At Advance Base, everything worked reasonably well for the first two months. The gasoline that powered the generator for the radio gave off fumes and Byrd learned to store the generator in a food tunnel, only bringing it into the hut when he needed to use it. The protruding roof soon accumulated snow, making the trapdoor difficult to open, so Byrd dug another escape tunnel. He also found he was without a recipe book and, not knowing how to cook, had to continually radio Little America for instructions. Otherwise, things went to plan.
The same could not be said for life at Little America, where Tom Poulter, who was a nondrinker, had been left in charge of a boozy group of men who had no respect for his authority. There was also a sense among the men that their leader had forsaken them, and that Byrd’s idea of wintering alone was only designed to glorify him. We are “tools for the Admiral’s ambition,”1 one man wrote in his diary.
While Harold June and the construction party had been erecting Advance Base, Poulter had attempted to rein in the drinking at Little America by confiscating some of the alcohol and hiding it. He had also buried what was left of Dr. Shirley’s stash in the snow. After the construction team returned from Advance Base on April 1, Poulter relaxed the rules and let the men drink alcohol from their remaining supplies. Some got exceedingly drunk, fell in the snow, and almost froze to death. Rather than ordering the remaining alcohol to be dumped out, Poulter let the men keep drinking in the hope that their supply would soon be exhausted.
Fearing that Poulter might soon instigate total prohibition, June started gathering support among expedition members to overrule Poulter’s command. Poulter reacted by attempting to form an executive committee to forestall June. All the while, the drunken binges continued. Knowing that Poulter had hidden Dr. Shirley’s cases of whisky, the men would stagger around in the snow, probing with long metal rods, trying to locate it. Next, Poulter tried to calm the men by occasionally handing over a few bottles, but the peace offering did not produce the desired effect. The men immediately got drunk and those that didn’t stumble around in the snow became increasingly antagonistic. Poulter reacted to the aggression by secretly pouring twenty cases of rye and bourbon into the snow, but not knowing the mother lode had been destroyed, the men continued to search for it.
At the same time, some of the men were directing their hostility toward Byrd, who on the previous expedition had been a willing participant in the drinking sessions. He had actually encouraged them. Now many men were annoyed that he had not only deserted them, but had left a nondrinker in charge. One expedition member wrote in his diary of the pathetic struggling of a group of men “to satisfy an already satiated leader’s publicity complex.” Another hung a sign around the neck of a dog that had frozen that read, “I died for Byrd. Why don’t you?”2
Alone at Advance Base during April and May, Byrd enjoyed himself. “Indeed I look forward to the rest of my sojourn with pleasure,” he wrote. The simple unhurried routine, combined with the lack of human contact, gave him ample time to reflect on his life, which he did:
Yes, solitude is greater than I anticipated. My sense of values is changing, and many things which before were in solution in my mind, now seem to be crystallizing. I am better able to tell what in the world is wheat for me and what is chaff. In fact, my definition of success itself is changing.3
In the stillness, a tiny helpless dot in a vast landscape of whiteness and purity, Byrd also began to sense, like many others who share a similar experience, a presence of God:
The universe is not dead. Therefore, there is an Intelligence there, and it is all pervading. At least one purpose, possibly the major purpose, of that Intelligence is the achievement of universal harmony . . . The human race is therefore not alone in the universe. Though I am cut off from human beings, I am not alone.
For untold ages man had felt an awareness of that Intelligence. Belief in it is the one point where all religions agree. It has been called many names. Many call it God.4
But while Byrd explored his consciousness and spirituality, he was slowly being poisoned. History offers two theories as to what poisoned him.1 One points to the gasoline engine that ran the generator to power the radio. Byrd would crawl into the narrow tunnel daily and start the engine for his radio transmissions, but the fumes in the tunnel made him nauseous. The other theory points to the kerosene stove that Byrd used to heat the hut and cook his food. He needed to keep the stove burning to avoid freezing to death. The original stove had given off such strong fumes that the men setting up the hut had replaced it with a smaller coal-burning stove, which had been hastily converted for kerosene. That makeshift device was attached to an ill-fitting flue, which leaked. Slowly, as the weeks passed, Byrd’s condition, as a result of the gasoline engine or the stove, or both, worsened.
By early June, Byrd realized he was sick but was unsure what to do about it. He desperately needed what little heat he could get from the kerosene stove, because a few feet above him, the temperature was -60°F (-51°C). And he needed to keep crawling into the radio tunnel to send his messages. If he stopped, he feared his men would attempt to rescue him. A sledging journey across the shelf in the dead of winter would be almost suicidal. Byrd had to keep up the appearance that everything was fine at Advance Base while, in fact, he knew he was being poisoned.
At Little America however, Byrd’s erratic signals were worrying Poulter. On June 14, Byrd asked if moisture would help reduce carbon monoxide, and asked Poulter to make exhaustive recommendations for keeping down carbon monoxide fumes. Poulter knew his leader was in trouble. He consulted Charles Murphy, who was Byrd’s public relations man and one of the few men who was not part of June’s drinking group. Should they attempt to reach Byrd in the dark of winter, with temperatures at -60°F and unseen crevices crossing their path?
At the same time, keeping Byrd’s worsening condition a secret was impossible at Little America. Despite orders forbidding private radios, some had been smuggled in, and various men were eavesdropping on Byrd’s communications with Poulter and Murphy, then relaying information to the United States. By late June, Byrd’s condition was so well known that even the New York Times was speculating that he might need to be rescued. Byrd, meanwhile, was still torn between wanting to be rescued and not wanting his men to risk their lives. He issued instructions clearly stating that no attempt should be made to come and get him until the light was sufficient and men could make the trip without undue risk.
Poulter, whose scientific disciplines included astronomy, tactfully asked if he could be allowed to make a trip thirty miles from Little America, along the trail to Advance Base, to observe a meteor shower. Byrd gave his consent. On June 26, Poulter and three others went out on the trail with one of the tractors. Although an ordeal, the trip proved something of a success because, using torches, the men were able to follow the trail of flags that led to Advance Base. A week later Poulter posted a notice on the bulletin board announcing that a tractor party would be sent to rescue Byrd. He stated that he felt it would be safe to leave on such a trip in the last two weeks of July.
Harold June immediately called a meeting of the “executive staff,” which rejected the idea as too dangerous. Poulter called another meeting, which supporters of both camps attended. When June announced that he wanted no responsibility for what might happen to the rescue party, Poulter took it as a sign that he would not veto the idea. Remarkably, that was the first of many meetings. The debate continued as expedition members moved motions, offered opinions, called more meetings, and objected to proposals. The bureaucratic squabbling at Little America continued for so long that the sun began to return before anything could be resolved.
On July 14, a faint glow appeared on the horizon. A week later, Poulter and four others left in a tractor, but they only got about thirty miles before a blizzard forced them to return. Byrd, by then, had given up all pretensions of not wanting to be rescued. In his feeble, pain-wracked state he radioed asking where the tractor was.
Poulter made a second dash for Advance Base on August 4, this time with only two companions: Pete Demas and “Bud” Waite. Both were loyal “Byrd men.” After thirty-six hours they had only traveled twenty miles. The tractor’s clutch began to slip and the trio turned back. Partway back to Little America the tractor stopped altogether and was abandoned. The three men staggered the final miles, half frozen. Poulter had another tractor prepared and a day later the trio departed again. For two days they made their way cautiously across the ice. Byrd, who had been at Advance Base for more than four months, would periodically open the trapdoor to stare across the ice in the dark of the perpetual night:
At 6 o’clock I was again at the trapdoor. And this time I really saw something. Dead in the north a beam of light lifted itself from the Barrier, swept to the vertical, and fell; then it rose again, touched a star, and went out. This was unmistakably Poulter’s searchlight, and my first guess was that it wasn’t more than ten miles away.5
Poulter, Waite, and Demas arrived safely. They remained at Advance Base for two months, nursing Byrd back to health. Remarkably, they suffered no ill effects from either the kerosene stove or the gasoline engine. What caused Byrd’s poisoning has been a subject of speculation ever since. Leaving Advance Base for the final time, he wrote:
I climbed the hatch and never looked back. Part of me remained forever at latitude 80.08 South: what survived of my youth, my vanity, perhaps, and certainly my scepticism. On the other hand, I did take away something that I had not fully possessed before: appreciation of the sheer beauty and miracle of being alive, and a humble set of values.6
Byrd may have been endowed with a humble set of values, but with Lincoln Ellsworth about to make another attempt to cross Antarctica, he still needed to ensure that he remained, in the eyes of the American public, his country’s greatest polar hero. His manipulative mind studied ways he could turn his failure and near-death experience at Advance Base into a success that would surpass anything Ellsworth might do.
While Byrd recuperated at Advance Base, Wilkins waited in Dunedin for Ellsworth to arrive. On September 2, Wilkins explained to Suzanne:
[Ellsworth] is on the boat between here and Honolulu now. He must have been on a “bender” last night because he sent me a wireless saying that, as it was raining on the boat, he did not want to stay at the hotel in New Zealand and that, as he would not have anything to do with Byrd, he asked me to arrange a code by which we could communicate. But then he ended up asking if I didn’t think it was possible for me to arrange with Byrd’s ships to carry some of our supplies and finally said to cancel arrangements I had made here for him, and about which he had previously sent four or five cables to be sure that I had made.7
Ellsworth may have indeed been on a bender. On his second trip to New Zealand he was free of the watchful glare of Mary Louise and had found a boyfriend in Hawaii; a Hawaiian guitar player, name unknown. “I don’t know if he is bringing his Hawaiian with him or not,” Wilkins wrote, then added sarcastically, “if he doesn’t he won’t get the same tune played to him by yours truly.”8
Despite his previous reluctance, Wilkins had convinced himself to go south again. With no other option, he was forced to take out his maps and study the problem of crossing Antarctica yet again. Various factors pointed to changing the original plan and starting from the opposite side of the continent. Chief among those was that Byrd was at Little America on the Ross Ice Shelf. A one-way crossing of the continent, starting from Graham Land and ending at Little America, would dramatically shorten the distance of the flight. Wilkins could sail the Wyatt Earp across the Southern Ocean to Graham Land, from where Balchen and Ellsworth could take off, then fly over the continent to the Ross Ice Shelf. Safely landed, they could enjoy Byrd’s hospitality, while the Wyatt Earp sailed back across the Southern Ocean to collect them.
There was also the weather to consider. The best months for flying in the Antarctic were November and December, after the ferocious winter winds, yet before the summer fogs set in. Wilkins had made his long flight from Deception Island to Hearst Land during December. Byrd had flown to the South Pole in late November. The logical plan seemed to be to start from somewhere in Graham Land, in November, and fly to Little America. Deception Island was a possible starting point. If the bay was frozen the Polar Star could easily get airborne from there. If the ice in the bay was not frozen, it might be possible to take off using the newly tested pontoons. The new plan was fundamentally the same as what Wilkins had attempted in 1928 and 1929, when Byrd had been at Little America the first time.
During the northern summer, the Polar Star had been repaired and Balchen had test flown it across America. After that, he, mechanic Braathen, and radio operator Lanz had returned to New Zealand with the repaired plane aboard the SS Monterey. Ellsworth had sailed on the more luxurious SS Mariposa.
Wanting an extra crew member, Wilkins advertised in a local paper, and received more than four hundred responses. A twenty-year-old Dunedin lad, Alastair Duthie, who explained he had skiing and mountaineering experience, joined the Wyatt Earp.
“I have a presentiment that there is some rather strenuous work ahead of me before we get through with this year’s efforts,” Wilkins wrote to his wife after complaining, as usual, that she never wrote to him. Then he added, “Goodness knows what will happen and the stars forecast strange things for me.”9 But a day before he sailed, Wilkins finally received an unexpected letter from Suzanne. He read it to learn that the wife he had not seen for more than two years was preparing to have a child. His reaction, which he expressed to her in a letter the following day, reveals something of the personality of one of the most enigmatic characters in polar history:
So you are preparing to have a baby. Ah hah. So that’s it. Well I have with me four books about the habits and complaints of women—thought I had better put in some of my time studying such things so as to be able to take care of you. When I come back I will be a regular women’s doctor—so your man had better be careful what he’s about because you will have to tell me all the treatments and I will tell you if it is the right thing to have done.10
The Wyatt Earp, with Ellsworth, Wilkins, Balchen, and fourteen crew members, left Dunedin on September 19, 1934, bound for Antarctica a second time.
As the Wyatt Earp sailed, another Antarctic expedition was nearing Graham Land. When Wilkins had flown along the east coast of Graham Land and Palmer Land in 1928, he had reported a series of channels and straits presumably reaching the Bellingshausen Sea. The largest of these, and the nearest to Hearst Land, he named Stefansson Strait. In 1934, the British Graham Land Expedition intended to sail down the west coast of Graham Land and Palmer Land to locate the western end of Stefansson Strait (if it existed) and see if it was possible to sail through it to reach the eastern side, as seen by Wilkins. The expedition was led by John Rymill who, like Wilkins, was a South Australian. Rymill had purchased an old three-masted schooner, which he renamed Penola, and his nine-man expedition was intending to establish a winter headquarters at Marguerite Bay, on the west side of Graham Land.