The Exploration of the Poles

Overview

During the first part of the twentieth century, having mapped and visited nearly the whole Earth, explorers turned their attentions to the Poles. Inhospitable, dangerous, and difficult to reach, the North and South Poles represented one of the ultimate adventures left on Earth and their conquest captured the public attention. When Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) reached the South Pole in 1911, one phase of the exploration of the Earth ended and another began.

Background

From time immemorial, mankind knew of the frozen wastes to the north. The Norse, Siberians, Inuit, and others lived in it and even merchant sailors came across icebergs broken loose from the northern ice packs. Eventually, as people came to understand that the Earth was a sphere spinning in space, they realized that the Earth's axis of rotation would be found in the far north and the far south.

While the far north was known to be hiding the North Pole, little was known about it save that it was virtually uninhabitable, cold, icy, and desolate. Some were convinced a continent lay hidden beneath the ice, others felt it contained a shallow sea, and some thought it was an ice-covered ocean. However, it was all speculation, uninformed by any real information.

As little as was known of the northern polar regions, even less was known about the far south. The ancient Greeks posited the existence of a southern continent because they felt it was needed to balance the weight of the northern landmass, but it was not sighted until 1840, when the American sailor Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) made the first confirmed sighting of land. However, as with the northern polar regions, exploration on foot was to wait for some time.

The northern polar region was the first to be extensively explored, probably because it was just a short distance from the major nations engaged in journeys of exploration. Perhaps the most daring attempt to reach the North Pole was Fridtjof Nansen's (1861-1930) voyage in the Fram, which left Norway in 1893 and returned in 1896. Unlike previous polar explorers, Nansen chose to work with nature. Knowing that the polar ice drifted with time, he and his companions designed a ship that would become frozen into the ice purposely, letting the ice itself carry them to the Pole. While unsuccessful, Nansen did reach a higher northern latitude than any previous explorer and became famous upon his return. The North Pole was finally reached on foot by Matthew Henson (1866-1955) and Robert Peary (1856-1920) in 1909. The first flight over the North Pole was claimed by American Richard Byrd (1888-1957) and pilot Floyd Bennett (1890-1928) in 1926, but doubt about their actual success remains. Byrd's diary, found in 1996, indicates that they were probably about 150 miles (240 km) short of the Pole when an engine oil leak forced them to turn back. The first documented flight over the North Pole was made three days after Byrd's attempt by the team of Roald Amundsen (Norway), Lincoln Ellsworth (U.S.), and Umberto Nobile (Italy), who crossed the Pole in a dirigible.

While the assaults on the North Pole were showing fruit, serious attempts were made to visit the South Pole, too. As with the North Pole, there were many unsuccessful attempts, including Ernest Shackleton's (1874-1922) epic voyage in 1914. Plagued by frostbite, snow blindness, and dysentery, Shackleton's expedition covered over 1,700 miles, but stopped short of the continent and spent nearly two years before its rescue. The first successful expedition to the South Pole was that of Roald Amundsen in 1911, who beat the unfortunate Englishman Robert Scott and his team to the South Pole by a matter of weeks. Tragically, Scott and his entire party died on their return from the South Pole, neither the first nor the last to fall victim to the polar regions. The ubiquitous Admiral Byrd became the first to fly over the South Pole in 1929; among his most notable achievements was the establishment of the first scientific outposts on the continent.

Impact

Public interest in polar explorers and their accomplishments was avid in the era of Byrd and Amundsen, and remains high even today, despite the fact that visiting the Poles is now almost routine. Television shows on the Arctic and Antarctic are popular, as are books and movies set there. As recently as 1999, world attention focused on the plight of a woman scientist with suspected breast cancer who could not be evacuated from the south polar station for many weeks; at the same time, a news station aired a documentary on scientific expeditions that traveled by nuclear submarine beneath the Arctic ice cap.

Part of the reason for this continuing fascination is probably because the Poles were, literally, the last places on Earth to be explored. As with Mount Everest, elaborate attention to preparation and equipment is essential, making mere survival a triumph of human will, technology, or both. It may be, too, that we are drawn by such extremes because they test us as nothing else can and, in so doing, make us see what is best in ourselves. Or, as John Kennedy once said with respect to journeying to the Moon, "We choose to do this, not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

In addition, polar exploration is, in many ways, a romantic activity, full of adventure, idealism, and with little immediate practical application. It may be that, to a public living in an increasingly practical world, following the exploits of polar explorers throughout the twentieth century provided (and continues to provide) an outlet for that part of our human nature that longs for an escape from the practicalities of modern life. Whatever the reasons, polar exploration has excited public interest for over a century, an interest that shows little sign of abating.

In the political and military arena, the Poles offer much, as well. From the start, national pride and prestige were reflected in exploration of any sort, rich as they were with potential for the discovery of new sources of raw materials, new trade routes, and the like. Conquering the Poles, however, also offered military and economic advantages that many nations have been eager to explore.

While most nations have relinquished any territorial claims to the Antarctic, many have a continuing presence on the continent. The United States, Russia, Britain, New Zealand, and others maintain scientific personnel on a more-orless continuing basis; some countries, notably Chile and Argentina, have attempted to maintain small colonies. Chile actually set up a small village at one point, encouraging pregnant women to give birth in Antarctica to bolster their claim to portions of the continent (which have never been recognized by other nations). In general, while many countries jockey for position in Antarctica, little will likely come of it unless the Antarctic Treaty fails at some point to be renewed.

International treaty also prohibits exploring for or recovery of natural resources in Antarctica. The entire continent has been declared offlimits, in spite of evidence for deposits of coal, minerals, and perhaps petroleum. This same treaty also prohibits the use of Antarctica for military purposes, although several nations maintained military personnel on the continent to assist their scientific outposts. For that reason, the primary advantage to a continuing presence in the Antarctic is political prestige. The Arctic, however, is a different story.

Although there are no mineral resources beneath the Arctic ice cap, the Arctic environment was studied for decades by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union because of its military importance. Since the mid-1950s, nuclear submarines crossed beneath the Pole regularly, perfecting under-ice navigation and warfare techniques. The Soviet Union (and, later, Russia) developed ballistic missile submarines specifically designed to break through leads in the ice to launch their missiles at the U.S. or Europe, while the U.S. developed ways to find these submarines amid the cacophony of sounds made by drifting ice. To this end, the U.S. embarked on a continuing program of subsea exploration designed to return information about the oceanography, submarine geology and geography, as well as other factors that could provide a military advantage in wartime. Both nations studied above the ice, too, with the knowledge that nuclear missiles, if launched, would travel over the Poles.

In conclusion, the scientific returns from Antarctica are impressive and appear likely to continue for some time. Antarctic science has confirmed and deepened our understanding of terrestrial phenomena such as plate tectonics, ozone depletion, past climate change, meteorites, paleontology, glaciology, biology, and more. In addition, relatively new telescopes are providing a great deal of valuable information about high-energy astrophysics, and neutrinos, and allow long-term observations of phenomena during the months-long Antarctic night.

The most significant impact of Antarctic science, however, could simply be a better appreciation of the speed with which small changes in global temperature can cause the Antarctic ice sheets and polar cap to collapse. This could lead higher sea levels, potentially flooding many major world cities such as New York, Amsterdam, London, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, and others. An ongoing debate over the fragility of parts of the ice sheet has some scientists arguing that very little change is needed to cause such a collapse. If this is the case, they suggest, it may already be too late to do more than prepare for higher sea levels in the next century or so. Although this controversy has yet to be resolved, it will profoundly affect the way we interpret our ecological influence. If the ice sheet can collapse rapidly, we may soon be faced with a crucial choice: try to lower global temperature or prepare to evacuate hundreds of millions of people from low-lying areas around the world. Either choice will reverberate for decades or centuries.

P. ANDREW KARAM