The March 1912 log concluded: “It seems a pity, but I do not think I can
write more. R. Scott. British naval officer Robert Falcon Scott and his team
had arrived at the South Pole two months earlier, on Jan. 16, 1912, hoping to
be the first people to stand at the iconic point. But Captain Scott’s log
from that day read: “The worst has happened, or nearly the worst.”
Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his four-man team had beaten Scott’s team
to the South Pole by one month.
After Amundsen reached the South Pole on Dec. 14, 1911, he used the only form
of communication available: He left behind a letter addressed to King Haakon
VII of Norway, describing the crew’s accomplishment. As quoted in his 1913
book, The South Pole, Amundsen wrote: “The way home was a long one,
and so many things might happen to make it impossible for us to give an account
of our expedition. Besides this letter, I wrote a short epistle to Captain Scott,
who, I assumed, would be the first to find the tent.”
He was.
It is hard to imagine the world then — a world in which such a simultaneous
defeat and victory would not be instantly broadcast globally. But the lines
of communication were vastly different in Scott’s and Amundsen’s time
than they are today.
Poor connection
Amundsen and Scott had waited out the previous winter in Antarctica, both anticipating
the race to the pole, just 720 kilometers (450 miles) away from each other on
the ice sheet. Neither knew where the other was, nor did anyone back in their
home countries.
On their journey back from the pole across the continent, all five men in Scott’s
expedition died. We know of their tragic trip and their ultimate fate because
Scott was a Navy man to the end, writing logs that recorded his team’s
travails. Shortly before he died in Antarctica, Scott wrote letters to friends
and to relatives of his doomed men, giving them credit for their commitment
and bravery. He also wrote a “Message to the Public” in which he detailed
the team’s misfortunes: miserable weather, soft snow, the illness and death
of a key member of the party. The facsimile of the last page of his journal,
reproduced in Scott’s Last Expedition, is as chilling today as the
weather outside his tent must have been in March 1912.
At the same time Scott was writing his last log entry, the Norwegian success
in reaching the South Pole was communicated to the world when Amundsen’s
team reached Tasmania.
Scott’s letters and notebooks were found underneath his shoulder eight
months later by a search party. Outside were about 16 kilograms (35 pounds)
of rock samples from the Beardmore Glacier moraine that the team had refused
to leave behind.
Enduring interruptions
As disastrous as the conclusion of Scott’s expedition was, the team did
make a major advance in communications on Antarctica. The crew rigged a telephone
connection between two huts and conversed over a distance of about 24 kilometers.
Still, for these early 20th century explorers, logs and letters were the most
effective forms of communication. British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s
two expeditions to Antarctica, for example, were recorded in photographs and
handwritten notes. His most famous story — of the Endurance being
crushed by ice in the Weddell Sea while on a voyage to be the first to cross
the southern continent — has been featured in books and movies, including
a silent film captured by Frank Hurley, a photographer on the expedition.
After his ship was crushed, Shackleton left some of his crew on the deserted
Elephant Island and took five men on an 800-mile ocean voyage in an open boat
to South Georgia Island to seek help. He ultimately found help from a Norwegian
whaling station on the opposite side of the island. In his book South
(1920), Shackleton wrote, “The record of the voyage to South Georgia is
based upon scanty notes made day by day.”
All of the archival records were physically carried out after the remaining
crew members were rescued from Elephant Island. No one on the outside knew what
had happened to the men until Shackleton’s group walked into Stromness
Whaling Station in May 1916. The entire crew survived the adventure.
Speaking up
In 1930, Richard Byrd led his first Antarctic expedition to the Ross Ice Shelf.
His expedition introduced radios, allowing communication between groups on the
ice and with their ship. Messages could be relayed to New Zealand and from there
around the world. The opportunity for real-time communication would change the
nature of Antarctic exploration forever.
Byrd wrote in Little America (1930): “The radio beyond doubt has
ended the isolation of this ice cap. As a practical thing, its help is priceless.
But I can see where it is going to destroy all peace of mind, which is half
the attraction of the polar regions.”
When we fast-forward 80 years, Byrd’s words ring eerily true. The world
of communication is completely different from what the early explorers of this
continent experienced — one full of constant connection.
From November 2005 to January 2006, 13 scientists spent nearly eight weeks in
the Antarctic, as part of the Antarctic Search for Meteorites Program (ANSMET),
which is supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation. McMurdo Station
has e-mail and Internet access. The team members had walkie-talkies, and several
had satellite phones.
One of the members of the ANSMET Team, Mike Kelley of Georgia Southern University,
posted blogs and uploaded photographs, creating a modern-day real-time journal
of the expedition (cost.georgiasouthern.edu/ansmet). He narrated the exploration,
engaged in a lively Q&A with schoolchildren back in the states, and sent
photographs and movie clips of the activities. He uploaded the logs using an
Iridium satellite phone, which also received text messages less than 160 characters
long (how students forwarded their questions to the team).
When my home phone rang on Jan. 1, Mike’s voice said, “Happy New Year
from Antarctica!” How the world has changed!
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