A Popular History of Unpopular Things
A podcast that makes history more fun and accessible - we love all things gory, gross, mysterious, and weird!
A Popular History of Unpopular Things
The Deadly Antarctic Expeditions
Join Kelli as she talks about THREE expeditions to Antarctica in the Heroic Age of Exploration. The first, led by Roald Amundsen, was the first to reach the geographic South Pole. At the same time, Robert Falcon Scott was leading his own expedition to the South Pole, but Amundsen beat him there. Unfortunately for Scott, his expedition faced extreme weather and bad luck on the way back, and none returned alive. The third, led by Douglas Mawson, was an attempt to map out more Antarctic land, but that trip also suffered tragedies.
These are three epic tales of the lengths we go to to discover the unexplored, and the gross stuff that can happen in the process!
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Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
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Sources referenced:
South with the Sun: Roald Amundsen, His Polar Explorations, and the Quest for Discovery by Lynne Cox
An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science by Edward J. Larson
Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration by David Roberts
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The Deadly Explorations to the South Pole
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.
Just a quick reminder that you can support me and the show on Patreon, just look up either A Popular History of Unpopular Things or APHOUT: A-P-H-O-U-T. And you can also now watch episodes on YouTube - so go subscribe to my channel there! Links for both the Patreon and YouTube are in the description.
For those of you who love exploration stories gone horribly, horribly, wrong, you’re in for a treat today because we’re going to take a look at three different expedition parties in the early 20th century, that’s the 1900s, and their attempts at exploring Antarctica - the world’s highest, driest, windiest, coldest, and iciest continent. That’s a lot of superlatives.
And in each of today’s three cases, the explorers experienced extreme hardship, suffering, pain, loss, unimaginable situations where they had to do unthinkable things to survive, and of course, the bitterly cold temperatures of the coldest places on earth. From racing to the South Pole, to mapping out the continent, these men risked it all to do what they loved most - exploring the unexplored. Being true adventurers. And in fact, this period of exploration in the late 1800s and early 1900s is known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
So we are going to take a look at three heroic groups in particular, and we’ll do it chronologically.
First, we have Norwegian Explorer Roald Amundsen and his party, the first to reach the South Pole.
Then, concurrently, we have English Explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his party, who were racing against Amundsen. Their story is fraught with tragedy and death and has become a very famous tale of the dangers of Antarctic exploration.
Then, we’ll look at Australian Explorer Douglas Mawson, the first to reach the magnetic South Pole and the first to hike up Mount Erebus in 1909. If the name Erebus sounds familiar… good. It should! It was named after a very famous English ship that sailed for Antarctica under James Clark Ross in 1840, along with the HMS Terror. Then, both the Erebus and Terror sailed for the Arctic, looking for the Northwest Passage through Canada’s waterways, where their captains, Francis Crozier and John Franklin, got stuck in pack ice. I did an episode on that one - the Lost Franklin Expedition. It was also popularized by the AMC series The Terror back in 2018, one I highly recommend watching.
But anyway - Mawson was the first to hike up Mount Erebus in Antarctica. When he returned to map out more of the continent in 1911, the expedition went horribly wrong.
So we have a lot to talk about today. And in my opinion, it’s really gripping stuff. They are adventures on par with the earliest Mount Everest explorers, or the men who froze to death in the icy expanses of the northwest passage. These are the stories of those who risked it all to explore the harshest place on our planet.
As always, we’ll start with a brief historical context - essentially, why then, and why there? What was going on in the world that explains why these explorers wanted to go to Antarctica? Then, after we understand the why, we’ll go through each story to get a good sense of why this age of Antarctica exploration was so heroic, and why it’s a fitting topic for the APHOUT podcast.
So let’s get started!
Historical Context
Now, the years I’m focusing on today are 1911-1914. So if you’re a history person, you might think that I’d contextualize these events alongside WWI. But NOPE! We need to go further back to understand why there were so many expeditions to Antarctica. We also need to consider the explorations of the Arctic in the north in the previous century, like the aforementioned Franklin Expedition - one of my favorites. So, as I like to do, let’s take a step backwards and look at the bigger picture. We’re going back to the British Empire.
Empire still existed in this pre-WWI world. In fact, many European colonies throughout Africa and Asia fought in WWI for their colonial overlords. But it’s not necessarily the conquering aspect of Empire that drove European nations to seek out these discoveries at the poles. A lot of the “why” exists in both competition and scientific advancement.
In 1830, the Royal Geographical Society was formed in England. Its main goal was to explore land and sea - partly for the adventurer’s thrill of discovering undiscovered lands, but also to map out the world and determine which places were ripe for conquering. Take David Livingstone and his explorations into the heart of Africa in 1840 - sure, he was there primarily on a missionary expedition, but his explorations and stories encouraged other explorers - and hungry imperial nations - to sit up and take notice of what Africa had to offer. Man, I really need to get around to that episode on imperialism in Africa.
Anyways, the Royal Geographic Society - the RGS - sent explorers all around the world. But they were more than just explorers - they were scientists, geographers, and researchers. And we can actually go back even further than the formation of the RGS! Think about James Cook and his explorations throughout the Pacific in the mid- to late-18th century, that’s the 1700s, claiming lands for Britain. It was about taking lands but also mapping out our world. Supremacy in all realms - political control, religious conversion, economic domination, and scientific advancement. And through this, cultural and social supremacy.
In the mid-19th century, that’s the 1800s, we know that Britain was keen on finding the Northwest Passage. I mean they’d been looking since the 1400s to be fair, ever since Columbus introduced the New World into the European consciousness. But by the mid-1800s, they had narrowed the location of the passage down to the icy waterways cutting through Canada. And the British were so focused on getting it done. John Franklin and his crew of 128 men all died in pursuit of it, along with other crews on other expeditions both before and after. And many of these men, Franklin included, had done Arctic and Antarctic explorations, so they had some experience with the challenges.
So when the first successful trip through the Northwest Passage was done by a Norwegian in 1906, a man we’ll talk about soon - Roald Amundsen - the British were incensed. They had expended a lot of time, money, resources, and human lives into navigating through the passage. And they were beaten by a rival.
The British felt similarly about Antarctica. After all, it was Captain James Cook who is credited with being the first to sail into Antarctic waters in 1773. In 1839, James Clark Ross is sent down there with the HMS Terror and Erebus to explore further into the Antarctic Circle, to take note of the magnetic changes as they got closer to the magnetic south pole.
Ah - this is a good time to talk about the difference between the magnetic south pole and the geographic south pole. The geographic south pole doesn’t move. It’s at 90 degrees south, right? The “bottom” of the globe. It’s where all the lines of longitude, also called meridians, converge in the south. It’s a fixed point in Antarctica. Sure, tectonic plates might shift the land around underneath it, but the point itself stays the same. It’s at the bottom.
The magnetic poles do move though, which is cool to think about. I’m going to simplify some science so my listeners can get the visual. As you may already know, there is a magnetic field that cuts through our planet - currently, it goes “in” near the North Pole, and comes “out” near the South Pole. I say currently because (on average) every 300,000 years or so, according to NASA, it can actually flip! How cool is that! But apparently the last time it flipped was 780,000 years ago. We’re talking biiiiig stretches of time, so that 300,000 is just an average when looking back at hundreds of millions of years of geological history and data.
The magnetic field cutting through our planet is caused by molten iron and nickel in the earth’s core. These liquid metals generate an electric field. But you can imagine, based on how everything is sloshing around and moving, the magnetic field is always moving, or you might hear the term “in flux.” NASA simplifies it well enough, quote:
“since the forces that generate our magnetic field are constantly changing, the field itself is also in continual flux, its strength waxing and waning over time. This causes the location of Earth's magnetic north and south poles to gradually shift.” End quote.
So in 1839, James Clark Ross was sent down to explore the southern magnetic pole. Which is fitting, because he was actually the first explorer to find the northern magnetic pole in 1831. Which, as we’ve just learned, has since moved. It was “discovered” in 1831 in northern Canada, but it’s been shifting across the Arctic towards Russia.
Anywho, Ross didn’t find the southern pole, neither the magnetic or geographic, but he did report back with some cool findings about Antarctica. Here are some excerpts from his journal. At 78 degrees South, he saw, quote:
“A perpendicular cliff of ice between 150 and 200 feet above the level of the sea, perfectly flat and level on top, and without any fissures or promontories on its even seaward side. We had discovered a land of so extensive a coastline and attaining such an altitude as to justify the appellation of a Great New Southern Continent.” End quote.
And while Ross didn’t set foot on Antarctica, it left a mark on the British to be the ones to conquer these harsh, desolate places. Ross himself wrote, quote,
“Impressed with the feeling that England had ever led the way of discovery in the southern as well as in the northern regions, I considered it would have been inconsistent with the pre-eminence she has ever maintained, if we were to follow in the footsteps of the expedition of any other nation.” End quote.
So, in short, since Britain generally leads the pack in terms of exploration, British explorers should be the ones to fully conquer the unknown.
After this Ross Antarctic expedition, the RGS started sending its men into the cold reaches of the world - north and south - to do that conquering. They did a lot of the work finding the route through the Northwest Passage, right? Only for the full thing to be conquered by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. The British did a lot of work exploring and taking measurements in Antarctica, so now that it was about the right time to push towards the geographic south pole, the British wanted to be the ones who did it.
They were motivated by the same things that led to imperialism - competition and dominance. Maybe not as heavy in the political realm, but certainly in the scientific one. They wanted to be the ones who discovered all the things and get the glory.
So how irritating for them that they weren’t the ones to get to the geographic south pole first. That distinction, again, went to Roald Amundsen.
Roald Amundsen
To start, a disclaimer - though there were certainly other expeditions to try to reach the South Pole before Amundsen, like the Irish-Anglo explorer Ernest Shackleton who was only 97 miles away during his attempt between 1907-1909, I’m starting my story with the first successful attempt. Otherwise, we’ll be here forever, and this is already a long episode.
Amundsen’s first trip to Antarctica was in 1899 as a second officer on board the Belgica. The point of this first expedition was to reach the magnetic South Pole, but it wasn’t successful in that regard. It was the first expedition as part of this “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration,” and was also the first to spend the winter in the Antarctic - but that wasn’t the plan. The idea was to go during the Southern hemisphere’s summer, but they got waylaid. The problem was that they weren’t kit out for winter. Lynne Cox, an adventurer, swimmer, and writer, puts it well in her book South with the Sun: Roald Amundsen, His Polar Explorations, and the Quest for Discovery. Quote:
“They were unprepared for the winter, lacking the clothes, equipment, or supplies to sustain the entire crew through an Antarctic winter as they drifted around uncharted polar seas.” End quote.
Amundsen learned a lot from this trip. He learned to eat raw penguin and seal meat when possible to prevent scurvy. He learned that you have to get creative when stuck in an ice pack for months on end. And he learned to be prepared for an Antarctic winter.
He honed his winter adventuring skills even further in 1903, when he led his own expedition to sail through the Northwest Passage. Amundsen was fascinated by polar expeditions, including the Franklin Expedition, where the men aboard the Terror and Erebus got stuck in the ice and eventually died off King William Island. Go listen to my episode on that one if you’re interested in the whole story. But the Franklin Expedition fueled his lifelong dream to sail the Northwest Passage. He and his crew were the first to successfully sail through the Northwest Passage on a small-ish boat, going from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
On this trip, Amundsen went to some of the same places where Franklin and his men had touched ground, which is cool. But more importantly for our story, it was on this trip that Amundsen learned from the local Inuit people about how to survive in the Arctic. Things like using sled dogs to transport stuff around, building a proper igloo, or wearing animal skins instead of wool coats to keep warm even when wet.
Invigorated, he planned his next expedition to be the first man to reach the North Pole. But then it came out that two men already claimed to be the first - Dr. Frederick Cook, who was on board the Belgica with Amundsen in 1899, claimed he reached the North Pole in mid-April 1908. But then Robert Peary claimed he got there about two weeks earlier than Cook. It was a big controversy. But regardless, Amundsen changed his plan. If the North Pole was taken, then he’d be the first to reach the South Pole.
At the same time, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott was already on an expedition to be the first to reach the South Pole. So it would be a race. Spoiler - and you could have assumed this anyway because we’re doing this chronologically - but Amundsen and his crew reached it first. Scott got there about a month later, but we’ll discuss his story next.
Both Amundsen and Scott started their trips from the Ross Ice Shelf. From there, they would have to cross the vast expanse of ice, climb up and onto glaciers, navigate around and over the Transantarctic mountains, and then head for the Pole.
Amundsen’s big thing was making sure he had a crew of Eskimo dogs, which he brought from Greenland. They would pull extra food, which he figured was key for survival. Based on his previous experiences, and from what he learned from other people’s failed expeditions to find the South Pole, he knew that bringing enough food was a crucial part of surviving. It would tire the men to carry it themselves. Ponies, which were used to pull sleds in previous expeditions, weren’t suited for the icy terrain. But sled dogs? Absolutely. The unfortunate part, though, is that having a bunch of dogs with you meant that they were also part of the food supply - if they were injured, or died, or if the other provisions ran out, they would be killed and eaten. Poor babies :(
Amundsen brought 97 dogs with him. And some had puppies on the way, so they arrived with 110. That’s a lotta sweet baby doggos! I need to not get attached. It doesn’t end up well for most of the dogs.
Now the expedition was split in two - a land party, headed by Amundsen, and a sea party that would get data, break some southern sailing records, and then meet up with Amundsen at an established later date for pickup.
Amundsen, on the way to the South Pole, set up caches of extra food for the way back. Why bring all that food to the Pole and back, right? This was a smart move - it lightened the load and helped ensure there would be food rationed out for later. They stored things like seal meat, blubber, dried fish, chocolate, biscuits, and margarine - things with lots of energy that would also survive in the freezing temperatures. Mmm, nothing like cold, raw fat to get you excited for adventuring!
They experienced some problems, of course. Their compasses didn’t work, so they had to chart their way using the stars. There was dense fog that came and went. There were vast expanses of nothing but flat snow, so there weren’t landmarks to help guide them. They would do some sled runs to mark out the route ahead of time, acclimatizing themselves and the dogs to the weather and make sure they were ready. It’s alllll about that preparation. What does my husband always tell me? Prior preparation prevents piss poor performance. He says it’s a British Navy thing that he picked up when he served back in the 90s.
Some other problems they encountered: the dogs were constantly fighting with each other. They were also freezing and constantly shivering. The temperature in September 1911 dropped as low as minus 68 degrees Fahrenheit - that’s minus 55 Celsius for my non-Americans, though it’s not like any of us have ever felt that to even have a solid understanding of how ridiculously cold that is. SO cold, in fact, that one of the men at their camp felt a chunk of his frostbitten heel fall off inside his sock. Gahhhh-ross.
On their proper start to the Pole, they set up six-foot-high beacons to use as landmarks on the way back - since the environment was just, you know, white and flat. They shot and ate dogs as necessary if they couldn’t keep up, because slowing down or stopping would mean death for everyone. But it wasn’t just when the dogs were slow - they planned to systematically kill off the dogs as they went on to make sure they had food. Which makes me sad. Like I said, I need to not get attached.
On November 15, they were at a latitude of 85 degrees South - and of course they’re trying to get to 90, the southern point, right? Ahead of them was a mountain. With them still were 42 dogs and enough food and equipment for 30 days. The plan was to continue killing and eating dogs so that there would only be 12 left, enough to bring them back to their camp.
It was an arduous journey - they dodged avalanches and climbed several mountains, reaching altitudes of over 10,000 feet. They continued to kill and eat their canine companions.
On December 7th, they were at an altitude of 87 degrees - only a few degrees away from the Pole! The weather was bad - clouds, fog, and dense snow. Luckily, they were able to periodically get a clear line of sight of the sun to help determine their location - not only did they want to make sure they were heading in the right direction, but they also wanted to be able to prove they did make the South Pole. Unlike the argument going on back in the non-frozen world about whether Cook or Pearcy reached the North Pole, he wanted to conclusively prove that he reached the South first.
On December 14th, 1911, Amundsen, his crew, and 17 dogs became the first to reach the South Pole. And yes, I’m counting the dogs here, because without them Amundsen and the rest wouldn’t have made it. I’m attached, I can’t help it. They planted the Norwegian Flag, named the area after the King of Norway, and left some supplies for Scott’s crew - because it was clear that Amundsen had reached the pole first. There’s a really cool picture of one of Amundsen’s expeditionaries standing at the Norwegian flag with his dogs. It’s a grainy black-and-white photo, but you can really see the relief and pride in his face. Go dogs! And, Amundsen and his team, too. I guess.
The way back was relatively smooth sailing. Because they had set up food depots on the way, they had plenty of supplies to keep them going. As Edward Larson writes in his book An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science, quote:
“Rations steadily increased for the men and dogs as they passed their evenly spaced supply depots. ‘We could not manage more,’ Amundsen said of the food. Some was left behind. ‘The dogs were bursting with health, and tugged at their harness.’ The polar party reached [their base] after 99 days out and back. Amundsen had gained weight.” End quote.
It was January 25th, 1912, 42 days after reaching the Pole, that Amundsen returned to camp with his men and 11 dogs. They had gone 1,860 miles in 99 days. And if sailing through the Northwest Passage wasn’t enough to prove he was an awesome explorer, now he could add being the first to reach the South Pole to that list.
But what of Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition? Let’s take a look at his story.
Robert Falcon Scott
So we know that Amundsen and Scott ended up racing for the Pole. And we know that Amundsen won that race, and though I mentioned a few setbacks and hurdles, it generally… went kind of okay? Relatively, in terms of an Antarctic expedition, anyway. That is not the case for Scott’s attempt that same year - the Terra Nova Expedition.
But 1911 wasn’t the first time Scott had been to the Antarctic. He led the Discovery expedition from 1901-1904, named after the ship they took to get there. Scott and two others in the expedition party - which included the famous explorer Ernest Shackleton - set a record in 1902 when they reached 82 degrees south - the furthest south anyone had been at that point. They crossed 500 miles on foot, carrying heavy sledges with their gear and food, but had to turn back because the trek was just too difficult with what they had with them. They were about 530 miles from the pole.
In the Discovery expedition, Scott learned about the difficulties of Antarctic exploration. He knew the dangers. He had brought dogs along and killed them when needed. He understood the necessity of having fresh food, as his crew battled with scurvy. And though they didn’t reach the Pole, they had amassed a good deal of scientific knowledge to bring back home. He returned a hero, was promoted a couple of times, and started rubbing elbows with the rich and powerful in Britain. But he always wanted to go back.
So five years later, in 1909, when Scott was presented with the opportunity, he set sail on the Terra Nova to try again at reaching the Pole. The RGS wanted this to be more of a scientific exploration, but Scott was clear in his main objective, which was, and I quote: “to reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of this achievement.” End quote.
This jives well with what I was saying earlier about the remnants of imperialism. And at this point, British nationalism. To reach the pole would be a huge personal victory, but would also be a good victory for the British Empire. Especially, considering the context, other big “wins” had been achieved by non-Brits lately, like the Amundsen navigating through the Northwest Passage. And the two men who claimed the North Pole were both Americans.
Oh, and by the way? The first undisputed, verifiable visit to the North Pole was - you might have guessed it - Roald Amundsen in 1926. But this time in an airship! Which gives us a good insight into the preferred technologies of the day.
So anyways, Scott set sail on the Terra Nova in June 1910. Amundsen didn’t leave until three months later, but arrived in Antarctica first, and as we now know, reached the Pole first as well. I can only imagine how irritated Scott must have felt - to potentially have this prize taken from him - and Britain - once again.
When Scott planned and left for his expedition, it wasn’t a race. So, Scott wasn’t kit out for speed and efficiency - he was set up for a scientific expedition, and he would also reach the Pole. His ship had 66 men on board, 34 of whom would actually go on shore in Antarctica. Amundsen, in comparison, had 19 men on board, only 9 of whom would winter in Antarctica. Remember the rest were to stay on board, take some measurements, and meet them when it was all done.
Scott and his bigger party set his base on Ross Island, about 700 miles in a straight line away from the Pole. Amundsen, knowing this, set up on the other side of the Ross Ice Shelf, about 60-80 miles closer.
And if it wasn’t clear that this was absolutely a race, and not just coincidental timing, Amundsen wrote that, quote, “The plan was to leave the station as early in the spring as possible. If we had set out to capture this record, we must at any cost get there first.” End quote.
Scott wasn’t set up for a race. He had more men. He had a longer and more difficult path. He didn’t have close to 100 dogs that would carry his supplies and food - in fact, they relied on those ponies and their own muscles to haul gear in sledges, as well as some rudimentary motorized sledges he brought along. He did have a few dozen Siberian dogs, but it wasn’t enough. And don’t forget that Scott was also there to get measurements and further the RGS’s scientific knowledge, not just race to the Pole. What I’m trying to say is that it was never going to be Scott. He arrived second, had a greater distance to travel, had more men and gear, wasn’t kit out for a race, and had other expectations for his time. Amundsen knew what Scott had going on, set himself up to just race to the Pole, and did just that. It wasn’t a level playing field.
So let’s talk about Scott’s expedition. Because of the 34 men who disembarked, only five were in the final party that went for the Pole, and none of them made it back.
Scott and the others arrived in Antarctica in January of 1911. He didn’t unload and immediately head to the pole - and neither did Amundsen for that matter. It’s not like they jumped off the boats and started sled-dogging at top speed into the continent. There was a considerable amount of setting up, planning, and prep to do. The first order of business was building a shelter - the Terra Nova Hut. But it wasn’t a tiny, cramped hut - it was 50 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 9 ft high - a decently-sized building. The biggest on Antarctica at the time. I think it only took them 8 days to get it up, which is pretty impressive.
Once that was situated, because some men would be staying behind at the hut to carry out some measurements and do science-y stuff, Scott and fifteen men would continue on in a journey to the Pole. There would be three groups - one “main” group that would reach the pole, and two “support groups” that would travel ahead and make supply depots to help the “main” group reach their destination. Scott was going to be part of the main group that reached the pole, of course, but he was going to make up his mind last minute about who would join him. I guess it depended on how well they were doing - how physically fit they were after getting that far.
The first support group left in late October 1911 and had some difficulties right off the bat. In addition to a handful of dogs and ponies, Scott had those motor-powered sledges. But after about 50 miles, the sledges they had with them broke down, so the first support group had to travel on foot for the next 150 miles. They didn’t get far before the others caught up to them in November, defeating the purpose of leaving earlier to set up some supply depots.
Then, a blizzard hit in early December, forcing the men to stay in their tents for five days - this caused them to eat through rations, and the ponies they had tied up outside were growing weaker by the day. The ponies were eventually killed for their meat, which just meant that travelling and pulling the sledges would be harder.
By December 23rd, about half of the 15 men were sent back to camp, the Terra Nova Hut, with instructions to meet up later with the rest with dogs - they’d need the help on their return journey from the pole. We’re not sure what happened here, because the dogs never arrived, but the men did return to camp. Maybe they forgot? I don’t know. There’s a lot of speculation, but nothing concrete, so I’m not going to spread conspiracies.
The party continued on until Scott decided on who would go on the final push. On January 4th, three men were told to return to camp. Those that would follow Scott to the Pole were Edward Wilson, Lawrence Oates, Edgar Evans, and Henry Bowers.
These five men made their final push to the Pole, reaching it on January 17th, 1912. And they were greeted with Amundsen’s green tent, some supplies they left for Scott and his men, a note welcoming them to 90 degrees south, and the Norwegian flag. Amundsen had arrived 35 days earlier.
Scott was crushed. Upon reaching it, Scott wrote, quote,
“The Pole. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected… Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority. Well, it is something to have got here… Now for the run home and a desperate struggle. I wonder if we can do it.” End quote.
The next day, the group turned around to head back - an 883 mile return journey. It was at this point that things started going south. Err, not literally. Can’t get much more south than the South Pole.
Despite supply teams setting up depots and caches to help, the five men were suffering from a lack of food, exhaustion, and frostbite. And what was left in the supply depots wasn’t enough. Edgar Evans collapsed and injured himself while the group was descending down the Beardmore Glacier from the Transantarctic mountains to the Ross Ice Shelf. He succumbed to his injuries and died on February 17th.
Once on the Ice Shelf, the weather worsened. The team was stuck in a blizzard, and they had to wait it out in their tent. Oates was so sickly by that point that he wished he would die in the night. He tried to persuade Scott to leave him behind, since he felt he was holding the team back, but Scott of course refused. When Oates woke up the next morning, March 15th, he walked out of the tent, into the full force of the blizzard. His last words were “I am just going outside and may be some time.” He sacrificed himself for the sake of the group - he felt he was at the end, didn’t want to impede the group any further, and didn’t want to use any more of the quickly diminishing pile of food rations.
Scott wrote about it in his journal. Quote:
“We knew that poor Oates 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.”
The remaining three men carried on, but the weather was still horrendous, and they were rapidly declining in both health and strength.
On March 29th, Scott wrote the following in his journal. Quote:
“Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 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. For God’s sake look after our people. ”
These were the last words Scott wrote in his journal. He died shortly after, alongside Wilson and Bowers in their tent. Their frozen corpses were found later that year, on November 12th, only 11 miles from the next depot that might have saved their lives.
All five of the men’s bodies still remain buried in Antarctica.
The Norwegian Amundsen, who changed his plans last minute and raced to the pole, had survived. The English Scott, who had been a stalwart in British Antarctic Expeditions, had died. And it was unfortunate for Amundsen that Scott didn’t make it back. Because for a lot of the press, particularly in Britain, Amundsen was blamed for Scott’s death - the idea being that the competition is what killed Scott, forcing him to race to the Pole when he hadn’t planned to do so. Amundsen argued that he was just better prepared, with his food supplies, dogs, and polar survival skills accumulated over the past ten or so years. Scott had polar experience too, but his mission was different, and he didn’t have almost 100 trained dogs with him to help speed things up. Instead, Scott relied on machines that broke, ponies that were ill-suited for the terrain, and good old-fashioned man-powered sledges, which honestly should just have remained a relic from the earlier days of British Naval Exploration. Add to that some bad luck with the blizzard conditions on the Ross Ice Shelf, not enough food in the supply caches (or, because of the weather, he was unable to get to some of them), and it just didn’t pan out for Scott and his men.
But, the South Pole was won. We can check that one off the explorer’s lists, right? But despite that, others still wanted to get down to Antarctica. And one of those men was Douglas Mawson - an Australian who had previous experience there with Shackleton, who is credited with being on the first team to summit Mount Erebus, the first to reach the Magnetic South Pole, and who turned down a spot on Scott’s fatal expedition to the pole to lead his own. The Australasian Antarctic Expedition. And despite the death and despair associated with Scott’s famous story, you know, his attempt to be the first to the Pole, I think Mawson’s story is potentially even more horrific. And awe-inspiring.
Douglas Mawson
So as I mentioned previously, Mawson was no stranger to Antarctica. And in this heroic age of exploration, he wanted his own piece of the glory. He wasn’t trying to reach the geographic South Pole, though - he wanted to explore the virtually unknown parts of Antarctica south of Australia - King George V Land and Adelie Land. Like with Scott’s expedition, he also set out to do some geographical and scientific studies, including, hopefully, a trip to the magnetic South Pole to take some readings.
He left Australia in December of 1911, and to put that in chronological context, that was the same month that Amundsen made history by being the first to the reach the South Pole.
Like with the previous explorers, he put together several teams of men who would do different tasks - he was part of the Far Eastern Party, and alongside Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis, his plan was to explore at least 350 miles, mapping out land that nobody else had even seen before, connecting his Australia-adjacent chunk of Antarctica with the area explored and seen by Amundsen and Scott earlier that year and the year prior.
So if you look at a traditional map of Antarctica, with the South Pole in the middle and the Ross Ice Shelf below that, Mawson set out to explore the Southeast chunk. They set up camp at Cape Denison and planned to explore West across the coastline and connecting it to the already mapped out areas around the Ross Ice Shelf explored by the previous guys.
But since I’m talking about it in an APHOUT episode, you know it doesn’t go super well. The guy and his explorations were cool and important anyway, but there’s a reason I picked this one in particular. And of the different groups and parties associated with the Australasian Antarctica Exploration, I’m just focusing on the one led by Mawson, Mertz, and Ninnis.
So by the time Mawson began his expedition, it was clear that Amundsen saw success with his dogs. In fact, small side tangent here, remember how the British were not super happy with Amundsen because he got to the Pole first and their man, Scott, died? Well at an RGS banquet in 1912 honoring Amundsen and his accomplishment, one man gave a speech that ended like this. Quote:
“I almost wish that in our tribute of admiration we could include those wonderful, good-tempered, fascinating dogs, the true friends of man, without whom Captain Amundsen would never have got to the Pole. I therefore propose three cheers for the dogs.” End quote.
Yikes. It was a dig at Amundsen - belittling his accomplishments and instead cheering on the dogs who helped his speed-run to the Pole. But to be fair, those dogs were super helpful. It’s a good thing Amundsen brought so many. And Mawson would have known this, so he brought some too. But unfortunately for Mawson, a bunch of them died on the trip over from Australia. When Mawson, Mertz and Ninnis left camp for their portion of the expedition in late 1912, they only had 17 dogs to help pull three sledges totalling 1,723 pounds. Mostly food - for both the men and the dogs.
The men faced weather issues similar to Scott and his party - terrible storms and blizzards that forced them to stay in their tent for days, horribly strong winds that sometimes reached up to 80 mph… it was brutal.
At one point, Ninnis walked around for too long without his rudimentary snow goggles, so he suffered from snow blindness. It’s been a while since that’s come up in an episode, but the short of it is that it’s bad when the sun’s rays bounce off the white snow and go straight into your eyes. If you don’t wear the proper eyewear, you can become temporarily - or sometimes permanently - blind from the UV rays. Back in the early 20th century, snow goggles weren’t those fancy rainbow colored ones like you see today at ski resorts - they were goggles with smoky lenses to help keep out the light. I saw a pair that Scott used in his 1901-1904 expedition that were wooden things with crosses over the eyes - so basically, he couldnt see except for the cut out cross part, limiting the amount of light that got in. I can’t think that that was super effective - you can’t see much, and what you can see will still blind you.
But anyways, Ninnis had to deal with snow blindness for a while. Mawson tried to help with a common treatment they’d use back then - opening up the eyelids, putting in a tablet of zinc sulfate and cocaine hydrochloride, and letting tears dissolve the tablets under the eyelid. First, ouch. I don’t want to put tabs on my eyeballs. And second, yes, cocaine as in the drug. Cocaine hydrochloride is powdered cocaine that at the time was used as an anethestic. Please… don’t stick cocaine in your eyeballs. That just sounds like a bad time.
But it wasn’t just the weather and snow blindness they had to contend with - Mawson, Mertz, and Ninnis were constantly running into crevasses cutting deep into glaciers. Not a crevice, which is a narrow split in a rock or a wall. Similar, though. A crevasse is essentially a super deep cracks in glacial ice that can appear from stress on the glacier, or when a glacier moves, or if the glacier hits a bump in the ground underneath it… They can be hundreds of feet deep and also pretty wide, depending on how it formed. Certainly enough to swallow, say, a sledge. They are relatively common, actually. And it can even happen on Antarctic land, not just glaciers, because of all the snow and ice. If there’s deep snow and ice, a crevasse can develop. So, basically, most of Antarctica. And Mawson and his team had many run-ins with crevasses.
On November 20th, Mawson wrote this in his journal about their first encounter with one. Quote:
“Suddenly without any warning the leading dogs of my team dropped out of sight, swinging in their harness ropes in a crevasse. The next moment I realized that the sledges were on a bridge covering a crevasse, twenty-five feet wide, the dogs having broken through on one edge. We spend some anxious moments before they were hauled to the daylight and the sledges rested on solid ground.” End quote.
The next day, Ninnis fell through a thin layer of ice and snow covering up a crevasse and was hanging on to the edge. Luckily, the men rescued him in time. In his journal, Mawson wrote that he “investigated the fissure and found nought but black space below; a close shave for Ninnis.”
But this wasn’t their worst incident.
On December 14th, Ninnis, his dogs, and his sledge had broken through another thin lid of ice covering a crevasse. But this time, he fell straight into the crack. There one second, gone the next. Mawson wrote that, quote:
“We broke back the edge of the hard snow lid and, secured by a rope, took turns leaning over, calling into the darkness in the hope that our companion might still be alive. For three hours we called unceasingly but no answering sound came back… A chill draught rose out of the abyss. We felt that there was no hope.” End quote.
They surveyed the depth of the crevasse, hoping that they could go down and explore, try to find Ninnis, but it was far too deep. They spotted one dead and one injured dog around 150ish feet down, but nothing else. Ninnis and the sledge were even deeper, and he was likely dead on impact when he fell, and if he wasn’t, they wouldn’t be able to go down to rescue him anyway. Ninnis was gone. They held a funeral service next to the crevasse, packed up, and turned back. It was the end of their push to connect the coast and lands below Australia with those that Scott and Amundsen explored.
The loss of their friend and companion was bad enough, but Ninnis also had a fair amount of food and supplies on his sledge, not to mention the dogs that fell with him. Ninnis’ sledge had nearly all the men’s food, all the dog’s food, their tent, some tools, and some other pieces of gear. They still had a stove, sleeping bags, and fuel, but no proper shelter. They had to MacGuyver one out of what they had left. They also lost extra clothes needed to stay warm and dry, so that was a disaster. It wasn’t looking good for Mawson and Mertz, and they were five weeks away from their base with only a week and a half’s worth of rations.
The trip back was difficult. The dogs, without proper access to food, were starving. As they started to weaken and slow down, they were killed and consumed for energy, but it wasn’t really enough to keep the other dogs or the men fully fed. So after a while, Mawson and Mertz had to help pull the sledges - but they were exhausted too.
As they carried on, their stuff got soggier and wetter. And without the extra layers and gear, you know, the ones that went into the crevasse with Ninnis, both Mawson and Mertz were getting colder and colder.
On December 28th, the last dog died. The men camped and cooked her, using her skull as a dish that they would pass back and forth. Not because they had lost their minds, but because they really didn’t have anything else - they were leaving all of their excess gear behind to help lighten the load. But now that the last dog was gone, they would have to walk themselves out alone - and without anymore emergency sources of food.
It was Mertz that got sick first. His last entry was on January 1st, 1913 - at that point, he no longer had the strength to write. He was quickly declining - any energy was spent hauling sledges and walking back to camp. He was having a hard time digesting the dog meat, and what little food supplies they had left weren’t enough to maintain his fragile health. Soon enough, Mertz couldn’t even haul the sledge anymore, so after some insistence from Mawson, he got in it. Mawson hauled Mertz alongside their supplies - what an absolute badass.
Resting didn’t help Mertz much - it just made him colder. And his stomach was in so much pain that he couldn’t eat anything, really. Mawson wrote in his journal, quote,
“Things are in a most serious state for both of us - if he cannot go on 8 or 10 miles a day, in a day or two we are doomed. I could pull through myself with the provisions at hand but I cannot leave him. His heart seems to have gone.” End quote.
Mawson and Mertz were starved, frost-bitten, perpetually damp, and were rubbed raw, so they were chafing all over, which, as a woman with thighs, I know is painful to deal with. Mertz was also starting to lose it - his mind was deteriorating along with his body. He thrashed around, bit off the tip of his frostbitten finger, and raged for a bit before falling into a coma. And at around 2 am on January 8th, he died. Mawson spent the rest of the night sleeping next to his dead friend, buried him in his sleeping bag under a pile of snow, erected a cross, read a quick burial service, and carried on alone. It was 26 days after Ninnis had died.
In the days after Mawson buried Mertz, he faced searing winds of up to 50 mph, forcing him to stay put in his tent for even longer. He ran out of dog meat by the 10th. On the 11th, the weather was cooperative, so he was eager to make at least 10 miles - he was on a deadline to get back to the case at Cape Denison before the ship left him there for another winter, so he was eager to get going. But as he got started that morning, he noticed that - ready for this? - the soles of his feet had completely separated from his foot and were just sloshing around in his sock. GROSS. But he had to carry on to meet the ship in time, so he just did his best to bandage everything together with more socks and carry on. He managed to limp 6.5 miles that day.
On January 16th, he had a scare with his old nemesis - the crevasse. He broke through a layer on thin ice covering one and almost fell to his death, but luckily he managed to stop the sledge from falling in, which would certainly have brought him in with it.
The next day, he almost fell into a crevasse again when a bridge of snow he was crossing collapsed. But the sledge got wedged - hah! Fun rhyme! - into the snows on either side of the crevasse, and he was dangling bya rope about 14 feet from the sledge into the darkness of the crevasse. The walls were 6 feet apart, out of his reach. And it’s not like he wanted to risk swinging wildly incase the sledge fell in, right? So he had to climb his way up the rope. Luckily he had already put knots in it, which helped. Because otherwise, I don’t think a man who had been through everything Mawson had been through would be in a fit state to climb a rope dangling into a crevasse and certain death. This guy seriously had a will to live.
He got to the top of the crevasse, but the edge of it broke and he fell back down again - luckily the sledge didn’t collapse and fall down with him. He dangled there for a while, contemplating whether or not he should just give up and die, but then mustered the strength to try again. According to his memoir, a verse from poet Robert Service popped into his head. Quote:
“Just have one more try - it’s dead easy to die / It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.” End quote.
Very poetic. Not sure how believable that is, it sounds very storybook, but the dude is a badass, so it’s ok.
He managed to climb out of the crevasse, immediately passed out, and woke up a few hours later covered by a dusting of snow. He then fashioned a rope ladder of sorts and tied it to the sledge and himself, so that if this happened again, it would be easier to climb out. And it’s a good thing he did this, because he did fall into a few more crevasses on the way out. At least, he said he did in his memoirs later on. They weren’t mentioned in his journal.
He kept going, making slow but steady progress. On January 29th, he came across a supply depot in a cairn, put there by some of the other expedition team members who were growing worried about Mawson, Mertz and Ninnis since they didn’t get back in time. But it was food! Mawson carried on, renewed. Almost a week and a half later, after battling more fierce winds, maladies, and hunger, Mawson stumbled back into camp, half dead. He had missed the ship by a few hours. They got a wireless message out, and the ship returned, but bad weather prevented it from docking to rescue Mawson. He had to stay another winter. But at least he was alive.
On December 23, 1913, almost a year later, he finally boarded the ship for Australia. He had spent the extra time on Antarctica collecting more geological and scientific data with the others who stayed at base, and was about to bring back a wealth of new information. And in fact, so devoted as he was to science, they didn’t immediately sail for home - they rounded the coastline to get more data. The ship finally returned to Australia on February 26th, and Mawson was given all kinds of praise and awards. He is a survivor of one of the harshest polar journey’s I’ve ever read about, and a fitting hero for this age of Antarctic Expeditions.
So why is it that names like Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen stand out amongst the polar explorers, but not Mawson? Well, author David Roberts speculates in his book, Alone on the Ice, that, quote,
“Since the second decade of the twentieth century, Mawson has lurked in the shadow of his contemporaries Scott, Shackleton, and the great Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen… the great reason for the neglect of Mawson and the Australasian Antarcitic Exploration lied in the fact that, unlike nearly all the Antarctic explorers of what is called the Heroic Age, Mawson was completely uninterested in reaching the South Pole. What mattered to the man instead - and what drove the ambitions of [his expedition] - was the urge to explore land that had never before been seen by human eyes, and to bring back from the southern continent the best science that men in the field migt be capable of.” End quote.
It’s a fair reasoning - we often look at those explorers with the boldest claims, the biggest dreams, the competitive spirit. But Mawson, a man who pushed himself to the very edge of his limits and of our world, is a man who stands in line with the great polar adventurers of his time.
And hey, are you proud of me? No cannibalism today :)
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of The Deadly Antarctic Explorations. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!
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