From Woody's Couch

This blog post is part of the Frozen Friday Series, an A-Z journey of the Polar Archives.  Each week, we will feature some aspect of the history of polar exploration with a blog post written by our student authors

“Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.”[1] And so read an advertisement supposedly printed in the London newspaper The Times[2], submitted by the famed polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton sometime in the early twentieth century. The ad might also have read something like “men needed for mission to boldly go where no man has gone before,” and would retain no less accuracy or meaning. Simply, the advertisement is a call to arms, asking young men to set aside their lives at home for the exotic, the dangerous, and the unknown in the name of personal glory and adventure. Although this advertisement likely never existed as it has been presented,[3]it does capture something of the mentality required by the explorer: a willingness to endure harsh conditions for great amounts of time, courage in face of possible injury and death, and extended time apart from loved ones, all for the sake of a chance for personal heroism. These real-life Captain Kirks existed well into the modern era.

By 1900, the world had shrunk significantly. Europeans had mapped the ‘darkest’ parts of the world; plunging into the heart of Africa and the mountains and deserts of Asia seeking to expand the breadth of Western knowledge.[4] Those blank spaces on the map had all but been filled in, apart from the cold, harsh Antarctic. In the toilsome and disheartening years of the Great Depression, the words “Dicky’ Bird is going south again” inspired in the hearts of many Americans, “tired of the deadly squabbles between Europe’s dictators and democrats and ground down by the daily effort to make or find a living in the midst of constant privation”, a feeling of romantic wonder and national pride[5]. The collections of the Polar Archives at the Ohio State University has the papers of many such polar explorers, including Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Sir George Hubert Wilkins, men who could be considered the embodiment of polar heroism and held the deep adoration and fascination of the American public.

Not only were Byrd and Wilkins considered heroic in the eyes of the public, the men with whom they served also saw them as heroes. One man serving under Wilkins described him in 1933 as “a wonderful leader” and wrote that Wilkins “never made decisions without giving us the opportunity either of making suggestions or of declining to undertake tasks if we felt unable to carry them out. But I think that most of us trusted Sir Hubert so implicitly that we gladly followed his ideas.”[6] Another member of that same expedition claimed that he “looked up to Sir Hubert as a dog does to his master. It was a tremendous honour to serve under such a great explorer.”[7] Wilkins always put the needs of the crew in their proper place of importance. When his plane, the Polar Star, was ruined before it could be flown over the Antarctic, Wilkins worked diligently with young men half his age to transport, by hand, heavy sledges of supplies for ten hours each day in thirty degrees Fahrenheit below zero against heavy winds for the purpose of another flight attempt the next spring[8].

Admiral Richard Byrd held those characteristics one would find common amongst the greatest of leaders and explorers of any generation. Claude Swanson, a lifelong friend of the Admiral, found that Byrd’s “father’s indignant denunciations of foolhardiness were more than justified”[9]. A childhood friend of Byrd who accompanied a young Byrd on his travels across the globe, “attributes some of his gray hair to the anxiety accompanying his efforts to locate the young daredevil who had managed to slip away on his Filipino pony and join a sheriff’s posse…who were…rounding up a group of desperate bandits.”[10] Along with this proclivity towards adventure imbued in Byrd seemingly at birth was a profound sense of duty to others. This manifested itself best in relation to the men of Byrd’s First Antarctic expedition, 1933-1935. When a party of geologists left Little America I on a mission, their plane and only method of transport was swept away and destroyed in a storm with winds of over hundred miles per hour[11]. The men were stranded for several days before they heard Byrd, flying above on a mission of rescue[12]. Upon returning to the United States and the lands of warmth (or at least not eternal cold) after his expedition, Byrd was likely to be voted a special medal of honor by Congress[13]. Byrd then asked that medals be awarded to his men instead, to which Congress agreed[14].

Wilkins and Byrd were the explorers of their time. To their men and to the public, they were reincarnations of the mythical explorers of old. Their actions spoke louder than their words, but that is not to say that their words were not already heard and appreciated.

One can learn more about Byrd and Wilkins and their incredible lives of exploration and adventure at the Polar Archives at the Ohio State University.

 

[1] Colin Schultz, “Shackleton Probably Never Took Out an Ad Seeking Men for a Hazardous Journey”, Smart News, September 10, 2013, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/shackleton-probably-never-took-out-an-ad-seeking-men-for-a-hazardous-journey-5552379/?no-ist.

[2] Shultz, Shackleton “Probably Never Took Out an Ad”.

[3] Shultz, Shackleton “Probably Never Took Out an Ad”.

[4] Lisle A. Rose, Explorer (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 2.

[5] Rose, Explorer 1.

[6] Simon Nasht, The Last Explorer (Sydney: Hodder Australia, 2005), 260

[7] Nasht, The Last Explorer 261

[8] Nasht, The Last Explorer 260-261

[9] Claude A. Swanson, introduction to Discovery, by Richard E. Byrd (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1953), vii.

[10] Swanson, introduction vii.

[11] Antarctica, 2nd ed., s.v. “Conquest by Air.” (Surry Hills: Reader’s Digest, 1990)

[12] Antarctica, “Conquest by Air”

[13] Swanson, introduction xiii

[14] Swanson, introduction xiii

Works Cited

“Conquest by Air.” In Antarctica, 2nd ed. Surry Hills: Reader’s Digest, 1990.

Nasht, Simon. The Last Explorer. Sydney: Hodder Australia, 2005.

Rose, Lisle A. Explorer. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2008.

Schultz, Colin. Shackleton Probably Never Took Out an Ad Seeking Men for a Hazardous Journey. Smart News, September 10, 2013. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/shackleton-probably-never-took-out-an-ad-seeking-men-for-a-hazardous-journey-5552379/?no-ist.

Swanson, Claude A. Introduction to Discovery, by Richard E. Byrd, vii-xv. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1953.

Written by John Hooton.