Little America Read online

  Oct. 2, 1928

  Aboard Twentieth Century Ltd.

  En route San Pedro, Calif.

  Home is back there now—but no, rather it is two years ahead of me. It is more pleasant to look at it in that way. For then each day must advance me to ward it, and not away from it. Yesterday was the last day. There were, of course, no goodbyes. A casual “so long” is so much better. The thing is living with me to day, and I have not the will to describe it. Of the three girls, only Bolling seems to have understood that I was going away for a long time, but whatever doubts that knowledge gave rise to were speedily swallowed up in a vaster personal disaster. She cut her finger, and ran up, crying: “Daddy, I ’m leaking. Stop me up.” Dickie was the little soldier he always is, at the end shoving shyly into my hand his most treasured toy. What a wonderful thing to have come close to the mind of a child! Here is perhaps the most exquisite intimacy, and surely the most tranquil. For Dickie takes it for granted that all fathers adore sons, and all sons adore fathers.

  Tonight, as I have done on a hundred nights, I have asked myself: why are you doing this? Can it be that the joy you get out of exploring is the decisive factor in your plans, overpowering all other influences?

  This is a time of heart-sinking doubt. I must go it alone for no one can decide the matter for me. My mind knows what the answers are, but there is some obscure, perhaps ancient, voice within me tonight which instinctively interposes others. What a contradictory thing “instinct” is? Half of human instinct drives away from the center, and makes for enlarging the outline of what we know. Half of it drives toward the center, seeking to confirm and make secure the goods that are there. Life is made up of both things, exploring and establishing, a double swing of the pendulum. Sometimes, as tonight, the instinct toward digging-in must have its chance to speak—not a homing instinct, for I am not far enough away for that—but a home-building instinct perhaps, trying to persuade one that happiness is identified with security, order, and steady work toward making things more perfect. But when intellect takes this instinct by the ears and compels it to listen to reason, it recognizes that security is never perfect, and therefore home-building is never finished, until we know all that is outside that charmed circle. Going away is a part of solid working at the center. And perhaps this is my particular fate, to do my building in this roundabout way. “Man wants to know,” Nansen has said, “and when he does not want to know he ceases to be a man.”

  Oct. 2, ’ 28

  On Train en route

  San Pedro, Calif.

  My suit case lies open on the opposite seat—in it, and opened, is an old newspaper with the following headlines:

  Million Dollar Expedition

  Has Magnificent Equipment

  Costliest on Record

  Between the lines the thought lay implicit:—“plutocratic backing, lavish equipment, unnecessary luxuries, and elegant ease where hardships were once considered inescapable.”

  To the man who wrote the article, an attack on Antarctica with a shoestring would have been the desirable thing. There would then be more high adventure to it, more sport, more drama and so, more news value. I fear we shall pay for that impression.

  In polar expeditions of given conditions, the adventure involved varies directly as preparation. There is a saying among explorers that the more the amateur the greater the adventure. Conditions in the Antarctic, however, are sufficiently hazardous to involve risk—which is to say, adventure—even to the most carefully prepared expedition. Faulty preparation must certainly bring a high degree of risk, if not tragedy, were the expedition not even to venture from its main base. Tragedy may follow even with the best possible preparation. A knowledge of what has been going on behind the scenes, as well as the literature on the Antarctic, must have softened that man’s humor.

  He would then have known of an enormous debt—of creditors pressing us week after week, almost to the edge of bankruptcy, and loyal friends neglecting their own affairs to help us stave off failure.

  He would have seen no flock of plutocrats buying luxuries; only a handful of impecunious men collecting necessities with painful economy.

  He would have known the mere fact of costs running up into six figures does not mean luxury. If the notion was drawn from comparison with the costs of other expeditions, a moment’s analysis must have convinced him that the difference, if anything, would not be against us. The dollar’s purchasing power has diminished considerably since the first great expeditions to the Antarctic. The cost of Captain Scott’s first expedition (1901–1904) was approximately $460,000,1 of his last (1910—1913) at least $375,000,2 and of Sir Ernest Shackleton ’s second (1914–1916) about $400,000.3

  Moreover, we must take not only the best in pioneering equipment, but also the most useful apparatus that modern science and industry offers. The unique nature of the expedition, in fact, demands the most expensive kind of transport thus far used in polar regions—the airplane. It requires the services of a highly-paid, well-trained personnel. The pay of the aviators alone will total $35,000, and the extra ship necessary to carry the airplanes and gasoline will cost several hundred thousand dollars to purchase and condition it for the Antarctic and for cost of operation. Ships are very costly things.

  No, we are not half so well fixed as this fellow believed.

  And there is the added thought that the past expeditions, as large as ours is, were usually supported wholly. or in large part, by governments, or divisions of governments; whereas responsibility for the financing of this one is centered in a single man.

  What a debacle if the creditors had forced us to the wall! Yet better a thousand times, we told ourselves, to face ruin in New York than accept the dreadful responsibility of starting south lacking a single bit of equipment, no matter what the cost, necessary for the safety of the men.

  The raising of money for polar expeditions is always difficult. I have never known an explorer who was not either bankrupt or close to it.

  October 7, 1928

  Hotel

  Los Angeles.

  The telephone is disconnected at last. It is quiet here, for the first time in hours. Committees have gone, good-wishers, autograph hunters who flock, like locusts, to the feast. More than five hundred telegrams, most of them wishing “bon voyage,” are stacked up on the table. There is no time nor money to answer them, and that hurts.

  The devilish flu that threatened to upset everything is almost gone. Fever is down and pulse normal. In fact, I feel quite fit. This is a good omen.

  Marie is best of nurses. We have seen more of each other during the past few days than in many, many months. It has made me realize more fully how very busy I have been during the past ten years. Tomorrow is our last day. Then I start south on the Larsen.1

  I do hope they let us get away quietly and without too noisy a show.

  October 13, ‘28

  A board S.S. C. A. Larsen

  En route New Zealand.

  Headed southward at last. After years of anticipation and months of preparation.

  The moon on the water; the breezes whispering adventure ahead; then the storm, the water boiling; and above the wind the calm sound of the ship’s bell striking on the hour, voicing man’s indifference to the nature about him that can no longer shape him to its end; the wind slackens again to a whisper and the barely audible chug-chug of the engines feeding man’s deep yearning for mobility, carrying us to a new place, where wealth and fame and power count for nothing, and where men will not strut because there are no women about.

  October 16

  These last few days, I have simply rested and recalled. What struck me most, as the events of the past few years passed through my mind, was the difference between these last three expeditions and the first two. That is, the difference in the magnitude of operations, the methods of financing, and the distribution of responsibility.

  In the projected trans-Atlantic flight of 1919 and the MacMillan Arctic Expedition of 1925, of which I comm
anded the naval aerial unit, the powerful bureaus of the Navy Department shouldered most of the work and most of the responsibility for the hazards of the flying. On the North Pole flight and this Antarctic expedition, the responsibility has been entirely mine. Responsibility for debts, mistakes, plans, execution of work and what is vastly more important—responsibility for the safety of the men involved—has fallen wholly upon a single pair of shoulders; whereas, in the case of a naval or governmental undertaking of the kind, such cares and responsibilities are distributed among I 20,000,000 persons. There are more than four score men on this expedition, ran gin g in age from 18 years to 68, from seam en to scientists. For every one of them I have a deep sense of responsibility. I shall have it with me, without relief, for nearly two years.

  This expedition brought me trying problem s from the start. Of these, the problem of financing was perhaps the most difficult. The extensive scientific inquiry planned for the Antarctic, which alone could justify our going, required competent supporting forces. The cash necessary for creating the expedition, and keeping it in the field for the necessary period, was estimated, in the Spring of 1928, as approximately $750,000. We had begun to raise this money in the fall of 1927, through public subscription and private contributions; by mid-summer approximately $500,000 had been raised. I knew that mean while we had run into unforeseen expenses, the extent of which I did not learn until the last week m September. I was in New York at the time. In seven days I hoped to leave for Boston.

  Hilton1 met meat the office, after a night with his reports. Hilton had been put in charge of raising funds for the expedition. When he spoke, he did not hold his punch.

  “I have a final statement to make on our debts,” he said. “We have a deficit of $300,000.”

  I had n o t expected it to be half as much. The reasons for this were soon forthcoming. The cost and outfitting of the City of New York and the Eleanor Bolling had amounted to a small fortune—$165,000 for the first, $125,000 for the second. To build new ships would have approximately cost three times what I put into them. There could be no cutting corners in the matter of strengthening the ships for the struggle in the ice: this expenditure was absolutely necessary. I owed a fortune. And here I was, at the bitter end of my resources, dead tired, sustained during the last crowded days by the hope I should have the last few days at home. Well, I had to get that money; though where, God only knew.

  While I sat pondering over this cruel turn of affairs, Hilton came at me again. “I have also learned this: an article is being written for a powerful syndicate of newspapers attacking the expedition for lavish equipment.”

  “Great,” I told him. “Now let’s have some more good news. I need it.”

  Only five days—Monday to Friday night—in which to raise that amount of money. It was distressing to be forced to give up those seven days at home. They were more than just spilt milk, not to be cried over.

  I am in no proper frame of mind, even at this distant date, to record that struggle here. From early morning until late at night, I was at the most disagreeable job in the world, money-raising, begging it really is. I was fortunate. The debt was reduced to $184,000. The job, I confess, could not have been done alone. Loyal friends went to the bat for me, not once but many times. And to them I give undying gratitude—small recompense indeed for what they have done. They made it possible to go ahead and saved me from abysm al bankruptcy.

  The day we sailed, in fact, yet another encouraging gift came. It was embodied in a telegram, which I have at hand:

  Replying to your request through Edsel Ford, Fisher Brothers are glad to contribute $50,000 to the fund of the great research expedition you are making. Kindly advise where and how funds should be deposited. Best wishes and success to you all in your great undertaking.

  L. P. FISHER,

  Detroit, Mich.

  And so to you, Lawrence Fisher, and your brothers, I also extend my deepest thanks. You cannot possibly know how much your gift has encouraged us.

  Still a debt in excess of $100,000. Ahead of us expenses of routine operation that will certainly amount to that much more. In the treasury hardly half enough funds with which to meet them.

  Unless we can raise the money, we shall have, then, the humiliation of debts and creditors in a foreign land.

  I had determined at the outset not to leave the United States if a large deficit had accumulated. This decision had to be abandoned; the expedition gathered such momentum that it could not be stopped; for another month’s delay here must of necessity mean another year’s delay,1 and considerably greater expenditures in the end. But having set my course I shall go ahead with keen pleasure, for these difficulties are part of the problem and they will be met somehow.

  The situation nevertheless calls for determination and cooperation on the part of all members of the expedition; and from Nature the most favorable of circumstances. If, for example, we should fail to get our winter base established on the Barrier there can be but one miserable ending—bankruptcy and disgrace. In expeditions of this kind success and failure are not nearly as far apart as the antithetical meanings of the words themselves would indicate. Failure of the pack ice to break up at a seasonable date, thus holding us back too long for the complete basing of supplies, or the presence of a speck of dirt in the airplane engines in flight—matters remotely beyond human control—may well bring disaster at the beginning.

  The problem of using aircraft to the utmost advantage in the Antarctic has been discussed at length both at home and aboard ship. The use of aircraft in the Antarctic is experimental, and its success unpredictable. Mawson,1 as early as 1911, proposed to use an airplane in the field, an R.E.P. monoplane, built by Vickers, with a special detachable sledge-runner under-carriage. It came to grief, however, in a test flight at Adelaide, Australia, nearly killing its pilot, and Mawson therefore abandoned the idea of attempting to fly in the Antarctic.2 The fuselage was converted into a tractor for hauling sledges, in which humbler capacity it also failed.3As a matter of fact, pioneering with heavier-than-air craft in polar regions could not have had more distressing circumstances attending it than Mawson found at Adelie Land. Had not the excessively roughened character of the terrain at Cape Denison, on Commonwealth Bay, where he established his main base, been sufficient to preclude the possibility of a take-off, save under the most hazardous circumstances, the ferocity of the winds must have kept his craft permanently under cover. For he discovered the windiest country in the world—”an accursed country.”4 The average wind velocity for the year was placed at 50 miles per hour; for hours on end blizzards persisted at velocities greatly in excess of the maximum on the Beaufort Scale,5 reaching the phenomenal velocity of 116 miles per hour, July 5, 1913,1 and maintaining an average of 107 miles per hour for eight hours, jarring even the tightly bolted timbers of their hut. Gusts approaching 200 miles per hour were reported on the anemometer.2 Such conditions must beggar the mightiest flying efforts of man.

  Of course we shall have no problem at our base in the Bay of Whales; although preeminently a windy continent, Antarctica has places of calm, and Amundsen assures me that, if we are eternally vigilant, our planes can be kept safely in flight and on the ice. The principal risks, as we see them, will arise from storms or from the impossible conditions of visibility met unexpectedly in flight, in landings away from the base, upon unknown ice terrain, and from the difficulty in properly securing the ship against the wind in connection with such landings. All three present food for serious thought; the third is perhaps our most difficult problem. A wind velocity of 60 miles per hour is sufficient to give a stationary airplane a true flying speed; at 100 miles per hour a terrific lift; at that speed the wind exerts a pressure of 23 lbs. per square foot, and unless securely anchored, a plane would be instantly hurled aloft and destroyed. Balchen3 and Smith4 are particularly concerned with this problem; and they are now working out a system of anchor lines and ice anchors. I have great faith in these splendid pilots. Both have superb records:
—Smith, a pioneer pilot in the mail service, one of the four survivors, I am told, of the thirty-two pilots who opened the mail line between New York and Cleveland; he is now only 31 years old. I have yet to learn to know Smith, but I believe in him. When I met his mother I knew that he must have good stuff in him. Bernt Balchen and I have been through much together. He has never failed to meet whatever test has come. Bernt is splendid.

  What uncertainty of the future I share centers principally about the matter of attempting landings away from the main base. Our program demands several such landings in connection with the laying of depots for the main polar flight, and for reconnaissance expeditions of the scientists. Each of these landings must be attended with great risk, for conditions of visibility in the Antarctic are notoriously bad, ice surfaces are extremely difficult to judge from the air and there will be the constant threat of unseen crevasses. Even less attractive is the possibility of a forced landing.

  All of which gives us much to think about, even on the tranquil Pacific. We plan and discuss matters from early morning until late at night. At luncheon today we discussed merits of seal meat and pemmican as a constant diet. I detected in Parker,1 who comes from Mississippi, the beginnings of a strong distaste for such food. There is a vast amount of work yet to be done—hundreds of letters and telegrams carried unanswered from the states, and much routine planning for the expedition from New Zealand on. Duties must be allocated continuously, the program for the scientists finally drafted in detail, the plan of the wintering party prepared, and so on, seemingly without end. Lofgren’s typewriter seems rarely still. Good old Charlie. He is always an anchor to windward.

  I really am not greatly exercised either by our financial problems or by the task ahead. But wherever it can be done, my plan is always to substitute anticipation and preparation for worry. It is the unexpected that messes the plans of an expedition of this kind.

  October 27

  Aboard S.S. Larsen

  Today we reached a most important decision. The original plan to send the Bolling and the City through the pack together we may now abandon. On the condition we do not delay his own passage, Captain Nilsen has agreed to take the City in tow through the pack, and as a result the Bolling need not risk her thin metal sides until later in the season, when ice conditions will be less hazardous. The new plan is to have the Bolling tow the City to the edge of the pack, where the Larsen will pick her up and give her a much needed boost to the Ross Sea. Thus many tons of precious coal will be saved. I have refused to consider the coal situation impossible and here is the solution if it works out. After giving us all the coal we can handle the Bolling will return to New Zealand, take on cargo and follow through, probably three weeks later. What excellent luck! We had scarcely dared to hope for this chance! However, there is danger of counting our tows before they are made. Everything now depends upon the speed with which we can get the two ships to New Zealand, loaded and then to the pack. Captain Nilsen expects to enter the pack late in November, and he insists he cannot afford to delay passage on our account: the loss of a day’s fishing means a loss of about $30,000 worth of oil.