A day after the Ellsworth Trans-Antarctic Expedition sailed, the Byrd Antarctic Expedition II arrived in Wellington, New Zealand. Byrd soaked up a round of social engagements while the crew hurriedly restocked their supplies and purchased alcohol. Asked to comment on the “race” to reach the Ross Ice Shelf, Byrd replied magnanimously:
Mr. Ellsworth is an old and very great personal friend. Mr. Ellsworth asked my permission to operate from Little America and to take with him Mr. Balchen, who was with me on my last expedition and who is one of the greatest pilots in the world. That permission was readily given.1
When the comment was relayed by radiogram to the Wyatt Earp, it succeeded in annoying both Ellsworth and Balchen, neither of whom felt they needed Byrd’s permission to do anything. Matters were not helped a day later when another radiogram, sent by a reporter, asked Ellsworth if he cared to comment on the announcement that Byrd intended to beat Ellsworth to the Bay of Whales by flying from his ship, partway across the continent. Wilkins replied courteously on behalf of Ellsworth:
Statement from Ellsworth—with a definite plan in view I am not in race to reach the Antarctic first. The Antarctic is a big territory and there is room for many expeditions. In my mind cooperation rather than a race should be the real incentive. I do not know Byrd’s plans and it has never been my intention to use Little America.2
Less than a week after the Wyatt Earp, with its tiny crew, had left New Zealand, Byrd followed with the largest expedition yet to assault the southern continent. In addition to his ships and airplanes, Byrd’s second Antarctic expedition included ninety-five men, 135 dogs, three cows (one of which was pregnant), and enough supplies to maintain a small community for three years. Among the fifty-two page inventory were three hundred pairs of overalls, fifteen stoves, fifteen hundred pounds of tobacco, six cases of chewing gum, three thousand books, six step ladders, seventy-two brooms, and two kitchen sinks. The Norwegian explorers had learned to adapt to the ice. The Americans would remake it in their own image.
After his brief visit to New Zealand, Byrd did not follow the Wyatt Earp to the Bay of Whales but, instead, headed back to the unexplored Pacific Quadrant, in search of headlines. Byrd still harbored hopes of upstaging Ellsworth by making significant flights of discovery from the area.
Between 80º West and 150º West no one had seen the coast of Antarctica or knew where the land—if indeed there was land—ended, and the ice began. Was there, in the Pacific Quadrant, another enormous ice shelf? Or a mountain range? Or islands? No one had been farther south than Captain James Cook, on his second great voyage of discovery (1773–74) when his path had been blocked by a wall of massive icebergs, stretching from horizon to horizon.
Byrd’s plan was to thread his way through the icebergs as far as possible, lower the Curtiss Condor, which had been fitted with pontoons, onto clear water, then search for land. Seven days out of Wellington, after storms and rough seas had slowed progress, the Ruppert crept past Cook’s southernmost point to enter the icebergs. Hundreds were counted, many three or four miles wide. Byrd named the area the Devil’s Graveyard, because of the constant threat of being crushed.
A day later, the crew took depth soundings but could not find bottom at 300 fathoms (1,800 feet). Evidently, land was not nearby. A day later again, an ice-free area was found for the Curtiss Condor, so with pilot Harold June at the controls, Byrd flew south along the 150° West meridian. One hundred and eighty miles south of the Ruppert, he could still see nothing but icebergs. After flying past 69° South, more than one hundred miles farther south than Cook had sailed, and having used half his fuel, Byrd turned back.
On the Ruppert he faced a choice. A radio message from the Wyatt Earp informed him that Wilkins and Ellsworth were still battling their way through the ice pack to reach the Bay of Whales. Should he, having failed to find the coast on his first flight, now head west for the Bay of Whales and get his ship unloaded, so his men could start building Little America II? Or should he sail east to make another flight in an attempt to find land? He decided to go east, and for two frustrating weeks the Ruppert picked its way precariously through icebergs. The Devil, Byrd learned, had a large graveyard.
On January 3, 1934, near 116º West, and just below the Antarctic Circle, another open stretch of water was found and the Curtiss Condor was lowered to the sea. Again, Byrd flew south in the hope of discovering land, but shortly after takeoff, fog enveloped the plane. When the fog cleared Byrd saw the horizon was black with snow-covered squalls. They were flying into a storm. They had reached 72º 30' South and the coast of Antarctica still eluded them. Byrd flew back to the ship.
Byrd waited twenty-four hours to attempt another flight, but the weather only worsened. He ordered the Ruppert north and, after threading its way through the icebergs, it emerged into clear water on January 6. A day later Byrd received a radio message reporting the Wyatt Earp had reached the Bay of Whales.
The Wyatt Earp had a rough trip south. In heavy weather it would roll fifty degrees to each side. From being heeled over to port, rolling though one hundred degrees to starboard, then back to port, took only four and a half seconds. Anything not secured would be catapulted about the cabins with dangerous velocity. The entire trip was hell for the claustrophobic Ellsworth, who had never known such sailing or the confines of a small ship. He rarely emerged from his cabin and when he did, he managed to alienate the crew. On one occasion, he ordered Miss Piggy be slaughtered, so he could have fresh bacon for breakfast. Shortly after, First Mate Olsen knocked on his door, presented him with a pistol, and told Ellsworth if he wanted bacon, he was to get it himself. Miss Piggy’s Antarctic adventure continued.
Extending several hundred miles from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf was the dreaded “pack,” a constantly moving maze of tabular icebergs slowly floating northward to melt in warmer waters. Fortunately, Captain Holth had been to the Antarctic previously and understood there was no quick or easy way to negotiate the pack. He spent three weeks threading the Wyatt Earp though the icebergs, before the expedition confronted the Ross Ice Shelf.
When Captain Sir James Clark Ross, the British explorer, discovered the shelf in 1841, and named it the Barrier, he observed there were few opportunities to unload a ship and scramble onto the ice along the four-hundred-mile wall that rose sharply from the water to, in some places, 150 feet. Ross did record that at the eastern end of the wall of ice, there was an indent, like the entrance to a narrow harbor. Robert Scott, on his first Antarctic expedition, found the same indent sixty-three years later. With the benefit of coal-fired steam propulsion, as opposed to a sailing ship at the mercy of the winds, Scott nosed the Discovery into the inlet to have a look around and took advantage of the low ice to disembark his men to practice their skiing. After going aloft in a tethered balloon to get a better view of the extent of the shelf, Scott named the indent Balloon Bight. Shackleton arrived next in January 1908 and renamed the indent the Bay of Whales, for “it was a veritable playground for these monsters.”3 Despite being able to unload their ships at the bay, neither Scott nor Shackleton thought a floating ice shelf was a safe place to set up their winter headquarters. Both continued to the western end, where they could build their huts on firm ground.
By the time he sailed south on the Fram in 1910, Amundsen had read Scott’s and Shackleton’s accounts of their respective expeditions and noted that the Bay of Whales was a permanent fixture:
For seventy years then, this formation—with the exception of the pieces that had broken away—had persisted in the same place. I therefore concluded that it could be no accidental formation. What once, in the dawn of time, arrested the mighty stream of ice at this spot and formed a lasting bay in its edge, which with few exceptions runs in an almost straight line, was not merely a passing whim of the fearful force that came crashing on, but something even stronger than that—something that was firmer than hard ice—namely solid land.4
Amundsen realized the Bay of Whales was formed by land farther south, impeding the northerly flow of the glacial ice. That unseen land, he reasoned correctly, would stabilize the surrounding ice shelf and make it safe on which to erect his hut. The bay was also a degree of latitude higher than the islands at the western extremity of the shelf, and therefore he could start his trek closer to the South Pole than Scott. Amundsen’s gamble ultimately paid dividends.
In 1928, Byrd followed Amundsen and chose to build Little America at the Bay of Whales, because the flat surface of the surrounding ice shelf offered a vast ready-made runway for his airplanes.
On January 7, 1934, the Wyatt Earp entered the Bay of Whales. An area where the ice was level with the ship’s deck was soon located. Balchen examined the surrounding shelf, approving its suitability as a possible runway, then he and mechanic Chris Braathen, who had also been at Little America with Byrd, strapped on skis and went in search of what had been their home four years earlier. Twelve miles south they found radio towers, chimneys, and the rudder of Byrd’s Ford Trimotor protruding from the snow. Balchen burrowed down to the cockpit of the plane that he had piloted to the South Pole and discovered everything as he had left it. He sat in the pilot’s seat and memories of the historic flight flooded back. He reached down and, on the floor, found the small pocket slide rule he had lost. Nothing had changed. Little America was frozen in time.
“Little America is as you left it with the planes in good condition except for digging out,” Wilkins radioed to Byrd as a courtesy, knowing the Americans were sailing in the wake of the Wyatt Earp. “Radio masts OK but tremendous pressure shows in front of Ver-Sur-Mer [inlet]1 making it impassable for dog teams. [Wyatt Earp] docked twelve miles from Little America. No sign of thawing this summer.”5
The awkward task of hauling the Polar Star twelve miles to Little America was considered unnecessary. All the crew needed to do was to get the plane unloaded, attach the wings, get Ellsworth and Balchen airborne, let them make the twenty-hour flight to the Weddell Sea and back, then pack up and get the hell out of there.
The fuselage was lifted from the hold of the Wyatt Earp, followed by each wing, and the crew began the tricky job of assembly. Attaching the wings meant threading hundreds of tiny metal bolts, then attaching nuts, which was impossible using gloves. To stop their hands freezing, the crew rigged a canvas cover over the plane and warmed the air with four blowlamps. The task still consumed two days. Then Balchen and mechanic Chris Braathen took the Polar Star up for two short test flights. Everything worked perfectly. Next, Balchen took Ellsworth up for thirty minutes and Ellsworth was thrilled to realize his great flight of discovery was about to begin. Olsen observed Ellsworth was “like a little boy in his excitement.”6 Even the weather for the following day promised to be clear.
But as the sea pounded the ice shelf, small sections near the edge began to crack and break off. Alarmed at the sight of the shelf breaking, Balchen took some of the crew and moved the plane about a mile farther from the edge. Wilkins questioned whether it was far enough but, as Ellsworth remembered, “Balchen said it would be better to take if back farther, but it would be safe for the night. Everyone was tired.”7 Ellsworth turned in, delighted the flight would take place the next day.
But his dream of polar immortality was rudely awakened at 4:00 A.M. by men shouting in Norwegian and the clamor of running feet. Ellsworth scrambled out of his bunk and rushed on deck to see the normally stable shelf buckling and cracking, as slabs of ice the size of football fields rose and fell, smashing each other at the edges. To Olsen, watching the phenomenon, it sounded like, “the tuning up of a mighty orchestra . . . as if the whole universe had begun to vibrate.”8 Gaps appeared between the slabs of ice. Even with the Polar Star a mile away, sitting alone under its canvas cover, Ellsworth could see the cracks snaking dangerously close to his precious plane. Nine crew members climbed over the side of the Wyatt Earp and, balancing on the heaving ice slabs, hurried toward the Polar Star.
When, after an hour, the men reached the Polar Star, an extraordinary sight greeted them. A crack in the ice ran directly beneath the plane. The Polar Star had dropped neatly into it and was only saved from plunging to the bottom of the sea by its wings, which spread across the ice on either side. The plane was too heavy to lift manually, so their only hope was to somehow get the Wyatt Earp close enough to hoist it on board before the crack widened.
After hours of delicate maneuvering, Captain Holth managed to penetrate the floes, some of which had the courtesy to drift away, to within about three hundred feet of the stranded plane. A cable was run out and for the next four hours the Polar Star was reeled in, inch by inch, to where it could be lifted on board. There was a deathly silence as the plane was hoisted clear of the ice. As it dangled from the derrick the damage was clear. The undercarriage was completely stoved in. There would be no flying this season.
Ellsworth was shattered. It was plain bad luck, and Ellsworth and Wilkins both seemed to attract it. The news got worse. In the urgency to thread its way as close to the Polar Star as possible, the Wyatt Earp had become trapped. After everyone had rested, Wilkins gathered the crew together and told them they were not to be upset over “that thing on the deck with the broken legs.”9 Glasses of champagne were circulated and Wilkins explained their present imprisonment in the ice was not serious.
By this time, having spent six weeks with Ellsworth, most of the crew had come to, at best, ignore him and, at worst, detest him. Magnus Olsen (who was in the camp that chose to ignore him), wrote of the misfortune:
Sir Hubert’s own calm and indomitable spirit had saved the situation . . . his whole attitude to everything had so cheered us that, along with the afterglow of the champagne, we were at last impelled to tell our versions of the great drama which had been enacted on the previous day. It was a tremendous honor to serve under such a great explorer.10
After they had rested, the crew started the laborious task of blasting their way free of the ice. First, holes ten feet deep were drilled by hand in the ice. Then, sticks of dynamite taped to the ends of bamboo poles were lowered into the holes. Caps on the top of the dynamite were set off with an electrical charge, usually from a distance of about one hundred feet. The results were unspectacular. The ice would simply rupture, lift fractionally and fall back into place. Undeterred, the crew kept repeating the process, until the Wyatt Earp was surrounded by cracks and small channels. By that time, however, the engine could not be started because the propeller and rudder were frozen in a solid block of ice. Explosives could not be used, for fear of damage. So, for five days, the crew dynamited forward of the bow and used a hand saw to produce cracks, then, walking on the ice, man-hauled the Wyatt Earp toward open water. Once they were partially free, they used an old Norwegian sailors’ trick to warm the ice surrounding the propeller and rudder. They slung hessian bags containing lumps of carbide and rock salt over the side, so when the seawater soaked into the bags, heat was generated and the ice melted.
Finally, after an exhausting week, the Wyatt Earp reached the open sea.