Roald Amundsen: the first man to reach the South Pole

Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) was a Norwegian explorer who led the first expedition to reach the South Pole, which he did in December 1911. History tells far fewer stories about him than it does about Robert Falcon Scott, who reached the pole a month later to find a Norwegian flag stuck in the ice, and who perished on the return journey.

The problem with Amundsen’s expedition, from the point of view of romance and history, is that there were not many problems.

Amundsen did not make many of the mistakes that Scott made. For example, he did not use heavy woolen clothing but lightweight furred skins. He also relied on dog teams for hauling sledges and not ponies, as Scott did.

The venture was carefully planned, with supply depots established at strategic points along the route. One factor that led to disaster for Scott’s party was that the supply depots were wrongly placed, which was not a mistake that Amundsen made.

Amundsen’s expedition did have one setback, with the first group that tried to reach the Pole being forced to turn back, but the second party, including Amundsen himself, reached its objective and returned safely to base camp.

Amundsen announced his success when he reached Hobart (capital of Tasmania) in March 1912. Some people in the UK were not willing to credit him with having beaten Scott to the Pole, preferring to wait for Scott’s ship, the Terra Nova, to return to the UK with the triumphant explorers aboard. Of course, this did not happen. The full horror of Scott’s failure was not discovered until November.

Roald Amundsen later carried out expeditions in the Arctic, including flying to the North Pole by flying boat. He disappeared in 1928 when on a rescue mission in the Arctic. His flying boat is believed to have crashed into the sea, with his remains, and those of the other crew members, never being found.

© John Welford

Captain Lawrence Oates

“I am just going outside and I may be some time”. Those were the last recorded words of Captain Lawrence Oates, who stepped into a blizzard in Antarctica on 16th March 1912 and was never seen again. The recorder of those words was Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who kept a diary until shortly before his own death some two weeks later, also defeated in the attempt to survive the terrible conditions of the southern continent.


Captain Oates and the race to the South Pole

Lawrence Oates was born in London on 17th March 1880 into a well-do-to family that provided him with an Eton education and the pleasures of gentlemanly life. He became particularly interested in hunting and horses, and it was his expertise with the latter that made him a suitable candidate for Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, which had never been reached before. Another plus point was the fact that he was able to contribute one thousand pounds to the cost of the expedition, which was a considerable sum in 1910.

Scott knew that he was in a race to be first to the Pole, his rival being the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. However, the tactics of the two expeditions were different. Whereas Amundsen was going to rely on a pack of more than 200 dogs, some of which would be slaughtered to feed the survivors as the journey progressed, Scott was horrified by this idea. Instead, he wanted to take a much smaller team of dogs and use ponies as pack animals to carry supplies to the depots they intended to set up along the way.


Why Oates did not trust Scott

The ponies were to be bought from a source in Siberia, the idea being that these would be used to working in extremely cold conditions. What Scott should have done was send his horse expert, Oates, to Siberia to select and buy the ponies, but he did not. When Oates saw the ponies that had been bought, and which were collected from New Zealand on the expedition’s way south, he was alarmed by their poor condition, describing them as a “wretched load of crocks”. Oates was to continue to have a poor opinion of Scott and his ability to lead the expedition.

Another point of contention was Scott’s plan to establish the final depot, named “One Ton” for the quantity of supplies it would contain, which was too far from the Pole for Oates’s liking. Oates argued that if the weakest of the ponies were killed and fed to the dogs, it would be possible to site the depot ten miles closer to the Pole, thus shortening the distance that would have to be covered by men dragging sledges. However, Scott rejected the idea, saying to Oates that he had had “more than enough of this cruelty to animals”.

For his part Oates clearly distrusted Scott, as revealed in his letters home. He wrote: “The fact of the matter is he is not straight; it is himself first, the rest nowhere”.


Scott loses the race

When the final team of five reached the Pole on 18th January 1912 they found that Amundsen’s well-organized expedition had beaten them by more than a month. Oates wrote of his admiration for the Norwegians in his diary, stating that: “That man must have had his head screwed on all right”. The clear implication was that Scott had not.

It was now a case of returning the way they had come, the first objective being to drag the sledges the 120 miles to One Ton Depot, which they would have expected to do in about three weeks. However, the weather turned bad and temperatures plummeted, resulting in severe frostbite. As progress slowed, the food supplies began to run out.

After four weeks of battling against the elements, Petty Officer Edgar Evans died, although Scott noted that this did at least meant that the food would last longer.


The last days of Captain Oates

The condition of Captain Oates now held everyone back. It is doubtful whether he should have been allowed to be one of the final five given the opportunity to reach the Pole, one reason being that he carried an old and serious war wound (on the thigh) from his former service as an army officer during the Boer War in 1901. He had, after all, served his purpose as an expedition member now that all the ponies were dead, and Scott’s reason for selecting him for the final push seemed to be out of sentiment rather than anything else. It is hard to see a modern expedition allowing someone with such a handicap to take the risk of facing such extreme conditions.

Oates’s frostbite had become gangrenous and every step was extremely painful. Even worse was the fact that it took him two hours every morning to get his boots on, with everyone else having to wait while he did so. He knew that he was holding the others back, but they persuaded him to keep struggling on, although they also knew that their own chances of survival were worsening by the day.

On 11th March Scott issued every man with 30 opium tablets, which was in effect a suicide pill that gave them all a choice of whether to keep going or give up. However, nobody chose the easy way out.

Oates eventually realised that he had to make that choice, and he did it in a way that would inconvenience his colleagues as little as possible. Scott and the others knew that Oates was committing suicide when he walked out of the tent. Whether Scott was correct to write in his journal that they tried to dissuade Oates we can never know. Oates had himself described Scott as “not straight”, and this could have been Scott’s way of trying to exonerate himself from agreement with an act that might just have been enough to save his own life.

In the event, it was not. Scott and the others died some two weeks later, ironically just eleven miles short of One Ton Depot. Had it been sited ten miles further south, as Oates had suggested, would that have been enough to save them? On the other hand, would the extra eleven miles have been covered if Oates had taken his opium tablets five days before his final act, thus speeding the progress of the others? This is, of course, open to speculation because the answers can never be known.

© John Welford

Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe

Alexander Selkirk is usually credited as being the original of the character of Robinson Crusoe in Daniel Defoe’s novel of 1719. Although Defoe’s book was fictional, and owed much to the author’s vivid imagination, it did contain elements of fact which relate to the life of Alexander Selkirk, as relayed by word of mouth and written accounts at the time of his rescue from having been marooned on a remote island for more than four years.

Alexander Selkirk’s early career

Alexander Selkirk was born in 1676 in Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland. He was the seventh son of a shoemaker. He made it clear at an early age that he wanted to go to sea, which he did in August 1695.

In May 1703 he was appointed master of the privateer “Cinque Ports”, which was under the command of Captain Charles Pickering. Together with the “St George”, commanded by William Dampier, the renowned explorer, the ship set sail for the South Pacific Ocean on 11^th September. Britain was at war with France and Spain (the War of the Spanish Succession), and privateers were being encouraged to capture and raid ships belonging to those two countries.

When Captain Pickering died after reaching Brazil, Thomas Stradling was appointed to succeed him. Selkirk seems to have found the new commander difficult to deal with and may have been among those officers and crew who mutinied after the ships reached the Juan Fernandez islands, some 400 miles west of Chile.

However, the crew seems to have been pacified following a successful engagement with a French ship, after which both British ships continued to explore northwards in the hope of finding more rich pickings, although these proved hard to come by.

By the end of May 1704 the two commanders found that they could no longer work together so the two ships parted company, with Selkirk staying on Stradling’s ship.

How he became “Robinson Crusoe”

The “Cinque Ports” sailed up and down the coast of Central and South America until August, with relations between Selkirk and Stradling becoming increasingly fraught. When they returned to Juan Fernandez in September for repairs, Selkirk declared that the ship was not in a seaworthy enough condition to continue its voyage and that he would rather stay ashore than sail in her. He therefore gathered together some essentials and disembarked. The list of items he took with him was later given as:

‘his clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets, and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible, some practical pieces, and his mathematical instruments and books’.

It would appear that, once he had realised what he had done, he changed his mind almost immediately but Stradling refused to let him back on the ship. However, Selkirk’s move turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the “Cinque Ports” sank a month later. He had been correct in his assessment of the dangerous condition of the ship.

Selkirk now had to survive as best he could on his own. The island in question (renamed “Robinson Crusoe Island” in 1966; another island in the group being named “Alejandro Selkirk Island”) was large enough (nearly 40 square miles) to support him in terms of food, especially as it had a population of wild goats which he could hunt, firstly using his musket and later catching them on foot. When he had been on the island for some time he tamed some of the goats and “farmed” them for milk and meat. His fear was that he would never leave the island and that he would eventually be too old to catch anything wild.

He also bred cats from the feral specimens that had escaped from ships that had called in the past. These not only provided company but helped to keep him safe from the rats that had also populated the island thanks to the occasional visits of sailors.

Having nobody to talk to was one of his worst privations, and he preserved the power of speech by reading his Bible aloud to himself and singing psalms to tunes that he remembered from his boyhood days in the church at Largo.

On one occasion he was lucky to survive a fall over a precipice when chasing a goat. When he came round he found that the goat was lying dead underneath him, having cushioned his fall and probably saved his life.

His hopes of being rescued lay with the possibility of a ship visiting the island, much as the “Cinque Ports” had done. When two Spanish ships did so, he was spotted by the sailors who sent a boat ashore and fired a gun in his direction. His knowledge of the island, and his physical agility, enabled him to escape and hide until they gave up the chase.

Rescue and further voyages

Selkirk was eventually rescued when two privateers from Bristol, the “Duke” and the “Duchess” called at the island in February 1709 in search of water. Selkirk had a fire burning, and this was seen by an observer on the “Duke”, whose commander, Captain Woodes Rogers, sent a boat ashore to investigate. When Selkirk was brought aboard the ship, dressed in goatskins and barely able to speak coherently, he was recognised by the man who was acting as pilot on board the ship, none other than William Dampier.

Dampier remembered Selkirk as having been an excellent ship’s master and recommended that Captain Rogers should make use of his services. Selkirk was thus not only rescued but he also found himself with a job, namely as mate of the “Duke”.

The two ships made a capture on 26^th February which was renamed the “Increase”, with Selkirk being appointed by Rogers to be its master. In December an even richer prize was seized, this being the “Nuestra Señora”, a Spanish galleon which was renamed the “Bachelor”. Again, Selkirk was given the job of being its new master, with Captain Thomas Dover in command.

On 10^th January 1710 the fleet of four ships then set sail to cross the Pacific, a voyage of 6000 miles. They arrived in Batavia (modern Jakarta) in June, where the booty was shared out and Selkirk received 80 pieces of eight.

After the ships were refitted they sailed on to Cape of Good Hope where they stayed put for three months before heading home as part of a larger fleet, eventually reaching the Shetlands in July 1711 and London in October. When Alexander Selkirk eventually stepped ashore he had been away from Britain for more than eight years, with four years and four months of that time spent in total isolation.

Later life

He found it very difficult to adjust to a normal life. After telling his story to anyone who was willing to listen, and there were many such, he eventually returned to Largo, where he found it necessary to build a cave in his father’s garden where he could be alone and meditate.

However, he also became infatuated with a local woman, Sophia Bruce, with whom he eloped back to London, living with her for some time (possibly as husband and wife) and making a will in her favour in January 1718.

The call of the sea eventually became too strong for him and he embarked on HMS Weymouth on 20^th October 1720, as master’s mate. A factor in his decision may well have been the appearance in 1719 of Defoe’s novel, and the extra attention that would have come his way. For a man who had become used to solitude it must have seemed that this was going to be denied him for ever and it was time to escape to the world he knew best, namely that of ships and the sea.

HMS Weymouth was based at Plymouth, where Selkirk appears to have forgotten all about Sophia Bruce in that he married Frances Candis, a widow, on 12^th December 1720, when he also drew up a new will that left everything to his new, maybe bigamous, bride.

  

From March to December 1721 Selkirk served aboard HMS Weymouth in operations against pirates off the coast of Africa. He died of disease aboard ship on 13^th December, leaving the two women in his life to fight over his will, a fight which Frances Candis won.

Apart from those four years and four months spent on Juan Fernandez, Alexander Selkirk’s life was not all that remarkable, in that many sailors of that time could have told a very similar story of sailing around the world and serving on privateers and naval ships. However, it is as the original of Robinson Crusoe that he has gained immortality.

The most accurate account of his “Crusoe years” is in Woodes Rogers’s “A Cruising Voyage Around the World”, which was published in 1712 with a second edition in 1718, but the best-known is clearly Defoe’s novel, despite its fictions. Defoe almost certainly met Selkirk in London, and there were stories that he tricked Selkirk into allowing him to use Selkirk’s own journal, but there is no evidence that this is true.

There is an unproven report, that may well be true, that Selkirk once complained that, although he was now a wealthy man, he was much happier when he did not have a farthing to his name. Even if this was an invention it would not have been out of character for a man whose best years, in retrospect, were spent entirely on his own on an island in the Pacific Ocean.

© John Welford

Balboa, the first European to see the Pacific Ocean

26th September 1513 was the day on which a European first set eyes on the Pacific Ocean, as far as is known. This was Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c.1475 – 1519), one of the Spanish “conquistadors”, although the 19th century poet John Keats, in his “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”, mistakenly attributed the feat to “stout Cortez”.


Balboa’s quest

Balboa had arrived at Darien on the isthmus of Panama in the hope of making money to clear his debts. He became the military commander of the small Spanish community there and was soon making trips inland in search of gold and slaves.

The reputation of the conquistadors in historical terms is not a good one, as they were responsible for many acts of murder and cultural vandalism in imposing their will on local populations. Balboa was probably one of the more enlightened of them, although he cannot be left off the hook entirely in this respect. He was not above using strong-arm tactics when it suited him, and once had 40 natives torn to pieces by dogs because they opposed him.

In 1513 Balboa heard that there were vast reserves of gold further inland, and he was determined to find them. It was neither the first nor the last time that a journey of exploration would be inspired by a story of treasure and riches to be found in a distant place. Usually the treasure turns out to be mythical, but sometimes a discovery of a different kind is made, as in Balboa’s case.

Balboa set off on 1st September at the head of 190 Spaniards and many more Indian guides and porters. The journey was extremely difficult, as they had to hack their way through thick jungle. For days on end they could not even see the sky through the forest canopy.


A peak in Darien

After 25 days they emerged in sight of a mountain (Keats’s “peak in Darien”). Balboa climbed the mountain alone and saw from the top the distant Pacific Ocean. He then invited the others to join him at the top. The expedition had crossed the narrow isthmus that connects North and South America and they could now see that there was another ocean that might, for all they knew, be even greater than the one the conquistadors has sailed across to reach the Americas from Spain.

Being a Spanish conqueror, Balboa’s first instinct was to carve the name of King Ferdinand on a tree, thus claiming the mountain for Spain. He reached the coast four days later and proceeded to wave his sword and claim the ocean for Spain as well.

Unfortunately for Balboa, his achievements caused jealousy in others. Six years later he was accused by the colony’s leader of treason, on a trumped-up charge, and he was beheaded in the main square of Darien. It was an ignominious end for one of the world’s most notable explorers.

© John Welford