1912 (9 page)

David later wrote: ‘After travelling a little over two miles, just beyond Cape Barne, the snow had become so thick that the coastline was almost entirely hidden from our view. Under these circumstances I did not think it was prudent to take the motorcar further, so Mackay, Mawson, and I bid adieu to our good friends. Strapping on our harness, we toggled on to the sledge rope, and with a “One, two, three” and “away”, started on our long journey over the sea ice.' Setting off along the coast, the three men were on their own. They hauled the sledge and spoke little, save for the odd encouraging word amid what David described as ‘the wilderness of snow'.

To reach their objective the three men relied on a dipping compass to measure the vertical component of the magnetic field. Mawson was put in charge of the device during the journey and eagerly looked out for the moment when the needle would point vertically. The team was disappointed to realise that the South Magnetic Pole was further inland than the
Discovery
expedition's findings suggested. Stoically, they climbed the mountain chain abutting the Antarctic Plateau; the prospect of searching for rich mineral resources, so important for encouraging investment in their endeavour, would have to wait. Mawson did continue to make geological observations, often making comparisons to the rich mineral seams he had seen back in Australia, at Broken Hill,
but this was now secondary to the scientific work. When Mawson fell down a crevasse, swinging on his straps, he collected crystals from the sheer walls of ice, and threw them up for the others to look at; as they travelled over the wind-blown snow and ice, they noted its orientation, giving an insight into the pervasive winds that hurtled off the interior.

Approaching the magnetic pole, Mawson found its location shifted daily, and he had to anticipate its likely movement. To complicate matters further, being close to a pole meant any traditional compass was hopeless for orientation, barely changing over hundreds of kilometres. ‘Compass now very sluggish,' David recalled of his time on the plateau, ‘in fact the theodolite compass would scarcely work at all. This pleased us a good deal, and at first we all wished more power to it: then amended the sentiment and wished less power to it.'

The instrument for finding the magnetic pole was a Lloyd-Creak dipping circle, a delicate device not designed for the conditions Mawson was operating in: the subfreezing temperatures, buffeting winds and drifting snow all tested the instrument to its limits. Handling a dipping compass and making precise measurements at around -20°C with swirling snow and ice was far from easy. Properly done, the whole process took at least two and a half hours, involving up to three hundred instrument readings, depending on the conditions. ‘A back-breaking feat of endurance for the observer and perishing cold for the recorder,' one member of Mawson's 1912 team later wrote. Today, a similar level of precision can be achieved using magnetometers commonly found in smartphones, capable of measuring the dip and strength of the different components of the magnetic field in under a minute—and without the sort of training the Lloyd-Creak circle required.

By 15 January the compass needle was stubbornly holding back from a fully vertical position, but Mawson's
calculations—based on a handful of observations—placed the South Magnetic Pole at just seventeen kilometres away. The men were exhausted and their food supplies were dwindling at an alarming rate. They agreed to make a dash for the pole the following day. About three kilometres out from their temporary base, David, Mawson and Mackay resolved to leave most of the gear with their sledge and push on, lighter of foot, allowing them to cover a greater distance.

The danger was that they might not find their way back, with fatal consequences. The compass was hopeless in this regard, and if they lost their bearings the three men would be left with only the clothes they were wearing and the equipment they were carrying. Conditions were good, but Antarctic weather has a habit of closing in rapidly. As a safeguard, the party decided to leave a piece of equipment a further three kilometres on, to act as a guide if the need arose. They walked for three kilometres, stopped for lunch and set up a tripod as another marker. Once more the three men pushed forward in anticipation. The weather remained clear, and their calculations placed the pole eight kilometres away.

A couple of hours later, some 2200 metres above sea level and more than a thousand kilometres from any other human being, they believed they had reached their goal. Disappointingly, the prismatic compass, after some tapping, still pointed to the west. There remained a small element of horizontal force acting on the compass, but it would have to do. The men had been running on less than half-rations for weeks and were exhausted.

It was a clear day with a light wind and only a handful of clouds overhead. The men hoisted the Union Jack at 3.30 pm and congratulated one another. Mawson set up a camera, arranging all three men in frame. Connecting a string to the camera, David declared, ‘I hereby take possession of this area now containing the Magnetic Pole for the British Empire,' and
pulled the trigger. They gave three cheers for the king. The photo shows three relieved and exhausted figures standing around the flag, bareheaded in a relatively balmy -18°C. The formalities complete, Mawson packed up the camera and, after a heartfelt ‘Thank God,' they turned and fled back to the tent they temporarily called home.

With supplies perilously low, the men forced themselves to march back to the coast, hoping they might still be picked up by the
Nimrod
. In such an environment and under such physical strain it was easy to lose your temper, and both younger men became exasperated with David. Mawson's diaries are a catalogue of concerns and irritations. On 31 January: ‘Prof's burberry pants are now so much torn as to be falling off. He is apparently half-demented, by his actions—the strain had been too great.' By 2 February, David's boots were frozen on and one foot had gone numb. ‘During most of the day the Prof has been walking on his ankles. He was no doubt doing his best this way, and Mac appears to have kicked him several times when in the harness.'

The following day Mackay threatened to declare David insane unless leadership of the team was passed to Mawson. The young geologist was uncomfortable with the plan, writing of David: ‘I again said I did not like the business and stated he had better leave matters as they were until the ship failed to turn up.' The next day they made it to what became known as Relief Inlet, on the Victoria Land coast, where Mackay wrote, ‘We are now, of course, expecting the ship. The Professor says that Shackleton promised to send her to look for us on the 1st but one can't believe a word he says.'

They had no supplies to speak of and would be forced to live off seal meat; David would be unlikely to survive a journey down the coast to their winter quarters if they were forced to march south, and the inevitable delay in caring for him would almost certainly be fatal for Mackay and Mawson. As Mackay wrote,
‘The whole thing is enough to make a man turn religious.'

Indeed, the
Nimrod
miraculously turned up at 3.30 pm the next day. The ship had passed several days earlier, heading north. On board, the first mate, John King Davis, had been uneasy that because of fog he could not see one section of the 320-kilometre coast they were searching. Coal reserves were low, but the ship duly returned south. It was the first of many strokes of luck for Mawson and Shackleton.

In the excitement of reaching the ship Mawson fell down a crevasse and, with the team members too weak to help, Davis had to rescue him. The South Magnetic Pole team had travelled 2030 kilometres, 1180 in relay, on a 122-day journey—with no dogs or ponies, and more than half a tonne of supplies and equipment. It remained the longest unsupported, man-hauling journey in history until the 1980s, and gave the most accurate fix yet on the location of the South Magnetic Pole.

As David, Mawson and Mackay were heading back to the coast, Shackleton was leading the other team towards its geographic counterpart. Supported by horses, the men dragged their loads over the crevasse-filled Great Ice Barrier, out beyond the record achieved by Shackleton with Scott and Wilson just a few years earlier. Shackleton observed: ‘It falls to the lot of few men to view land not previously seen by human eyes, and it was with feelings of keen curiosity, not unmingled with awe, that we watched the new mountains rise from the great unknown that lay ahead of us.'

The mountain range of Victoria Land continued to stretch before them, forming a southwestern limit of the Great Ice Barrier down to 86°S. Realising they would have to climb this formidable obstacle if they were to reach the pole, the four men
forged a route up what turned out to be one of the largest glaciers in the world, a formidable fifty kilometres wide and more than 250 kilometres long, tumbling off the eastern Antarctic Plateau. Losing their last pony and a large part of the remaining supplies down a crevasse on what became known as the Beardmore Glacier, the men were forced to relay the remaining stores. For every mile closer to the pole, three had to be covered. As they worked through a maze of crevasses and steep climbs without crampons, sometimes at a snail's pace, supplies disappeared frighteningly quickly.

They still found time to survey this new land: rocks melting out of the ice gave an insight into the bedrock far below their feet; ramparts of rubble deposited when the Beardmore Glacier had been even larger in the past were noted; the ensuing drops in air temperature were diligently recorded. Given the circumstances, it was an impressive scientific achievement.

During Scott's
Discovery
expedition a young Cambridge graduate, Hartley Ferrar, had gone on sledging expeditions to explore the geology of the area surrounding Ross Island and in particular Victoria Land. Ferrar's insight was to recognise that the whole area had the same sequence of rocks: the lowermost levels were a complex series of volcanic deposits that spoke of violent eruptions and later reburial, overlain by more than a kilometre of fine sediments that became known as the Beacon Sandstone, one of the Antarctic's prime geological features. From the fossils it contained, it represented a remarkably stable time from 416 to 245 million years ago, when the area was made up of shallow lakes and rivers that could be readily identified on the ground. Once you saw the Beacon Sandstone, with its distinctive light-brown sands, you knew where you were in time. At the Beardmore Glacier the Beacon Sandstone could be clearly seen, and in it Shackleton found coal seams metres thick with occasional intruded volcanic rocks that showed the
sequence had subsequently been buried deep underground.

The findings were all well and good, but Shackleton knew his backers would demand more. He had to get close to the pole if he was to return in glory and pay off his considerable debts. Food supplies were now dangerously low. Non-essential equipment was jettisoned and meals were cut back to eke out a longer trip.

After some 1350 kilometres of backbreaking sledging Shackleton realised they could not make it to the pole. Standing on an ocean of ice more than three thousand metres above sea level, the four men could not take much more. Temperatures averaging -30°C, exhaustion, hunger, altitude sickness and the possibility of scurvy were all taking their toll. By 4 January three of the men were so cold that the clinical thermometer was not even registering a body temperature. They were close to death.

Enough was enough. They decided to make a dash to the furthest possible southerly point and then head home. ‘Our last day outwards,' Shackleton later wrote:

We have shot our bolt and the tale is latitude 88° 23' South, longitude 162° East…At 4 a.m. started south, with the Queen's Union Jack, a brass cylinder containing stamps and documents to place at the furthest south point, camera, glasses and compass. At 9 a.m. we were in 88° 23' South, half running and half walking over a surface much hardened by the recent blizzard. It was strange for us to go along without the nightmare of a sledge dragging behind us. We hoisted her Majesty's flag and the other Union Jack afterwards, and took possession of the Plateau in the name of his Majesty [Edward VII]. While the Union Jack blew out stiffly in the icy gale that cut us to the bone, we looked south with our powerful glasses, but could see nothing but the dead white snow plain.

They could go no further. A mere ninety-seven nautical miles—equivalent to 180 kilometres—short of their goal,
Shackleton turned his small group around and headed back, having set a new furthest-south record. ‘Our food lies ahead,' he wrote ‘and death stalks us from behind.'

‘And thus we went along,' Shackleton later recounted in a recording made of his exploits, ‘and thus we returned, having done a work that has resulted with great advantage to science, and for the first time returning without the loss of a single human life.' Their journey back to the
Nimrod
was a close-run thing. Food supplies had been stretched to the limit; the men fell back on Forced March tablets, made from a cocaine base, to sustain them.