The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

ROALD AMUNDSEN

On December 16, 1911, a Norwegian exploring party headed by Captain Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. The discovery thus followed with surprising closeness after Peary's triumph in reaching the North Pole in 1909.

Antarctic exploration had never attracted so much attention as that of the far north; partly because an almost impossible ice barrier a hundred feet high was known to extend across the southern ocean at about the parallel of the Antarctic Circle. In 1908, however, an English expedition under Lieutenant Shackleton managed to penetrate beyond this barrier in the region south of New Zealand and reached to within less than two hundred miles of the pole. They established the fact that in contrast to the deep waters which flow above the northern Pole, the southern Pole is raised upon an Antarctic mountain continent many thousand feet in height. Shackleton's success led to several other expeditions, and in 1910 three separate parties made almost simultaneous efforts to reach the Pole, one from Japan and one from England, as well as the Norwegian one.

We give here Captain Amundsen's own account of his expedition as first explained by him before the Berlin Geographical Society and published by the New York Geographical Society in their bulletin.

The glowing success of Amundsen's expedition throws into sharpest relief the tragedy of the parallel English expedition. Captain Scott, the leader of this party, also reached the Pole after a far more desperate struggle. But he reached it on January 18, 1912, only to find that his Norwegian rival had preceded him, and he and his entire party died of starvation and exhaustion on their return journey toward their camp.

The first aim of my expedition was the attainment of the South Pole. I have the honor to report the accomplishment of the plan.

I can only mention briefly here the expeditions which have worked in the region which we had selected for our starting-point. As we wished to reach the South Pole our first problem was to go south as far as possible with our ship and there establish our station. Even so, the sled journeys would be long enough. I knew that the English expedition would again choose their old winter quarters in McMurdo Sound, South Victoria Land, as their starting-point. From newspaper report it was known that the Japanese had selected King Edward VII. Land. In order to avoid these two expeditions we had to establish our station on the Great Ice Barrier as far as possible from the starting-points of the two other expeditions.

The Great Ice Barrier, also called the Ross Barrier, lies between South Victoria Land and King Edward VII. Land and has an extent of about 515 miles. The first to reach this mighty ice formation was Sir James Clark Ross in 1841. He did not dare approach the great ice wall, 100 feet high, with his two sailing ships, the Erebus and the Terror, whose progress southward was impeded by this mighty obstacle. He examined the ice wall from a distance, however, as far as possible. His observations showed that the Barrier is not a continuous, abrupt ice wall, but is interrupted by bays and small channels. On Ross's map a bay of considerable magnitude may be seen.

The next expedition was that of the Southern Cross in 1900. It is interesting to note that this party found the bay mentioned above at the same place where Ross had seen it in 1841, nearly sixty years before; that this expedition also was able to land a few miles to the east of the large bay in a small bay, named Balloon Bight, and from there to ascend the Ice Barrier, which heretofore had been considered an insurmountable obstacle to further advance toward the south.