Roland Huntford · 1979 · polar
Roland Huntford's 1979 double biography, which set the Amundsen expedition beside Scott's and demolished a British legend in the process. The route is the winning one: Christiania to Madeira under false pretences, the Bay of Whales, the Axel Heiberg Glacier, and the Pole on 14 December 1911.
- 1Christiania
Amundsen announces an expedition to the North Pole, raises money for it, borrows Nansen's Fram - and tells nobody except his brother that Peary has already been there and he intends to go the other way.
- 2Funchal
Madeira, September 1910, and the crew assembled on deck to be told that the ship is going south instead - and a telegram sent to Scott in Melbourne reading, in full, that the Fram is proceeding to the Antarctic.
- 3The Bay of Whales
Framheim on the Ross Ice Shelf, sixty miles closer to the Pole than Scott's base and on ice everybody else considered too dangerous to camp on - and the winter spent redesigning every item of equipment.
- 4The 80th parallel
The depot line laid the previous autumn, marked with bamboo and black flags at right angles to the route so they cannot be missed in a whiteout - three tons of supplies placed before the season started.
- 5Axel Heiberg Glacier
The route up onto the plateau, found by looking rather than by following anyone - ten thousand feet in four days with dogs, and at the top the twenty-four weakest shot and fed to the others as planned.
- 6The Devil's Glacier
Crevasse country on the plateau, and the last degrees - four men and eighteen dogs moving fast on skis, doing in a day what the other party would do in three.
- 7The South Pole
14 December 1911. A tent, a Norwegian flag, a letter left for Scott to carry home in case they did not get back, and a name for the place: Polheim.
- 8Hobart
March 1912, and Amundsen walks into a telegraph office in Tasmania to send the news - unrecognised, mistaken for a tramp, and made to wait while the operator finished something else.