Finding himself suddenly married, the newlywed Ellsworth deserted his bride and traveled alone to Death Valley where, holed up in the luxurious Furnace Creek Inn, he informed Mary Louise that he might like it so much in Antarctica, he would stay there. “It’s inconceivable to me that my life should not lie with yours,” Mary Louise responded. “It was very saddening to find your letter so different from the others.”1 But Ellsworth, for the moment at least, was content in the desert and expressed his feelings in a letter, not to his wife, but his niece, Clare:1
It is though I were formed of two beings from different spheres. The one is satisfied merely with the work and activity of the day. The other craves something else, something that is to be found somewhere in the west in the cloud kingdoms of the sunset, or in the dreamy splendor of the moon, or farther away in the trembling stars.2
When he was informed by Wilkins that the Wyatt Earp was preparing to sail from Norway, Ellsworth ceased his stargazing, returned to New York, collected Mary Louise and her mother, and prepared to rendezvous with his expedition in New Zealand.
The Wyatt Earp sailed from Norway on July 29, 1933. It was a sunny day and all morning people had been gathering on the quay at Bergen to see the brave little ship set out on its gallant voyage. By mid-afternoon the moorings were slipped amid a chorus of cheers, while nearby ships hooted their sirens in encouragement. Hundreds of small boats escorted the Wyatt Earp as the crew lined the rails to acknowledge the well-wishers. From the top of the foremast the American flag fluttered proudly above the flags of scientific societies, schools, and clubs with which Ellsworth had a connection. Flapping alone at the stern was the Norwegian flag: a quiet reminder that this, despite its cowboy name, was a Norwegian ship. It might have been bought and paid for by a wealthy American, but to the Norwegian people the Wyatt Earp was still their ship, crewed by sturdy Norwegian men, courageously sailing south in the wake of Roald Amundsen. At the Inner Lighthouse, the Norwegian flag was dipped three times and three long blasts of the ship’s siren bid farewell.
The Polar Star was stowed in the hold with its wings detached and wrapped in oiled paper to prevent corrosion.
In open sea, the Wyatt Earp was hit by a gale that lasted two days. It pitched and rolled, as it was prone to do, but otherwise proved seaworthy. Wilkins wrote to his wife,2 “The ship rolls a great deal but it is not a viscous crazy roll, just swaying from side to side. We get used to it.” After the gale abated, the crew enjoyed fine weather to Cape Town and became confident their small ship would be more than capable in the stormy Southern Ocean. “The captain and crew have turned out pretty good,” Wilkins wrote. “There is a good spirit on board—the cook has cleaned up everything in the galley and mess and the food is good.”3
Of the men on board Wilkins was the only Australian. Bernt Balchen, born a Norwegian, was a naturalized American citizen, while Chris Braathen, the mechanic, and Walter Lanz, the radio operator, were Americans. The rest of the crew were Norwegians and, with the exception of a young doctor, had all crossed either the Arctic or Antarctic Circle. The Wyatt Earp had an experienced captain, Baard Holth, at the helm.
Among the Norwegians was twenty-year-old Magnus Olsen, who was serving as first mate. Born in Norway in 1913, Olsen had been raised by his grandfather, who instilled in him a love of ships and the sea. He had graduated from the Norwegian Naval Academy in March 1933, just four months before the Wyatt Earp sailed. Olsen was also a flier, and he had been included in the Wyatt Earp’s crew to act as a reserve pilot for Balchen. Olsen would later publish the only Norwegian account of the first three voyages of the Wyatt Earp.3
The trip to New Zealand gave Balchen a chance to assess Wilkins. The perceptive Balchen was not impressed. “He is a strange fellow, fiddling around by himself all the time,” he wrote to his wife. “Whatever he does, it usually ends up wrong.”4
The Wyatt Earp had to stop for ten days at Cape Town, South Africa, while Balchen had his tonsils removed. Testy that the expedition was wasting time, Ellsworth sent a telegram wanting to know why the ship was delayed, emphasizing that they needed to get to Antarctica quickly, and reiterating, “under no consideration will I winter.”5 That Ellsworth had no intention of wintering in Antarctica was not news to Wilkins, and he urged the crew to proceed with haste. He was also pleased to report to his disinterested wife that “The crew are quite a deal better than those on the Nautilus”:
One or two on board are not ideal but they are not so bad while at sea as in port. Not many of them get drunk, but one went out the first night in port, had one drink at a cheap pub. The drink was doped and the sailor woke up on the wharf near the ship minus his false teeth, his collar and tie, and his hat. He has no recollection of what happened to him after the drink.6
The expedition left Cape Town on September 28, and six weeks later was greeted by Ellsworth in the southern New Zealand city of Dunedin. “How proud I was of my little ship, thus soberly and faithfully finishing her long voyage,”7 he later wrote.
At Dunedin, the practical Balchen went hunting, and shot four wild pigs that were then hung from the rigging. He also wrote to his wife, “Wilkins has become much nicer now that Ellsworth has joined us.”8
Ellsworth, for whom exploration was supposed to be about “the painfully established bases, the bitter journeys with sleds and dogs, the heroic battle against the elements,”9 had sailed first class on a liner to New Zealand. He, along with Mary Louise and her mother, had arrived in Auckland earlier in September, insulted most of the local dignitaries, then, learning the Wyatt Earp was still held up in Cape Town, sailed to Pago Pago where it was warmer, before returning to New Zealand. Wilkins observed of the newly married couple:
They have been having a wretched time in New Zealand. They don’t care for the place at all and find the people uninteresting. However that is all their own fault for I hear from several quarters that people—the Governor and all the others in society out here, have been making many plans for the entertainment of the honeymooners . . . but they won’t fall for the society stuff.
To the Governor’s invitation to call at Government House, they have not even answered, neither has Lincoln replied to a letter telling him that the people of Dunedin were affording him the freedom of the port—a saving to him of two or three thousand dollars. These little things I can now fix up, but it hasn’t made the job much easier for me in this town.10
Having greeted his ship at Dunedin, Ellsworth learned it would be a month before it would depart for the Antarctic. Not wanting to spend any more time than necessary in the provincial city, he and Mary Louise found a comfortable hotel a few hours’ drive north in the larger city of Christchurch.
In Dunedin, Wilkins oversaw the coaling of the Wyatt Earp and the loading of supplies, while receiving a stream of telegrams from Ellsworth, instructing him not to imply that he was somehow organizing the expedition on Ellsworth’s behalf. Wilkins confided to his wife:
[Ellsworth] sends me repeatedly, telegrams asking me not to accept luncheon engagements or speak or be seen in public any more than I can help for fear people will think that I am managing his affairs. Yet that fact cannot be but obvious because he has just as much trouble making up his mind what to do or what he wants, as ever, and it inevitably remains for me to finally say that he must do this and that, and then do it for him.11
Two days after the Wyatt Earp arrived at Dunedin, while Ellsworth sat in his hotel room at Christchurch, he received a disturbing radiogram from his old rival, Richard Byrd. “We are headed for Wellington [New Zealand],”12 Byrd announced triumphantly, then continued to ask that if Ellsworth reached the Bay of Whales first, would he be good enough to supply Byrd with weather reports. To Ellsworth it must have seemed like the North Pole all over again: Byrd arriving with his large expedition to steal the glory and media attention.
Richard Byrd’s second Antarctic expedition included two ships, the Curtiss Condor, two smaller planes, and an early form of helicopter known as an autogiro. Those were in addition to the two planes he had left at Little America in 1930. (He had taken a third in 1928, but it had been blown away in a gale.) The slower of the ships, the Bear, had sailed from the U.S. on September 25, 1933. The Ruppert, with Byrd on board, left on October 11. Byrd’s original plan had been to first reach Peter I Island, a tiny landfall lying within the Antarctic Circle, southwest of Cape Horn. But for reasons he never explained, on the same day that the Wyatt Earp had reached Dunedin, Byrd changed his mind, postponing the idea of flying from Peter I Island, and ordered his ship to sail directly to New Zealand, where the crew could stock up on alcohol at beautiful, friendly, and prohibition-free Wellington.4 New Zealand’s Auckland Star observed:
Apparently there is a race between the Ellsworth and Byrd expeditions to reach Antarctica first. The expeditions are entirely independent of one another, but it is known that Mr. Ellsworth is not desirous of being headed in reaching the Ice Barrier. A message from the Jacob Ruppert has already indicated that Rear-Admiral Byrd is anxious to speed up his trip south and not delay the ships in New Zealand waters.13
Meanwhile, frustrated that Ellsworth’s instructions were ambiguous, vague, or contradictory, Wilkins drove to Christchurch to speak to him directly. He found Ellsworth mired in depression and having second thoughts about the whole expedition. Mary Louise, after six months of marriage, was equally frustrated. Wilkins revealed to his wife:
She does not know how long it will last. Mary does everything she can to please Lincoln . . . but she does not dare express very forcibly all her desires in order not to embarrass Lincoln. She told me that she has got him to promise to “go out”—step out, she said, twice a week when they return to the cities after the expedition. She has discovered that Lincoln does not like parties—luncheons, teas, or dinners or the theater, except vaudeville. He seems to like vaudeville shows so she expects their stepping out will be practically confined to the Hippodrome and such like.
Mary Louise also confided in Wilkins that she and Lincoln were sleeping in separate rooms, and Wilkins confirmed:
. . . Mary’s tale, and what I have heard from the keeper of the hotel where they have been staying, that separate bedrooms, sometimes the length of the corridor apart, are the vogue, seems to lack indication of lovers canoodling.14
Wilkins left Ellsworth holed up alone in his hotel room at Christchurch, and returned to Dunedin to continue preparing the Wyatt Earp. In the following weeks, barges plied their way around the ship and supplies were hoisted aboard to be stored in the holds. Magnus Olsen, the young Norwegian, recalled he was helping load the ship when:
. . . a mysterious box was then hoisted up. It so happened that I was the one to receive it, and as I stood looking at it, the little boat turned swiftly and chugged back to shore. As the sound of the engine died away, I began to hear strange noises coming from within the box itself. I wondered at first if the box contained a dog but by listening more intently I realized that the noises were the grunts of a pig!15
Olsen adopted the pig, which had been donated by an anonymous farmer, and built a small home for it out of packing crates. Over the door he painted “Miss Piggy’s Cottage,” and observed that the pig continually soiled the deck, until a tray of sawdust was provided for it. The ship’s cat, on board to keep the rat population in check, began using the litter tray and, remarkably, Miss Piggy followed its example. Soon she was trotting around like a house-trained puppy and was a welcome addition to the expedition.
Ellsworth also sent on board forty bottles of whisky for his personal consumption, in addition to the whisky and beer taken on board for the crew.
Finally, on December 5, the Wyatt Earp left Dunedin. At Port Chalmers, the last landfall near the mouth of the Otago Harbour, Wilkins scribbled a hasty letter to his wife:
We are away from the port and you should have seen the “awaying.” Lincoln and Balchen full to the gills. Balchen followed by a Swedish blonde who immediately fastened herself to Ellsworth (who was in tears for an hour after the departure of Mary Louise, who went away an hour before we sailed) and you should have seen the snogging going on. The girl was very affectionate and apparently enjoyed kissing, and Lincoln didn’t seem to mind it in the least.16
Other crew members had also brought girls on board for the short trip down the harbor from Dunedin to Port Chalmers, where Wilkins hustled them all ashore. With the girls gone, and Ellsworth and Balchen passed out drunk in their bunks, the Wyatt Earp chugged out into the Southern Ocean on its quest to achieve the last great first in polar exploration. Ellsworth’s grand voyage of discovery was underway, and he later recalled proudly:
I don’t suppose any vessel ever sailed before so filled with the presence of the figure whose name it bore as was the Wyatt Earp when it set out for the Antarctic. In the ship’s library were two books about Earp: Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshall, by Stewart N. Lake, and Tombstone, by Walter Noble Burns. Everybody on board read these two volumes, the Norwegians who understood English translating to those who didn’t. On one of my fingers I wore a plain gold wedding-ring which the widowed Mrs. Earp had given me in memory of her famous husband. Wyatt Earp wore this ring during his Tombstone days, and he in turn had received it from his father. The ring, therefore, saw three generations of pioneers.17