The Earth’s landmasses have largely been explored. There are a handful of locations that remain “untouched” by human experience. These would include places like Pitcairn Island, which is located 3,300 miles from New Zealand. No plane or helicopter has ever landed there, and it takes about a 32-hour yacht ride to get there from Auckland.
Or the Namib Desert in Africa. They say it is one of the world’s oldest deserts, large, dry, non-vegetated, unexplored. There’s the mountain Gangkhar Puensum which is located in Bhutan near Tibet. It is the world’s tallest unclimbed mountain. I could name more, but you get my drift. We humans would have a heck of a time getting to these places, just to have a look around. Many of these places have been photographed from the air, so we have a working knowledge of them.
But years ago, all the continents had been touched, except for Antarctica. Yes, it was the last unexplored place, and many countries took a great interest, including Britain, Japan, Germany, Sweden, and Norway.
Back then, they were all competing against each other to gain knowledge of this icy region. But mostly, it was about getting there first and staking claim to this new territory. The geographical prize, the big to-do, was the South Pole – the most remote spot on the planet.
The victory would go to Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. He became the first man, on this day in 1911, to set foot on the South Pole. Upon arrival, and as proof of the victory, Amundsen and his team pitched their tent on the very spot of the South Pole with the Norwegian flag waving proudly above.
But the sad part of the story was coming from another direction. Captain Robert Falcon Scott, from England, had set out months before. He had been just as determined as Amundsen to win the race to the Pole.
But consider the timeline on this. The British party arrived in Antarctica in January 1911 and began their preparations. They took nine months to make ready before they left base camp on November 1, 1911. They took support parties, motor sleds, dogs, and ponies for this difficult journey. And once they set out, the race was on.
It is amazing to me that for all their preparations, they hadn’t counted on the horrendous conditions they would face. First of all, their mechanical sleds constantly broke down in the freezing weather. And then the ponies couldn’t cope with the cold. I mean, ponies? They start getting cold at 20 degrees Fahrenheit, from what I’ve read. Well, obviously, the expedition carried on without them. Then, by early-December, even the dog teams turned back. That left the explorers having to haul their sleds by hand.
Of the 65 members of the original team, only five remained. They were Captain Scott; his friend Dr. Edward Wilson; Welshman Edgar Evans; Scotsman Henry’ Birdie’ Bowers; and Captain Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates. By early December, they were completely exhausted and suffering from hypothermia and scurvy.
Oh, they arrived at the Pole, finally. On January 17, 1912. Of course, they found the heartbreaking sight of the Norwegian flag that had been put up by Amundsen 33 days earlier. The Norwegians had taken a shorter route.
The Scott party took pictures for documentation and quickly left. Ahead of them was a 932-mile journey back (1500 km). The conditions continued to be gruesome, with winds and temperatures hovering around minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 22 degrees Celsius).
The Welsh guy, Edgar Evans, was the first to die on February 17. He fell behind the group and slipped into a coma. One month later, on March 17, Captain Oates died. He had been crippled with frostbite and believed he was holding the others back. So on that night, he walked out of the tent and onto his death. It was his 32nd birthday.
The three remaining men remained in their tent, waiting for death. They were in the middle of a blizzard and were confined to their sleeping bags. Scott wrote in his diary:
“We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.”
And that was that. The adventure was done.
Eight months later, a search party found their tent, all three of them inside, frozen inside their sleeping bags. Scott’s diary was by his side. The search party covered them with the tent, then built a cairn of ice and snow over it to mark the grave.
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“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― Andre Gide
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“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
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“Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.”
― Walter Savage Landor
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Exploring the unknown planet until the end.
