Only one challenge remains in the Polar Regions that can be guaranteed to awaken the public’s interest, and that is to reach the South Pole. I knew that if I could do this, the funds for my planned expedition would be assured.
ANTARCTICA IS AN uninhabited mass of rock and ice covering the South Pole. The fifth largest continent, falling nearly completely within the Antarctic Circle, it is surrounded by the turbulent, icy waters of the Southern Ocean—the southern portion of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans—known for its enormous waves, ferocious winds and treacherous obstacles. It is the coldest land on the planet, with temperatures as low as –90°C (–130°F) in the interior during winter. During summer, along the coast, the thermometer sometimes rises as high as 15°C (59°F), but it usually remains below 10°C (50°F). It is also the windiest and driest continent, whose interior is a desert receiving as little as 10 centimetres of snow a year. The Antarctic ice sheet smothers nearly 98 per cent of the continent’s land, having an average thickness of 1.6 kilometres and locking up around 70 per cent of the world’s fresh water. It is, of course, entirely dark in winter and endlessly sunny during the summer, making sunburn a serious risk for explorers.
The continent’s howling waste of permanently frozen, almost uniformly white terrain is punctuated by jagged rock outcroppings—mountain peaks. It has no permanent human population, and it has never had one. Only along the coast does life flourish. There, various species of penguins, fur seals, blue whales, orcas, squids and various fish thrive. Other fauna include such less-than-charismatic creatures as midges, mites, lice and krill. Plant life in this land of rock and ice and seasonal darkness is sparse and consists of lichens and mosses. No animals live in the interior.
For centuries before ships probed the fringes of this desolate landmass, images of a great southern land appeared on charts. Claudius Ptolemy’s map of the world from the first century C.E. portrays it in order to support the idea that a landmass existed in the south of sufficient size to counterbalance the weight of the continental land in the north, lest the world wobble lopsided and spin out of control. This was one of the key theories motivating Captain James Cook’s second epic voyage of discovery between 1772 and 1775. Cook made several attempts to push south through the ice toward the mysterious, never-before-visited region. His ships Resolution and Adventure fought their way to within 120 kilometres of land before being pushed back by pack ice and storms.
The first documented sighting of the continent came in 1820, when three separate expeditions voyaged within 30 kilometres of the coast and reported a vast expanse of ice fields. In 1839, the United States Exploring Expedition, led by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes under the auspices of the U.S. Navy, also spied the continent but did not land. A decade later, a British expedition led by James Clark Ross in the Erebus and the Terror sailed into what is now known as the Ross Sea, without charts and entirely under wind power, cruising along the mighty ice wall for several hundred kilometres.
Amundsen was enthralled by these old adventure seekers, particularly Ross. He wrote in his account of his own Antarctic expedition that the long-dead British captain had “plunged into the heart of a pack which all previous polar explorers regarded as certain death. . . . It is difficult for us to understand[,] . . . we who only need a signal to start the propeller, and wriggle out of the first difficulty we meet.” This observation is an example of Amundsen’s characteristic understatement, humility and appreciation for the achievements of others who had gone before—certainly the primitive diesel-driven propeller on the Fram could not have been expected to be this effective.
Throughout the nineteenth century, various areas near Antarctica, especially South Georgia Island, were used as the semi-permanent bases of American, Norwegian and British sealers and whalers. These mariners confined their activities to the plentiful hunting grounds, devoting little time to surveying the coast and no time to exploring the interior of the continent. It was not until the 1890s that interest in exploration drove several expeditions to probe the coastline for a means of accessing the interior and the South Pole. There was, of course, the Belgica expedition, with Amundsen as second mate, and the British Southern Cross Expedition, led by Norwegian mariner Carsten Borchgrevink between 1898 and 1900. Robert Falcon Scott also led an expedition between 1901 and 1904.
Most important was Ernest Shackleton’s expedition in the Nimrod between 1907 and 1909. Men from Shackleton’s expedition had located the magnetic South Pole, climbed several famous mountains near their McMurdo Sound base, crossed the ice shelf, traversed the daunting and gloomy peaks of the Transantarctic Mountain Range, entered the South Polar Plateau, and with ponies and by man-hauling sledges had come within 150 kilometres of reaching the geographic South Pole, before being forced back, suffering from scurvy. Shackleton returned to Britain in the spring of 1909 a national hero.
Everyone knew that with Shackleton’s near success, the South Pole, the last remaining great symbol of geographical conquest, would be claimed soon. This was the last chance for fame and glory for the handful of polar hopefuls who had been probing the extremities of the earth for the past generation. Other expeditions to Antarctica were imminent: Robert Edwin Peary mused about going south, now that he had claimed the North Pole, and so did Dr. Frederick Cook. A French doctor, Jean-Baptiste Charcot, had just returned from his second Antarctic expedition and was pondering a third. A German expedition under Wilhelm Filcher was soon to depart for Antarctica, and a Japanese expedition led by Nobu Shirase would set out in December 1910. A scramble to the pole seemed inevitable.
Amundsen knew there was little time for delay. He was in a race with more than just Scott and the British Antarctic Expedition, though they were his immediate competition. If Amundsen failed, others would be close behind. He believed that this was his final chance to achieve fame as an explorer, to build a reputation that could be leveraged to undertake other projects in the future. Around the world, members of the budding community of adventurers who wanted to be professional explorers all knew it. For many, an expedition to the South Pole was tied to nationalistic ambitions and prestige, and enjoyed institutional financial support. Certainly this was the underlying assumption behind Scott’s expedition: that the discovery of the South Pole should be reserved for the world’s greatest empire, an empire with a history of thus-far doomed but fascinating expeditions in the far-flung corners of the earth, particularly in the Arctic. An American had a competing claim to the North Pole; a Swede, Baron Erik Adolf Nordenskiöld, had navigated the Siberian coast of the Northeast Passage in 1878–1879; and Amundsen, a Norwegian, had claimed the Northwest Passage. The South Pole was to be Britain’s prize.
Although Amundsen’s ship, the Fram, was owned by the Norwegian state and was only on loan to him, the loan was for an expedition to the North Pole; Amundsen’s desultory efforts to emphasize nationalism were a calculated strategy in his and his brothers’ otherwise private schemes. His expedition did not begin as a “Norwegian” expedition; it would only become more closely tied to the nation after it was successful. The adventurer’s motivations were less nationalistic, more personal. Even most of the Fram’s crew were kept in the dark about the expedition’s ultimate objective. “At all costs we had to be first at the finish,” he wrote. “Everything had to be concentrated on that.” The stated motive of science was likewise merely part of a calculated marketing plan for the expedition. The voyage’s scientific veneer, thin as it was, was scrubbed away entirely when the Fram changed course from north to south without warning. Amundsen later wrote, with a self-deprecating smile, one can imagine, that “on this little detour, science would have to look after itself.”
As early as the fall of 1909 Amundsen had been planning to contrive a race between himself and Scott that he was sure would appeal to the American public in particular. Americans seemed less preoccupied with the objects of science and more accepting of conspicuous achievement, especially in a sporting event. In the United States, if not in Europe, the race itself, coupled with the symbolic if utterly valueless destination of the South Pole, would be enough. Adventure was a form of entertainment, and Amundsen was increasingly aware of his role in satisfying the demand for vicarious competition in a dangerous and little-known region. A race would give the geographical conquest of the pole a human element: something for the press to talk about, to make predictions and wagers over, and to take sides on. In this way Amundsen would be able to sell books and articles, charge for his lectures and gain lucrative product endorsements; he could make a career out of his quest for adventure.
As far as the public knew, however, he was still pushing on to the Arctic with plans for a north polar drift. Much of the equipment required for expeditions at opposite ends of the planet was the same, so Amundsen’s true intentions could easily be concealed. It was a lot of work to gather everything the Fram would need to sail around the world and to arrange for everything the crew might conceivably need for several years once they were in Antarctica. They would not be able to obtain any supplies once they departed. Nineteen people and about a hundred dogs eat a lot of food over several years. Everything conceivable had to be itemized, quantities calculated and stores obtained beforehand.
For months only a handful of people knew Amundsen’s true destination. Among them were his brother and business manager, Leon; his wealthy American friend Fredrik Herman Gade; his friend from Tromsø Fritz Zapffe, who had planned to join the expedition but pulled out for personal reasons; the oceanographer Bjorn Helland-Hansen; and the commander of the ship, Thorvald Nilsen. Some, if not all, of the expedition’s major financiers probably knew of the public deception as well, particularly the ones whom Amundsen had met through Gade in America. He alluded to the fact that despite his funding for the north polar float drying up, “something had to be done to attract the attention and interest of the public in order to procure the relatively large amount of money still lacking.”
In a letter to Fridtjof Nansen, Amundsen wrote: “The question became how I could raise the necessary funds. Something had to be done to increase the public’s interest. Only one challenge remains in the Polar Regions that can be guaranteed to awaken the public’s interest, and that is to reach the South Pole. I knew that if I could do this, the funds for my planned expedition would be assured.” If the expedition was still in the future, how then did the funds arrive, if their arrival was based upon exciting public interest in an expedition that was supposed to be entirely secret? It is more than likely that key investors were aware of the expedition’s true destination and had provided financing based on this updated but suppressed knowledge.
Luckily, Uranienborg was a secluded spot, ideal for keeping secrets. By June 1910, however, even some of the eighteen crew members were becoming suspicious, particularly about a prefabricated hut that was being stored in Amundsen’s garden. It was a large structure, complete with a kitchen range, a linoleum floor and separate sleeping quarters for nine people—a hut that would have been completely out of place on an Arctic drift. The hut had obviously been a long time in the making. Helmer Hanssen, the second mate on the Gjøa voyage, who would also be aboard the Fram, expressed his confusion: “The house was to be an observatory I was told. But I was very doubtful whether such a large elaborate building would be of any use in the drift ice. I thought our plan was to drift across the Arctic Ocean and I told Captain Nilsen that no power on earth would get me to sleep in that house, built on drift ice. But Captain Nilsen suddenly disappeared and after that he did not seem to want to talk any more about this house.” Some of the other cargo also raised eyebrows: why load piles of timber in Norway, when it could be obtained easily in San Francisco? And why kennel nearly a hundred sled dogs on the deck and cart them around the world to the Bering Strait, when they could be obtained cheaply and without difficulty in Alaska? Amundsen admitted that the faces of many of his men “began to resemble notes of interrogation.”
He felt, however, that secrecy was paramount to his success. Not only was he heavily in debt to his financial backers and morally in debt to his scientific supporters in both the government and scientific societies, but also he knew his career as an explorer would come crashing down if the plans for his voyage, already years in the making, were to collapse. “If at that juncture I had made my intention public, it would only have given occasion for a lot of newspaper discussion, and possibly have ended in the project being stifled at its birth.” He clearly remembered the result of his earlier slip-up with the media, immediately following his Northwest Passage success, when his story was leaked and essentially stolen, costing him a fair amount of lost money in fees and royalties. Never again would he be forthright with the press about his plans. He also recalled the previous year, when he had almost been tripped up by the press’s incessant attempts to get him to take sides in the Cook-Peary controversy in the hope of linking him to the discredited claims of his old friend Dr. Cook. Following the advice and direction of his brother Leon and his friend Gade, Amundsen would feed the press information only as he saw fit—when it was useful to promote his cause. Amundsen the strategist was increasingly aware of how the media worked and how to make it work for him, not against him. The media and publicity were just another detail of the expedition to be planned and controlled.
Amundsen maintained a furtive and reclusive lifestyle. He never answered the telephone; he was rarely ready to receive visitors; and he seldom ventured out in public during the winter of 1910. When not overseeing the acquisition of supplies and provisions, he spent a great deal of time in Uranienborg poring over both old and recent maps, and reading historical accounts of mariners and explorers who had visited Antarctica. He studied all the literature he could obtain, seeking any information that would give him an edge, an advantage over his rivals that might sway the race in his favour or increase his chances of survival. It had worked for him in the Northwest Passage, and he intended that it should work for him at the South Pole.
From his reading, Amundsen determined the precise location to which he wanted to sail the Fram and begin skiing to the South Pole. It was something that had never before been attempted: landing the ship and making a base atop the imposing 30-metre ice wall now known as the Ross Ice Shelf. Amundsen compared the charts of the region made by Ross in 1841 with those made sixty years later by Borchgrevink of the British Southern Cross Expedition (the first to overwinter on the Antarctic mainland), which confirmed that the ice barrier was an almost insurmountable length of cliff that, as Amundsen later said in his lecture to the Royal Geographical Society, was “broken at intervals by bights and small inlets. . . . [The Southern Cross Expedition] found this bay in the same place, where Ross saw it in 1841—sixty years earlier. It is interesting that this expedition succeeded in landing in a little bay—Baloon Bight—some miles to the eastward of the big one, and from here climbed up on the barrier, which up to this time had been considered an inaccessible and invincible hindrance for an advance toward the south.”
The explorer also noted that the Discovery expedition led by Scott in 1901 had steamed along the edge of the ice barrier and confirmed the location of the small bay. In the course of the Nimrod expedition in 1908, Shackleton had observed that the ice had only minimal breaks, and had named the inlet the Bay of Whales, but he did not make a landing because it looked too dangerous. Amundsen concluded that “though some few pieces [of ice] had broken off here and there, this bay had remained constant for about seventy years. It was an obvious conclusion that the bay was no casual formation, but owed its existence to substantial land, banks, etc.” Though he had never set eyes upon it, Amundsen chose this never-before-used bay to launch his land parties. It was about 650 kilometres from Scott’s planned base at McMurdo Sound, and “therefore seemed to us that we were at sufficient distance from the English sphere, and need not fear that we should come in their way.”
Once he had settled on using the Bay of Whales as his base, Amundsen proceeded with his plan of attack. If successful, it would be a logistical triumph that would see him and his chosen men begin the race to the South Pole an entire degree of latitude closer than Scott’s base at McMurdo Sound, at the far western end of the ice shelf. The plan was a closely guarded secret; any leak might give advantage to Scott, who might decide to use the same base before the Norwegians. Amundsen had the advantage of having decided on his expedition before hearing the confirmation of Scott’s expedition, yet being able to read the details of Scott’s plans in the newspapers while refining his own plan.
In April 1910, Scott visited Norway to test the new motorized sleds he planned on taking to Antarctica. The northern plains between Oslo and Bergen would provide a mild version of what to expect in Antarctica. Scott and his wife, Kathleen, met with Nansen and discussed their plans for the South Pole. He also tried to meet with Amundsen, but without success. Certainly Amundsen was busy, but furthermore it is unlikely that he could have met the English naval officer whom he planned to race to the South Pole and still have kept his plans secret.
Amundsen has been criticized for keeping Scott in the dark about his true intentions. It is important, however, to point out that Amundsen and others were already planning their South Pole expeditions when they read Scott’s announcement, and this detailed and highly public proclamation by Scott was little other than an effort to forestall others from heading south until he had had his chance at the pole. Scott’s tactics were to use publicity to clear the field, to cause any potential rivals to back down, and in effect to lay claim to the pole as his and Britain’s property. His actions were no more honourable or dishonourable than Amundsen’s keeping his plans secret. Amundsen had many reasons for secrecy, not the least of which was his financing and that his ship had been borrowed for a different purpose. He had already been in the Antarctic and knew what the conditions were like. No one on the planet had his set of skills and knowledge, practical and theoretical, learned first-hand from the people who had the most to teach others on the subject—the Inuit. Although Amundsen had learned some of the details of Scott’s expedition, such as Scott’s plan to use motor sledges and ponies, he knew they would not fare well in the harsh conditions of the Antarctic. He found it nearly inconceivable that Scott would not be using dogs and skis for transport. Amundsen knew his business; he was confident of victory and did not fear that Scott would, or could, beat him and his team, which was equipped lightly and efficiently for speed.
At the same time, there was no advantage in keeping the details of his expedition secret from Scott, Amundsen reasoned, since Scott would not have done anything differently in any event. “Scott’s plan and equipment,” Amundsen noted in his autobiography, “were so widely different from my own that I regarded the telegram that I sent him later, with the information that we were bound for the Antarctic regions, rather as a mark of courtesy than as a communication which might cause him to alter his programme in the slightest degree.” This is probably true—it’s hard to imagine the naval officer Scott using dogs and learning to ski. However, if Scott had known he was in a race, he might have set sail earlier; or perhaps the excitement of a race would have helped Scott with his own fundraising.
As things stood, Amundsen could mull over his plan without public scrutiny while Scott had to disclose his plans to the newspapers before he departed—which is how Amundsen knew that Scott would be using McMurdo Sound as his base. He could develop a counter-plan to avoid the British expedition while using his superior skills in dog driving and skiing. In addition, the momentum of Scott’s expedition depended not merely on his desire to attain the South Pole but on a host of other cultural and political foundations that precluded secrecy. As a private adventurer, Amundsen could go wherever he wanted and do whatever he wanted. Not so Scott, who was weighed down by the rigid traditions of the world’s then-greatest empire.
In the spring of 1910, after debating the news of Peary’s and Cook’s competing claims to have reached the North Pole, the Norwegian parliament did what Amundsen had expected: it voted not to provide the Fram polar drift expedition with additional funds. In the wake of this decision, private donations were cancelled as well, promises of free supplies were withdrawn and offers for newspaper rights to the exclusive story were declined. Faced with a shortage of funds, Amundsen put up all his remaining money, mortgaged his home and took on debt wherever possible. Tired and frustrated with the tedium of fundraising—begging, as he thought of it—he signed over the responsibility for all money matters to his brother Leon and devoted himself exclusively to the logistics of the operation. He assumed a financial solution would be found. If he could only get to sea with the Fram and his crew, he would be successful; and if he was successful, he would be forgiven his minor deception, and wide acclaim would be forthcoming.
Cancelling the expedition would result in astronomical financial loss: its provisions, supplies, equipment—nautical and personal—had been ordered and paid for, the crew had been hired and other financial commitments made. It would bankrupt Amundsen, and hurt his friends and family. The loss of financial support from businesses and government agencies also meant that he could easily lose the use of the Fram. It had been refurbished at great expense by the Norwegian government and provided for his proposed serious and scientific endeavour, which would presumably bring respectability and prestige to the new nation; without the Fram Amundsen would be unable to launch a significant expedition. At the same time he knew that the newly independent Norwegian government would take a dim view of any attempt to directly compete with Great Britain in its goal of claiming the South Pole. The diplomatic ramifications were not a small matter, and Amundsen agonized over his secrecy for months.
As a result, even a month before Amundsen’s departure for the South—or the North, as it was still generally believed—he was short a substantial amount of money and had no credible plan to obtain it. Even Nansen was concerned; the money would be needed to keep the ship in repair during the many years of the voyage. Amundsen, while nearly sick with stress, calmly maintained that the money would surely be forthcoming once he arrived in San Francisco. The financial shortfall was his greatest secret: if his many creditors ever found out, they would surely call in their loans and impound the ship. The money was not needed immediately, as Amundsen knew, but it was vital to the success of the expedition; indeed, it was vital to his survival. Once it had navigated the treacherous waters of Antarctica, the Fram was to drop off the polar party and then sail to Argentina to refit, repair, refuel and reprovision before returning to the Bay of Whales to pick them up. The money was essential for the relief expedition; otherwise, the adventurers would be stuck on Antarctica. Certainly a third-party rescue operation could be organized, but it would be an embarrassment and would jeopardize any attempt to capitalize on their success, should they win the race but be unable to return.
A preliminary test of the Fram to gain some experience for the crew was planned for June 7, the fifth anniversary of Norway’s independence from Sweden. The two Amundsens, Roald and Leon, planned to link the voyage to Norway’s independence to defuse any anger from the government or disgruntled creditors. Roald had to reveal his secret plans to two more of his officers; after all, they would be commanding the ship and needed to know where they were going. Fortunately, as was the case with everyone else in whom Amundsen confided, the officers were enthusiastic about the scheme and happy to be taken into his confidence, and they readily agreed to keep the grand secret. Before casting off, Amundsen held a party in the yard at Uranienborg. After a simple supper, the men cleared their throats and “united in [singing] ‘God preserve the King and fatherland.’” Then they climbed into small boats and ferried themselves out to the Fram, which was anchored in the fjord.
One of the officers brought a horseshoe aboard and nailed it to the mast in the ship’s saloon. “In his opinion it is quite incredible what luck an old horseshoe can bring. Possibly he is right,” Amundsen mused. They hauled in the anchor, got the diesel engine running and then, “at precisely midnight,” they set off.
Twice already had a band of stout-hearted men brought this ship back with honor after years of service. Would it be vouchsafed to us to uphold this honorable tradition? Such were, no doubt, the thoughts with which most of us were occupied as our vessel glided over the motionless fjord in the light summer night. . . . [A]mong our bright and confident hopes there crept a shadow of melancholy. The hillsides, the woods, the fjord all were so bewitchingly fair and so dear to us. They called to us with their allurement, but the Diesel motor knew no pity. Its tuff-tuff went on brutally through the stillness.
While making last-minute preparations, including loading the dogs and carrying out some final tweaks to the diesel engine, Amundsen still had to keep some of his creditors in the dark and at bay, just as on the Gjøa expedition, until he was at sea and beyond their reach. Leon maintained a straight face and a calm demeanour, though he privately noted that “the position is no better, and maybe even worse, than when Gjøa sailed.” Neither Leon nor Roald had found a solution to the pressing problem of how to pay for the work done on the Fram in Argentina. Not even the men they had taken into their confidence knew about this looming, show-stopping problem.
Then, with little more than a week remaining before the final departure for Antarctica, Amundsen received a telegram from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. It contained happy news: a wealthy and respected businessman in Buenos Aires named Peter Christophersen had offered to provide the Fram with coal and supplies. A Norwegian who had been living in Argentina for decades, where he had made a fortune, Christophersen had heard of Amundsen’s public request for donations—one of his brothers knew Nansen, and another was the Norwegian minister in Buenos Aires. Amundsen must have chuckled with relief: he had always forged ahead on the assumption that things would work out, even when others shook their heads and advised caution. With great relief, he replied right away, requesting oil rather than coal, and was assured that he would have all he needed in Buenos Aires. Fortune again was smiling on him.
After its test voyage from Bergen to Scotland and back, the Fram was shipshape. The real voyage began on August 9, eight weeks after Scott’s expedition had departed from Cardiff. On the voyage south the dogs crowded everywhere, barking and fighting, even on the bridge. Thorvald Nilsen, the captain of the ship, wrote in his brief account of the voyage, “The number of living creatures on board when we left Norway was nineteen men, ninety-seven dogs, four pigs, six carrier pigeons, and one canary.” In photographs of the Fram at sea, the dogs are ubiquitous; they lounge against the railing, sleep on the open deck, look curiously toward the camera, take shelter under awnings and collapse panting in the equatorial heat. The pups play with the men and generally appear to have the run of the ship. The hopes of the expedition depended upon them, and their antics provided respite from the monotony of the voyage. Although all on board were responsible for the welfare of the “four-footed friends,” crew member Oscar Wisting became the official dogkeeper.
Amundsen loved the dogs: “There can hardly be an animal that is capable of expressing its feelings to the same extent as the dog,” he mused.
Joy, sorrow, gratitude, scruples of conscience, are all reflected as plainly as could be desired in his behavior, and above all in his eyes. . . . [T]ake a look at a dog’s eyes, study them attentively. How often do we see something “human” in their expression, the same variations we meet with in human eyes. This, at all events, is something that strikingly resembles “soul.” We will leave the question open for those who are interested in its solution, and will only mention another point, which seems to show that a dog is something more than a mere machine of flesh and blood.
In a scheme that more than any other earned for Amundsen the honorific “the Napoleon of the Poles,” he and Leon timed the public announcement of the change in destination with a precision more common in a military operation. While the Fram was at sea, Leon had boarded a steamer and cruised south to Funchal on Madeira. He was waiting there when the Fram arrived on September 6, 1910, having made arrangements for taking on provisions such as fruit, vegetables, fresh water and any items that had been missed earlier. Most of the crew spent several days relaxing in the sun, but Amundsen dismissed one man for his seeming inability to get along with the others.
Amundsen selected his crew carefully and knew from instinct and experience that one sour or unmotivated man could poison the voyage’s atmosphere and endanger the entire expedition. He had been in no hurry to make his selections; after his success in navigating the Northwest Passage, men had been approaching him for years before the Fram sailed. He did not have to seek them out. His discussion with a New York Times reporter on October 27, 1908, is revealing: “I never read the references a man brings to me, when he applies for a position with us in an exploring trip. I can generally tell, after observing him closely and talking to him a while, if he will be equal to the strain, and I have never been mistaken. It is important to get the right sort of men, for one weak man will disorganize the rest. The main thing is always to keep busy, to keep the men at work all the time, and to keep at work yourself.” Two of Amundsen’s companions from the Gjøa expedition had joined the South Pole expedition: Helmer Hanssen and the cook, Adolf Lindstrøm.
Amundsen was reasonably confident that the men he selected were sufficiently adventurous to be willing to challenge the South Pole, and he had already secured the support of most of the leaders, but he couldn’t know for sure. In the afternoon on September 9, 1910, mere hours before the ship sailed, ostensibly on a route around South America to San Francisco, Amundsen called a meeting of the entire company. He and Leon and Nilsen stood shoulder to shoulder in front of a large chart that prominently displayed Antarctica. Amundsen spoke directly and firmly to the gathered men: “It is my intention to sail southwards, land a party on the Southern continent and try to reach the South Pole.” The men—most of them, at any rate—just stood there with their mouths agape.
Hanssen, recalling the scene years later, wrote that “he said that he had deceived us and also the Norwegian nation. But that could not be helped. He suggested that we should all be released from our contracts . . . and be given free passage home. Anyone on board who didn’t want to go south was at liberty to leave the ship right away and go back to Norway with Amundsen’s brother.” It was a reasonable offer, and Amundsen spoke to each man personally to determine his true opinion.
The crew’s assent was vigorous and unanimous, and the pressure was off. “Before I had finished,” Amundsen related in The South Pole, “they were all bright with smiles. I was now sure of the answer I should get when I finally asked each man whether he was willing to go on.”
One of the men, on hearing that they would be racing the British to the Pole, exclaimed: “Hurrah, that means we’ll get there first!” For Amundsen it was “difficult to express the joy I felt at seeing how promptly my comrades placed themselves at my service on this momentous occasion.” Why not exchange one pole for another? Both were equally cold and dreary, but the southern one offered a greater chance for glory and fame. The men were up for a race. Although it has been suggested that Amundsen’s tactic placed unacceptable pressure on his crew to accept the new terms, when one considers his philosophy of leadership it becomes clear that he really did want any dissenters to leave at the outset rather than cause trouble later.
As soon as the Fram cleared Funchal and set a course south, Leon boarded a steamer back to Norway with a collection of the men’s final letters and other communications that would soon be made public. Amundsen wrote in his journal that “my brother has taken it upon himself to convey the news as to where we are headed. I do not envy him the task.” News of the Fram’s startling change of course would be hand-delivered to the palace and to Nansen on October 1, a day before the news would be made public with a statement to the newspapers. Amundsen wanted to explain himself candidly and more personally both to his king and to his friend and mentor, so that they wouldn’t first discover his deception in the morning newspapers.
In a sincere and heartfelt letter to Nansen, who Amundsen had kept completely in the dark about his change of plans despite their close working relationship, he wrote:
There have been many times I have almost confided this secret to you, but then turned away, afraid that you would stop me. I have often wished that Scott could have known my decision, so that it did not look like I tried to get ahead of him without his knowledge. But I have been afraid that any public announcement would stop me. . . . Once more I beg you. Do not judge me too harshly. I am no hypocrite, but rather was forced by distress to make this decision. And so, I ask you to forgive me for what I have done. May my future work make amends for it.
He further explained, “I understood that it would be impossible for me to obtain the necessary funds for my enterprise,” and gave the example of the Norwegian parliament cancelling his funding in the spring.
Amundsen emphasized to Nansen that the race to the South Pole would merely be an additional objective for the Fram, not the entire expedition, and he promised to continue with the scientific voyage in the Arctic once he had attained the pole. The money that would come from victory at the South Pole, he maintained, was the only way to pay for the valuable scientific voyage to the North Pole. The public announcement, which would be reprinted in countless newspapers around the world, read: “You can count on hearing from us again in February-March 1912. . . . We will then continue to San Francisco, where the last preparations for the drift across the Polar Basin will be made.”
The next day, October 2, the papers announced the sensational news: Amundsen and the Fram had changed course and now were heading south “to battle for the South Pole.” Amundsen downplayed his competition with Scott and the British expedition. “It is my intention not to get in the way of the English. They, of course, have priority. We will have to make do with what they discard.” Of course he had already made his detailed plans for the attack on the pole, and he knew exactly where he intended to set up base in Antarctica. Oddly, the news was not picked up in any detail by the British press. On October 3, Leon released the final letters to the men’s families. They detailed the men’s new roles and their thoughts on the expedition, including the observation of at least one that Amundsen was astonished that Nansen hadn’t guessed his true intentions when he observed the pack of nearly one hundred baying dogs being loaded aboard the Fram, and that the details of the scheme hadn’t been leaked. Leon also posted the now-famous telegram to Scott: “Captain Scott Terra Nova Christ Church Beg inform you Fram Proceeding Antarctic. Amundsen.”
Amundsen had elected not to take the recently developed wireless communication technology aboard the Fram. When Leon departed Madeira, taking the mail bag with him, it was the last time the men on board the Fram would be in communication with the outside world for the duration of the South Pole expedition. Amundsen had explained his decision during his presentation to the Royal Geographic Society the previous year. He claimed to reject the wireless not because of its weight or expense or doubts about its functionality, but because of its potential effects on his leadership. He had spent a great deal of time weighing the arguments in favour and against, and had concluded that wireless communication might only add to the crew’s feelings of anxiety and helplessness while offering no solution to the problems it generated. “Imagine that we have spent two years in the drifting pack, and still have three more years to spend—imagine that we suddenly get a dispatch stating that some of our dears are seriously ill or dying, or whatever it may be. What would then be the result?”
Of course, in the circumstances in which Amundsen now found himself, being incommunicado had the additional benefit of ensuring that no one could call him back to Norway.