The dangerous race for the South Pole Elizabeth Leane
Roald Amundsen had spent nearly two
years preparing his Arctic expedition.
He had secured funding from the Norwegian
Crown and hand-picked a trusted crew.
He’d even received the blessing of
the famed explorer Fridtjof Nansen,
along with the use of his ship, Fram,
specially constructed to withstand the ice.
Now, with the voyage departing, he had
one final announcement to his shipmates:
They were going to head in the
opposite direction.
By the early 20th century,
nearly every region of the globe had
been visited and mapped,
with only two key locations
remaining:
the North Pole, deep in the
frozen waters of the Arctic region,
and the South Pole, nestled within a
recently discovered icy continent
in the vast Antarctic Ocean.
A veteran of several expeditions,
Amundsen had long dreamed of
reaching the North Pole.
But in 1909, amidst his preparations,
news came that the American explorers
Frederick Cook and Robert Peary
had staked rival claims
to the achievement.
Instead of abandoning the planned voyage,
Amundsen decided to alter its course to
what he called “the last great problem.”
But Amundsen’s crew weren’t
the only ones kept in the dark.
British naval officer Robert F. Scott had
already visited the Antarctic,
and was leading his own
South Pole expedition.
Now, as Scott’s ship Terra Nova
reached Melbourne in 1910,
he was greeted with the news
that Amundsen was also heading south.
Reluctantly, Scott found himself pitted
against the Norwegian
in what the newspapers
called a ‘race to the Pole.’
Yet if it was a race,
it was a strange one.
The expeditions left at different times
from different locations,
and they had very different
plans for the journey.
Amundsen was focused solely
on reaching the Pole.
Informed by his Arctic exploration,
he drew on both Inuit and
Norwegian experience,
arriving with a small team of
men and more than a hundred dogs.
His explorers were clothed
in sealskin and furs,
as well as specially
designed skis and boots.
But Scott’s venture was more complicated.
Launching an extensive scientific
research expedition,
he traveled with over three times
more men than Amundsen,
alongside over 30 dogs,
19 Siberian ponies,
and three state-of-the-art
motorized sledges.
But these additional tools and bodies
weighed down the ship as it battled
the storms of the southern ocean.
And as they finally began to lay supplies,
they found both their ponies and
motor-sledges ineffective
in the harsh ice and snow.
In the spring of 1911, after waiting out
the long polar night,
both parties began the journey south.
Scott’s team traveled
over the Beardmore Glacier,
following the path of Ernest Shackleton’s
earlier attempt to reach the pole.
But although this course had been
documented, it proved slow and laborious.
Meanwhile, despite an initial false start,
Amundsen’s five-man team made good time
using a previously uncharted route
through the same Transantarctic Mountains.
They stayed ahead of Scott’s team,
and on December 14, arrived first
at their desolate destination.
To avoid the ambiguity that surrounded
Cook and Peary’s North Pole claims,
Amundsen’s team traversed
the area in a grid
to make sure they covered
the Pole’s location.
Along with flags and a tent marker,
they left a letter for Scott, which would
not be found until over a month later.
But when Scott’s party
finally reached the pole,
losing the ‘race’ was
the least of their problems.
On the way back towards the camp,
two of the five men succumbed to frostbite
starvation, and exhaustion.
The remaining explorers hoped for a
prearranged rendezvous
with a team sent from their base,
but due to a series of mishaps,
misjudgements and miscommunications,
their rescue never arrived.
Their remains, along with Scott’s diary,
would not be found until spring.
Today, scientists from various countries
live and work at Antarctic
research stations.
But the journeys of these early
explorers are not forgotten.
Despite their divergent fates,
they are forever joined in history,
and in the name of the research
base that marks the South Pole.