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even foolhardy – deeds. Few who
read Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s epic
account of Scott’s last expedition,
The Worst Journey in the World
(1922), are likely ever again to guy
the ironic, detached, very English
brand of courage it puts on show.
Tourism aside, the principal
reason for setting foot at the poles
these days is science. For ice and
air are finely calibrated barometers
of global climate change, as environmental scientists at the university’s renowned Scott Polar
Research Institute (SPRI) have
discovered over a generation.
Founded in 1920 as an interdisciplinary meeting-place for
polar explorers and researchers,
SPRI maintains its traditions
actively. Each morning and afternoon, when the bell from the
Terra Nova – the ship that carried
Scott on his doomed expedition
– rings, glaciologists, anthropologists, geophysicists and visiting
academics come together to swap
ideas over coffee and tea. No one
admires the courage and fortitude
of the pioneers more than they
do. But these days it is science –
especially environmental science
– that shapes the agenda. THE PIONEERS
Ice bound
Blinding in sunlight but dark for months on
end, with frozen seas, huge skies, blizzards,
glaciers and astonishing sunsets, the poles
have a majesty unmatched anywhere else
on earth. Martin Thompson explores
our last wilderness through the collections
of the Scott Polar Research Institute
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The poles of the Earth have long
exercised a magnetic pull on the
adventurous, who want both to
experience their pristine beauty at
first-hand and test themselves in
unforgiving terrain. Some expeditions have been driven by patriotism or competitive instinct;
others have been genuinely scientific. Most have been a mix of the
two, embracing science but also
pushing human beings to their
limits, and occasioning heroic –
Left. The Terra Nova, photographed by Herbert Ponting.
Captain Scott’s Terra Nova was
used to ferry men and equipment
south for the legendary British
Antarctic Expedition of 1910–13
that culminated in Scott’s failed
attempt to raise the Union Jack at
the South Pole ahead of his great
rival, Roald Amundsen. Knowing
how important the new medium
of photography was for publicity,
Scott gave a key place in his team
to a professional photographer,
Herbert Ponting, whose atmospheric pictures have helped keep
Scott’s flame alight ever since.
Over 1,700 original glass negatives survive at SPRI. Ponting
(1870–1935), the son of a banker,
originally made his name as a
globetrotting war photographer
and photojournalist for American
magazines. After Scott’s death, he
gave up photography to lecture
about the last expedition, using
his own memorable images to help
convey the explorers’ endurance,
resilience and almost superhuman
tenacity.
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Right. Sir John Franklin, 1845.
For three centuries sailors tried to
find a north-west sea passage that
would dramatically shorten trade
voyages from China by linking
the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans,
slowly piecing together a route
through the icebergs and frozen
islands of northern Canada, where
winter temperatures fall to 50˚F
below freezing. Though an experienced Arctic explorer, Franklin was
59 and, to judge from this photo,
none too fit when he set out in
1845 to settle the route for good.
Neither of his ships, the Erebus
and the Terror, with 129 men on
board, were ever seen again.
Two years later, the first of
more than twenty search expeditions were despatched, most of
them financed by the Admiralty,
a few by Franklin’s wife, Lady
Jane, who bought a luxury yacht
and had it refitted for Arctic
conditions. Eventually it became
apparent that the expedition had
been trapped by thick sea ice two
years out, and after Franklin’s own
death had abandoned both ships
and struggled south over the ice
to the Adelaide peninsula on the
Canadian mainland. That final
landfall completed the piecemeal
discovery of the north-west passage, but every surviving crewman perished there, at what is now
known as Starvation Cove.
Top right. Captain Scott’s expedition at the South Pole, 1912.
‘Had we lived, I should have had
a tale to tell of the hardihood,
endurance and courage of my
companions which would have
stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our
dead bodies must tell the tale…
We shall stick it out to the end,
but we are getting weaker of
course and the end cannot be far.
It seems a pity, but I do not think
I can write more. For God’s sake,
look after our people.’
The last diary entry of Robert
Falcon Scott (1868–1912) epitomises the heroic age of Antarctic
exploration. He and his party
reached the pole on 17 January
1912 only to find that the betterequipped Roald Amundsen had
beaten them to it by a month
with the help of dog-pulled
sledges. This picture, taken by
the group themselves, bears the
imprint of their shattered dreams.
Seated, from left, are Henry ‘Birdie’
Bowers and Edward Wilson (Caius
1891). Behind them are Lawrence
Oates, Scott and Edgar Evans.
All five died on the 800-mile
return journey, succumbing one
by one to blizzards and temperatures down to -43°F. Evans was
the first to die, followed by
Oates, who famously walked out
of the tent on the morning of his
32nd birthday with the words:
‘I am just going outside. I may be
some time’. His abandoned sleeping bag and Scott’s last letters are
today among the great treasures of
the Scott Polar Research Institute.
Right. Ernest Shackleton and
Frank Hurley, Patience Camp,
1916. ‘We had seen God in his
splendours, heard the text that
Nature renders. We had reached
the naked soul of man.’ So wrote
Shackleton (1874–1922) of his
epic trek across the uncharted
mountains of the island of South
Georgia after pack ice crushed his
ship, the Endurance, and wrecked
his attempt to be the first to cross
the Antarctic continent.
Hurley, seen here skinning a
penguin to feed the blubber stove
outside the tent the two men
shared, was a fearless Australian
photographer who signed on to
Shackleton’s party to record a triumph and ended up chronicling
one of the greatest survival stories
of all time. He managed to rescue
his precious negatives when the
Endurance was crushed to matchwood and sank, and lugged the
canisters everywhere thereafter
until he was finally rescued from
Elephant Island in August 1916.
Help came to the expedition only
after Shackleton and five crew
sailed the 800 miles to South
Georgia in a tiny open boat, the
James Caird, and then trekked
overland across the forbidding
interior of the island to raise the
alarm at a whaling station. In the
end, not a single member of the
expedition died.
Below. Hand-coloured lantern
slides of Nares’ polar expedition
in 1875–6, showing HMS Alert
and a sledging party. George
Nares (1831–1915) was captaining HMS Challenger on the legendary scientific voyage that gave
birth to modern oceanography
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JULIAN DOWDESWELL
when he was recalled to lead the
1875 British expedition to the
North Pole. A crowd of almost a
quarter of a million gathered to
watch the Alert and Discovery set
sail from Portsmouth.
Nares’ principal objective was
to see if the pole was surrounded
by open sea, as was then believed.
In the spring of 1876 he sent out
sledge parties that explored
hundreds of miles of new coastline and dispatched a polar team,
led by Commander Albert Markham, that reached 83°20’ north
before turning back – an amazing
achievement over pack ice that
was drifting south almost as fast
as they could travel north.
Nares was an admirable
leader but his planning was poor:
none of his officers had ever seen
an iceberg, the expedition’s clothing was inadequate and the limejuice taken to ward off scurvy was
made useless by boiling.
Though the public was disappointed that the pole had not
been reached, the expedition
returned safely and Nares was
knighted. The world’s northernmost settlement, on Ellesmere
Island, is today called after the
Alert and the strait between the
island and Greenland is named in
Nares’ honour.
ANTARCTICA TODAY
Above. Crevassed ice margin,
Neumayer Channel. This mazelike channel at the north-western
tip of Antarctica is one of two
frequently used by cruise ships visiting the region. Although many
passengers do not land, tourism is
on the increase and its impact on
the delicate ecology of the continent will require careful management in years to come.
The photograph was taken by
Julian Dowdeswell, currently the
director of the Scott Polar
Research Institute, who studies
the form and flow of glaciers and
ice caps, and their response
to climate change. ‘The idea that
global warming is causing the
polar ice caps to shrink is now
widely accepted by scientists,’ he
says. ‘On the Antarctic peninsula
temperatures have risen by 3˚C
over the last fifty years. By monitoring changes to the frozen surface of the Amundsen Sea, we are
now beginning to get a more precise idea about the rate of change.’
Below. Antarctic ice, Amundsen
Sea. Named after the great Norwegian explorer, the Amundsen
Sea is one of three major drainage
outlets for the West Antarctica ice
sheet, which measures up to two
miles thick. On the Pacific side of
the continent, the glaciers flowing
into the sea have been melting
much faster in recent years. ‘Why
do we care so much about the
polar regions?’ asks Dowdeswell.
‘Because what happens there has a
big effect on climate and sea level
in other latitudes. As glaciers and
JULIAN DOWDESWELL
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W G REES
the great ice sheets melt, water is
decanted into the ocean and sea
levels rise. All our climate models
suggest that the polar regions –
and the Arctic in particular – will
respond to increases in greenhouse gases more quickly than
anywhere else. We have already
detected dramatic changes in both
Arctic and Antarctic ice cover, and
we’re now analysing the implications: working out, for instance,
how long we have before we need
to rebuild the Thames Barrier that
protects London from flooding.’
SPRI
Right. The robo-sub Isis being
winched aboard its mother ship.
SPRI uses a mix of aircraft, ships,
satellites and fieldwork to establish
whether ice sheets and glaciers are
growing or shrinking. Its scientists
also have access to a submersible
ROV (Remotely-operated Vehicle)
called Isis. Weighing 3 tonnes and
costing £4.5m, this robo-sub was
built at the National Oceanography
Centre, Southampton, to withstand enormous pressures.
Capable of working up to four
miles away from its mother ship, it
can dive two miles deep and map
the sea floor at high resolution,
using mechanical arms to collect
samples of deep-sea sediment as
it goes. Dowdeswell has already
taken the vehicle to 3,500m (2.2
miles), the deepest it has ever
descended in Antarctic waters.
‘Well-preserved sediments
allow us to calibrate the advance
and retreat of the ice 100,000 years
ago, and this helps us understand
how modern ice sheets respond to
a rapidly changing climate.’
JULIAN DOWDESWELL
Right. Siberian reindeer herders
migrating to a new summer
camp. Although only 14 per cent
of the Nenet, Russia’s most
numerous indigenous people, still
work as reindeer-herders, reindeer
remain at the symbolic core of
Nenet cultural identity. Because
herding is best done away from
human activity, some families still
live as nomads on the tundra.
Access to modern infrastructure
such as meat-processing plants is
essential, but at the same time
industrial pollution is reducing
the amount of pasture available
year by year. Until a balance is
struck between industry and
nature, the future of the traditional Nenet way of life must
accordingly remain in doubt.
Above. Inuit carving of a man in
a kayak, from Baffin Island,
Canada, 1961. The museum at
SPRI, which is open to the public
free of charge, has among its varied
collections many carvings made by
the native peoples of the Canadian
and Alaskan Arctic. Some are in
stone, some ivory. This fine figure
of a man in a kayak was carved
from soapstone by Josie Pisuktie of
Iqualuit [Frobisher Bay].
The Scott Polar Research
Institute's museum is open
Tues–Fri 11–1, 2–4; Sat 12–4.
Closed Sunday, Monday
and Bank Holiday weekends.
For visiting arrangements,
see www.spri.cam.ac.uk/
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