1912 (17 page)

When Scott's decision to head south was announced, on 13 September 1909—just after Peary's reported return
from the Arctic—Amundsen was suddenly aware there was competition for the south. Nonetheless, the Norwegian felt his plan was justified: no one had the right to claim anything until they got there. Anyway, he had overwintered in the Antarctic region before Scott had even been made leader of the
Discovery
expedition.

Amundsen now had to tread a fine line. ‘At all costs we had to be first at the finish. Everything had to be concentrated on that,' he later wrote. The Norwegian was keen to differentiate his work from the scientific efforts of Scott; it had to be a different sort of expedition. ‘On this little détour, science would have to look after itself'—but ‘we could not reach the Pole by the route I had determined to take without enriching in a considerable degree several branches of science.'

There was more science to the Norwegian effort than was generally supposed. But some of the planned research would never come to pass, thwarted at the last moment. Probably the most significant casualty was the magnetic work. On 5 August 1909 a young American, Dr Harry Edmonds, wrote to Amundsen agreeing to the Norwegian's invitation to join the
Fram
on its quest for the North Geographic Pole, for what was described as the ‘most important part of the scientific work of the trip'. The son of a judge in San Francisco, and claiming ‘inherited powers of endurance in pioneer work', Edmonds had an unusual but useful skill set. He was a trained medical doctor, had been on an Arctic expedition and had also run a magnetic observatory. Amundsen was delighted, and confirmed the American's position as lead magnetic observer and expedition doctor. Edmonds and his equipment would be picked up in San Francisco by the
Fram
on the way north.

Later that year Amundsen contacted one of the world's leading centres for magnetic research: the Department of Research in Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institute of
Washington. Because of Edmonds's experience in magnetics, the institute agreed to employ him for six months to design and construct the equipment needed on the
Fram
. Equipment lists were drawn up; magnetometers and dip circles were identified. Then the Norwegian wrote to Edmonds, confirming a delay in the expedition, though not giving the real reason. Edmonds felt his time at the institute had been ‘without any value whatever to the expedition'. By July 1910 he was ready to go.

Despite Amundsen's insistence, Edmonds was not keen to join him in Christiania by the Norwegian's deadline of 1 August. He could not understand the need for it. Colleagues had told him any measurements travelling around the Horn would be worthless; the
Fram
would have to be swung to take measurements at sea and these would be of little value, given that measurements had already been made on land by people at the institute. The plan, as Edmonds understood it, had been to take observations once the
Fram
was frozen in. Edmonds claimed he was ‘absolutely in the dark…about the trip'. He sat tight, and refused to travel until the
Fram
reached San Francisco.

Amundsen was furious, claiming he would ‘now have to start without medical service on board which is very annoying'. The Carnegie Institute could—or would—not intercede, and Edmonds was unmoved. Amundsen had run foul of his own secrecy.

For the trip north there were plans to use polar bears for dragging sledges; now even the ever-ambitious Amundsen could not justify attempting to take them south. The Norwegian was also developing man-bearing kites. The idea rapidly lost its appeal when, in the summer of 1909, the expedition's second-in-command, Captain Ole Engelstad, died when he was struck
by lightning. Yet Amundsen was ahead of the game: today kite skiing is hugely popular; in 2008 the Norwegian Ronny Finsås set the record for kiting from the South Geographic Pole to the coast, in just five days.

As some of Amundsen's plans—though not his final destination—leaked out, the media asked other explorers their opinions. Borchgrevink was one of the more vocal. He had advised Scott to use reindeer in the south, and criticised Amundsen for not taking them north.

Amundsen convinced Nansen to let him borrow the polar vessel
Fram
, though he knew his mentor also wished to make an attempt on the South Geographic Pole; when Amundsen decided to switch to the south, he did not tell Nansen. And when Scott twice called on Amundsen to discuss scientific collaboration during the different polar bids, the Norwegian hid. The subsequent arrival of British scientific equipment was deeply embarrassing, but Amundsen was committed to heading south and kept quiet. Amazingly, when the expedition departed few of the crew knew the true destination, most still believing they were heading north via the Bering Strait.

The
Fram
left Norway on 9 August 1910 but only once the ship reached the Atlantic Portuguese island of Madeira, some four weeks later, did Amundsen tell his nineteen-strong expedition of the new objective. Though given the option of returning home, all agreed to proceed. Leon Amundsen had gone with the
Fram
to Madeira and, once all had been settled, returned to Europe clutching a packet of letters and telegrams with the explosive news.

One was a three-page typed apology from Roald to Nansen, explaining his motives and need for secrecy, fearing the titan of Norwegian exploration would attempt to dissuade him; in it Amundsen did not reveal where he would set up a base but said that he would try to meet Scott in Antarctica, and tell him of his
plans. The telegram to Scott announcing the Norwegian's plans was sent on 3 October 1910, and reached the British leader in Melbourne. The secret was out, leading
The Times
to comment that Amundsen had not ‘played the game'.

The Norwegian expedition members were aware of how much was at stake. The explorer and scientist Bjørn Helland-Hansen wrote to Leon Amundsen, ‘Now we must just hope that all goes well with the dogs and the disembarkation then everything will be fine, in spite of reindeer, ponies and automobiles.' The race for the South Geographic Pole was on.

In mid-January 1911 the Norwegians were pleasantly surprised to find the pack ice in the Ross Sea was not as bad as expected. The sun's warmth had already much weakened it. Travelling nearly a month later than Scott had given Amundsen a tremendous edge: it took five days, as opposed to three weeks, to cover almost the same stretch of ocean. Knowing the British were working in the McMurdo region, Amundsen sailed for Shackleton's Bay of Whales.

The team got to work fast. They erected the hut that had caused consternation in Norway and christened it Framheim. Meanwhile, the sledges and dogs were immediately put through their paces in preparation for the journey further south. Within two weeks the new home was built, the provisions were safely on the ice and the
Fram
was sent north to explore the depths of the southern Atlantic Ocean.

In an age where we can effortlessly—albeit virtually—explore a vast amount of the world's surface from the comfort of a warm home, it is easy to forget that the Norwegians were off the map. When Amundsen was heading to Antarctica, there was still debate over whether it was a continent or a string of
islands covered in ice. Unlike Scott, Amundsen could not follow an established route—he had to blaze a new path through an unknown landscape.

The immediate challenge was the Great Ice Barrier. In Scott's 1903 attempt to reach the geographic pole with Shackleton and Wilson, the British team had reported reaching 83°S and finding the barrier kept going. In the process, Scott and his men had discovered the mountain chain that formed the backbone of Victoria Land continued to the south, and apparently bordered the barrier, holding back a vast high-altitude plateau. Scott believed that most of the barrier was floating, but how much further it extended beyond Shackleton's later route was unknown. Closer to the pole, Scott wrote in 1905, it was ‘extremely improbable that the full height of the ice-cap of Victoria Land could be seen anywhere from the sea or from the barrier surface. It is certain that the ice-cap is of very great extent…[and] that it maintains a great and approximately uniform level over the whole continent.' Shackleton's findings seemed to bear this out.

But from Amundsen's perspective no one had any idea where the barrier ended and the plateau began. The Norwegian had no desire to be accused of using the ‘British route'—which meant starting further east, heading into uncharted territory. And yet there were significant benefits. It also took best advantage of the relative proximity of the Bay of Whales to the geographic pole: Framheim was 1° of latitude closer than Scott's base, equivalent to more than one hundred kilometres that would not have to be covered by sledges, skis or dogs. Early on, Amundsen suspected the barrier was an enormous glacier, and that ‘after a steady climb, we will reach the pole at around 7000 ft, perhaps a bit higher', offering the prospect of an easier route. If the mountains did continue south, as Shackleton had suggested, it meant less time spent on the high-altitude plateau. And with more of Antarctica to explore, the Norwegians would be
able to proclaim genuine discoveries to learned societies on their return.

There was, however, one big risk: the Bay of Whales. Shackleton had visited the same spot just a few years earlier, and felt it distinctly unsafe—a view also held by Victor Campbell, when he had visited in the
Terra Nova
. In his book
The South Pole
Amundsen later downplayed any concerns and suggested the Bay of Whales had changed little in shape since Ross had visited in the 1840s.

The Norwegian leader popularised the idea that this part of the barrier sat on land. But some expedition members felt movement—something that signalled there was sea below and the location unsafe. If this was true, Framheim risked being cast adrift into the Ross Sea. Amundsen noted their observations but maintained publicly that if Shackleton had based his operations there he would have probably made it to the pole.

We now know the ice around the Bay of Whales is floating and fundamentally unstable. Shackleton was correct: the configuration of the Bay of Whales changes continuously, sometimes drastically. The bay is formed downstream of a prominent ice-covered feature known as Roosevelt Island. A survey in the 1930s found Roosevelt Island lies at the meeting point of two separate ice systems, which flow north nearly half a kilometre a year. The result downstream is a jumble of ice that frequently collapses into the sea. At times the bay almost completely disappears, rendering it unsafe to use, even as a temporary harbour.

Amundsen set about monitoring the weather from his new home at Framheim, and a routine for observations was soon established. The Norwegian had brought the latest instruments to make automatic measurements—although these were not as
sophisticated as Simpson's contraptions. For atmospheric pressure, the barometers were housed indoors behind the open kitchen door, to shelter them from the heat of the stove and prevent jarring. In the living room was a barograph, a device with a stack of small bellows that were highly sensitive to the pressure of air overhead. These would inflate or deflate over time, recording the changing conditions on a slowly rotating barrel of graph paper.