A Day in Polar History

Tuesday, December 14 5:13 pm

Today marks a special day of discovery: nearly a century ago, on December 14, 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team were the first people ever to reach the South Pole. His historic race against a team of British explorers, led by Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott, is the subject of the Museum’s thrilling exhibition Race to the End of the Earth, on view through January 2.

Kids can experience Amundsen’s epic journey firsthand in an interactive “scrapbook” on the Museum’s OLogy website. Ross MacPhee, curator of the Race to the End of the Earth exhibition, describes the legendary race to the South Pole with a selection of vintage photographs and snippets from historic letters. MacPhee, a polar explorer himself who has always been inspired by the heroic tales of the first Antarctic explorers, introduces kids to the British and Norwegian teams and the decisions their leaders faced — Camp on land or on ice shelf? Use dogs or horses? Wear fur or wool? — as they competed to be the first to reach the South Pole.

The expeditions unfold in compelling historic photographs. The British journey comes to life in snapshots of ponies aboard the ship Terra Nova, team members studying at base camp, and cooks making a stew called “hoosh.” Photographs of the Norwegian explorers include images of the mustached crew of the Norwegian Fram, an “underground village” dug in the ice, and men sewing reindeer skins into sleeping bags. The trek itself, a race against time and weather, is recorded through photos of experiments with motorized sleds, the tremendous effort of “man-hauling,” and the tent pitched at the Pole itself — as well as the haggard faces of the British, who arrived there second. The race to the South Pole is a great adventure story, and OLogy’s scrapbook tells it wonderfully.

Complete with maps that show the explorers’ routes, a chart that compares the teams’ strategies, and detailed captions, the scrapbook is rounded out by modern-day photos. Through these contemporary images, it’s easy to see that these expeditions paved the way for the thousands of researchers, like MacPhee, who travel to the “Continent of Science” today to search for answers under conditions unlike those at any other place on Earth.

Don’t forget to catch Race to the End of the Earth, open through January 2.

Lincoln Ellsworth: The Museum’s Own Polar Star

Friday, July 16 2:34 pm

Tin cup from Roald Amundsen's ship. © AMNH/C. Chesek

A corridor on the Museum’s first floor just off the Grand Gallery celebrates a relatively unsung hero of polar exploration: the American Lincoln Ellsworth, who was also a Museum Trustee. His bust graces the back wall of the narrow hallway, while the display cases on either side contain artifacts detailing Ellsworth’s efforts to become the first man to fly across both poles, a feat he accomplished in 1935 when he crossed the Antarctic in his plane Polar Star.

Ten years earlier, Ellsworth’s first attempt to fly over the North Pole teamed him with Norwegian Roald Amundsen, whose earlier overland competition with British Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott to reach the South Pole is chronicled in the Museum’s new exhibition Race to the End of the Earth. Through the special relationship between Amundsen and Ellsworth, the Museum Library’s Memorabilia Collection came to possess items the Norwegian explorer carried with him on his quest to reach the South Pole, including a sledge, chronometer, binoculars, shotgun, and a tin cup from the ship Fram, which are featured in the new exhibition.

Partially underwritten by his father James, a wealthy coal mine owner and banker, Ellsworth’s 1925 attempt to fl y over the North Pole failed. One year later, he and Amundsen succeeded in a dirigible, the Norge, built and piloted by Italian explorer Umberto Nobile. Ellsworth would go on to other expeditions, contributing geological and fossil specimens to the Museum’s collections in the process. He died in 1951 at age 71, but his legacy of support for the Museum and its mission continues to this day through an annual gift from The Lincoln Ellsworth Foundation.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Summer issue of Rotunda, the magazine for Museum Members.

Take a Video Walkthrough of Race to the End of the Earth

Tuesday, June 08 11:11 am

Race to the End of the Earth, the major new exhibition now open at the American Museum of Natural History, recounts one of the most stirring tales of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration: the contest to be the first to reach the South Pole in 1911-1912.

The exhibition focuses on the challenges that the two leaders – Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and British Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott — faced as they undertook their 1,800-mile journeys from the shores of the Ross Sea to the Pole and back. Race to the End of the Earth also spotlights modern scientific exploration in the Antarctic and the latest research on this unique continent.

Photographs, paintings, videos, vivid dioramas, hands-on activities, and rare historical artifacts from this Heroic Age give visitors a feel for the remarkable story of Antarctic exploration and research during the past century.

‘The Competition Was On’: Curator MacPhee’s New Book on Polar Race

Wednesday, May 26 9:41 am

In June, 1910, Roald Amundsen left Norway on a ship called the Fram.  His stated plan: sail north to the Arctic. In October, Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott, leader of the highly publicized British expedition to the Antarctic, whose ship Terra Nova was then docked in Melbourne, received a terse telegram indicating the Fram had turned south to the Antarctic. Curator Ross D. E. MacPhee describes the fallout in his book Race to the End: Amundsen, Scott, and the Attainment of the South Pole.

It was vitally important for Scott to have his expedition seen as scientifically significant. To that end, he took along 12 researchers or scientists, including a bespectacled young Oxford graduate, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who paid £1,000 pounds (equivalent in buying power to $120,000 to $150,000 today) to join the team as assistant zoologist. These are his snow goggles, fitted with prescription lenses, atop a copy of his book The Worst Journey in the World, which includes a harrowing account of a side trip in search of emperor penguin eggs. It became an instant classic. © Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge

After reading the telegram Scott summoned Tryggve Gran, the young Norwegian ski expert appointed to the expedition on the recommendation of Fridtjof Nansen. Scott had hoped that Gran, as Amundsen’s fellow countryman, could help him make sense of the message. But little could be gleaned from the deliberately curt wording, sent according to plan by Leon Amundsen [the explorer’s brother] after Fram was well away from Madeira.

For a man like Amundsen, whose exploration career was built on a continuing cascade of firsts, there could be only one goal in Antarctica. As Scott told Gran, “Amundsen is acting suspiciously…In Norway he avoided me in every conceivable manner…Let me say it right out. Amundsen was too honorable to tell me lies to my face. It’s the pole he is after, all right.”

…As [Apsley Cherry-Garrard] later recollected,“The last we had heard of [Amundsen] was that he had equipped Nansen’s old ship, the Fram, for further exploration of the Arctic. This was only a feint. Once at sea, he had told his men that he was going south instead of north; and when he reached Madeira he sent this brief telegram, ‘I shall be at the South Pole before you.’ It also meant, though we did not appreciate it at the time, that we were up against a very big man.”

…The fact is that, whatever Scott may have said to influential backers about the vulgarity of racing for the pole, to the public he plainly and unequivocally stated that “the Pole was the main objective.” Of course, it only became an actual race when Amundsen and his men showed up; but others had been sending out trial balloons well before the Terra Nova expedition left for the south, and no one could have been in any doubt that, if there was to be any kind of competition for the pole on the Antarctic ice, Britain intended to get there first.

Newspapers had begun to trumpet Amundsen’s change of plans even before the Terra Nova had docked in Melbourne. Challenge had been served, and the competition for the South Pole was now very much on.

Reprinted with permission from Race to the End: Amundsen, Scott, and the Attainment of the South Pole © Ross D. E. MacPhee 2010, Sterling Innovation.

Behind the Scenes at the New Exhibition: The Race Begins in 9 Days

Thursday, May 20 2:25 pm

Race to the End of the Earth recounts one of the most stirring tales of Antarctic exploration: the contest to reach the South Pole in 1911-1912. The exhibition focuses on the challenges that the two leaders — Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and British Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott — confronted as they undertook their journeys from the shores of the Ross Sea to the Pole and back.

Moving through the exhibition, visitors will find clues about the experiences of various members of Scott’s and Amundsen’s teams, see actual items of clothing and tools they used, and look in on life-sized models of rooms in Amundsen’s and Scott’s base camps–all against a spectacular backdrop of Aurora Australis, or the southern lights. Another section features a diorama of emperor penguins, the largest penguin species alive today and the subject of a dangerous expedition by three of Scott’s men to recover eggs for scientific study, while additional exhibits will acquaint visitors with scientists and staff at work in Antarctica today.

For a behind-the-scenes look at Race to the End of the Earth, check out this slideshow of Museum artists at work.