by David Hirzel hroughout the nineteenth century, hundreds of men dedicated their careers-and many perished in the process-in pursuit of elusive goals: the search for the Northwest Passage across North America, the hunt for the "Open Polar Sea," and attempts to reach the North Pole itself. At the opposite end of the earth, a larger terra incognita beckoned. Captain James Cook circumnavigated it in 1773, and the first hints of an Antarctic mainland were noted in the 1820s, butitwas not until 1901 that the first large-scale, governmentsponsored expeditions voyaged south, intending to land and explore the interior. They went by sea, in ships patterned after the sturdy Greenland whalers, wooden barques with auxiliary steam designed to venture into the floating pack ice that choked the polar seas. When that ice grew dense and moved, these ships' limber frames and planking could most times yield to the pressure and later resume their normal shape, suffering only a few more leaks to vex their crews. The sailors manning them were a hardy lot who were used to hard work, bad weather, and sudden turns of events that might change an ordinary day into catastrophe. In addition to being able to "hand, reef, and steer," these men possessed the skills of many trades and were adaptable enough to learn on the spot any others that might be needed. Accustomed to following orders without hesitation"Growl ye may, but go ye must"-these
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men took on the most daunting tasks with casual aplomb. Between 1897 and 1922, no fewer than seventeen major expeditions, sponsored by eight different countries, from Europe to Scandinavia to Japan, set out to conquer the South Pole. The competition between nations was fierce, as were the rivalries between expedition leaders, aided by their stalwart and dedicated crewmembers. Scott's Discovery Expedition One of the most famous rivalries to the South Pole was underway in the early twentieth century between Great Britain's Robert Falcon Scott (expeditions in 1901-1904 and 1910-1913) , Norway's Roald Amundsen (s uccessful expedition to the South Pole in 1910-1912), and Great Britain's Ernest Shackleton (three
The British ship RRS Discovery, Antarctica, 1901. Discovery has been preserved as a museum ship and is open to visitors. She is owned by the Dundee Heritage Trust in Dundee, Scotland. (See their website, www.rrsdiscovery.com.)
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expeditions in 1907-1909, 1913- 1917, and 1921-1922). Scott's first attempt to conquer the pole included Shackleton in his crew, as third officer. They sailed for the Antarctic in the purpose-built exploration ship RRS (Royal Research Ship) Discovery, a wooden three-masted sailing ship with auxiliary steam propulsion. Scott and his team spent two years icebound in the far south, pursuing the twin goals of scientific investigation and geographic discovery. The expedition's published results in geology, meteorology, geophysics, and oceanography provide the foundation from which all such research springs today. Tnen as now, scientists pursued their lofty goals, but it is the workers and technicians who made it possible. In Scott's day, those workt!rs were the seamen, strong and resourceful individuals like Frank Wild, Edgar "Taff' Evans, Bill Lashly, and Tom Crean. Their names are not as well known as those of their expedition leaders, but their contributions were nothing short of heroic. Once the expeditions left the ships and embarked on the overland journeys, it was the able bodied seamen who pulled the sledges over the ice, pitched the tents, and did the physical labor of this new trade. Irishman Tom Crean had been recruited by Scott in 1901 in New Zealand, from HMS Ringarooma, where he was serving as an able seaman in the Royal Navy's New Zealand Squadron. Crean would log 149 days on the ice during his first expedition to Antarctica under Scott, hauling heavy sledges toward distant goals in which he would share no glory, suffering hunger and thirst, cold to -67° F, the occasional drop into a seemingly bottomless crevasse. Crean so distinguished himself among his messmates that Scott chose him to be captain's coxswain on all the ships he later commanded. In 1909, Shackleton returned from the Nimrod expedition, where he and his team had made it within 112 miles of the South Pole before having to turn back. When Scott heard the news, he said, "I think we'd better have a shot next." He was speaking to Tom Crean. 1 Scott's Terra Nova Expedition Crean had proven he could handle a boat, go aloft in a raging gale, travel over the
SEA HISTORY 142, SPRING 2013