frank Wild was to stay behind and take care of the shore

The Indomitable Shackleton -213

party. There could not have been a better leader for that
difficult task. Wild never got rattled, his judgment was ex-
cellent, and his control of men absolute. He had been in bad
places before, when he had faced starvation with Shackleton,
and when he moved a camp back from the edge of an ice
shelf on Shackleton's first expedition in time to prevent its
falling into the sea with a calving iceberg. He was hard-
boiled and tough and reliable.

There was a moan in the wind before the James Caird
put off. It made Worsley think of the wind soughing through
the rigging of the Endurance the night that Shackleton told
him the ship was doomed. When they launched the boat,
two men fell overboard, and two on shore changed clothes
with them. It was two weeks before the clothes dried out.
The boat hit a rock also, and Worsley took a "treasured pos-
sessionalmost the last thing remaining to remind me that I
had once been a civilized man: a handkerchief, now black
with soot and grimeand jammed it in the hole with a
marline-spike." Then they took on their stores and set sail.

The first night Shackleton sat beside Worsley, who was
steering, with an arm thrown over his shoulders, so they
could warm each other, and decided to make for South
Georgia, 1,000 miles to the east.

"We've had some great adventures together, Skipper," said
Shackleton, "but this is the greatest of all. This time It is
really do or die, as they say in the story books."

They drank some hot milk, and Shackleton broke into a
desultory conversation with:

"Do you think there could be gold on the Antarctic Con-
tinent?" He was always romantic about the subject of treas-
ure, and Worsley told him that years before he had found
a pearl lagoon in the Pacific. They agreed to go back to it
one day. The long seas tossed the boat, and the wind bit cold,
and Shackleton went on:

"I wonder what we should have seen if we had been able

214 The Antarctic Ocean

to go a few miles deeper inland. Perhaps the highest moun-
tain in the world or a chain of volcanoes; or who knows what
else?"

Does that give some clue to the mind of an explorer, to
why men go to strange places? Possibly. And a little later he
said:

< I wonder how the boys are feeling on the island. Thank
God they've got a good man like Wild to look after them.
One of poor Wild's troubles will be to find sufficient oc-
cupation for them to keep them from being bored. Suspense
is bound to get on their nerves, and when that happens they'll
be difficult to handle."

Shackleton had more sense about food than any of his
predecessors. Every four hours in the daytime they had a
scalding hot souplike mixture of rich condensed food, and
every four hours at night they had hot milk. When a man
seemed almost overcome with cold, there would be hot milk
again. The sufferer never knew that it was particularly for
him, for all shared in it, and the coldest got the most benefit.
It was bitter going. A gale sprang up that drove the small
boat back nearly to the ice pack. That was a grave setback,
and Shackleton said:

"Skipper, if anything happens to me while those fellows
are waiting for me, I shall feel like a murderer."

But the boat drove on. The small space under the canvas
deck that had been placed over her was their only sleeping
room; it was a region reached only by struggle over the pro-
visions and ballast, and at the end the only solace a wet sleep-
ing bag into which a man crawled wearily. Water dripped
down on them, and they were tossed about unmercifully by
the gyrations of the small craft. Going to bed was as unhappy
as getting up. In fact, they preferred to be outside. Somebody
was always pumping out the water that came aboard.

"Every swell that rushed toward us hid the horizon astern
and towered, an over-arching wall, above us. As the seas

The Indomitable Shackleton -215

broke all around us the boat was lifted dizzily upwards, and
we would heel over to the force of the gale. At these mo-
ments we could see for miles in all directions but we saw
nothing but grey, grey, grey an unending series of grey hills
and grey valleys. The dominant noises were the whistle of
the wind through the sails and the shrouds, and the roar of
the crashing seas.

"We were getting soaked on an average of every three or
four minutes. The action of the sea is too Irregular always
for any statement to be true of it all the time, but with few
exceptions each hour saw us get about fifteen wettings. The
gales which blew continuously in that fearsome climate were
responsible for it, and the procedure was something like
this. A great sea would break over us, pouring water in
streams over everything and making us feel for a moment or
so that we were under a water-fall. Then, before the next
wave would break, we would get several minor seas that
would just manage to cover the boat and wet us again. This
went on day and night. The cold was intense."

Their feet and legs got completely numb. Shackleton as-
sured them that it was only superficial frostbite, but to
Worsley he worried about keeping the men warm, and
Worsley twitted him with his nickname on his first expedi-
tion "Cautious Jack." There had never been such a cautious
daredevil. He was devoid of fear, but never took a chance
if it could be avoided. When the seas became too great, he
lay to with a sea anchor out. Water froze on top of the
canvas covering the thin deck over the forward part of the
boat, and three times they cut it away.

Often men nearly rolled into the sea, for they had merely
handholds cut in the ice to cling to and their fingers were
so numb they could barely cling to anything. They did not
dare cut too sharply for fear of piercing the canvas covering
and letting more water into the boat. No man could stand
this ice chopping more than four minutes; it was bitter pun-

216 The Antarctic Ocean

ishment. But it had to be done to keep the boat from getting
top-heavy, or sinking under the weight of ice. Two oars were
thrown overboard to relieve the boat of weight, and two
sleeping bags, reindeer bags.

"Why anybody should look upon such a wretched bit of
sodden wetness, hair and chill, as a home I really don't
know," said Worsley, "but the fact remains that we all did,
and I can remember even now the sad expression of two of
the men as they watched their sleeping bags floating away.
They looked as if they had lost the last thing on earth that
mattered.' 1

Men become elemental under such conditions. The mere
means of living is far more precious than gold and jewels,
and a sleeping bag, wet and shedding its fur, was a palace.
Of course, they did not sacrifice much, for there were always
three men on duty, and there were four bags left, but each
bag was a personal possession.

The fur from the bags was a nuisance. They fished it out
of the soup and milk, and it was everywhere in the boat.
It got into the pump, into their eyes and mouths, until
they began to feel that each wet hair was a crawling, detest-
able thing.

Their feet also troubled them; their hands and knees were
so chafed from crawling around over the ballast remember,
this was only a twenty-two-foot boat that they bled continu-
ally. One night Worsley could not straighten out after his
spell at the tiller, They had to lift him below, straighten his
body and rub some semblance of life into it before he could
be tucked into his sleeping bag. They were in the midst of
a cold, wet, gray hell, and they had to go on.

Then came an almost disastrous moment. Shackleton was
at the tiller. There was a heavy cross sea, with snow squalls,
a miserable day. Shackleton saw what he thought was a line
of clear sky, as he said:

"I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and

The Indomitable Shackleton 217

then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not
a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave.
During twenty-six years* experience of the ocean in all its
moods I had not encountered a wave so gigantic. It was a
mighty upheaval of the ocean, a thing quite apart from the
big white-capped seas that had been our tireless enemies for
many days. I shouted Tor God's sake, hold on! It's got us/
Then came a moment of suspense that seemed drawn out
into hours. White surged the foam of the breaking sea
around us. We felt our boat lifted and flung forward like a
cork in breaking surf. We were in a seething chaos of tor-
tured water; but somehow the boat lived through it, half
full of water, sagging to the dead weight and shuddering
under the blow. We bailed with the energy of men fighting
for life, flinging the water over the side with every receptacle
that came to our hands, and after ten minutes of uncertainty
we felt the boat renew her life beneath us. She floated again
and ceased to lurch drunkenly as though dazed by the at-
tack of the sea/'

One of the men seemed to lose his strength after this. An-
other was in a bad way, although cheerful. Shackleton, him-
self, was suffering terribly from sciatica, a fact that he does
not mention in his book. It got better as he went on, fortu-
nately. Then they broached their last water cask and found
that it had salt in it, not enough to make it undrinkable,
but enough to increase their thirst. Worsley had the tough
job of trying to get a sight by kneeling on a thwart while
a man held him on each side so that he would not go over-
board with his sextant. There was constant mist, the horizon
was not good, and the sun was a vague blur through the fog
above. But by taking about ten sights and averaging them,
he managed to get a fairly accurate position.

And so they finally sighted South Georgia and headed for
King Haakon Sound, but the seas breaking on reefs and ap-
proaching darkness kept Shackleton from running for the

218 The Antarctic Ocean

land. They decided to wait until morning, and that night a
terrific gale hit them and drove them toward the coast. They
were so thirsty from the salt water that they could hardly
swallow their food, their lips were split, the spray from the
waves shot from the side of the boat high into the air, and
the wind howled like an airplane zooming. The shocks of
hitting the seas opened the planks in the bow of the boat so
that the water gushed through. They bore down on a tiny
island, driven remorselessly, and it was a question whether
they would hit it, or round it into calmer water.

"Shell do it," said Worsley.

"Of course she will," Shackleton replied. "She's damned
well got to."

The next day Shackleton told Worsley that they must get
ashore, that two of the men were weakening from lack of
water, and that he didn't want to take the chance of going
to sea again in the boat. So he proposed to find a landing
and go over the island to the whaling station on the other
side. No human being had ever been in the interior of South
Georgia. What was behind those glaciers and ice-covered
mountains was unknown. But Shackleton was determined to
try that route rather than take the chance of having his boat
foundered or crushed against the rocks, which would mean
that the men back on Elephant Island would die.

They got into King Haakon's Sound, managed to pull
their boat up with difficulty, and found a cave. Some baby
albatrosses in their nests provided them with food, and they
were so hungry they ate the bones. Near by was a stream of
water that tasted like nectar. Leaves and some sort of moss
made a bed on the stones. For the first time in two weeks
they could relax and sleep and they did.

Somebody had to be left with the boat, as the seas that
roared in picked it up and threw it against the rocks. One
night they all turned out and held the boat, and Shackleton,
with a formal bow, said, "I do hope that you are all enjoy-

The Indomitable Shackleton 219

ing my little party." Shackleton had nightmares about the
huge wave he had seen. They killed a sea elephant and the
liver was the best present they could have had. The rudder,
which had been torn from the boat when they made their
first landing, miraculously came back to where the boat had
been beached. They went up to the head of the sound, where
they spent three days under the upturned boat, days when
the wind howled, when snow and sleet beat over them, where
they shivered in the most violent storms that are known in
the world. But the need to get away and find help for the
men on Elephant Island was imperative. They had a grim
reminder of what storms could do in a great pile of drift-
wood at the upper end of the sound, half an acre of wreck-
age from ships.

"In places it was piled eight feet high or more, and there
were ships' masts and timbers, a great mainyard, bits of
figureheads, teak stanchions with brass caps, cabin doors, bin-
nacle stands, broken oars and harness casks. These had been
swept before the westerly gales a thousand miles from Cape
Horn, or farther, until the wild South Ocean had, by some
freak of its eddies, thrown them up here to rot." It was like
those relics of an ancient Spanish ship that Smith had found
years before in the Shetlands.

"Some day, Skipper," said Shackleton, "you and I will
come back here and dig for treasure. Or, who knows, we may
have to take our last sleep here with those who used these
things."

The weather was continually bad. The mountains were
swathed in mist, the wind blew, and the cloud rack overhead
made prospecting for a place through the passes an almost
impossible task. Shackleton became gloomy, and said, "I'll
never make another expedition." But then early on May 19,
1916, the weather cleared, the moon shone, and Shackleton,
Crean, and Worsley started across the island. When they

220 The Antarctic Ocean

reached the other side, they found that they had had the only
favorable weather in many weeks.

That cross-island trip has nothing to do with the sea, but
it was an effort that, in its way, was as great as the boat
journey. Three men were not fit to travel and were left be-
hind. Those who went carried three days' food each, a primus
stove, an adze to cut steps in the ice, compasses, a chronom-
eter, and ninety feet of rope. They had brass screws in the
soles of their shoes to help them climb on ice.

Their first slope was littered with big boulders and they
saw one bounding down the mountain with great speed.
They suddenly found themselves on the edge of a giant pit
in the snow, a hundred feet deep, which Worsley thought
must have been caused by a meteor. He was behind, steering
the group by his compass. They found themselves in blind
passes, made their way almost down to the sea and had to
turn back, and once found themselves on the brink of a
"gigantic chasm," 200 feet deep, 200 feet broad, and 2,000
feet long, ripped out by the howling gales. They pushed back
and looked at each other and wondered what would happen
if a gale came up it would blow them into that crevasse.
Then they roped themselves together.

Finally they reached the ridge, a ridge so steep that they
could sit on it and let their legs dangle over on each side.
They did not know in what direction to move. The fog had
crept up over the country they had been through and had
blotted it out. They were in an impossible position. If they
did not move, they would freeze to death. They started cut-
ting steps in the ice down the side of the mountain. It took
them half an hour to go down a hundred yards and Shackle-
ton realized that such slow progress was useless. Let Worsley
tell the rest of the story. He is a good storyteller.

"Shackleton then cut out a large step and sat on it. For
a few moments he pondered, then he said:

" Tve got an idea. We must go on, no matter what is be-

The Indomitable Shackleton - 221

low. To try to do it this way is hopeless. We can't cut steps
down thousands of feet/

"He paused, and Crean and I both agreed with him. Then
he spoke again.

" It's a devil of a risk, but we've got to take it. We'll
slide/

"Slide down what was practically a precipice, in the dark-
ness, to meetwhat?

" 'All right/ I said aloud, perhaps not very cheerfully, and
Crean echoed my words.

"It seemed to me a most impossible project. The slope was
well-nigh precipitous, and a rock in our pathwe could
never have seen it in the darkness in time to avoid it would
mean certain disaster. Still, it was the only way. We had
explored all the passes: to go back was useless: moreover such
a proceeding would sign and seal the death warrant not only
of ourselves but of the whole of the expedition. To stay on
the ridge longer meant certain death by freezing. It was use-
less therefore to think about personal risk. If we were killed,
at least we had done everything in our power to bring help
to our shipmates. Shackleton was right. Our chance was a
very small one indeed, but it was up to us to take it.

"We each coiled our share of the rope until it made a pad
on which we could sit to make our glissade from the moun-
tain top. We hurried as much as possible, being anxious to
get through the ordeal. Shackleton sat on the large step he
had carved, and I sat behind him and clasped him around
the neck. Crean did the same with me, so that we were
locked together as one man. Then Shackleton kicked off.

"We seemed to shoot off into space. For a moment my hair
fairly stood on end. Then quite suddenly I felt a glow, and
knew that I was grinning! I was actually enjoying it. It was
most exhilarating. We were shooting down the side of an
almost precipitous mountain at nearly a mile a minute. I
yelled with excitement, and found that Shackleton and Crean

222 * The Antarctic Ocean

were yelling too. It seemed ridiculously safe. To hell with
the rocks!

"The sharp slope eased out slightly toward the level below,
and then we knew for certain that we were safe. Little by
little our speed slackened, and we finished up at the bottom
in a bank of snow. We picked ourselves up and solemnly
shook hands all round.

" 'It's not good to do that kind of thing too often/ said
Shackleton slowly. 'Thanks be that the risk was justified this
time/

"We turned and looked up at the mountain down which
we had just sped. I judged that we had travelled down about
three thousand feet, and it was difficult to realize that we
had reached the bottom in less than three minutes after we
had left the top. This of course included the slowing down
at the bottom.

"As we dusted the snow off us, I looked ruefully at my
trousers, which happened to belong to an old dress suit.
They were badly torn in spite of the pad of rope. Shackleton
laughed, but when I pointed out to him that his own were in
equally bad case his laugh eased up a bit/'

When they were so close to the whaling factory on the
island that they could hear the whistle in the morning, they
found themselves in another predicament. They were on a
mountainside that was nearly a precipice. The snow had
melted and then frozen again. Shackleton happened to bring
a heel down sharply on the ice and broke through the surface
crust, so that by banging his heels he could cut a series of
steps. The others followed, using the same depressions and
enlarging them as they banged also.

As Worsley put it, they went down "walking on their
backs/* He was afraid to lift his head up lest he fall forward.
But it was better than cutting steps, and safer. They came to
a narrow defile that ended in a waterfall, and down that they
went on the rope, and were soaked in the icy water. They

The Indomitable Shackleton 223

came to a shed, a part of the whaling factory, having crossed
South Georgia in thirty-six hours, and were so wild-looking
that two young Norwegian boys who first saw them turned
and ran.

The commander of the whaling station, who had enter-
tained them two years before, did not recognize them when
they reached his house. When Worsley went back to King
Haakon Sound to get the three men left there, they were
disappointed because a member of their own party had not
come ashore with the Norwegians to rescue them. They had
lived with Worsley two years on the ship, the ice, and in the
small boat, but did not recognize him after he had had a bath
and a shave, and had donned some decent clothes.

Looking back at that trip across the island, with all its
hidden dangers and its miraculous success, Worsley wrote,
and Shackleton echoed him in his own narrative:

"There was indeed one curious thing about our crossing
of South Georgia, a thing that has given me much food for
thought, and which I have never been able to explain. When-
ever I reviewed the incidents of that march I had the sub-
conscious feeling that there were four of us, instead of three.
Moreover, tKIs impression was shared by both Shackleton
and Crean."

Even the most avowed agnostic might have had that im-
pression after such a journey. They had crossed the island
in the only interval of good weather during the entire winter.

The men at King Haakon Sound were rescued, and
Shackleton, with the aid of the Chilean government, and
after two abortive attempts, was able to get his men off Ele-
phant Island in one of the few moments when the ice per-
mitted an approach. They were all well with the exception
of one lad whose toes were amputated after living for four
and a half months under two overturned boats, beaten by
hurricanes, and pelted with ice from the mountains. So ended
the greatest Antarctic adventure of them all.

224 The Antarctic Ocean

Shackleton's hair turned silver in those four months.

After the first World War he went south again in the
small ship Quest, hoping to continue his Antarctic explora-
tion. Worsley and Frank Wild were with him. He died on
the Quest of a heart attack, grimly humorous to the last, and
was buried on South Georgia.

A New Era

WITH the coming of the airplane, it was obvious
that a new and more efficient weapon had been
forged with which to explore the mysteries of
Antarctica. It provided speed, height at which aerial surveys
could be made photographically, thereby covering in a day,
and more accurately, a territory that might occupy months
of exploration on the surface, and a wide range. Strange
as it may seem, the greatest discoveries, with two exceptions,
have so far been made over water.

It is also true, however, that the airplane, as so far used,
has been something of a disappointment because, again with
one exception, it has never made a trip in the Antarctic to a
point farther than could be reached by men with sledges and
dogs.

There are several reasons for this. The weather is uncer-
tain. A plane with a very low landing speed and therefore a
low top speed must be used because of the rough surface.
Also a method correlating the use of dog teams and airplanes,
or even relays of airplanes, to cover great distances, has never
been thoroughly worked out. That will come.

The great value of the airplane so far has been in scouting,
in finding over a difficult route places that would reward a
more careful examination on the surface. In this the airplane
is unexcelled, and there is no doubt that in the future planes
will be used in such a way that they will unveil every impor-
tant section of that great land. The first man to use airplanes
in the Antarctic was Sir Hubert Wilkins in his flights over
Palmer Land. The second, who embarked on a much more

225

226 * The Antarctic Ocean

extensive program, was Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd,
who had already flown in Greenland and over the North
Pole, as well as across the Atlantic.

Byrd has been criticized for the complexity and size of his
expeditions, but I do not think that is a fair criticism. In
a mechanical age an explorer who does not use all the instru-
ments that corne to his hand is neglecting his opportunities.
Byrd has used airplanes, tractors, and dog teams. Both
Shackleton and Scott attempted to use tractors of a sort, but
they were not a success because machines and engines had
not been developed in their day. Byrd's men have done
things with tractors that are astonishing, when one considers
the crevassed and dangerous ground over which they have
traveled. But his greatest accomplishments and his important
discoveries have been with the airplane.

As a matter of fact, Byrd's best work in the Antarctic has
been entirely overlooked popularly because of his spectacular
flight to the South Pole, which disclosed very little geo-
graphically. Byrd is a good showman, and his flights over
both poles have made him famous. But his eventual claim
to fame geographically will rest on other flights, of which
few people realized the significance and which have been
forgotten except by those deeply interested in such work.

Byrd is a Virginian, a graduate of Annapolis, and very
good-looking. His motivating forces have been ambition and
vanity, and that is not said in disparagement, for ambition is
a worthy impulse, and who of us is free from vanity. But it is
those two characteristics that have given him the driving
force to get together and send to the Antarctic three tremend-
ous expeditions, two of which he led himself, and one of
which he directed for the government. He is imaginative, im-
pulsive, and yet cautious, somewhat secretive and suspicious.
He can be generous, and at the same time extremely difficult
to deal with. He has both the faults and virtues of most ex-

A New Era * 227

plorers, but he can get things done under difficulties as well
as any man who has gone to the Antarctic.

It is because of these characteristics that he was able to
take two expeditions to the Antarctic, each of which probably
cost nearly a million dollars. The amount of material he has
used makes the equipment of former explorers look small
indeed, but that is to be expected if one is to use three air-
planes, quantities of oil and gasoline, spare engines and parts,
tractors and dogs, as well as the houses, food, and infinite
number of things that are necessary to shelter many men. His
ships have become larger with each expedition, and he has
always used two.

His first expedition was planned primarily for the purpose
of reaching the pole. Not having entirely relinquished the
idea of the old wooden Norwegian sailing ship, built for the
ice, he had the City of New York which he had bought in
Norway under the name of the Samson, Amundsen recom-
mended her. She was a stout sealer and a splendid ship. He
had as a consort a rolling bit of metal called the Eleanor
Boiling.

Byrd not only followed Shackleton's example by having
the Boiling tow the City to the ice pack, but he broke prece-
dent by being towed through the pack itself by a powerful
whaler. The City left Dunedin, New Zealand, on Dec. 2,
1928, and outside the heads was taken in tow by the Boiling.
There was one gale on the way down, with heavy seas that
at times blotted out the Boiling so we (I was on board as
correspondent of The New York Times) could hardly see the
tops of her masts. The Boiling was rolling her rail under, but
the stout old City rode the seas like a duck.

On Dec. 10 she met the C. A. Larsen on the edge of the
pack, having passed close to the Scott Islands, and lay to in a
bay in the ice while coal was shifted from the Boiling. The
pack was heavy and wide that year, and the solid sealer with
her asthmatic engine would not have been able to get through

228 * The Antarctic Ocean

for some time if she had not been towed through by the
Larsen, a 17,000-ton whaler.

That tow was something nobody who was aboard the City
will ever forget. The huge ship dwarfed our little vessel, and
as she nosed into the ice with us astern it was like being
dragged along by an ocean liner. Not that we went fast. The
City was difficult to control, forever creeping up on the ship
ahead when the Larsen slowed down, and then being yanked
along with a jerk as the powerful engines of the whaler
turned over again. The sensation of being snaked across a
wide, open bit of water in the pack at a speed to which the
City was not accustomed, was all most exciting. No expedi-
tion ship ever before traveled that fast in the pack.

But there was a day when the Larsen lay still in heavy ice,
waiting for it to loosen up a bit, while a strong wind howled
through the rigging and drifted snow across the ship, when
it was impossible to see very far, and the snowy petrels
drifted in and out of the gloom like eerie ghosts of birds.
And another day when the Larsen had to stop and we heard
the sound of hammers on her hull, as the engineers tried to
straighten out a plate that had buckled near the engine
room. It was heavy pack. Once or twice the Larsen was stuck,
and then it was a sight to see a small chaser come up from
the lane astern, and at full speed ride up on the ice beside
the mother ship. The little chaser would roll over, the ice
would break under her, and then she would back up and
whack it again until she had worked her way clear up to the
bow of the Larsen.

After a severe pounding that made the ship groan in every
timber, open water was reached on Dec. 23, and on Christ-
inas night the barrier was sighted. Strangely enough, I had
seen so many pictures of it that it did not arouse any great
emotion. Byrd made for the Bay of Whales for several reasons.
The most important was that to the east lay a completely
unknown territory that he wanted to look at, and secondly

Map 11. Byrd discovered the east side of the Ross Sea, sought for many
years, and Ellsworth flew across the continent

230 The Antarctic Ocean

it is a region far from mountains from which come the terrific
gales that make the western side of the Ross Sea so uncom-
fortable. Not that we didn't have blizzards, but there are
probably fewer of them over the flat country around the bay
than in most other parts of the continent. It was better suited
to flying.

The bay was well filled with ice, and it was not possible to
set a base down anywhere near w r here Amundsen had win-
tered. But on the east side of the bay an inlet was found,
with a smooth slope leading up to a basin between slightly
higher levels of barrier. It was obvious later that that basin
broke loose at times and moved up and down, as it did on
the second expedition, but it looked safe enough. And there
the camp was established. It formed an excellent flying field.

While the ships were unloading, Byrd made a flight to the
east and immediately made a discovery, showing the recon-
noitering value of planes. He found a group of small moun-
tains, which he called the Rockefeller Mountains, and an-
other mountain farther to the east that he called the Matter-
horn. A survey of the Alexandra Mountains and of the bar-
rier edge beyond Cape Colbeck completed that year's work.

The first important flight the next year was that to the
South Pole, which was started on the afternoon of Thanks-
giving Day and which lasted about seventeen and a half
hours. Instead of going up the Axel Heiberg Glacier Byrd
and his crew went up the Liv Glacier just to the west, as it
offered a longer time for the climb to the plateau.

Bernt Balchen, who was the pilot, made it only after 250
pounds of food had been dropped overboard. They reached
the "vicinity** of the pole, and then turned back, this time
flying down Axel Heiberg to where a fuel depot had been
placed on the barrier at the foot of the mountains. The trip
in from there was simple.

With this flight off his mind Byrd was able to turn his
attention to the east, and he made a flight the track of which,

A New Era * 231

to say the least, is puzzling. Many attempts had been made
to reach the east side of the Ross Sea by ship; Scott and
Shackleton had both tried it, only to be checked by heavy,
hummocked pack in which lay what Scott called ice islands.
It is probable that no ship will ever be able to penetrate very
far in that direction until ice conditions are radically im-
proved. It remained for Ryrd to learn why this was so.

The flying weather at this time was good, both during the
polar flight and for a short time later, and on Dec. 5 Byrd
started on his eastern flight. Alton Parker was the pilot this
time, with Harold June along as flight engineer, and Captain
Ashley McKinley as photographer, the last two having been
on the polar flight also.

Byrd flew to the northeast across King Edward VII Land
and then out over the ice, which was broken up with large
pools of water between floesnot a nice place to land. After
a time, on his right, he saw a chain of mountains, split by
glaciers, rising high above the shore ice. It was the eastern
side of the Ross Sea! The goal for which men had struggled
in ships for years lay within easy reach of his airplane.

But instead of heading for the mountains and flying along
their front to get good pictures of them, he turned north,
out to sea, attracted by some ice islands or peaks that he
thought he saw looming in the distance. Of course, an effort
to learn what was holding that great mass of ice to the north
was worth while, but of far greater importance was the moun-
tain range to the east. It was a geographical discovery of the
first order, one as imposing as the discovery by Ross of the
mountain range on the coast of Victoria Land to the west.

McKinley got some pictures of it at a distance of about
forty miles, and then the planes turned to the east for a
short distance, and then to the southwest. As they turned
Harold June said he thought he saw the end of the land to
the north, with the coast tending to the eastward, which has
since been proved to be correct. Byrd turned north again

232 The Antarctic Ocean

on a search for some illusive ice islands, and then south back
to King Edward Land and home. Ice islands are interesting,
but a closer examination and better pictures of that eastern
rampart would have been more valuable. On the next expe-
dition a sledging party went almost to the end of that moun-
tain range, thus completing the survey.

It was on his second expedition that Byrd did his most dar-
ing work, wiping off the map a great unknown area that had
puzzled scientists for years. His finding of that eastern moun-
tain range, known as the Edsel Ford Range, was an explana-
tion of why so much pack gathers in the sea north of the
land, ice that had also been impenetrable. Now it was to
yield, both to airplanes and to ships.

On this trip Byrd had two good-sized ships, the Jacob
Ruppert, a large steel vessel, and the famous old Coast Guard
ship Bear, retired from active service but still plenty strong.
He needed the Ruppert to carry a large biplane, of a type
that was once used in the army as a bomber. It was no longer
suitable for that purpose, but it would carry a heavy load
and its landing speed was low. The Ruppert put out from
Wellington, New Zealand, on Dec. 12, 1933, and headed to
the southeast. Byrd intended to attack the mystery of what
lay beyond the northern point of the Edsel Ford Range from
the ocean, going as far east as the ice would permit and using
an airplane based on the ship. It had been done by Captain
Riiser-Larsen of the Norvegia Expedition in 1929-1930, and
by Sir Douglas Mawson, but Byrd used a larger plane, with
a crew of four, and equipped with radio.

It was an ambitious and sensible program, and fortunately
he was aided by an open ice year. On Dec. 19 the Ruppert
had passed beyond Cook's farthest south, a point no other
vessel had reached except a small Norwegian ship hunting
sealing grounds. Certainly no steel ship had ever been near
there. The old Ruppert butted her way through heavy ice

A New Era 233

that grated along her plates to 67 degrees 9 minutes south
and 148 degrees west, 148 miles beyond Cook's record. But
they could go no farther, and Byrd turned back to where
there was a pool of open water. Now it was time to use the
plane to vault what a ship could not penetrate.

The plane was dropped overboard on the morning of Dec.
21. The weather was perfect, a clear day with the sun shining.
The plane took off and an hour was spent in checking the
compasses while the plane circled the ship. Then it headed
south on the 150th meridian at an altitude of 2,000 feet,
at which height they could see for nearly sixty miles. They
flew through a snow squall, and when they came out of it,
Byrd could see what he thought was an ice front or barrier,
but which turned out to be a great rampart of bergs, with
the pack between and beyond them. He turned back at 69
degrees 51 minutes south and 149 degrees 45 minutes west.

It was on this flight that Byrd used for the first time in
polar exploration a radio telephone with which to communi-
cate with the ship a good way to learn if it would be wise
to turn back because of changing weather.

The ship again went on to the east and soon entered a
region that Byrd called the Devil's Graveyard, a place of
white fog and drifting bergs and ice, where danger loomed
on one side or the other every few minutes. It was the devil
of a place for a steel ship. While they felt their way through
this mess, a gale came up at a time when they were sur-
rounded by icebergs half concealed in the mist. Two big bergs
reared themselves about 200 yards ahead, one on each bow,
and the ship turned to pass to windward of them. And just
as she turned, her speed fell off.

Water had gotten into the oil tank, had been pumped
Into the burner nozzles and put the fire out. To windward of
a huge berg in a gale and with almost no steam! They cleared
the berg by 200 yards, only to find themselves in a mass of
growlers, small pieces of steellike hard ice, which would have

234 The Antarctic Ocean

carved through the ship's sides if she had rammed one of
them hard.

Fortunately she worked clear of them. On the twenty-
seventh the sun came out, and then they realized what they
had been through. The sea was covered with bergs. They
steamed past one twenty miles long and ten miles wide. In
twenty-four hours they sighted 8,000 bergs.

The ship edged its way along heavy pack toward the south-
east and drifted in thick weather waiting for a chance to put
the plane overboard and again fly to the south seeking land.
The weather remained bad, but on Jan. 3 Byrd decided to
take a chance and fly. It was probably the most dangerous
flight he ever made in his life, and knowing how cautious
he usually is about taking off in bad weather, I am astonished
that he did it. It was a courageous thing to do.

It is probable that he felt he had gone east as far as he
could if he were to reach Little America in time to unload,
and that he would never again have the opportunity of
darting south in this region. There was no sun, limited visi-
bility, and a low ceiling, with a steady snowfall. The position
of the ship was 69 degrees 57 minutes south and 116 degrees
37 minutes west.

Wlien they took off they flew at about 400 feet, just high
enough to clear icebergs, and then scud was flying by under
the pontoons. Six hundred feet above them was a solid bank
of clouds. Five minutes later the ship was lost to sight. Byrd
had left word to have a weather report sent to him every
fifteen minutes, and the ship was to send up a column of
smoke which might act as a guide, if they were lucky enough
to see it.

The visibility was never more than ten miles and often
less, and the ceiling was never more than a thousand feet.
Most of the way they flew at 400 feet. Harold June was the
pilot. Not forty miles from the ship they got a wind shift
from west to east, which Byrd discovered but could not at

A New Era 235

first believe. However, when the plane was dropped to fifty
feet, he could determine the drift by ripples on open water.
The pack, despite occasional openings, was the heaviest they
had seen. About 110 miles south of the Ruppert they crossed
an enormous solid floe, about twenty miles wide, and in the
middle of it were two lonely emperor penguins.

They turned north again at 72 degrees 30 minutes south,
when they saw ahead a horizon black with snow squalls, in
which they might have been lost. They could see about ten
miles beyond the point at which they made the turn. On
the run home they nearly rammed an iceberg in the thick
weather. Snow squalls were all around them, and mist
streamed past the windows, so thick that they had to fly by
instruments. Ice clogged the air speed indicator so that it
would not work, and ice began to form on the forward edges
of the wings.

Bowlin, co-pilot, who was flying at the time, went down to
about 100 feet where the air was warmer. Somewhere along
their track were three bergs that they had passed on the way
out. Barely able to see ahead, Bowlin suddenly sighted a
black shadow looming up. He lifted the nose sharply, opened
the engines wide, and they barely missed the top of a berg.
A fine place for low flying! After that he kept an altitude of
300 feet, and the weather cleared a bit. But two hours after
they landed, a thick snowstorm blotted out the whole hori-
zon.

They came to one interesting conclusion because of the
winds, during the time they lay north of the pack at their
far-eastern position. It had been the experience at Little
America that southerly winds from the interior of the cold,
dry continent were clearing winds. But southerly winds
where they lay brought nothing but snow and mist, and the
only logical deduction was that the coast must lie several
hundred miles south of their position for the southerly winds
to pick up so much moisture.

236 The Antarctic Ocean

As the weather continued bad they turned west, and as
they proceeded along the edge of the pack they were able to
go much farther south than on their eastern trip. The pack
had gone out In tremendous quantities. In fact, the ship
was able to get within a mile of the farthest south reached
by the plane on the first flight. It was an astonishingly quick
change.

On Jan. 10 Byrd made his third and last flight from the
ship. It had been his original intention to fly the 600 miles
to Little America, which would have been an easy flight
in good weather. The weather was perfect where the Rup-
pert lay, a light wind, unlimited visibility, and a warm sun.

But it was not so at the Bay of Whales. Lincoln Ellsworth
was there with his plane, hoping to fly across the continent,
a flight that he later made safely in the opposite direction.
He informed Byrd by radio that there was no visibility at
Little America, and that it was snowing. To have attempted
a flight to such a distance under those conditions would have
been ridiculous. So Byrd reluctantly gave up his plan. Ordi-
narily at that time of year weather conditions at Little
America are spotty.

However, Byrd decided to make one last flight to the
south. A short time after they took off, the sky became over-
cast and there was obviously a change coming, so the plane
again turned back, having reached 71 degrees 45 minutes
south at 152 degrees west. The importance of these three
flights can hardly be overemphasized. They proved beyond a
doubt that there was no land in this area. This fact was
confirmed the next month when two ships, the whaler Thors-
havn and the Australian exploring ship Discovery were able
to reach about 72 degrees south, farther than Byrd had gone
in his plane.

The ships' accomplishment does not detract at all from
Byrd's achievement. The ships, under less favorable condi-
tions, might not have been able to get so far south, and the

A New Era 237

only reason they did was because of the tremendous outsurge
of the ice. It must have been an unusually open year. Score
one more in Captain Weddell's favor. One never can tell
what will happen in the Antarctic.

Before the plane landed it went up to 7,000 feet where the
sea was scanned for a possible channel for the ship. Byrd did
not want to go back to the traditional 178th meridian to
pass through the Ross Sea pack, if he could help it. It would
be a waste of time and he hoped to find another opening
through the pack to the east of that point. He may have re-
called that Amundsen went through the pack with little diffi-
culty to the east of the meridian on which Scott spent nearly
a month in working his way through the ice in the same
year. The pack is unpredictable. At any rate he saw from
the plane an irregular lead about thirty miles to the north-
west. It was worth trying.

Ellsworth, whose plane had been wrecked in the Bay of
Whales when the ice in the bay suddenly broke up and went
out, had met tremendously heavy ice at 178, which was an-
other determining factor in Byrd's choice. So they pushed
slowly westward looking for an opening to the south, and
on the 169th meridian found an open road to Little Amer-
ica. They met no ice at all.

Byrd's other flights belong more properly to another nar-
rative, as they have to do entirely with inland exploration,
but one, at least, must be mentioned because of its signifi-
cance. There had always been differences of opinion between
geologists as to whether the Antarctic Continent was divided
by a strait, filled with ice, that ran from the east side of the
Ross barrier toward the Weddell Sea. On one side were the
Edsel Ford Mountains to the north, and on the other the
Queen Maud Range to the south.

This mystery was resolved by a unique use of the airplane.
A flight to the southeast along the parallel of 81 degrees 10
minutes south was made, the plane coming down close to the

238 The Antarctic Ocean

surface at intervals so as to show the elevation by the plane's
altimeter. In connection with seismic soundings at the point
where the plateau began to rise, the slope indicated plainly
that there was land under the ice. It was an extremely clever
expedient, and it worked perfectly. Added to the flights
made from the ship it rounded out in broad outline two fine
geographical discoveries.

But it is these things which are seldom appreciated by the
public, and therefore they have gone unnoticed. Admiral
Byrd's self-immuration in a hut eighty miles south of Little
America during the year made much better popular reading.
But long after that is forgotten, his reputation will rest
solidly on his discovery of the eastern shore of the Ross Sea,
a mystery which had eluded many other men.

What Is It Worth?

IT IS a long way from the visionary Quiros and his dream
of a rich, warm southern continent filled with people
waiting for spiritual salvation, and from the hardly less
amusing vaporings of Alexander Dalrymple, who thought
there must be at least fifty million inhabitants of the land,
to the partial conquest of the Antarctic by ship, sledge, and
airplane. The warm land of imagination gave way to the
knowledge of a land defended by icy barriers and ramparts,
but the greater its inaccessibility the more it tempted the
staunch souls who demanded and obtained some of its
secrets.

That search, extending over more than 300 years, is one
of the most dramatic in the history of exploration. We have
seen how, beginning merely with a philosophical postulate,
the Antarctic began to emerge from the mist as men refused
to let ice and storm defeat their purpose. How the sketchy
outlines of land, a lonely island or two, piqued their curiosity
and led them forward to ever greater gains. How they hurled
themselves against the growling ice, that warden at the gate,
time and again, until they burst through to find that vast
frozen and lonely land. Truly has it been called a siege, a
siege in which all the ingenuity and courage of men were
brought to bear against 4 an implacable and unrelenting foe.

We know fairly well now what sort of a continent lies
behind that icy rim that repelled men for so many centuries.
Its great domed plateau, its major mountain chains, its tre-
mendous glaciers, are partly outlined. And with every re-
curring thrust against its portals, or into the interior, more

239

240 The Antarctic Ocean

is learned to satisfy the curiosity of those to whom every un-
known region on the surface of the earth is a constant chal-
lenge.

But the question remains: Of what material value is this
great mass of ice-covered land? And the answer is, except for
further geographical and geological investigation, and its
value as a weather station: Absolutely none!

So long as any part of its surface is unknown, men will go
there, drawn by the irresistible instinct to plunge into areas
in which other men have not been, as well as to learn more
of its strange geological history, which may throw light on the
past of the whole globe. That will always be so, until the
charts show every valley and glacier and mountain range,
until they show how this strange land came into being, and
what has happened to it in ages past, since it had a warm
climate. That is something worth seeking.

Knowledge of Antarctic weather is also invaluable, and
the time will probably come when weather stations will be
established there permanently in order that the weather of
the southern hemisphere may be more accurately predicted.
The Antarctic controls that weather. That inconceivable
large mass of ice, breeding storms, sending its cold breath
to the north, affects the lives of all those living within a few
thousand miles of it. It has been the dream of meteorolo-
gists for years to learn more of the vagaries of Antarctic
weather.

But why nations should squabble over Antarctic territory
is beyond my comprehension. Chile and Argentina have re-
cently put forward claims, so has Germany, so has the
United States, unofficially, based on Byrd's explorations. Eng-
land established her claims long ago, when by Orders in
Council she claimed the Falkland Island Dependencies and
the Ross Sea Dependency. It is not likely that these claims

Map 12. The tracks of all the expeditions mentioned in the narrative; a
cobweb of attacks on the icy ramparts of the land.

242 The Antarctic Ocean

were based on a desire to control any part of the Antarctic
land.

The Falkland Island Dependencies were established be-
cause at the Falklands England has a naval station that con-
trols the passage around the Horn and the whale fisheries
to the south, or pretends to control the latter, and the Ross
Sea claim was put forward in an attempt to control the
rich whaling grounds of that region. At one time New
Zealand levied a tax on every barrel of whale oil brought
into the whaler's base at Stewart Island, until the Nor-
wegians refused to pay it.

Coal has been found in the Antarctic, it is true. Shackle-
ton found it on his polar journey and Scott confirmed his
finding. Griffith Taylor, geologist with Scott, estimated that
the Antarctic contained the greatest coal deposit in the
world, as did Laurence Gould, geologist of the first Byrd
expedition. But the coal is of inferior quality. It is buried
in sandstone in tremendously long seams running north from
the Beardmore Glacier. It was found by members of Byrd's
second expedition on their geological trip to the east of the
Ross Sea.

But so long as 2,600 miles of ocean and pack ice separate
the only practicable approach to the interior of the Ant-
arctic from the nearest civilized land, New Zealand, of what
conceivable use is the coal? When all the coal in the present
habitable world is used up, which will be in the far-distant
future, then it might be worth while to send ships through
the gales and ice of the Antarctic Ocean to bring back some
of this inferior coal. But by that time science will probably
have made us independent of coal anyway.

Nothing else of any value has ever been found there.
Gould found faint traces of copper, but there is an almost
limitless amount of copper available in more comfortable
climates. Traces" of metals and other valuable raw materials
have been found in some of the glacial moraines along the

What Is It Worth? 243

edge of the continent. But where did they come from? To
find their place of origin would mean boring haphazardly
through an unknown thickness of ice.

There is nothing valuable in the Antarctic that can be
reached, or that could be exploited profitably.

It has been mentioned as an aviation base on great circle
flights between points in the southern hemisphere. There
are only two or three months of the year when flying is pos-
sible in the Antarctic, and anyone who has been there knows
the uncertainty of weather conditions. No meteorologist at
present can predict the weather in that frozen land for more
than twelve hours ahead, and even then he takes a chance.
Landing there is always a hazard with a heavy plane because
of the rough surface.

It will be only a few years before planes have such a long
range that intermediate stops in a flight of 5,000 or 6,000
miles will be unnecessary.

No, the Antarctic is a field for the explorer or the adven-
turer, not for business or even for military strategy. It is
unique in this world, isolated by nature, protected by ice
and storm, inviolate except to the feeble thrusts of men who
dare greatly to learn what the outside surface looks like,
or the tale concealed in its rocks. And yet nations dispute
over it. To leave one's name there is an honor dearly won,
but for any country to say, "This is my chunk of ice and
mountains and blizzard," seems the height of absurdity. Some
of the statesmen who claim portions of it should sit through
a winter there, and then decide what they would do with
the Antarctic if it were given to them.

Its only material wealth lies in the ocean surrounding it
the whales. Its real wealth is in what man can learn from
it, the secrets he can wrest from its winds and rocks.

Index

Adare, Cape, 125, 169

Adelaide Island, 58, 77

Adelie Land, 88, 89, 91, 109, 112, 116,

174, 198

Admiral Graf Spee, 21
Admiralty Range, 125
Adventure, 23
Aerial surveys, 225
Africa, 12, 32

interior of, 83
Agate, Alfred T., artist, 98
Airplane, in Antarctic, 225-227, 243

correlating with dog teams, 225,
227

exploration by, 115, 116, 231-238

reconnoitering value, 230

survey by, 132
Albatrosses, 9, 120, 122, 218
Alexander I, discovery ships, 59
Alexander I Land, 61, 77, 138, 141
Alexandra Mountains, 163, 230
American explorers, 21, 49
American Geographical Society, 42,

66

American Philosophical Society, 93
Amsterdam, 18

Amundsen, Roald, 120, 180-184, 186,
195, 227, 237

on Belgica expedition, 137-152

Cook, quoted on, 137, 148, 152

dog teams, use of, 183, 184, 187

Northwest Passage, first to make,
182

notifies Scott of intention, 181

Amundsen, Roald, reaches South

Pole, 66, 184, 193
Andromache, 46
Ann, Cape, 76

Antarctic Circle, 60, 61, 75, 79, 80,
82, 83, 153, 157

first crossed by Cook, 24, 26
Antarctic continent, 20, 30-40, 210

balances Arctic depression, 31, 32

claims to, 240, 242

climate, 30-35

drift theory, 32

field for explorer, 243

first sighted, 40-62

gates to (see Ross Sea)

life in, 35-40

material value, 240-243

proved a continent, 41, 82, 92, 113

quest for, 12-29, 239-243

siege of, 239-243

strait, controversy over, 237, 238

sun in, 33

year-long day, 33

Antarctic Ocean, fact and fantasy, 3-
11, 40

ice conditions, 64-81
Antarctica, 18
Antwerp Island, 138
Anvers Island, 58
Arctic Ocean, II, 13, 31
Arctowski, Henryk, geologist, 136,

141

Argentina, Antarctic claims, 240
Argyll, Duke of, 153
Arias, Dr. Juan Luis, 14

245

246 * The Antarctic Ocean

Aristotle, 5

Armitage, Cape, 166, 168

Astrolabe, corvette, 86, 88, 89

Atkinson, 194

Auckland Islands, 174

Aulick, Commander J. H., 129

Aurora, 115

Aurora borealis, 143

Aurora Islands, 50, 63

Australia, 18, 22, 23, 32, 102, 118,

198

Austrialia del Espiritu Santo, 17, 28
Avery, Captain, 76
Avon, brig, 65
Axel Heiberg Glacier, 183, 230

B

Balch, Edwin Swift, 18, 65, 66

Balchen, Bernt, 230

Balleny, John, 79, 80, 82, 120, 129

Balleny Islands, 114, 174

Balloon, Scott's ascent by, 165

Balloon Bight, 165, 178

Barne, 167-169

Barrie, Sir James M., 155, 191

Bartlett, Captain Bob, 115

Bartlett, Harley Harris, 93

Bay of Islands, New Zealand, 113, 129

Bay of Whales, 37, 66, 164, 165, 180-

182, 186, 229, 236, 237
Bear, Coast Guard ship, 232
Beardmore Glacier, 180, 183, 187,

198, 242

Beaufoy, cutter, 70
Belgica, 165, 182

first vessel frozen in ice, 136
Belgium, expedition to Antarctic,

136-152
Bellingshausen, Admiral, 59-61, 82,

124

Berghaus, Heinrich, 42
Bering Strait, 31
Betsey, 51

Birds, in Antarctic, 18, 36, 141, 158,
202

(See also Albatrosses; Penguins)
Biscoe, John, 11, 74-79, 82, 86, 114, 129
Biscoe Islands, 58
Blake, 46

Bligh, Captain, 212
Blythe Bay, 49
Bone, 46

Bougainville, Louis Antoine de, 21
Bounty, mutiny on, 212
Bounty Islands, 77
Bouvet, Lozier, 18, 19, 24
Bowers, Lieutenant H. R., 186, 188,

189, 191, 192
Bowers, Mrs., 191
Bowlin, co-pilot, 235
Brabant Island, 138
Brackenridge, William D., 98
Bransfield, Captain Edward, 42, 46

Trinity Island discovered by, 47, 48

voyage, 46-48, 62

controversy, 57, 61, 62, 77, 82
Bransfield Strait, 56
Brisbane, Matthew, 70
British Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, 119
Brooklyn Island, 138
Brooks, seaman, 109, 110
Brosses, Charles de, 19
Bruce, W. S., 202
Buccaneers, 18
Buck, Dr. Peter H., 6
Budd Land, 112
Burdick, Stanton L., 57
Burtus, Samuel A., 56
Byrd, Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn,
21, 73, 120, 182, 226

airplane, use of, 226, 233-238

Atlantic flight, 226

characteristics, 226, 227

discoveries, eastern shore of Ross

Sea, 230-232, 238, 242
Edsel Ford Range, 232

Index 247

Byrd, Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn,
first expedition, 43, 64, 66, 159,
165, 177, 180, 227-232
North Pole flight, 226
second expedition, 232-238
South Pole flight, 230
Byron, Commodore John, 21

Cachalot, 43

Caird Coast, 202

Cairns, snow, Amundsen's, 187

Campbell, 149

Campbell Island, 8, 79, 120

Canoes, Polynesian, 6, 7

Canton, China, 44, 51

Cape of Good Hope (see Good Hope,

Cape of)

Cape Horn (see Horn, Cape)
Cape Town, 24, 29
Carr, Cape, 112, 114
Challenger, oceanographic ship, 153
Charles X, 85
Chatham Islands, 77
Cherry-Garrard, Apsley, 126, 155, 156,

192-194
Chile, 14, 45, 223

Antarctic claims, 240
China, 44, 51
China clippers, 50
Chronometer, 23, 24
Churchill, Winston, 200
Circumcision, Cape, 19, 24
City of New York, 73, 227
Clarence Island, 47
Coal, in Antarctic, 32, 242
Coats' Land, 202
Colbeck, Cape, 230
Coleridge, "Rime of the Ancient

Mariner, The," 8-10
Columbus, Christopher, 48, 124
Compass, 162
Continents, drift of, 32

Cook, Dr. Frederick A., Amundsen's

view of, 137, 138
on Belgica expedition, 136-152

comment on, 140-145
controversy, North Pole, 42, 92,

137

conviction, 137
Cook, Captain James, 19, 21-30, 64,

79, 124, 154
character, 23
farthest South, 132, 232
search for Terra Australis, 21, 22
Copper, 242

Coulman Island, 125, 161, 162
Couthouy, Joseph Pithy, 98
Cowes, 156

Crean, Tom, 212, 219-223
Crozet Island, 19
Crozier, Commander Francis R. M.,

118, 129
Crozier, Cape, 162, 166

Balrymple, Alexander, 22, 23, 26, 239

Dana, James D wight, geologist, 98

Banco, Lieutenant, 145, 146

Banco Land, 138

Bavid, Sir Edgeworth, 31, 180

Beception Island, 55, 56, 58-60

Despatch, brig, 52

Bevil's Graveyard, 233

Bevon Island, 148

Biatoms, 158, 160

Bickerson, Mahlon, Secretary of the

Navy, 95, 96
Discovery, Scott's ship, 154, 156, 165,

170-175, 236
Biscovery Inlet, 163
Bog teams, 183, 187, 199, 206, 225-

227, 232

Bore", Gustave, 10
Brake, Sir Francis, 15, 16
Brake Strait, 30
Brayton, Joseph, artist, 98

248 The Antarctic Ocean

Drygalski, Erich von, 153
Dunbar, Captain, 55
Dunedin, New Zealand, 227
D'Urville, Jules Sebastien Ce"sar Du-

mont, 66, 84-91, 105, 109, 118,

124

Addie Land, discovery, 5, 88, 89
Dutch East India Company, 18
Dutch East Indies, 13
Dutch explorers, 18

Easter Island, 28

Edsel Ford Range, 231, 232, 237

Eld's Peak, 174

Eleanor Boiling, 227

Elephant Island, 21, 102, 210, 211,

218, 219, 223
Eliza, cutter, 76
Eliza Scott, schooner, 79, 80
Ellsworth, Lincoln, 21, 31, 33, 66, 67,

236, 237

Enderby, Charles, 74
Enderby Brothers, 73, 74, 79
Enderby Land, 26, 73, 79, 80, 82
Endurance, 196, 200, 202-209, 213
England (see Great Britain)
Eratosthenes, 5
Erebus, bomber, 118, 130-134
Erebus (Mt.), volcano, 35, 126, 128,

162

Eskimos, 36, 148
Espirito Santo, 50, 51
Evans, Edgar, 167, 168, 186-188, 190
Exeter, 21

Falkland Island Dependencies, 21,

240, 242

Falkland Islands, 21, 44, 50, 72, 135
Fanning, Captain Edmund, 43, 44,

50, 73
Voyages, 43, 51, 59-61

Fanning, William, 51

Fernandez, Juan, 14, 22

Ferrar, 168

Filchner, 63, 64, 200

Finne", Orentius, map, 12

Fletcher, Francis, 15

Flying Fish, tender, 99, 100, 104

Fossils, 188

Fram, 154, 180-182, 205

France, Anatole, Penguin Island, 17

France, expeditions from, 82, 84, 88,

119, 154
explorers, 19-21
Franciscans, 14, 17
Franklin, Sir John, 117, 118, 126
Franklin Island, 126
Frederick, brig, 54, 58
Freeman, Captain H., 79
Freshfield, Cape, 105, 115
Friesland (see Livingston Island)
Furneaux, Lieutenant Tobias, 23

Galapagos Islands, 55

Gama, Vasco da, 12

Gauss, Karl Friedrich, 83

Geographical Review, 42

George III, 46

George IV, 72

Georgia, Isle of, 28

Gerlache, Lieutenant A. de, 136-

152

Gerlache Strait, de, 138
German geographers, 45
Germany, Antarctic claims, 240
Antarctic expedition, 153, 154
Glaciers, 32, 169, 180, 183, 187, 202,

230, 231, 242, 243
Gold, 15, 16, 213
Good Hope, Cape of, 12, 13, 157
Gould, Lawrence, geologist, 242
Graham Land, 78, 136, 138, 208
Great Britain, Antarctic claims, 240,

242

Index 249

Great Britain, expeditions, first, 82,

84

explorers, 21-29, 4149
Greek geographers, concept of Ant-
arctic, 5, 24
Greenland, 20, 21, 31, 64, 115, 137

Byrd flight over, 226
Greenwich Islands, 58

H

Haakon, King, 193

Hale, Horatio, 98

Half Moon Beach, 49

Halley, 9

Hansen, naturalist, 160, 161, 168

Hardy, Sir Thomas M., 51, 52

Hare, 166-168

Harvey, Peter, 57

Hay ward, Walter, 36

Hero, sloop, 54-59, 74

Hersilia, brig, 49, 50, 52, 55

Hobart Town, 76, 88, 118

Hobbs, William H., 105, 114-116

Hooker, Dr. Joseph Dal ton, 98, 118,

126
Horn, Cape, 5, 8, 13, 15, 18, 27, 28,

30, 31, 34, 41, 42, 73, 100, 210
passage around, 242
House of Representatives, Committee

on Naval Affairs, 94, 95
Hudson, Captain William H., 99,

102-104, 108, 109

Hudson, Cape, 105, 106, 114, 115, 174
Hui-te-rangiora, 6-8
Hurley, 205

Hussey, L. D. A., 196, 197
Hut Point, 173
Hydrographic Office, 97

Icebergs, Byrd expedition and, 233-

235

Coleridge's account, 8-10
Ross's maneuver, 133
Wilkes's account, 105, 106
Iceland, 115
Indian Ocean, 12

International Geographical Congress,
136

J

Jacob Ruppert, 232-236
Jacquinot, Captain, 86
James Caird, Shackleton's boat, 212-

216

Jane, brig, 63, 70
Java, 18

Joinville Land, 86, 209
Jones, Commander Thomas Ap

Catesby, 95, 96
Jones, Cape, 161
Juan Fernandez Land, 28
June, Harold, 231, 234, 235

K

Kerguelen-Gaussberg Ridge, 30
Kerguelen Land, 20, 21, 26, 30
Kerguelen-Tremarec, Yves Joseph de,

19-21
Kerr, 203

King Edward VII Land, 132, 163, 231
King Haakon Sound, 217, 218, 223
King Wilhelm II Land, 153
King William Land, 118
Knox Land, 112
Koonya, towing ship, 177-178
Koren, 141

Ice, pack (see Pack ice)
Icebergs, in Antarctic, 3-11, 24, 70,
204, 205, 209, 210

La Pe*rouse, 85
Larsen, C. A., 227, 228
Le Maire, 15
Strait of, 8, 46

250 The Antarctic Ocean

Lecointe, Captain, 143, 146-147, 149
Library of Congress, 42, 55, 58
Liege Island, 138
Literary Gazette and Journal of the

Belles Lettres, 47, 48
Little America, 31, 37, 64, 234-236,

238

Liv Glacier, 230
Lively, cutter, 74, 76, 77
Livingston Island, 46, 47, 54-56, 58
Long Island Sound, 52
Looming or mirage, 115, 116
Loper, Richard Fanning, 57
Loper, Mrs. Richard Fanning, 50, 55
Louis-Philippe, 85
Louis-Philippe Land, 86

M

McCarthy, Timothy, 212
McFarlane's Sound, 57, 58
McKinley, Captain Ashley, 231
McMurdo Sound, 162, 165, 180, 186
McNeish, carpenter, 212
Madeira, 99, 100
Magellan, 12, 14, 124

Strait of, 15, 86
Magnetic Pole (see North Magnetic

Pole; South Magnetic Pole)
Malay Peninsula, 12
Marguerity Bay, 58
Marion-Dufresne, 19
Marion Island, 19, 26
Markham, Sir Clements, 153, 154, 175
Martin, Colonel Lawrence, 42, 47, 52,

56

Mary, Queen, 208
Massafuero, 43
Matterhorn, 230
Mauritius, 20
Mawson, Sir Douglas, 89, 114-116,

198, 199, 232
Melbourne, 76
Mendana, Alvaro de, 15, 16
Michotte, cook, 141

Mill, H. R., Siege of the South Pole,

5, 78, 86
Mirage, 115, 116
Montevideo, 21, 44
Morning, relief ship, 170, 171, 174
Morrell, Captain Benjamin, 65

N

Nansen, Fridtjof, 138, 152, 154, 180,

205

Nares, Sir George, 153
Ne Plus Ultra, 100
New Guinea, 15, 17, 18, 22
New Hebrides, 17, 28
New Holland (see Australia)
New South Shetland, 45
New York markets, 44
New York Times, 95, 227
New Zealand, 6, 7, 18, 21, 26-28, 77,
79, 120, 129, 157, 176, 242

circumnavigation, 22
Nimrod, 122, 176-180
Nordenskjold, N. A. E., 45, 66
Norsemen, discovery of America, 48
North Land, 112
North Magnetic Pole, 83, 117, 118,

129
North Pole, 137, 148

Byrd flight over, 226

Peary reaches, 180
Northwest Passage, 182
Norvegia Expedition, 232
Norwegians, 128, 223

Amundsen's crew, 182, 183

whalers, 43, 242

O

Gates, Titus, 187-190, 194
Ohlin Island, 57
Orange Harbor, 97, 100
Orleans Channel, 57
Ortelius, map, 13

Index 251

Pacific exploration, 84

Pacific Ocean, 32, 102, 124

Pack ice, 18, 28, 64-68, 154, 178, 200-

210

Belgica caught in, 141-153
best point to penetrate, 79
Byrd's experience with, 227-236
Cook turned back by, 26, 27
first seen, 6, 7
Ross Sea, 122-124, 127
Scott's expedition and, 158-164, 174
varying, 66-68, 122-124, 128, 161,

185, 186, 237
PactoluSj frigate, 52
Palmer, Captain Nathaniel B., 42, 49-

62, 74, 77, 82, 86, 92, 96, 114
first sights Antarctic continent, 57
logbook, 55, 56, 61
Orleans Channel discovered by, 55-

57

Palmer Archipelago, 138
Palmer Land, 31, 57-62, 73, 78, 100,

135, 225

Paris Geographical Society, 85
Parker, Alton, 231
Parry Mountains, 116, 127
Paulding, James K., Secretary of the

Navy, 96
Peacock, sloop of war, 99, 100, 102-

109

struggle with ice, 106-109
Peale, Titian Ramsey, 98
Peary, Robert E., 20, 21, 148

reaches North Pole, 137, 180
Peary-Cook controversy, 42, 92, 137
Pendleton, Captain Benjamin, 54, 55,

58, 59, 96
Penguins, 17, 19, 27, 36, 37, 49, 71,

88, 125, 142, 160, 207, 209
Ad&ies, 37-39, 89, 160
emperor, 35-39, 149, 164, 203, 207

Penguins, follow ship, 123
as meat, 143, 144, 147-151, 170, 212
migration of, 55

Peru, 15

Peter I Island, 61, 77, 145

Petrels, 36, 228

Philip III of Spain, 14, 16, 17

Phoenicians, 5

Pickering, Charles, 98

Piner's Bay, 105, 112

Plate River, 8

Plateau, Antarctic, 31, 169, 170, 183,
184, 187

Poe, Edgar Allan, Narrative of Ar-
thur Gordon Pym, 10, 93

Poinsett, Joel R., Secretary of War,
96

Polynesians, canoes, 6, 7

Ponies, 176, 182, 183, 187, 199

Pope's Line of Demarcation, 15

Porpoise, gun brig, 89, 90, 99, 100,
104, 109, 114

Port Ross, 174

Port Williams, 55

Portuguese navigators, 14, 15

Possession Island, 125

Poynter, 46

Presidents Harbor, 54

Priestley, 182, 183

Ptolemy, 12

Quartley, 167, 168
Queen Maud Mountains, 183, 237
Quest, Shackleton's ship, 224
Quiros, Pedro Fernandez de, 16-18,
20, 24, 26, 28, 239

R

Racovitza, Emile, 136, 141
Radio, on plane, 232, 236

252 * The Antarctic Ocean

Radio telephone, 233
Ramilies, ship, 52

Refraction, discovery of Cape Hud-
son by, 105, 114, 115, 127
Relief, store ship, 99
Resolution, 23
Retes, Ynigo Ortiz de, 15
Reynolds, Jeremiah N., 93-95, 97
Rich, William, botanist, 98
Ringgold, Captain, 89, 90, 114
Ringgold's Knoll, 104, 114, 174
Robertson Bay, 174
Rockefeller Mountains, 230
Roggeveen, Jacob, 18
Ross, James Clark, 66, 83, 84, 86, 98,

102, 113-116

Admiralty Range, discovery, 125
Barrier, discovery, 127, 128
character, 117
discovery of Antarctic gateway,

117-135, 153, 154
Erebus, Mt., discovery, 126, 128
iceberg maneuver, 133-135
Wilkes, views on, 118-120, 129
Ross Ice Barrier, 33, 117, 122, 127,
128, 132, 162, 164, 186, 194, 228,
237

Ross Ice Shelf, 112
Ross Island, 166
Ross Sea, 11, 27, 30, 34, 35, 64-66,

79, 116, 154, 160
discovery, 117, 120, 123, 124, 230-

232

freezing of, 132
ice pack, 122-124, 128-132
Ross Sea Dependency, 240, 242
Royal Geographical Society, 65, 74,

78, 116
Royds, 169

Royds, Cape, 180, 186
Ruser-Larsen, Captain, 232
Russia, Antarctic expedition, 59-61

work in Arctic, 19
Rymill, John, 41

Sabine, Mt., 125
Sabrina, cutter, 79, 80
San Salvador, 48
Sandwich Land, 28, 68
Sarmiento, Pedro de, 15
Sartorius, Sir George, 65
Schouten, 15
Scotia expedition, 202
Scott, Captain Robert Falcon, 33,
116, 120, 132, 170, 226, 237, 242
character, 155, 156, 195
death, 181, 192-194
diary, 157, 186-194
first expedition, 66, 154-175, 197-

200
geological specimens, 188, 190, 193,

194

plateau, discovery of, 169, 170
reaches Pole, 187, 193
scientific records, 170, 193
second expedition, 147, 180-194
Scott Islands, 157, 227, 231
Scurvy, 23, 76, 144, 146, 198
Sea elephants, 45, 219
Sea Gull, tender, 99, 100, 102
Sea leopards, 57, 67, 160
Sealers, discoveries by, 21, 42-45, 50,

52, 58, 68, 83
Sealing, 23, 94
life, 54
profits, 77

scientific records, 74-81
Seals, ,17, 19, 35-37, 43, 88, 141, 142,

159, 202, 207, 209
meat, 143, 144, 147-151, 160, 170
Weddell, 67

Seaman's Journal, The, 55, 56
Shackleton, Sir Ernest, 21, 28, 31, 63,
64, 120, 122, 154, 165, 168, 176-
180, 183, 226, 231, 242
bases, 199

character and history, 195-197
death, 224

Index - 253

Shackleton, Sir Ernest, Endurance

caught in ice, 202-209, 213
on Scott's first expedition, 154, 197
small boat journey, 212-219
South Georgia, crossing of, 219-222
Weddell Sea trip, 195, 199
Shackleton Ice Shelf, 112
Shag Rocks, 50, 63
Sheffield, James P., 49, 50
Shelvoke, George, 840
Shirreff, Captain W. H., 45, 46
Skua gulls, 36
Slaney, H.M.S., 46
Smith, William, discovers South Shet-

lands, 44, 45, 49
Smithsonian Institution, 92, 116
Snow, 32, 33, 162
Snow Island, 55
Solomon Islands, 15
South America, 12, 21, 32, 55, 102
South Fernandez, 44
South Georgia, 21, 72, 196, 212, 213,

217, 218, 223, 224

South Magnetic Pole, 31, 83, 84,
117, 124, 126, 127, 162, 180, 198
South Orkneys, 30, 31, 63, 68
South Polar Times, 197
South Pole, 31, 32, 124, 126, 176
Amundsen reaches, 184, 187, 193
Byrd's flight to, 226, 230
Scott reaches, 180-194
South Sandwich Islands, 31
South Sea islands, 6
South Shetlands, 18, 42-50, 52, 59,

60, 67, 68, 72, 138, 219
South Victoria Land, 79, 80
Southern Cross, 160
Spanish navigators, 14, 15, 63
Spears, John R., 52
Staten Land (see New Zealand)
Steam, whalers driven by, 136
Stenhouse, Captain J, R., 115
Stewart Island, 242

Stonington, Connecticut, 49-60

sealers, 45, 93, 94

siege of, 52

Sun, in Antarctic, 33, 34
Sweden, Antarctic expedition, 154
Sydney, Australia, 102, 104, 109, 129
Symmes, Captain John Cleves, Jr., 93

Tahiti, 22, 28

Tasman, 18, 22

Tasmania, 18, 76

Taylor, Griffith, geologist, 242

Te Aratanga-nuku, 6, 7

Temperatures, in Antarctic, 30, 33-

35

Termination Land, 112
Terra Australis Incognita, 12-29, 81
Terra Nova, relief ship, 170-174, 182-

186

Terrestrial magnetism, 83, 98, 118
Terror, bomb brig, 52, 118, 123, 129-

133, 135

Terror, Mt., 162, 166
Thorshavn, whaler, 236
Tierra del Fuego, 12, 17, 28, 73, 97,

100, 138
Torres, 17, 22
Tower Island, 47, 57
Tractors, 226, 227
Trinity Land, 47, 48, 56, 57, 61, 62,

73, 82

Tula, brig, 74, 76, 77
Twain, Mark, 14

U

United States, Antarctic claims, 19,

240
Antarctic expeditions, 82, 84, 92,

94-119
United States Exploring Expedition,

92-116
United States Hydrographic Office,

57

254 The Antarctic Ocean

Valparaiso, Chile, 44, 45

Van Dieman's Land (see Australia)

Van Wyck Island, 138

Venus de Milo, 84

Verne, Jules, An Antarctic Mystery,

10, 11

Victoria Land, 160, 231
Vince, 166-168
Vincennes, sloop of war, 99, 104, 106,

109-112

Vincent, boatswain, 212
Vinci, Leonardo da, 12
Volcano (Mt. Erebus), 35, 84, 126,

128

W

War of 1812, 43, 44, 51

Weather, Antarctic, knowledge of,

240
Weddell, James, 10, 63-73, 76, 83-86,

94, 124, 125, 237
Weddell Sea, 31, 65, 66, 72, 86, 94,

135, 195, 199, 200
Wellington, New Zealand, 157, 232
West Antarctica, 18
Whale oil, 23
Whalers, 28, 29, 36, 158, 212, 222,

223, 242

American, 42, 50-52, 94, 95
discoveries by, 94, 95, 120, 136
Whales, 36, 37, 47, 70, 128, 207, 243
blue, 36, 160, 202
fin of, 36

Whales, killer, 36, 37, 209

sperm, 43

Wilcox, Phineas, 57
Wild, Frank, 154, 167, 205, 206, 212-

214, 224
Wilkes, Charles, 82, 84, 86, 89-116,

118, 124, 153, 174, 198
character, 97
controversy, 92, 113-116
expedition, 97-116
Hudson, Cape, mirage, 105, 115,

116, 118420, 129
map, 118-120, 129
proves Antarctic a continent, 92,

113, 116

Ringgold's Knoll, discovery, 104
Wilkins, Sir Hubert, 225
Williams, brig, 44, 46
Wilson, Dr. Edward A., 154, 170, 186,

188-193, 197, 198
character, 154
death, 154
sketches, 154, 197
Wilson, Mrs., 191
Worsley, Frank, 205-224
Wright, 192

Yankee Harbor, 55, 58, 59
Yorktown, U.S.S., 129
Young, Dr. Adam, 46-48
Young Island, 80

ZeUe, corvette, 86

114007