Not Close Enough

This is an interesting day in history for it features three of my historical heroes, three dogged explorers who did much to open up parts of the world unknown at the time. They are Captain James Cook, Sir Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen, and on this day, they were all exploring the Antarctic.

In 1773 Captain Cook was undertaking his Second Voyage of Discovery in command of HMS Resolution accompanied by Captain Tobias Furneaux in command of HMS Adventure. Though he had charted much of the eastern coastline of Australia during his First Voyage, the mythical Terra Australis he sought was supposed to lie further to the south.

During the Second Voyage, Cook and his team were the first to cross the Antarctic Circle on this day in 1773. Later, in Antarctic fog, the two ships became separated and Furneaux made his way to New Zealand before eventually returning to Britain. Cook continued to explore the Antarctic seas, almost encountering the mainland before having to return to Tahiti to resupply his ship. He made a second, fruitless, attempt to find Terra Australis before returning home.

In the case of Robert Scott, he was in command of the Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole. The Terra Nova sailed out to New Zealand from Cardiff in June 1910. In Melbourne Scott left the ship temporarily to raise funds, and here discovered to his surprise that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was also heading for the South Pole, the first indication he’d had that he was effectively in a race to reach it.

Scott rejoined his ship in New Zealand and, having taken on board additional supplies as well as 34 sledge-dogs, 19 Siberian ponies and three motorised sledges, the ship sailed for the south, losing some supplies in a storm and then becoming stuck in pack ice for twenty days before finally landing the explorers for the Antarctic winter of 1911. Scott’s expedition plans were complex and, in some cases, ill-thought out. One of the motor sledges was lost in the ice as it was being landed, the other two were useless and the ponies, six of which died on the voyage, were soon found to be ill-suited to the extreme weather conditions. The expedition members were poorly equipped and were hampered by heavy woollen clothes. Scott’s team were also sometimes unclear as to what his intentions were.

In November 1911, Scott’s team started their march south, with groups travelling at different speeds, some of which dumped stores and returned to base. On 4 January 1912, the last two of the four-man groups had reached 87°34'S and Scott announced that five men would go onwards to the Pole - Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Evans. The other three men would return to base camp.

On 17 January the five men finally reached the South Pole only to find to their very great disappointment that Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it by five weeks. The rest is history: Scott and his four companions died of starvation and extreme cold on the way back to base.

In contrast to some of the muddles and misfortunes that beset Scott’s expedition, Amundsen had carefully prepared for his, having learned much about survival in the Arctic from the Eskimo inhabitants and particularly their clothing and handling of sled-dogs. Setting out on skis with four dogsleds and 52 dogs, some of which would later be used for their meat, Amundsen and his five other colleagues almost effortlessly reached the Pole 35 days before Scott. They left a small tent and a letter proclaiming their accomplishment.

17 January. An accomplishment for Cook in crossing the Antarctic Circle. Devastation for Scott for being late but glory for Amundsen for being early.
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Links To The Polar Past

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In 1912 Robert Falcon Scott, the polar explorer, along with four companions successfully reached the South Pole only to find that they had been beaten by the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. Burdened by heavy equipment, much of which they discarded in favour of sled-dogs, Scott and his party were bitterly disappointed to find that Amundsen had beaten them by just over a month. Sadly, Scott and his party perished on their return journey from exhaustion, hunger and cold.

In contrast, Amundsen had previously spent three winters icebound near King William Island, Canada, where he learned Arctic survival skills from the local Nattilik people. Among many other things, Amundsen learned to wear animal skins instead of the heavy, woollen parkas that were worn by polar explorers at that time. He learned also to use sled dogs and to travel light and fast. No wonder then that later, Amundsen and his four companions not only beat Scott to the South Pole but lived to tell the tale.

It was, of course, the sled dogs that enabled both explorers to travel across the frozen wilderness of two continents and they have been used in snowbound environments ever since. Possibly, the most notable of sled-dog achievements occurred in 1925 when a relay of dogs forged their way through the interior of Alaska to take urgently-needed medical supplies from Anchorage to Nome; an event commemorated annually by the famous Iditarod Trail Race. Thus, has emerged the sport of sled-dog racing and enthusiasts race in many places around the world.

The Husky dogs are wonderful to see when they are harnessed to a sled or cart. Their impatience to be ‘off’ is something I’ve seen in Alaska and on Spitsbergen. Their raw energy when they are working is an amazing thing to see; their sheer enthusiasm is clear from the way that they urge each other on, their tails wagging like windmill vanes in a gale.

Of course, you don’t have to go to the polar regions to see sled-dogs working as teams of them can be seen in places around the country pulling wheeled rigs. I’ve seen them, for example, racing through the New Forest.

Once a year there is the Highland Dog Sled Rally held in the Cairngorms, and this year’s rally took place at the weekend when, watched by over 2,000 spectators, 200 competitors and 1,000 Siberian Huskies, Alaskan Malamutes and Canadian Eskimo dogs raced round a four mile track pulling sledges instead of wheeled rigs. This was the first time in fifteen years that there was enough snow for sledges to be used in this event and, from what I saw on television, the dogs as well as their owners had a great time.

For the dog-lover there can hardly be a more interesting and exhilarating spectacle than to see sled-dogs in action and pulling as part of a team. You see immediately their enthusiasm and energy and get some idea of their speed and endurance.

Few of us get the chance to travel to the frozen wastelands of the Poles but perhaps the sled-dogs we see around our own country are a link to the great polar explorers and the sled-dogs they relied on all those years ago.
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Solving A Mystery

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It was the American, Robert Peary who on April 1909 was the first to reach the North Pole, and others then tried to claim the record of having reached it first by air. The great Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, tried it unsuccessfully in 1923 and 1925 and in 1926 two Americans, Byrd and Bennett, claimed to have circled the pole, though their claims quickly became mired in controversy.

Amundsen, along with the American, Lincoln Ellsworth, made another attempt in the dirigible Norge. Piloted by its Italian designer, Umberto Nobile, Norge took off from Spitsbergen in May 1926 and crossed the pole en route to Alaska. This successful flight confirmed Amundsen as the first person to have visited both the North and South Poles. Two Australians, Wilkins and Eilson, unsuccessfully tried to cross the Polar Sea by plane in 1926 and 1927, but succeeded in 1928 by flying from Alaska to Spitsbergen.

Umberto Nobile decided to see if there were any undiscovered islands in the Arctic, and he persuaded the Fascist government of Italy to finance the building of a new airship, the Italia. On 6 May 1928, Italia settled to its mast in Spitsbergen, having flown there from Milan via Germany where storm repairs were carried out.

On 23 May, Italia lifted off for what would be its last flight with a total of 16 men on board. Having reached and circled the North Pole, Nobile turned the airship around and headed back towards Spitsbergen. But on 25 May worsening weather conditions resulted in ice and snow making Italia heavier and difficult to handle and the dirigible eventually crashed. One man was killed in the crash and, though nine men including Nobile, escaped onto the ice, the other six men floated away on the wrecked airship and were never seen again.

The survivors had a tough time waiting for rescue which did not come until a Swedish pilot, Einar Lundborg, reached them on June 20 in a seaplane. Lundborg flew Nobile back to Spitsbergen, a decision Nobile was to regret for the rest of his life, as it led to charges that he abandoned his colleagues. When Lundborg flew back for the other survivors, he also crashed and was marooned on the ice. Finally, a Russian icebreaker rescued the survivors on 12 July after a 49 day ordeal.

Though treated as a hero by the Italian people, Nobile was excoriated by the Fascist government who blamed him for the expedition's failure. Nobile emigrated to Russia and then to America and, after Mussolini’s fall, he returned to Italy where he was rightly honoured and féted as an aviation pioneer until he died in 1978.

However, when Amundsen heard that Nobile’s airship had crashed, he joined a French rescue operation by seaplane. This aircraft left Tromsø in Norway en route for Spitsbergen and was never seen again, though parts of his aircraft are thought to have been washed up from time to time.

Today a Norwegian team is set to embark on an expedition to find the wreck of Amundsen’s plane, a Latham 47 sea plane. Two ships will set sail from Tromsø to begin a two-week expedition making sonar scans to scour around 45 sq miles of the sea bed.

And, perhaps, another mystery will have been solved.

Spitsbergen is a wonderful place to visit. It is surrounded by snow-capped mountains in crystal-clear air and is also a place where the spirit of the early Polar explorers still exists. Amundsen is memorialised there by a large and rather forbidding bust. And, within sight of this, is the poignant and rusting remains of the mast to which Nobile’s airship, Italia, was moored.
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