Empire: World History - 110. Antarctica: The Continent that wouldn’t be Conquered

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Antarctica, the great land of ice. It was first spotted in the early years of the 19th century but it wasn't until 1895 that humans, in the form of a Norwegian expedition, actually landed on one of the world's most inhospitable places. With that expedition the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration begun. Over the next 20 years some of history's great adventurers attempted to tame the continent. Scott of the Antarctic, Roald Amundsen, and the protagonist of this week's story, Ernest Shackleton. A true hero who has been immortalised due to his legendary leadership of his expedition aboard the Endurance. Listen as William and Anita are joined by Gabrielle Walker to discuss Shackleton's voyage on the Endurance. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnden. And me, William Droomple. I'm very excited this week because we've got somebody I really hugely admire, respect to my life. Yeah, she's my mate in curry because I come around for curry evenings around at mine. And Gabriel, we're not just being my friend, which is enough of an accolade,

but author of Antarctica, an intimate portrait of the world's most mysterious continent. It is honestly an amazing book, which is why I really wanted her on one of our three ships, because she turns Antarctica into a character herself. I mean, she's so many things. She's a scientist, she's an adventurer, public speaker, has just come back from COP. 28 is when we're recording. Let's not talk about COP yet because that's still hanging in the balance. We're about to get communicated from them,

where we don't know what it's going to say yet. So not only is she all of those things, but she's here to talk about HMS endurance. And the reason that I really wanted Gabriel on this podcast is because in her writing and in her experiences and in the things that she's told me, she makes Antarctica just as much a character as Shackleton himself, who is an amazing, amazing man,

a 20th century explorer who is famous here in Britain, because he's in many ways, one of the pantheon of heroes and explorers in this country that we study when we're younger. But Gabriel, I mean, Willie hasn't heard you talk about Antarctica. You've spent a lot of time there. You've lived there in one of those huts. I became, honestly, I became a bit obsessed with Antarctica.

I didn't even know it's a place that you could actually go to. And then I found out that it was. But I also found out it's the only place in the world that is really, it's dedicated to peace and science. Those are the two things it's dedicated to. So you're not allowed to do any kind of military maneuvering there. You're not allowed to exploit it for any kind of business reasons. Basically, the only thing you're allowed to do,

if you're a government, you're allowed to have a scientific base there. And I was writing about science. I was going to different parts of the world and looking at interesting science that was happening and how it's helping us to understand how the world worked. And then I realized that there's an entire continent, where they did nothing but that. And I thought, I have to go there.

But it wasn't just that. It's also, it's the only place in the world where there's no human history. Humans have never lived there because they couldn't. There's no life support. It's basically too hard. And so we know the name of the first person who was born on the continent. We didn't even meet the continent until the beginning of the 19th century. It's just, it's the closest you can get to going to another planet. It's really, it's wild and wonderful. The first time I completely stole you from my husband, actually, I have to say, confess to you with my husband. friend first. Same as true of us. I met you through Simon too. I also stole you from Simon, my husband. But the first time, and I just suddenly thought, you know, I'm having you, you're mine, was when you did a description, I wonder if you might indulge us a little bit about the experience

of being in a whiteout in Antarctica. You just come back from, you know, spending months out there. What is a whiteout, first of all, and tell us about walking into one. Well, so when people think about a whiteout, they think it's like a blizzard, you know, you have just lots of much snow that you can't actually see anything and you can attract in the middle of it. But that's one kind of white hat and they sort of teach you how to deal with that if you're stuck in it. You have this brilliant training session where everyone walks around with white buckets on the heads and tries to hold ropes and tangles up over each other and trips up. So that's quite a fun kind of whiteout. But the other kind is one which is much, much stranger,

more luminous and more mysterious. And I'd been really, I'd heard about these things. I'd really wanted to experience one. So the circumstances in which I did, I'd been to Antarctica quite a few times by this point. And I was actually trapped. in the middle of Antarctica in a station called Concordia. Every scientific base has its own thing. So like the American base, the main base has the only ATM, the only credit card machine on the island. The Italians have the best clothes.

The French have the best food. The British base is very kind of jolly hockey sticks and boy scouting. There's a Russian base that has the only kind of onion-domed chapel on the continent. It all smells a little bit of boiled cabbage. So they've all got their own thing. So this particular base called Concordia is unusual because it's actually jointly run by both the Italians and the French. So it had the fantastic clothes from the Italians, the other fantastic food. The French chef there, actually, he was brilliant.

Fabio from account, Anita. Tell us about the French chef, go on. Well, the French chef. Because Concordia, Antarctica is an extraordinary place. And in the centre of Antarctica, it's like a nice mountain. You're actually quite high up. You get altitude sickness. to danger of altitude sickness because you're very high up.

You're on top of this ice bandit in the centre, and it's really cold, like minus 40 degrees in the summer. And so it's quite a particular place to be. And it's actually, it turns out it's quite hard to make baguettes if you're that high up because the air is thin so the bread doesn't rise. So this particular friend chef, he'd figured out a way to make baguettes even in this circumstance, but he would not tell anybody because if he told anybody, they wouldn't keep asking him back year after year and he loved it there.

So he guarded the secret, I think, to his grave about how you can make the perfect baguettes. Anyway, so there's a French chef, Italian chef, competing with each other for the best food. The other thing I thought was funny about Concordia is I'd just been to the South Pole Station, which is the American station, also very high altitude, and they're very worried about you're getting altitude sickness there. So when you land, they tell you, you know, be very careful,

don't drink any caffeine or alcohol for the first few days, make sure you stay hydrated and just be very aware of the possibility of altitude sickness. Well, Concordia is a similar height. I think it's actually slightly higher. and when we landed there in a little plane first of all the French were there waiting for us with a tray of champagne and then when we went inside

there was an entire wall filled up with a massive espresso machine which had been brought over from Italy and the Italians were giving us coffee so like you know have your alcohol have your coffee we were fine you know we were fine but anyway so I was there in this place and it was amazing it was to be there

only about 40 people in the summer that were constructing a new station and I've been up till all hours of the morning drinking whiskey and playing cards with the French and came out at 2 o'clock. And you got used to, in the summer, it's just 24-hour day, like bright, bright, bright, bright sunshine. And you get used to that any hour that you come out of the huts. So I came out about 2 o'clock in the morning, and it wasn't like that. It was this weird kind of, I said, numinous, strange kind of light. And somebody said it's a whiteout. Now, what

this kind of whiteout is, is when the clouds are really low down. So you imagine that the ground is all ice, as far as the eye can see. It's like a frozen sea of ice for thousands of kilometers. So the clouds would come down really low, which means any sunlight gets scattered. And that means there are no shadows at all like none. So if you walk on the snow and you crunch, your foot goes down in the snow, but you can't see your footprint. You can't see any definition, any shape, any direction. If you think about holding up a piece of paper, it's still got kind of a little bit of texture in it. But there's nothing around you has any texture. So I thought, I want to see this. I want to see it on my own. Now in Antarctica, they're really straight. You can't go anywhere on your own. It's exhausting.

So I legged it off. I said, good night to everyone, legged it off to the place where all the coats and out of gear was, started quickly putting it on before anyone could notice.

And the radio guy came out and he said, where are you going? And I said, I just really want to see it, please. And he said, go on then.

Here's a radio, which I know is charged up. I will have this radio next to my bed, next to my head. If you have any problems, you call me straight away, we'll come out and get you.

Don't tell anyone. So off I trotted. And I left all the, all the huts and the tents and everything behind and went as far as I could, so I couldn't see anything behind me. And then everywhere I looked, it was just, it was just white. It was like, it's like sensory deprivation, except that you've got a Parker hood, so you can see the edges of the hood.

But everywhere you look, apart from that, you'd see nothing. It's like, nothing. And I'd no idea, it's like, would that be scary? Would that be boring? Is it totally disorientating? It was so disorientating. Imagine you're crunching along and you look down, there's no footprints. There's nothing in any direction.

But even if you're in a cloud, because a cloud always has texture. And so it was just like being in this kind of completely mystifying, mysterious heart of the most mysterious continent on earth with nobody and nothing around. Complete silence and this cold and then nothing. And I was thinking, well, what would it feel? Would it feel boring? Would it feel frightening? But I tell you what, it felt like being cradled. It was the most intimate way to experience.

magnificent, grand, fabulous nature, it just felt like being cradled. It was astonishing. Well, I mean, you are a very specific type of person because I can guarantee that both William and I, who seek sensory gratification all over the place, would have gone completely postal. Just within seconds.

You might have quite enjoyed sitting up with playing cards with the French, though. I was with you. It was in the whiskey and the cards, and then it all went a bit wrong. Can we talk about the history of Antarctica? So, I mean, you say, you know, we know the name of the first person born there, and it just is a place that is hostile to humanity. When did we know it even was a thing? I mean, was it, was it, before we knew it was a thing, did people guess it might be a thing? Yeah, when was it spotted?

Because even Australia was only, you know, Captain Cook in 75. Where did they get beyond that? There was a sort of realization there must be something out there because icebergs would every so often sort of come up and the kind of big tabby there are icebergs that you only get if you get ice flowing off land and not just kind of sort of. sea ice and there's this very distinct kinds. If the sea freezes and melts again, it's not very thick and it's not very tall, whereas icebergs could be, could be like massive shelves and could almost be, you know, city size. And so it was, it was clear that there's something down there, but there were all sorts of wacky theories, even before anyone, you know, Cook or anyone started going down there. There was this kind of idea that there ought to be something to balance

the Arctic and it might be this place that had this big hole in the middle of it that took you to the center of the earth or weird caverns or aliens or strange creatures. But it was really, it was a beginning of the 19th century when I think it was first circumnavigated, the mainland and really first properly seen in like 1820. That was a Russian expedition. Mikhail Lazarev. That's right, and Bellinghausen, who had the sea named after him as well. That's the one. Fabian Gottlie von Bellinghausen. It's a great name. There's a terrific name, isn't it? There's many wonderful names in the history of exploration in Antarctica. But I think what kind of is interesting then is it, the next big phase of really trying to establish what Antarctica was, was a lot more about whaling than it

was about heroic exploration. And so certainly around the peninsula and parts of Antarctica, there was a kind of big rush to sort of see, can we go get whales, can we go get oil? It was the big oil rush of the 19th century. And the kind of heroic explorer stuff didn't really start until the end of the 19th century. So, I mean, it had raw materials that is the stuff, you know, the engine house of empire, really, you know, where there is fuel, where there is gold, where there is oil, and where there are, you know, whales who are, you know, so comprehensively used for, you know, fuel, tallow, everything else as they were in the odd days. This is a commodity. So were countries then trying to get their hands on it, or was it just a question of just trying

to find it and map it at the beginning? They were trying to get the hands on it, obviously. That's what we do, isn't it? And there's a part of an island that's going to come into this story, South Georgia, which I visited a couple of years ago, which became a kind of hotbed of whaling. In the Falklands War, wasn't it? Later, there was all that stuff, yeah. It was a feature in the Falklands War. That famous moment where Mrs. Thatcher liberated the penguins. Hortga-Luio-Luiz Borges said it was two bald men fighting over a comb, which is my

favorite description of the Falklands, Malvinas, whatever you want to call it. But anyway, so the Falklands, the Malvinas are quite close to the to, to, you know, at the South American continent, then really quite far out again, it's this little ping-prink of an island called South Georgia. And that became, because it was right there in the middle of the South Atlantic, that became the base for whaling. And the whales were absolutely everywhere. So if you go to visit the wedding station there, it's actually astonishing.

It's heartbreaking. Ellen MacArthur sailed there to go and do some, just to sail across there, Ellen MacArthur, famous sailor, who then became an advocate of the circular economy. She sailed there with the intention of, studying albatrosses and hanging out with some scientists there. And when she saw the wading station and realized the extent of the smash and grab that happened there, it's amazing.

Basically, there were whales everywhere. And so countries from the north went down there and got their whaling ships, and it was big, it was brutal. You see the size and scale of the devices they used to get the whales, dragging them on the shore, butchering them, getting the oils, this whole machinery. And then they just killed them all. And then when they were gone, the whole economy collapsed and they went home. So, I mean, you're painting a picture of just seas of blood and, you know, the land stained with blood. So this is not Antarctica, though.

This is the area around because one of the things I find fascinating about Antarctica is that you only have to go a few hundred meters inland. And the largest living creature is the size of a pinhead. So all of the, all of the resources, really, are in the sea. There's lots of nutrients in the sea. There's whales, there's seals, there's fish, all teeming around Antarctica. But when you actually go on to the continent, it's so cold, it's so dry, and there are no plants. There's nothing to make shelter. There's nothing to make fuel.

There's nothing for food. Basically, the only food comes from the side. And historically, in human history, that's always been the case. It's never been a moment in, you know, the kind of first ice age when it was, you know, the tropics. In human history, absolutely. 100 million years ago, long before humans were even a glint in the eye of whoever created this mess, Antarctica was covered in ferns and forests and swamps and dinosaurs. So it's certainly in the past, when the world's temperature has been a lot warmer, it certainly

has had animals there. But human history and long before that, there's been nothing. And in fact, this is kind of interesting because in the history of Antarctica, the ancient geological history of Antarctica, what actually happened? was the continent was covered with trees and also had shallow seas all around it and the shallow seas had sea creatures living in them and the sea creatures got swamped by sand and started to get buried before they could rot and started to get buried more and more and the trees fell into the shallow swamps and they got buried by mud before they could rot and so the trees started

turning into this thing that we now call coal and the sea creatures started turning into this thing that we now call oil and gas so this was a mechanism whereby over 100 million years carbon Oaks, I got pumped out of the air and into the ground. So Antarctica was hot and covered with dinosaurs and gradually it got colder as the world got colder and colder and colder and colder and covered in ice. And now, in a few hundred years, we are starting to reverse that process and put that stuff back in the air and melt the continent. It's a hundred billion years, a few hundred years. Wow. I mean, the scale of that is breathtaking. I want to talk about Shackleton now, because, you know, You're painting, I mean, you know, the whole story of the whiteout, the whole story of the inhospitability of the place.

And Shackleton is linked to it inextricably. First of all, let's talk about the man himself who was born in 1874 and County Kildare. He's an Irishman, charismatic. What do we know about him? What do you know about his personality? Irish or Anglo-Irish? Anglo-Irish. Anglo-Irish.

So he was Anglo-Irish. So he was a fascinating guy. I mean, basically, when he was back at home, he was often, I think people could often sort of see him as a bit of a joke. He was always hustling and slightly behind the game. He ended up being a merchant seaman. He wasn't in the Navy. He wasn't really expected.

He was half Irish and the Irish were considered to be considerably below the English then. You know, compared to the proper upright Captain Scott, he was kind of also ran. But he also, he had get rich quick schemes. He hustled. He wasn't really, you know, a towering figure or anything. but the second he got anywhere in trouble, especially the second he got into the continent of Antarctica, he became the most magnificent leader.

You know, there's one thing, I think, there's a sort of saying that if you want a quick dash to the pole and be the first one at the South Pole, then give me Amundsen, the guy who actually made it to the South Pole first and did it very efficiently, Norwegian. And if you want a scientific expedition where you do lots of other things,

give me Scott, who did actually do quite a bit of science along the way to his doomed attempt to survive going to the South Pole. but if you're in a hell of a hole, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton every time. A magnificent leader. That's such a great quote. That's such a great quote. Now, but the other thing, I mean, before we sort of dismiss him as, you know, sort of the Del Boy of the sort of exploring community. I mean, he did, to be fair, he went to Dulwich College, which, you know, was known at the time as a private school, and I'm quoting here, a private school that raised true. of the British Empire. Yes, this is very much its reputation. Yeah. And I think in a way, if you think about it, at the time, the kind of heroic age of Antarctic exploration started towards the end of the 19th century. And then there'd been a few expeditions down there.

And one of the first ones, it wasn't the first one, but one of the first ones was Captain Scott and Ernest Shackleton went down to Antarctica to try to get to the South Pole. Is this 1901? Is this 1901? I have to ask this, why was Scott's second name Fulken? I wish I was called William Fulken Derrimple. It's a wonderful. Does that a bird watcher or a twitcher or work? I have to say, I do not know and I feel like I want to rush to find out. It's all right.

Somebody's going to know. They'll tweet us. It's all right. Gabriel Fulken Walker. Gabriel Falken Walker. I see your point. Absolutely fair. I need to chaffinch on it.

Let's face facts. I'm no falcon. Would you be more of a Robin? No, I think you've got a heart of a falcon any time. I definitely can see a heart and soul of a falcon. I love this. This is why she's not my husband's friend anymore. She's mine.

I'm mine. Okay, so we were talking about the 1901 expedition. So back to the story. What I was trying to do is, so Shackleton did go to Dulwich College. He was a son of the empire, but he was always a kind of also ran in the way that he perceived himself and the way that many others perceived him. Because compared to Scott, when they went on this expedition, Scott blamed him. It was a failure and Scott blamed Shackleton. And what happened was they didn't really manage to, they managed to make a hut, they found an island to sort of start off from. Nobody had really explored Antarctica very much. And then they got a little bit of the way. Things kept going wrong. And eventually Shackleton got scurvy. And they didn't know what it was, but he got scurvy. And they ended up, they had to come back with the tails between the legs, having made almost no progress. But Shackleton had to be carried back on a sled because he wasn't fit to ski.

And so that became a beginning of a real kind of rivalry between him and Scott, because Scott had to blame it on somebody. It couldn't be his bad leadership. And so it was all kind of Shackleton's fault. And Shackleton was humiliated, having to be brought back in that way and having that blame. How old did Shackleton at this point in how old would Scott have been? They'd have been somewhere in the 20s. Very young.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But also, I mean, is it true to say that, you know, Scott, who was this sort of upright, and some may say uptight kind of gentleman, was a little bit threatened by Shackleton's Bonamy and Brogue, you know, the fact that he was incredibly likable. Absolutely, totally. And, you know, Scott never had that charisma and Shackleton had it effortlessly. So that would definitely be part of it too. Okay, so, I mean, that was a failure.

And also the two men have got bad blood after this. Were they, I mean, were they enemies by now, or were they definitely rivals rather than friends? Well, define enemies. Define enemies. I'm sure that they spoke about each other very pleasantly in company and behind. I'm sure that they didn't. And, you know, it definitely became a rivalry that became more pronounced when Shackleton went back without Scott on his own to have another go at the South Pole. And Scott was furious. Without telling Scott?

Well, well, without inviting Scott and making it all about Shackleton. So Scott was furious. As far as he was concerned, he'd led the first expedition. So the South Pole belonged to him and only to him. And so the Shackleton went there and actually tried to mounted an expedition without him was something that was really... This is the Nimroy. expedition of 1907. So it's taken him a few years to get himself together. Was that a successful

expedition? I would say defined success because the point of the point of the coniquity. It's not making me define things. I refuse to define anything now. Go on. Well, I will define it for you then because many people say no because he didn't make it to the South Pole. So he had, he turned back within 100 miles of the South Pole. Did he know he was only 100 miles from the South Pole? Yes, he know exactly where he was. So 1901, that expedition, they knew how far they got, and it was almost nowhere. It was very, very short, rather pathetic attempt to get anywhere. Shackleton went right across the great barrier, which is the great floating ice sheet, up the Shackleton Glacier, still named after him, along the Great Platter, discovered the Great Platter, got within a hundred miles of the South Pole

with a great success, realized that he was not going to be able to get to, he could get to the pole with his men, but then they would not have enough food to get home. And he made what I considered to be one of the bravest decisions that's ever been made in Antarctica, which is a decision to turn back. He never lost a man, did he on any of that? He never lost a man. He didn't have lost a man. He said, better alive donkey than a dead lion.

But he was no donkey, the courage to know that you were in sight of that and to turn back. And also, he made the biggest leap in exploration between the edge of the sea and within 100 miles of the South Pole that anyone ever did. So you could say he didn't make it to the South Pole, but I would count that as a erasing success. There's a rather wonderful quote from one of his team, just describing just how difficult this whole thing was. It was Christmas 1908, and he's incredibly depressed because the whole thing's not gone to plan. And he says, may none but my worst enemies ever spend their Christmas in such a dreary god-forsaken spot as this. Here we are nine and a half thousand feet above sea level

further away from civilization that any human being has ever been with a gale blowing, a drift snow flying, and a temperature of 52 degrees of frost. I mean, it's not the best Christmas. I mean, any one of you is moaning about the Christmas you've just had, this is a properly hard Christmas. So he turns back. Is he then greeted as a, again, you know, a serial loser when he comes back? Well, I think serial loser is putting it a bit harshly.

You know, I think, no, he isn't, because he still managed to get up more expeditions. He's still a heroic explorer. but, you know, Scott would certainly have not wanted to lose any opportunity to point out that he didn't make it. I was just reflecting on that quote. I was thinking, you know, I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. It's not exactly a white Christmas like that, is it? But also one of the things about Shackleton, one of the many things about his incredible leadership,

is that for him, a kind of optimistic attitude is not just a kind of a pleasant thing to have around, but is utterly essential for every expedition and for any hope of success. And so he was never, ever one to say this is miserable, this has gone wrong. In a way, he valued his men on the basis of whether they were willing to just to keep on the spirit. Cameron, I'm quite interested in what they're eating at this point. There's something about Pemmican. Tell me about Pemmican. Have you ever had it?

I have had Pemmican. It's really, it's a funny thing as well. Lots of the Antarctic explorers. So Pemmican is rather revolting. It's kind of meat with as much fat as you can possibly cram into it, kind of dried and and put into packets, and then you turn it into a kind of soupy stew with melted snow. The thing that's kind of funny about it is it's supposed to be giving you as many calories as possible when you're pulling sledges and walking and freezing cold.

But they used to have food dreams. And their food dreams were about having... I have those. Their food dreams, their food dreams were about having unlimited pemmican. And they also had this thing called Hoosing. Do you know about this? No. So the food was being fairly...

distributed. First of all, someone would lad it into each of the different cups and then someone else would turn around so they couldn't see the cups and they point to one and say whose and who's and who's and who's. They point to them all and that's the way it was completely fair distribution. Nobody could say that's not fair. Brilliant. Isn't it? Isn't it? That's why people were loyal to me. He wasn't unfair. He didn't sort of oh, that's amazing. And then the other thing about Pemmican is that I found this when I was in Antarctica the many times that I went. It's still a thing. You can still go to the French station when you get away from baguettes.

No, she just had baguettes. She had baguettes and whiskey. The French base on the coast, which is a bigger base, actually had both a chef and a pastry chef. So you could actually have meal three on the French face at the coast. None of your penicent nonsense. They just are a more civilised people, aren't they? They are.

They are very much. They're very much. But in the different bases, one of the things that, you know, especially if you're out in a camp, you don't get fresh vegetables. If you want to have anyone in a camp love you, take fresh bread and take bread and take alcohol or take fresh vegetables. If any of just come in on the ship, they will love you for it. But you start to love the food that's there. You eat things. You'd never eat anywhere else. Like instant mashed potato, yum. And then you come back and you go, what was that all about?

So I think it's kind of like that with the pemmican. They had these food dreams of pemmican. And they come, when I get home, I'll have pemmican by my bed that I can eat it any time I want to. You go home and go, what was I thinking? So that's your pemmican for you. So look, I mean, it's, you know, as you say, it's not been an abject failure, but it hasn't been what he wanted it to be. But now there is the race 1911, we're talking about now, the race to the South Pole is now full throttle. Tell us about that and about the major players in that. And what's Shackleton doing while they're doing this? So the race of the South Pole is now, Scott is going back. Shackleton hasn't made it to the South Pole. So Scott is mounting this great expedition.

Shackleton is emphatically not invited to said expedition, by the way. And so Ophers got for this great expedition. But meanwhile, there's terrifying news that this guy, Earl Amundsen, who is a Norwegian explorer, is supposed to be going to go up to the North Pole to the Arctic. And then suddenly they get word that he's actually turning south and that it's going to be a race. Scott is disgusted, he's horrified. It's not exactly gentlemanly. It's not cricket. You know, I've claimed the South Pole for mine. Someone else shouldn't be doing this. And so that's what began this race. So they both went by New Zealand and then off they sailed. Scott was thinking about going into this place called the Bay of Wales,

which had a route up onto the great floating ice shelf, which is like a cliff of ice when you sail up to it, but there's actually a kind of bay in a way up there. So Scott was thinking about going there, but when they went along there, they found that Amundsen ship was already bedded in the Bay of Wales. And so off they sailed to the island that Scott and Shackleton had used before and said they were going to start off from there.

How far was Amazon, and ahead of them? How many? No, nobody was ahead of anybody because you can't, you have to wait for the summer. So you sail down there, you get in there towards the end of the first summer, you have to spend the winter there, and then the next spring you can start off, and they're each going to start off. Amundsen's gone down with his dogs and his experience skiing, he's a Norwegian, he's been probably born on skis.

Scott's gone with a weird combination of tractors and ponies and dogs and all sorts of stuff. And there's been acres written about whether the right thing, the wrong thing, but basically there they are, poised and ready. They're having their winters and they're ready to start on the South Pole come the next spring. Right. Let's take a break there because it's so exciting. I told you she was good. Didn't I tell me? I didn't doubt it. Yeah, yeah. Join us after the break. No, I didn't. Actually, to be fair, you never told me about the pemmican. Seriously. You definitely have to bring some around next time. I insist. I have to give you fresh, Anita.

Otherwise, you won't keep talking to me. There's always got to be something more. That's mystery in our relationship. Join us after the break when we find out what happens in the summer. Welcome back. So just before the break, we were on this, I mean, it really is a cliff edge of a story of the race to the South Pole with Amundsen and Scott, both vying for the crown. Is that your cat? I'm very unapproved by the fact that Scott brought a tractor.

Yes, I know, but Gabe was got a cat. Did you not see the cat just leap on the key floor? It's from Massey Ferguson. My beautiful black cat, she always wants to be involved in everything. She's a terrific storyteller. Okay, all right. Well, Cat, hello, Cat. So, look, what happens?

Who gets over the line first? And how does this end? It ends badly, as you can probably guess. And so lots of things happen along the way. But basically, Amundsen does a terrific job. It gets his team together. They ski to the South Pole with their dogs. They're very unromantic and unsentimental about it.

They get there, they plant their tent and their flag. They leave a little note in there saying, probably the next person to be here is going to be Captain Scott, welcome Captain Scott, can you take this back? No, no, no, nah, no, no. Cheaky buckets. How do you, sorry, it's probably a very basic question to a scientist, but how do you know you've got to the South Pole?

Does your compass do something bonkers and go around around a circle? Yeah, yeah. So you can actually, it's relatively simple to measure. To make sure that you've actually made it there, you actually have to sort of go a kind of kilometer or so. the way and just make sure you stomp all over the ground so that your instruments haven't gone slightly awry. But the South Pole and the North Pole, the only two points of the world where the sun actually rotates around the horizon in the summer. They're the points where the sun doesn't

dip or rise. It just goes round in the circle exactly round. So you know exactly, yes, you know exactly where you are, even with non-digital modern day satellite instruments. That's what Hamilton did. he got there. Scott, meanwhile, was having all sorts of troubles. Tractor didn't really work. The tractor didn't really work. The ponies kind of struggled a bit. They got to the bottom in the Shackleton Glacier. They went up the glacier. They started pulling. They began to run out of food.

Just things weren't going right. And then eventually, as they were up on this plateau and, you know, Anita's brilliant quote of how miserable the winter was there, you know, they had wind of the face and they had the freezing temperatures. And then they started to see the tracks and they knew that they'd been beaten. So they followed the tracks to the tent. They found the tent. And Scott said, great God, this is an awful place.

And terrible enough to get here without the benefit of priority. So they were thoroughly miserable. And then, you know, they had the pictures taken outside the tent. At this point, there's five of them, I believe. There was supposed to be forward at the last minute they added an extra one, which wasn't really very helpful for the food either. Other support groups would kind of take them along the way and then listen. And they'd left some food depos on the way to get back.

And I must have been there a whole month earlier, 33. three days. Yeah, yeah. So that was embarrassing too, but it got worse because as they were coming back, things went from bad to worse. They got sort of, one got sick, another famously, Captain Oates. He had probably scurvy, and he was slowing them down and he realized that and eventually he famous, he said, I'm going out now, I may be some time. And they all knew he was going to walk to his death. But they pretended in this kind of very British gentlemanly fashion. It wasn't that? It's such a British line that, isn't it? Exactly, isn't it? And eventually they got socked with a blizzard within only a mile or so, a really short distance from the food depot they

were trying to reach and they never managed to reach it. So they died. A mile. It was a very short distance. It might have been more than a mile, but it was very walkable within 10 miles. God's heartbreaking, isn't it? Heartbreaking. It's just heartbreaking. Yeah. And then Scott actually, they were still writing their diaries trying to keep their spirits up. They knew no one's going to come for them. In the end, Scott wrote, for God's sake, look after our people. And that's the last thing he wrote in his diary. Yeah, that last diary date. Can I just just share it? It's just, it's I mean, it's such a point. Sorry, 29th March 1912, the very last, exhausted, hungry, tired and jaded entry in that diary.

Scott's body is probably now in the form of spaghetti, but I thought you might like to know that. Why? Why? Because what they actually did was they just buried the men where they were, and they found them next spring. They buried them in their own tent. And what happens in Antarctica is the ice flows everywhere all the time. It's constantly flowing. And as it's flowing. It's stretching. And their bodies are all made basically of water.

which takes the fore the ice. And so as they were being squeezed and stretched towards the coast that had been stretched out to like 8 feet, 9 feet, 10 feet of these kind of... The human bodies.

The human bodies would be stretched like that. What a weird story. Within the ice. And what's going to happen to them in the end is that the ice will make its way to the edge

where it will break off and become an iceberg and they'll float off into the southern ocean. The ice will melt and the bodies will just fall gently to the bottom of the sea. Wow.

That's an amazing story. That's extraordinary. So now, look, so this is obviously, you know, a national mourning that this is up. And they've lost Scott. They loved Scott. You know, everyone loved Scott. But then you think that would put people off going for some time.

But no. I mean, it's only two years later that Shackleton decides he's going to try. Yes, he does. And this is where endurance comes in. It's always the ships with the good names that do it, isn't it? Yeah. If it isn't Endeavour, it's endurance. Yeah, we wanted to come to the ship.

I mean, this is part of three ships. Gabriel, I don't know whether you know, but this is three ships for Christmas after the Christmas. Carol. Yeah. See what we did. See how we know. M.F.

that. Tell us about, first of all, tell us, why does Shackleton think two years after this very sad episode and the demise of Scott that he's going to try again? And how does he come to meet Endurance? So, well, if you think about it, okay, now the South Pole has been conquered. There's been a tragedy in the sort of the British ranks. The Norwegians have won. But this is, this is a, this is now. become a kind of imperial endeavor. It's like the Norwegians have claimed the South Pole, what can

I claim? And how can my being a heroic adventure or actually claim something for the British crown in a more meaningful way? And remember, there's also his kind of Anglo-Irish merchant seaman, not Navy, wasn't invited on the, on the Scott expedition, but really feels like he is a leader, he is someone who can do this. And so he decides that since the South Pole has already been conquered, but why not go one bigger? Why not do an expedition where you actually walk across the entire continent,

not to the South Pole and back, but start on one sea and walk across the entire continent to get to the other. And very fittingly, considering the topic of this particular podcast, he called it the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. As far as I know,

that was the first time the word imperial has come into one of these expedition titles, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. And what's the backing for this? Is he looking for sponsorship or is this a British government thing? He's always looking for sponsorship. You always need some rich people who are going to sponsor it

one way or another. And this is not, you know, Scott went as captain of the British Navy, so this is the British government. Whereas Shackleton always had to cobble together the funding, always had to cobble together the sponsors. Scott was a kind of leading light of the Royal Geographical Society. Shackleton was going around the place hustling, trying to get the money in.

So, you know, it was really, it was a hustle, but he hustled well. and he got this lovely little ship called the endurance that was perfectly placed. The expedition was going to have two elements. One ship was going to go to the Ross Sea, which is where all those expeditions had started before and crossed from that side and lay food depots. And the other one was going to start on the other side and walk across the whole way.

So the one of the Ross Sea was there to lay depots, and the one on the other side was going to walk across the whole thing. But a little matter of timing. This is 1914. Yes. The war has started or? No, no. the war has very much not started.

When he sets off, the war has not started, and nobody has any idea that there's going to be one. And just imagine this. When they set off, we'll come to the end of the story. I don't want to do a spoiler alert. We never do that. We never do that in this story. We're known for it. Anyone who might survive, anyone who might survive from the disaster to come,

we'll get back to the world and find that the world's gone mad. God, that's weird, isn't it? So all of this time, they have no idea. They leave in the Edwardian era and they come back. back in the middle of World War I. Wow. Okay. So why the endurance? Is there something special about the endurance? And it's a wooden boat, which is absolutely not brilliantly strong. And if you're so the idea, in a way, it was perfectly sensible as a ship to go there. What's important also is the shape. They have this kind of slightly rounded shape so the ice can't get hold of them

and they have kind of double holes and things like that. So it was a perfectly sensible ship to take down there. How many people can go on it? Is it comfortable? I mean, what's it like to travel on this? So first of all, it's men only. Secondly, it has lots of dogs on it. And the dogs are breeding dogs so they can have puppies so they can pull their sleds. They've got their sledges. They've got provisions. Have they learned from Amundsen? Yes. Yes, they did. The Norwegians have shown how you can do this. There's no ponies. There's no tractors. This is dogs. They've got, you know, the men see and hammocks. There's a captain's cabin. There's the expedition leaders cabin. There's there's lots of provisions on board.

It's well over provisioned. It's not just provision for the ship, but it's provision for the expedition that's about to come. And they've got all these crates. I've seen some of them, crates with big imperial trans-Antarctic expeditions stamped all over them. So there's no question about it.

This is going to be an imperial thing. Not a massive ship, but perfectly sensible for sailing into these waters. But the place that it had to go, the ship that went to the Ross seaside, they kind of knew what they were getting into. That's the Food Depot ship, The food deposition that's going to be, yeah, okay.

But the endurance was having to go to the other side, which is where all the whaling are taking place, and having to sail into the Weddle Sea. Now, the Weddell Sea is famous for its ice. It gets really choked up with ice, and the icebergs come sailing out of there. So they knew that there was going to be a potential issue with icebergs and sea ice and the Weddell Sea,

and they were ready for it. So off they sail, they're going to start on this side. They're going to start walking over. The other guys are going to set the depots, and then Dobbs are going to be a good end. can march across the continent and claim it for his imperial majesty back at home. But it doesn't happen. But it didn't quite work like that.

Guess what happened? Guess what happens? You'll never guess. This is going to be our cliff edge for the next one. What happens, Gabriel? What happened is the ship got gripped in the pinions of the ice and the ice took hold of it, held it and started to squeeze. We're going to leave it there. Join us on the next episode of Empire to find out what happens to all those very brave men on board.

That will be out on Thursday or if you are a friend of the show or a gold tier member of the Empire Podcast Club, you can hear that next episode right now. All you need to do is go to Empirpoduk.com and you can sign up there. So if you do sign up, see you in a second. But if you don't, well, have to wait until Thursday. Till then it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. Bye from me, William Duremberg.