Surviving the Antarctic

The plan, at least in concept, was simple enough.

Six men, led by Swedish explorer Otto Nordenskjold, would put ashore on the Antarctic Peninsula in early 1902, and after a summer and winter exploring and conducting scientific research, would be picked up by their ship the following summer and return to Sweden and public acclaim.

It started well enough. The expedition vessel -- dubbed, appropriately enough, Antarctic, and captained by Norwegian Carl Anton Larsen -- left Gothenburg on October 16, 1901, and arrived off the Antarctic Peninsula on January 10, 1902. Nordenskjold and five others set ashore at a place they called Snow Hill Island, waved goodbye to the Antarctic, and set about their work.

With the resumption of summer late in the year, Nordenskjöld and companions prepared themselves for the return of their ship, but with each passing week, the vessel’s arrival seemed progressively less likely. Day after day, each member of the party took turns to climb to the top of a nearby bluff and look out for signs of the Antarctic’s approach, but each time the sight was the same: no ship anywhere to be seen, and where there should have been open water, nothing but ice stretching seemingly to the horizon.

Reluctantly, the six men steeled themselves for a second, unplanned, winter ashore in the cold surroundings of the Antarctic; in the meantime, they continued stoically with their research. On 12 October 1903, 20 months after being put ashore and fully 12 months after they had expected to be rescued, Nordenskjold and one of his party were on a sledding expedition when they saw figures in the distance.

At first they thought the figures must be penguins; then, realizing they were humans, wondered if they could be natives, such was the relative lack of knowledge about the southern realms. Imagine the collective shock when the three men turned out to be crew of the Antarctic.

Nordenskjold's brief joy at the imminence of rescue was rapidly tempered when the three men revealed that they, in fact, did not know where the Antarctic was. When the ship had been unable to penetrate the sea ice to retrieve Nordenskjold and his team the previous summer, Larsen had sent ashore a second landing party to make its way to Snow Hill Island and take the six over-winterers to where the vessel was waiting. Conditions prevented them from making that journey, however, so they turned back to advise Larsen of their failure. But when they reached the agreed rendezvous point, there was no sign of the ship. As a result, the second party, too, had been obliged to spend a winter ashore.

At least the two marooned camps had been reunited. But where was the Antarctic?

(I was recently reminded of this story, which is my favorite tale of Antarctic survival against the odds, when I came across this press release from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, announcing that the world's largest oceanography library was going digital. Thanks to a partnership with Google, over 100,000 titles in the institution's library have been digitized and are now available via the Google Book Search Index. One of the titles that caught my eye was the Fishes of the Swedish South Polar Expedition, one of the scientific outputs of Nordenskjold's endeavor. About seven years ago, I contemplated writing a book about the Swedish expedition, and may yet do so; it is testament to the rapidly advancing digital age that even back in 2003 I would have had to spend a lot of time grubbing around libraries for historical documents that I can now access via my desktop.

Ah, but I'm getting away from the narrative...)

The two parties returned to the camp at Snow Hill Island, wondering what had happened to their comrades and whether rescue would ever come their way. On November 8, three weeks after the two groups had found each other, there was excitement as four men appeared on the ice in the distance, coming ever closer. Surely it was Larsen, come to save them at last?

Rescuers indeed they were. But the head of the rescue party was not Larsen, but Capt. Julian Irizar of the Uruguay, which had been dispatched by the Argentine government to search for the expedition.

Conflicting emotions now tore at Nordenskjold. The Uruguay had heard no word of the Antarctic; clearly, the expedition vessel had been lost. Should he accept the rescue now on offer, if it meant abandoning any hope of finding Larsen and the rest of the crew?

It was an agonizing decision he would not, in the end, have to make. Amazingly, that very evening, Larsen and five others appeared over the horizon.

After dropping off the second landing party, the Antarctic had been crushed in the ice and the crew forced to scramble ashore at Paulet Island. The expedition had been broken into three groups, each forced to spend an unplanned winter ashore in the Antarctic, none of them knowing the fate or whereabouts of the others; and yet, astonishingly, they had found each other. Just one man, a member of the Paulet Island crew, died during the ordeal.

On his return, Nordenskjold was appointed chair of geography at the University of Gothenburg, a position he occupied until his death in 1928. He never returned to Antarctica.

Larsen, however, did. During the expedition, he had noticed an abundance of whales in the region, and in 1904, he established the first commercial whaling operation in the Antarctic, on South Georgia. During the first season of operation, Larsen's men killed 183 whales. Thirty years later, the maximum number of whales killed in a year had soared to 45,000.

But that, as they say, is another story...

Images: Wikimedia Commons; Giovanni Fattori