Category: Exploration
April 24, 1916 The World is Mad
In the early days of the Great War, the Endurance expedition of Sir Ernest Shackleton disappeared into the ice pack, within sight of the Antarctic continent. Theirs was a 497-day struggle for survival, re-emerging twenty months later to learn, the war wasn't over. Millions were dead. Europe had gone mad. The world had gone mad.
In an alternate history, the June 1914 assassination of the heir-apparent to the Habsburg Empire may have led to nothing more than a regional squabble. A policing action in the Balkans. As it was, mutual distrust and entangling alliances drew the Great Powers of Europe into the vortex. On August 3, the "War to End Wars" exploded across the European continent.
The period has been called the "Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration". As the diplomatic wrangling, mobilizations and counter-mobilizations of the "period preparatory to war" unfolded across the continent, Sir Ernest Shackleton made final arrangements for his third expedition into the Antarctic. Despite the outbreak of war, first Lord of the Admiralty Sir Winston Churchill ordered Shackleton to Proceed. The "Endurance" expedition departed British waters on August 8.
The German invasion of France ground to a halt that September. The first entrenchments were being dug as Shackleton himself remained in England, departing on September 27 to meet up with the Endurance expedition in Buenos Aires.
H/T GreatWarPhotos.com
With the unofficial "Christmas Truce" of 1914 short weeks away from the trenches of Flanders, Shackleton's expedition left Grytviken whaling station on South Georgia Island. It was December 5.
The Endurance expedition intended to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent. The way things turned out, the crew wouldn't touch land, for 497 days.
The disaster of the Great War became "Total War" with the zeppelin raids of January, as Endurance met with disaster of its own. The ship was frozen fast, within sight of the Antarctic continent. There was no hope of escape.
HMS Lusitania departed New York City on May 1, 1915, with no way to know she had only six days to live. The sun that vanished that night over the Shackleton expedition, would not reappear for another four months.
As the nine-month battle unfolded across the Gallipoli Peninsula, Shackleton's men abandoned ship's routine and converted to winter station. On September 1, the massive pressure of the pack ice caused Endurance to "literally [jump] into the air and [settle] on its beam," as losses to the Czar's army in Galicia and Poland lead to a mass exodus of Russian troops and civilians from Poland. The "Great Retreat" gave way to the sort of discontent which would end the Czarist regime, as Shackleton gave the order to abandon ship. On November 21, the wreck of the Endurance slipped below the surface.
That December, Allies began preparations for a summer offensive along the upper reaches of the River Somme. The Shackleton party camped on pack ice, adrift in open ocean as Erich von Falkenhayn began the Verdun offensive with which he would "bleed France white". The ice broke up that April, forcing Shackleton and his party into three small lifeboats. Seven brutal days would come and go in those open boats, before the party reached land at the desolate shores of Elephant Island.
The whaling stations at South Georgia Island, some 800 miles distant, were the only hope for survival. Shackleton and a party of five set out on April 24 aboard the 22½' lifeboat James Caird, as the five-month siege at Kut-al-Amara in Mesopotamia ended with the surrender of 13,000 British and Indian soldiers, to the Turks.
The party arrived on the west coast of South Georgia Island in near-hurricane force winds, the cliffs of South Georgia Island coming into view on May 10. As Captain Frank Worsely, Second officer Tom Crean and expedition leader Ernest Shackleton picked their way across glacier-clad mountain peaks thousands of feet high, Austrian troops attacked Italian mountain positions in the Trentino.
The trio arrived at the Stromness whaling station on May 20, ten days after the temporary German suspension of unrestricted submarine warfare . They must have been a sight, with thick ice encrusting long, filthy beards, and saltwater-soaked clothing rotting from their bodies. The first people they came across were children, who ran in fright at the sight of them.
The last of the Shackleton expedition would be rescued on August 22, ending the 20-months long ordeal. Six days later, Italy turned on her future ally and declared war on Germany. At South Georgia Island, Ernest Shackleton asked how the war had ended. The response hit him like a hammer. "The war isn't over. Millions are dead. Europe is mad. The world is mad".
"The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was minus 128.56 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 89.2 degrees Celsius), registered on July 21, 1983, at Antarctica's Vostok station". – H/T LiveScience.com
Author Cape Cod CurmudgeonPosted on April 24, 2019 April 24, 2019 Categories Disasters, Exploration, Today in History, Wars and Military Conflicts, WWITags Antarctic Exploration, Endurance, Shackleton Expedition, Today in History, WW17 Comments on April 24, 1916 The World is Mad
March 7, 1912 The Heroic Age of Polar Exploration
The final camp became their tomb, a high cairn of snow erected over it. Ship's carpenters built a wooden cross, inscribed with a line from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem Ulysses: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".
The fourth son of a family of Norwegian shipowners and captains, Roald Amundsen always wanted to go to sea. His mother wanted no such thing and made him promise he'd go to school to become a doctor. Amundsen was 21 when his mother died. He kept his promise until that day. There would be no more school after that.
Amundsen wanted to become an explorer, taking inspiration from the doomed Franklin Arctic Expedition of 1848, and Fridtjof Nansen's crossing of Greenland in 1888.
It's been called the "Heroic Age" of polar exploration.
Amundsen was drawn to it as much as he helped create it. He was part of the Antarctic expedition of 1897-99 aboard the RV Belgica, the first to winter in Antarctica. He led the first expedition to successfully navigate Canada's Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in 1903–06.
Amundsen's attempt to reach the South Pole set out on September 8, 1911. Using skis and dog sleds, Amundsen and his men created supply depots at 80°, 81° and 82° south, along a direct line to the Pole. The effort proved to be premature and had to be abandoned due to extreme cold.
A second attempt departed on October 19 with four sledges and 52 dogs, along the previously unknown Axel Heiberg Glacier. The team of five men and 16 dogs arrived at 90° 0′ S on December 14, 1911, the first team in history to reach the South Pole.
Amundsen expedition plants the Norwegian flag on the South Pole, December 14, 1911.
English explorer Robert Falcon Scott had attempted the South Pole in 1901–04, and was doing so once again in 1911. Though he'd had to turn back, the earlier expedition had established the southernmost record for that time, at 88° 23′ S. 97 miles short of the pole.
Unlike Amundsen who adopted the lighter fur-skins of the Inuit, the Scott expedition wore heavy wool clothing, depending on motorized and horse-drawn transport, and man-hauling sledges for the final drive across the polar plateau. Dog teams were expected to meet them only on the way out, on March 1.
The doomed Scott party used a string to take this "selfie", the day after becoming 2nd to reach the South Pole
Weak, poorly acclimated ponies slowed the depot-laying part of the Scott expedition, four horses dying of cold or having to be shot because they slowed the team. When Scott decided to locate "One-Ton Depot" 35 miles short of its planned location at 80°, expedition member Lawrence Oates warned "Sir, I'm afraid you'll come to regret not taking my advice."
Routes taken by Scott (green) and Amundsen (red) expeditions to the South Pole.
Unlike the previous attempt, Scott made it this time, only to find that Amundsen's Norwegian expedition had beat him by five weeks. The anguish in Scott's diary entry for January 17, 1912, is clear: "The worst has happened. All the day dreams must go. Great God! This is an awful place".
Roald Amundsen returned safely and publicly announced his attainment of the South Pole on March 7, 1912.
Defeated, the five-man Scott party began the 800-mile, frozen slog back from the Pole on January 19. Team member Edgar Evans' condition was visibly deteriorating as early as the 23rd. A bad fall on Beardmore Glacier on February 4 left him "dull and incapable". Another fall on the 17th left him dead at the foot of the glacier.
Dog teams failed to materialize at the appointed time. By March 16, Lawrence Oates was severely frostbitten. He left his tent for the last time in a valiant act of suicide, in the forlorn hopes that his comrades, might live. Oates stepped into the maelstrom, saying "I am just going outside and may be some time". He never returned.
RV Belgica frozen in the ice, 1898
The last three made their final camp on March 19, with 400 miles to go. A howling blizzard descended on camp the following day and lasted for days, as Scott and his companions wrote good-bye letters to mothers, wives, and others. The last words in his diary, were: "Last entry. For God's sake look after our people".
The frozen corpses of Scott and his comrades were found 8 months later, the last diary entry dated March 29, 1912. A high cairn of snow was erected over it all, that final camp becoming their tomb. Ship's carpenters built a wooden cross, inscribing on it the names of those lost: Scott, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans. A line from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, Ulysses, appears on the cross:
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".
The team was eleven miles from the next supply depot.
Satellites measured the coldest temperature in recorded history on August 10, 2010 at −93.2 °C (−135.8 °F), in East Antarctica. The Amundsen-Scott weather station at the South Pole reports the average daily temperature for March, at -50.3°C (-58.54°F).
A century of ice and snow have covered bodies, camp and the cross alike. Now encased 75′ down in the Ross Ice Shelf and inching their way outward, the bodies are expected to reach the Ross Sea sometime around 2276, perhaps to float away in an iceberg.
In 1926, Amundsen and a team of 15 reached the North Pole in the airship Norge. Three previous claims to have attained the North Pole: Frederick Cook (1908), Robert Peary (1909), and Richard E. Byrd (1926), have all been disputed as being of dubious accuracy or downright frauds, leaving Amundsen the undisputed first to have reached both poles.
The Observation Hill cross memorial to the Scott expedition, erected 1913.
Roald Amundsen and a crew of five disappeared into the Arctic on June 18, 1928, lost in the search for survivors following the crash of the Airship Italia.
Despite efforts to find them as late as August 2009, neither aircraft nor bodies were ever found.On hearing the details of Scott's end, Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen is quoted as saying "I would gladly forgo any honour or money if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death".
Peter Markham Scott, the only child produced by the marriage of Robert Falcon and Kathleen Bruce Scott, went on to found the World Wide Fund for Nature, which operates to this day as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
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Author Cape Cod CurmudgeonPosted on March 7, 2019 March 7, 2019 Categories Exploration, Odds & Ends, Today in HistoryTags Arctic Exploration, Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, Today in History5 Comments on March 7, 1912 The Heroic Age of Polar Exploration
January 16, 2003 Columbia Disaster
The first debris began falling to the ground near Lubbock, Texas, at 8:58am. The last communication from the crew came one minute later. Columbia disintegrated in the skies over East Texas at 9:00am eastern standard time.
The idea of a reusable Space Transportation System (STS) was floated as early as the 1960s, as a way to cut down on the cost of space travel. The final design was a reusable, winged "spaceplane", with a disposable external tank and reusable solid fuel rocket boosters. The 'Space Truck' program was approved in 1972, the prime contract awarded to North American Aviation (later Rockwell International), with the first orbiter completed in 1976.
Early Approach and Landing Tests were conducted with the first prototype dubbed "Enterprise", in 1977. A total of 16 tests, all atmospheric, were conducted from February to October of that year, the lessons learned applied to the first space-worthy vehicle in NASA's orbital fleet.
STS-1, the first mission of the "Space Shuttle" program launched aboard "Columbia" from the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida. It was April 12, 1981, the 20th anniversary of the first human spaceflight aboard the Russian capsule Vostok 1.
It was the first, and (to-date) only manned maiden test flight of a new system in the American space program.
This first flight of Columbia would be commanded by Gemini and Apollo veteran John Young, and piloted by Robert Crippen. It was the first of 135 missions in the Space Shuttle program, the first of only two to take off with external hydrogen fuel tanks painted white. From STS-3 on, the external tank would be left unpainted, to save weight.
Initially, there were four fully functional orbiters in the STS program: Columbia joined after the first five missions by "Challenger", then "Discovery", and finally "Atlantis". A fifth orbiter, "Endeavor", was built in 1991 to replace Challenger, which broke apart 73 seconds after lift-off on January 28, 1986, killing all seven of its crew.
All told, Columbia flew 28 missions with 160 crew members, traveling 125,204,911 miles in 4,808 orbits around the planet.
STS-107 launched from the Kennedy Space Center aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia on January 16, 2003.
Eighty seconds after launch, a piece of insulating foam broke away from the external fuel tank striking Columbia's left wing, leaving a small hole in the carbon composite tiles along the leading edge.
Three previous Space Shuttle missions had experienced similar damage and, while some engineers thought this one could be more serious, none was able to pinpoint the precise location or extent of the damage. NASA managers believed that, even in the event of major damage, little could be done about it.
These carbon tiles are all that stands between the orbiter and the searing heat of re-entry.
December 2, 1988 'Atlantis' mission narrowly missed repeting the Columbia disaster, four days later. "More than 700 heat shield tiles were damaged. One tile on the shuttle's belly near the nose was completely missing and the underlying metal – a thick mounting plate that helped anchor an antenna – was partially melted. In a slightly different location, the missing tile could have resulted in a catastrophic burn through". H/T Spaceflightnow.com
For Columbia, 300 days, 17 hours, forty minutes and 22 seconds of space travel came to an end on the morning of February 1, 2003. Over the California coast and traveling twenty-three times the speed of sound, external temperatures rose to 3,000° Fahrenheit and more, when super-heated gases entered the wing's interior.
231,000 feet below, mission control detected four unconnected sensors shut down on the left wing, with no explanation. The first debris struck the ground near Lubbock, Texas, at 8:58am. The last communication from the crew came about a minute later.
Columbia disintegrated in the skies over East Texas at 9:00am Eastern Standard Time.
Debris and human remains were found in 2,000 locations from the state of Louisiana, to Arkansas. The only survivors were a can full of worms, brought into space for study.
"Mon Landscape" by Petr Ginz
Payload Specialist Colonel Ilan Ramon, born Ilan Wolferman, was an Israeli fighter pilot and the first Israeli astronaut to join the NASA space program.
Ramon is the son and grandson of Auschwitz survivors and family member to several others, who didn't live to tell the tale. In their memory, Colonel Ramon reached out to the Yad Vashem Remembrance Center, for a holocaust relic to bring with him into space.
Petr Ginz was incarcerated for a time in the Theresienstadt ghetto, where he drew this picture. A piece of teenage imagination: the Earth as it may appear, from the moon.
Petr Ginz was destined to be murdered in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, though his drawing survived. He was fourteen years old. Colonel Ramon was given a copy, a young boy's drawing of a safer place. This would accompany the astronaut, into space.
Today, the assorted debris from the Columbia disaster numbers some 84,000 pieces, stored in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. To the best of my knowledge, this drawing by a boy who never made it out of Auschwitz, is not among them.
Afterward:
Andrew "Drew" Feustel is a car guy, with fond memories of restoring a '67 Ford Mustang in the family garage in North suburban Detroit.
When he's not fixing cars he's an astronaut, and veteran of two space missions. He was also for a time a colleague of Colonel Ramon. The pair had several close friends, in common.
The 'car guy' in space thing seems to have worked. NASA reports "The spacewalkers overcame frozen bolts, stripped screws and stuck handrails, four new or rejuvenated scientific instruments, new batteries, a new gyroscope and a new computer were installed. | NASA photo
In March 2018, Feustel left for his third spaceflight, this one a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. Before he left, Rona Ramon, widow of the Israeli Astronaut, gave him another copy of Petr Ginz' drawing.
The circle was closed. This fruit of a doomed boy's imagination once again broke the bonds of space. This time, to come home.
Author Cape Cod CurmudgeonPosted on January 16, 2019 January 16, 2019 Categories Aviation, Disasters, Exploration, Today in HistoryTags Columbia Disaster, Exploration, Space Shuttle, Today in History10 Comments on January 16, 2003 Columbia Disaster
January 9, 1493 Of Mermaids and Manatees
"Pax Romana", or "Roman Peace", refers to a period between the 1st and 2nd century AD, when the force of Roman arms subdued most everyone standing against them. The conquered peoples described the period differently. Sometime in 83 or 84AD, Calgacus of the Caledonian Confederacy in Northern Scotland, said "They make a desert and call it peace".
The conquests of Genghis Khan and his successors accomplished much the same during the 13th and 14th century. The "Pax Mongolica" effectively connected Europe with Asia, making it safe to travel the "Silk Road" from Britain in the west to China in the east. Great caravans carrying Chinese silks and spices came to the west via transcontinental trade routes. It was said of the era that "a maiden bearing a nugget of gold on her head could wander safely throughout the realm."
Never mind the pyramids of skulls, over there.
The "Black Death" and the political fragmentation of the Mongol Empire brought that period to an end. Muslim domination of Middle Eastern trade routes made overland travel to China and India increasingly difficult in the 15th century. After Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, such travel became next to impossible. Europe began to look for a water route to the East.
It's popular to believe that 15th century Europeans thought the world was flat, but that's a myth. Otherwise, the cats would have pushed everything over the edge, by now.
The fact that the world is round had been understood for over a thousand years, though 15th century mapmakers often got places and distances wrong. In 1474, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli detailed a scheme for sailing westward to China, India and the Spice Islands. He believed that Japan, which he called "Cipangu", was larger than it is, and farther to the east of "Cathay" (China). Toscanelli vastly overestimated the size of the Eurasian landmass, and the Americas were left out altogether.
This is the map that Christopher Columbus took with him in 1492.
Columbus had taken his idea of a westward trade route to the Portuguese King, to Genoa and to Venice, before he came to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1486. At that time the Spanish monarchs had a Reconquista to tend to, but they were ready in 1492. The Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria sailed that August.
By January 9, 1493, the expedition had been at sea for six months. Sailing off the coast of Hispaniola, what we now call the Dominican Republic, Columbus spotted three "mermaids".
They were Manatee, part of the order "Sirenia". "Sirens" are the beautiful sisters, half birdlike creatures who live by the sea, according to ancient Greek mythology. These girls, according to myth, sang a song so beautiful that sailors were hypnotized, crashing their ships into rocks in their efforts to reach them.
Columbus seems not to have been impressed, describing these mermaids as "not half as beautiful as they are painted."
Small wonder. These marine herbivores measure 10 to 13-feet from nose to tail, and weigh in at 800-1,200 lbs.
Not everyone was quite so dismissive. A hundred years later, the English explorer John Smith reported seeing a mermaid, almost certainly a Manatee. It was "by no means unattractive", he said, but I'm not so sure. It's just possible Mr. Smith needed to get out a little more.
Author Cape Cod CurmudgeonPosted on January 9, 2019 January 9, 2019 Categories Exploration, Odds & Ends, Popular Culture, Today in HistoryTags Columbus, Manatee, Mermaid5 Comments on January 9, 1493 Of Mermaids and Manatees
November 12, 1912 Frozen in Time
Over a hundred years later you can still feel anguish from the man's diary: "The worst has happened…All the day dreams must go…Great God! This is an awful place".
As long as he could remember, Roald Amundsen wanted to be an explorer. As a boy, he would read about the doomed Franklin Arctic Expedition, of 1848. A sixteen-year-old Amundsen took inspiration from Fridtjof Nansen's epic crossing of Greenland, in 1888.
The period would come to be called the "Heroic Age" of polar exploration. Amundsen was born to take part.
Not so, Robert Falcon Scott. A career officer with the British Royal Navy, Scott would take a different path to this story.
Clements Markham, President of the British Royal Geographical Society (RGS), was known to "collect" promising young naval officers with an eye toward future polar exploration. The two first met on March 1, 1887, when the eighteen-year old midshipman's cutter won a sailing race, across St. Kitt's Bay.
In 1894, Scott's father John made a disastrous mistake, selling the family brewery and investing the proceeds, badly. The elder Scott's death of heart disease three years later brought on fresh family crisis, leaving John's widow Hannah and her two unmarried daughters, dependent on Robert and his younger brother, Archie.
Now more than ever, Scott was eager to distinguish himself with an eye toward promotion, and the increase in income which came with it.
In the Royal Navy, limited opportunities for career advancement were eagerly sought after, by any number of ambitious officers. Home on leave in 1899, Scott chanced once again to meet the now-knighted "Sir" Clements Markham, and learned of an impending RGS Antarctic expedition, aboard the barque-rigged auxiliary steamship, RRS Discovery. What passed between the two went unrecorded but, a few days later, Scott showed up at the Markham residence, and volunteered to lead the expedition.
The Discovery expedition of 1901-'04 was one of science as well as exploration. Despite a combined polar experience of near-zero, the fifty officers and men under Robert Falcon Scott made a number of important biological, zoological and geological findings, proving that the Antarctic continent was once, forested. Though later criticized as clumsy and amateurish, a journey south in the direction of the pole discovered the polar plateau, establishing the southernmost record for its time at 82° 17′ S, only 530 miles short of the pole.
Kathleen Bruce Scott
Discovery returned in September 1904, the expedition hailed by one writer as "one of the great polar journeys", of its time. Once an obscure naval officer, Scott now entered Edwardian society, and moved among the higher social and economic circles, of the day.
A brief but stormy relationship ensued with Kathleen Bruce, a sculptress who studied under Auguste Rodin, and counted among her personal friends, the likes of Pablo Picasso, Aleister Crowley and Isadora Duncan. The couple was married on September 2, 1908 and the marriage produced one child, Peter Markham Scott, who went on to found the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The elder Scott would not live to see it.
Ernest Shackleton, ca 1909
The "Great Southern Journey" of Scott's Discovery officer Ernest Shackleton, arrived at a point 112 miles short of the pole on January 9, 1909, providing Scott with the impetus for a second attempt, the following year. Scott was still fundraising for the expedition when the old converted whaler Terra Nova departed Cardiff, in South Wales. Scott joined the ship in South Africa and arrived in Melbourne Australia in October, 1910.
Meanwhile, and unbeknownst to Scott, Roald Amundsen was preparing for his own drive on the south pole, aboard the ship "Fram" (Forward).
It was in Melbourne that Scott received the telegram: "Beg leave to inform you Fram proceeding Antarctic Amundsen". Robert Falcon Scott now faced a race to the pole.
Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano, in the world. Robert Falcon Scott took this photograph in 1911
Weak ponies, poorly acclimatized to the wretched conditions of Antarctica, slowed the depot-laying part of the Scott expedition. Four horses died of cold or had to be shot, because they slowed the team.
Expedition member Lawrence "Titus" Oates warned Scott against the decision to locate "One-Ton Depot" 35-miles short of the planned location at 80°. "Sir, I'm afraid you'll come to regret not taking my advice." His words would prove prophetic.
Unlike the earlier attempt, Robert Falcon Scott made it to the pole this time, only to find that Amundsen's Norwegian team had beat him there, by a mere five weeks. Over a hundred years later you can still feel anguish from the man's diary: "The worst has happened…All the day dreams must go…Great God! This is an awful place".
Defeated, the five-man Scott party turned and began the 800-mile, frozen slog back from the Pole on January 19, 1912. Team member Edgar "Taff" Evans' condition began to deteriorate as early as the 23rd. A bad fall on Beardmore Glacier left the man concussed on February 4, "dull and incapable". Another fall two weeks later, left Evans dead at the foot of the glacier.
Dog teams failed to materialize at the appointed time. Within days, Titus himself was severely frostbitten, concerned that his incapacity would become a threat and a burden to the team. He left his tent for the last time and limped into a blizzard on March 17, saying "I am just going outside and may be some time". He never returned.
Noble as it was, Lawrence Oates' suicide, came to naught. The last three made their final camp on March 19, with 400 miles yet to go. A howling blizzard descended on the tents the following day and lasted for days, as Scott, Henry "Birdie" Bowers and Dr. Edward Wilson wrote good-bye letters to mothers, wives, and others.
Starving and frostbitten, Robert Falcon Scott wrote to his diary in the final hours of his life "It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more." In his final entry, he worried about the financial burden on his family, and those of the doomed expedition: "Last entry. For God's sake look after our people".
The lowest ground level temperature ever recorded was −128.6° Fahrenheit at the Soviet Vostok Antarctic Station, in 1983. Meteorological conditions for those last days in the Scott camp, went undocumented.
The frozen corpses of Robert Falcon Scott and his comrades were found on November 12, 1912, that last diary entry dated March 29. A high cairn of snow was erected over it all, that final camp becoming the three men's tomb. Ship's carpenters built a wooden cross, inscribing on it the names of those lost: Scott, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans. A line from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, Ulysses, was carved into the cross:
Defeated by only weeks, the Scott party spends a moment at the south pole, before turning for the frozen, 800-mile slog, back.
It was eleven miles short of the next supply depot.
On hearing the fate of his rival, Roald Amundsen said "I would gladly forgo any honor or money if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death".
A century later, ice and snow have covered the last camp of the southern party. Pressed ever downward by the weight of snow and ice, their corpses are encased seventy-five-feet down in the Ross Ice Shelf and inching their way outward, expected to reach the Ross Sea sometime around 2276. One day to break off and float away, at the heart of some unknown and nameless iceberg.
Feature image, top of page: Last Camp of the Southern Party, of Robert Scott Falcon
Author Cape Cod CurmudgeonPosted on November 12, 2018 November 12, 2018 Categories British History, Exploration, Today in HistoryTags Heroic age of Polar Exploration, Last Camp, Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, Today in HistoryLeave a comment on November 12, 1912 Frozen in Time
August 29, 1854 The Resolute Desk
The British government presented a large partner's desk to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, a token of gratitude for the return of HMS Resolute, 24 years earlier. Excepting a brief period following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the desk has been in the oval office or a private study in the White House, from that day to this.
Since the time of Columbus, European explorers searched for a navigable shortcut by open water, from Europe to Asia. The "Corps of Discovery", better known as the Lewis and Clark expedition, departed the Indiana Territory in 1804 with, among other purposes, and intention of finding a water route to the Pacific.
Forty years later, Captain sir John Franklin departed England aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, to discover the mythical Northwest Passage.
The two ships became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island, in the Canadian Arctic.
Prodded by Lady Jane Franklin, the hunt for her husband's expedition would continue for years, at one time involving as any as eleven British and two American ships. Clues were found including notes and isolated graves, telling the story of a long and fruitless effort to stay alive in a hostile climate. The wreck of HMS Erebus would not be discovered until 2014, her sister ship, two years later.
In 1848, the British Admiralty possessed few ships suitable for arctic service. Two civilian steamships were purchased and converted to exploration vessels: HMS Pioneer and HMS Intrepid, along with four seagoing sailing vessels, Resolute, Assistance, Enterprise and Investigator.
HMS Resolute was a Barque rigged merchant ship, purchased in 1850 as the Ptarmigan, and refitted for Arctic exploration. Re-named Resolute, the vessel became part of a five ship squadron leaving England in April 1852, sailing into the Canadian arctic in search of the doomed Franklin expedition.
Neither Franklin nor any of his 128 officers and men would ever return alive. HMS Resolute found and rescued the long suffering crew of the HMS Investigator, hopelessly encased in ice where, three years earlier, she too had been searching for the lost expedition.
Three of the HMS Resolute expedition's ships themselves became trapped in floe ice in August 1853, including Resolute, herself. There was no choice but to abandon ship, striking out across the ice pack in search of their supply ships. Most of them made it, despite egregious hardship, straggling into Beechey Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, between May and August of the following year.
The expedition's survivors left Beechey Island on August 29, 1854, never to return.
Meanwhile Resolute, alone and abandoned among the ice floes, continued to drift eastward at a rate of 1½ nautical miles per day.
The American whale ship George Henry discovered the drifting Resolute on September 10, 1855, 1,200 miles from her last known position. Captain James Buddington split his crew, half of them now manning the abandoned ship. Fourteen of them sailed Resolute back to their base in Groton CT, arriving on Christmas eve.
The so-called 'Pig and Potato War" of 1859 was resolved between the British and American governments with the loss of no more than a single hog, yet a number of border disputes made the late 1850s a difficult time, for American-British relations. Senator James Mason of Virginia presented a bill in Congress to fix up the Resolute, giving her back to her Majesty Queen Victoria's government as a token of friendship between the two nations.
$40,000 were spent on the refit, and Resolute sailed for England later that year. Commander Henry J. Hartstene presented her to Queen Victoria on December 13. HMS Resolute served in the British navy until being retired and broken up in 1879. The British government ordered two desks to be fashioned from English oak of the ship's timbers, the work being done by the skilled cabinet makers of the Chatham dockyards. The British government presented a large partner's desk to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. A token of gratitude for HMS Resolute's return, 24 years earlier.
The desk, known as the Resolute Desk, has been used by nearly every American President since, whether in a private study or the oval office.
FDR had a panel installed in the opening, since he was self conscious about his leg braces. It was Jackie Kennedy who brought the desk into the Oval Office. There are pictures of JFK working at the desk, while his young son JFK, Jr., played under it.
Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Ford were the only ones not to use the Resolute desk, as LBJ allowed it to leave the White House, after the Kennedy assassination.
The Resolute Desk spent several years in the Kennedy Library and later the Smithsonian Institute, the only time the desk has been out of the White House.
Jimmy Carter returned the desk to the Oval Office, where it has remained through the Presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and, thus far, Donald J. Trump.
Author Cape Cod CurmudgeonPosted on August 29, 2018 August 29, 2018 Categories American History, British History, Disasters, Exploration, Politics & Government, Today in HistoryTags Franklin Expedition, HMS Resolute, International Relations, President's Desk, Today in HistoryLeave a comment on August 29, 1854 The Resolute Desk
August 10, 2010 An Awful Place
A chirpy little forecast on weather2travel.com advises the Antarctic traveler to "Check How Hot & Sunny It Is Before You Book Your Next Holiday in 2019," reporting max daytime temperatures for March, of -51°C.
Roald Amundsen always wanted to go to sea. The fourth son of a family of Norwegian shipowners and captains, Amundsen's mother wanted no such thing for her boy, and made him vow that he'd go to school to become a doctor. Amundsen was 21 when his mother died. He kept his promise until that day. After that, there would be no more school.
The period would come to be called the "Heroic Age" of polar exploration. Amundsen was drawn to the story, as much as he helped in its creation. He was part of the Antarctic expedition of 1897-99 aboard the RV Belgica, the first to winter in Antarctica. He led the first expedition to successfully navigate Canada's Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in 1903–06.
Amundsen's attempt to reach the South Pole set out on September 8, 1911. Using skis and dog sleds, Amundsen and his men created supply depots at 80°, 81° and 82° south latitude, precious stockpiles of food and equipment at 69-mile intervals on the way to the Pole. The effort proved to be premature and had to be abandoned due to extreme cold. A second attempt departed on October 19 with four sledges and 52 dogs, along the previously unknown Axel Heiberg Glacier. The team of five men and 16 dogs arrived at 90° 0′ S on December 14, 1911, the first team in history to reach the South Pole.
Robert Falcon Scott
English explorer Robert Falcon Scott attempted the South Pole in 1901–04, and was doing so once again at the time of the Amundsen expedition. Though he'd had to turn back, the earlier expedition had established the southernmost record for that time, at 88° 23′ S. Ninety-seven miles short of the pole.
Weak ponies, poorly acclimated to the wretched conditions slowed the depot-laying part of the Scott expedition, four horses dying of cold or having to be shot because they slowed the team.
Expedition member Lawrence "Titus" Oates warned Scott against the decision to locate "One-Ton Depot" 35-miles short of its planned location at 80°. His words would prove prophetic. "Sir, I'm afraid you'll come to regret not taking my advice."
Unlike his previous attempt, Scott made it this time, only to find that Amundsen's Norwegian expedition had beat him by a mere five weeks. The anguish in Scott's diary entry for January 17, 1912, is palpable: "The worst has happened…All the day dreams must go…Great God! This is an awful place".
"Scott captures Dr Edward Wilson sketching on Beardmore Glacier during his final expedition to the Antarctic in 1912". H/T Guardian.com
Defeated, the five-man Scott party began the 800-mile, frozen slog back from the Pole on January 19. Team member Edgar "Taff" Evans' condition began to deteriorate as early as the 23rd. A bad fall on Beardmore Glacier on February 4 left him "dull and incapable". Another fall on the 17th left Evans dead at the foot of the glacier.
Dog teams failed to materialize at the appointed time. Within days, Oates himself was severely frostbitten, concerned that his incapacity was a threat and a burden to the team. The man left his tent for the last time and limped into the blizzard on March 17, saying "I am just going outside and may be some time". He never returned.
Noble though it was, Lawrence Oates' suicide came to naught. The last three made their final camp on March 19, with 400 miles to go. A howling blizzard descended on the tents the following day and lasted for days, as Scott, Henry "Birdie" Bowers and Dr. Edward Wilson wrote good-bye letters to mothers, wives, and others. In his final starved, frostbitten hours, Robert Falcon Scott wrote to his diary "It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more." In his final entry, Scott worried about the financial burden on his family, and those of the doomed expedition: "Last entry. For God's sake look after our people".
The specific meteorological conditions of those final days, went unrecorded. A chirpy little forecast on http://www.weather2travel.com advises the Antarctic traveler to "Check How Hot & Sunny It Is Before You Book Your Next Holiday in 2019," reporting maximum daytime temperatures for March, of -51°C.
The frozen corpses of Scott and his comrades were found some eight months later, that last diary entry dated March 29, 1912. A high cairn of snow was erected over it all, that final camp becoming the three men's tomb. Ship's carpenters built a wooden cross, inscribing on it the names of those lost: Scott, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans. A line from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, Ulysses, appears on the cross: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".
The last three survivors died eleven miles from their next supply depot.
Apsley Cherry-Garrard, part of the expedition to find the doomed Scott party, survived similar conditions by some kind of miracle and wrote in The Worst Journey in the World, that his teeth chattered so violently, that some of them broke.
Routes taken to the South Pole by Amundsen (Red) and Scott (Green)
On hearing of the fate of his erstwhile rival, Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen is quoted as saying "I would gladly forgo any honour or money if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death".
A century of ice and snow have covered the bodies, the camp and the cross alike. Pressed ever downward by the weight of the snow and ice and creeping seaward with the glacier, the corpses are encased seventy-five-feet down in the Ross Ice Shelf and inching their way outward, expected to reach the Ross Sea sometime around 2276. Perhaps to break off and float away, at the heart of some unknown future iceberg.
Feature image, top of page "Final call: From left-righy, Dr E. A. Wilson, Lt. H. R, Bowers, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Petty Officer Taff Evans and Capt. L. E.G. Oates pose for a photo not long before they died on their way back from their trek". H/T Guardian.com
Author Cape Cod CurmudgeonPosted on August 10, 2018 August 10, 2018 Categories British History, Disasters, Exploration, Today in HistoryTags Arctic Exploration, Doomed Expedition, Heroic Age, Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, Today in History7 Comments on August 10, 2010 An Awful Place