SYMHC Classics: The Race to the South Pole

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Lately, we have seen seemingly infinite headlines about the discovery of the wreck of Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance, and I was extremely confident that we already had an episode on Shackleton. It seems, though, that we do not. He does come up a couple of times, and our episode on the Race to the South Pole, though that came out on September, and this episode is from previous hosts Katie and Sarah. And although Race to the South Pole sounds like it might describe a fun adventure, parts of this race really did not go well. So this episode includes references to numerous deaths of both animals and people, including deaths by suicide. And we are working on a Shackleton episode, although with our production schedule it'll be just a bit before it comes out. So maybe this one will tide folks over on the Shackleton curiosity until that is done. We hope everyone enjoys it. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of My Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And some say that the only frontier that we have left to explore is space, But Sarah and I were talking about it earlier, and we think the depths of the Ocean should be at the top of that list instead. You do kind of have to argue for that though. There aren't that many places left on Earth to explore, and it's been that way for at least a hundred years or so. By the time we get into the twentieth century, there's not really that much out there that we have no clue about, or at least not stuff that's very easy to reach. But in nineteen o nine, Robert Peary announced that he'd reached the North Pole. So all those young men keen on making the history books realize that they to adventure elsewhere, and these roving explorer eyes had to settle on something else. The natural choice the South Pole. Yeah, so we have two big players in our South Pole story. One is Robert Falcon Scott. One rolled Almondson. And it's interesting because there's gonna be one man here whose whose name is forever linked to the South Pole, and one who people don't even really know much about. And it's not what you might think as far as the winner and the loser go. So let's talk a little bit more about these two guys. Robert Falcon Scott was a British naval officer who had participated in another Antarctic expedition on the Discovery, which was nineteen o one to nineteen o four with Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson. They tried to reach the South Pole, but their dogs died and they almost died too, so that went really well. And our other player, Rolled Almondson is actually named Rolled Ingolbrick Governing Almondson, so that's there was a valiant try. So that's my attempt at Norwegian. So yes, this is obviously a Norwegian explorer. And Almondson has also had his shot at Antarctica before though he was first mate on an expedition there, and in nineteen o three he commanded the first single ship to make it through the Northwest Passage, which if you've listened to anything we've said about the Northwest Passage, or if you've read my article about exploring the Northwest Passage, you know that that is a very impressive feat. Indeed, people forever to make it all the way through. But more importantly, on his travels he learned as much as he could from the Canadian Inuits on how to survive in polar weather, which will come in handy when you're traveling to the South Pole. So, as we mentioned, Perry reached the North Pole in nineteen o nine, or at least he announced that he did. Nowadays, we're not actually so sure if he did make it when he said he did. But at the time the man had the spotlight and he was American, which made it worse in the eyes of Scott, who was quoted as saying, what matters now is that the South Pole should be attained by an Englishman. Yeah, but Perry reaching the North Pole also throws Almondson for a loop because he had been planning a North Pole track, So hey, what's the point if somebody else has already done it first, That's what they're thinking. They're not really appreciating the full extent of what you can learn from going to these places. So Scott had already been planning this South Pole trip and Almondson knew it, so he's tricky. He tells everyone that he's still going to the North Pole when he sails from Oslo in June. Scott leaves twelve days after him from Wales and Almondson didn't even tell the men on his own ship that they were going to the South Pole instead of the North until October. I'm going to say he's pulling into pole in here, going to Egypt. And he tells Scott about it in a rather cryptic telegram that read beg leave inform you proceed ing Antarctica. And even though it was rather unclear, Scott said, Almondson is acting suspiciously in Norway. He avoided me in every conceivable manner. Let me say it right out. Almondson was too honorable to tell me lies to my face. It's the pole he is after all right. So Scott knows that the two of them are in a race, as on the other races on. So Almondson sets off on the from with some very experienced sled dog drivers, which is going to come in handy scott ship is called the Terra Nova, and his aim isn't just to reach the South Pole. He also does want to make some contributions to science. Sorry if I if I suggested otherwise a minute ago, but he wanted to collect specimens and bring back information about the rocks and the minerals and the animals and possibly plants, if any exists in this extreme environment that people have very little idea about. So he brought twelve researchers with him on his ship, and one fantastic stickley named grad absolutely Cherry Gerard paid to join them. I think that could be a house to works freelance now I'm putting on my possible baby names list. Almondson, on the other hand, brought a lot of sled dogs, but Scott, after this dying dog expedition the Discovery, decided that ponies and man holds sledges were a better idea, which is mystifying to me because it seems like you would make it as difficult as possible a man hauling, you know, eight hundred pounds over hundreds of miles in these steep glaciers. Mistake. I think this might be a new podcast theme to bringing really inappropriate transport on your long, arduous expedition Champagne so far happens over and over. So Almindson plans to use dogs to help transport everybody. You know, he's got experience with them after all, But he also plans to eat them along the way, which I don't think Scott would like that very much, as an Englishman, you know, it was below him certainly wouldn't like that idea, But uncivilized it is. You know, if we look at it practically, and we look at it, you know, considering the reality of what it's like in Antarctica, it's a practical idea. It made sense for Ahmindson. So both ships arrived at the Ross Ice Shelf in January nineteen eleven and set up their bases. Scott called his Cape Evans and it was at McMurdo Sound, and Almondson set up his at Wales Bay, which he called Fromheim. And the crucial difference was that Almondson's base was almost ninety miles closer to the pole. But lest you think that this is Scott being stupid, which you might think a couple of times in this podcast, Shackleton had already taken this route, the one that he was planning on taking before, right, so it was at least a little bit better known to him, and he thought that might be an advantage. Now we get to the preparation point because they've made it, but it's obviously too close to Antarctic winter to set approaching for the poll. So Antarctica has two seasons basically summer and winter. But since they Doe has cold and one is Gold is a lot colder. Since they do have a little bit more of these warmer summer months left, they have a little time to start preparing for this big truck they're going to be doing later. So since this route was so long, Almondson's men start setting up supply routes. They travel by their sledges pulled by dogs. Um, you know, up a little ways, set up a supply depot, come back, go even further next time, set up a supply depot. So they'll have these depots along their future route before this you know, terrible way taking a long high exactly, and there's no time to go back. They'll need this along the way. And they also set up near some ice caves so they'll they'll be able to still work on stuff even in the worst weather. Scott tries to do this too, but he's working with the ponies, not dogs. And guess what, Ponies don't really do that great in snow. Dogs are faster and they're not as quick to freeze, and honestly, Scott should have brought more of them. And when someone suggests that they used the ponies to feed the men or the dogs. Scott says, the ponies are our friends. I'm not going to kill them, my little pony, which is yeah, it's it's sad right now, it gets sadder, but some of the ponies die anyways, they're just not suited to these temperatures. Well, and the Brits didn't even bring the right clothes. They brought wool versus the reindeer and seal skins that the Norwegian team brought, because of course, Almondson had learned from the Inuits and realize, hey, they don't starve or freeze to death, so let's quit being so snooty and listen to what they have to say, which again, uh, Scott and his men thought might be a little beneath them. So scotsmen may have been dressed in wool, but they also had a pretty hefty supply of opium pills and also cigars. This is again kind of like the Champagne Safari, bringing things that foi gras do not need your truffles, you probably don't need thirty five thousand cigars on and their supply depots during the styme aren't quite set up as well as Almondson's are they've got one one ton depot with a black flag to market, because you know, that's really easy to spot when you're snow blind. Just this, this little black flag in the middle of nowhere. So now we enter the waiting period. Preparation has ended. It's winter, and it's just weeks and weeks and weeks of complete dark, like as in no light at all, and of course it's extremely cold. So you have to find something to entertain yourselves to keep from getting cabin fever and going totally nuts. So how would you do it, Sarah if you were in Scott's expedition, Well, if I were in Scott's exhibition, I'd be watching movies and reading books and listening to the gramophone, maybe reading some poetry, painting, having interesting intellectual discussions with my peers. Or maybe you would adopt an Emperor Penguin chick like Wilson did um or learn to make a lovely seal consume with the rest of your expedition. Which these do sound like pretty good ways to avoid cabin fever. Unfortunately, they aren't the most practical things to be doing, because meanwhile, at their camp, the Norwegians are working on maintaining their equipment, maintaining their dogs, keeping up their health. They had their eyes on the prize. So on September eight, Almondson decides, let's do this. It's warm enough, the winter's finally ending, he thinks, So he takes eight guys and eighties six dogs out, but they do have to turn back a bit when it becomes too cold and foggy. They're stuck at a supply depot for a while. Um and they make it forty five point five miles in nine hours, which is so much faster than Scott can do with ponies and man hauled sledges. Dogs are definitely the way to go. I wonder how you'd get the lot to be the man haled hauled sledge driver. I don't know, but I don't want it. And as a side note, during this time this journey occasioned a quarrel, some say a mutiny from one of his men. Johanssen and Almondson dismissed him and basically erased his record with the expedition when he came back like just wouldn't even acknowledge that he'd ever been there, and uh Kalmar Johansson later committed suicide mostly because of that. Yeah. So by October we have the Norwegians finally heading back out again. This time they have five men, four sledges and fifty two dogs, and they get pretty nice weather for Antarctica. At least they make it and there a head of schedule, and Almondson plants the Norwegian flag at the poll on December seventeenth, nineteen eleven, and he writes in his journe so we arrived and we're able to plant our flag at the geographical South Pole. God be thanked. And they make it back to their Bay of Wales base at the end of January nineteen twelve. They covered seven d eighty nine miles in ninety nine days, and to Tasmania on March seventh, nineteen twelve, where they can announce their big win. So Norway had triumphed over Britain, but no one knew yet what had happened to Scott's expedition. So let's go back to our man catch up with Scott. So he leaves later than Ahmudson two weeks. It doesn't sound like very long, but it's a crucial amount of time that puts his return journey right in the middle of a particularly awful winter, and the motor sledges break pretty quickly. The ponies keep them, only going about five and a half miles a day, and they switched to those awful sounding man hauled sledges. Finally, two ponies fall through the ice and our eaten by killer whales, which I mean, I don't think you could make that up. That's a kind of the craziest part of the jorn I read that in a Wall Street Journal story by Mark Yost, and I wrote it all in caps on my outline, although I do have to say I think I screwed up the chronology a little bit. Uh. The motor sledges broke at the beginning of their journey and not at the end, so they were already pretty tired by this point, and by December thirty one only five of the men were left. The others had all returned to bays Or to a supply deep How we've got Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates, and Evans, and Scott finally reaches the Pole January, and there he found a letter to the King of Norway from Amondson asking Scott to deliver it to the King to let him know crushing he'd gotten there, and told him he could use any of the applies that he left, and he wished him a safe return. Readers truly read the letter. It's it's just so so just imagine this guy finding this after all the trouble he's gone through. Okay, So, dear Captain Scott, as you probably are the first to reach this area after us, I will ask you kindly to forward this letter to King hakon the seventh No idea If I said that right, if you can use any of the supplies left in the tent, please do not hesitate to do so. I wish you a safe return, yours truly. So they do use the supplies, but what a crushing disappointment for the brit heartbreak. Scott writes the poll. 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. So now they would have to make this grueling return journey without even the prospect of this vic Horrius trip home, which isn't a great place to be psychologically. But you know, at least they collected some rocks on the way back, they weren't in as much of a hurry as they should have been. They decided, if they weren't first anyways, well bring some stick around and you know, pick up more heavy things to put on their man holes. Sledge is clearly unstuck on that old sledge thing. But the weather had gotten much much worse, and this Arctic winter was even worse than it was, of course in the summer, but this one was particularly bad, according to the records that we have, probably somewhere in the negative forties or negative fifties fahrenheit, and the men were probably starving. They were working at as fast a pace as they could manage, but they were nearly out of food, so they're cleric intake is not going with the energy expenditure. Need a lot of energy to haul the sledge too, And it's also possible that they had scurvy, but that's a point of debate. So the first man to die was Evans. He had fallen behind, and when they finally went back to check on him, he was very disoriented and said that he'd fallen and he went into a coma and died in February. But the next is perhaps the best known oats, and he was already severely frost bitten and exhausted and starving in on his thirty second birthday, which was March seventeen, he said to the men, I'm just going outside and maybe sometime, which is probably again the most quietly heartbreaking the British thing you could say too. And so he thought that they might have a better chance at survival without him, And Scott writes, Oates died like a good Englishman. And so we have three left, and they're hit by yet another blizzard, and this one lasts for nine whole days, and they're out of food, they're freezing. You know, they're in this like light tent kind of contraption, hardly anything to weather a blizzard. In that they're only eleven miles from one tund it for straining that would take Almondson and those dogs like half an hour probably, So they're only eleven miles away. But they know they're going to die. And Scott writes a final letter home to eleven letters. Actually this is the one that he wrote to the British people. We have shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great fortitude as ever in the past. And then we have an excerpt his last diary entry, which was March. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot eleven miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. 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. And that is the last thing that Robert Falcon Scott ever wrote. So their bodies are found in November nineteen twelve, along with their writings and the specimens. They had collected thirty five pounds of rock. So yeah, that weight on that sledge unfortunate. But people are moved by how these men died, and the public raised seven million dollars for their families, according to a New York Times article by Edward Rothstein, and Scott left behind a little baby and a wife, and his widow is actually given the knighthood that would have been bestowed upon him had he lived. And people were so enamored with this romantic tragedy that Amindsen's triumph was overshadowed despite it being this huge accomplishment because Scott's story is simply more interesting. Almondson was incredibly capable and efficient, but you know, he's just missing that certain genesee quaw that Scott had. Everything went went perfectly with his mission. It's there's after you run through the details of what happened, there's there's not much more to tell. Or perhaps his reputation just has a dearth of cigars. And we should note that while Scott's expedition may be argued to be a spectacular failure, the scientific aspect of it was successful. That thirty pounds of rock meant a lot, because we learned quite a bit from all of their observations on glaciers and the mapping they did, and all those specimens they collected, including that little Emperor penguin chick. So my introduction to Captain Scott was in a fat amans ex libris, which if you haven't read it, please please go by it. It's not a book about polar expeditions. It's about the love of books and what she calls her odd shelf, the one that's home to all of your strange obsessions, and for her, it's polar expeditions and the romance of the failed but gallant British explorers, and it was from fat Amon that I knew. Scott's literary picks for the journey were Russian and Polish novels, chilly novels well Oates preferred a five volume work on Napoleon's campaigns in Iberia, and Wilson was a lover of Tennyson. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or Facebook U r L or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our old how Stuff Works email address no longer works, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. 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