On This Day: Roald Amundsen Becomes First Man to Reach South Pole
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National Library of Australia
Four of the five explorers in Amundsen’s team are pictured at the South Pole by the fifth member, Olav Bjaaland, Dec. 14, 1911.
On This Day: Roald Amundsen Becomes First Man to Reach South Pole
December 14, 2011 06:00 AM
by           findingDulcinea Staff
On Dec. 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen and four fellow Norwegian explorers became the first men to reach the South Pole, beating the ill-fated team of British Capt. Robert F. Scott by just over a month.
The Race to the South Pole
Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer who in 1898 was part of the first expedition to winter in Antarctica and in 1903 became the first man to sail through the Northwest Passage, had been planning an expedition to the North Pole in September 1910, but he lost interest when he heard that Americans Robert Peary and Frederick Cook had each achieved the feat in April 1909.
Amundsen secretly began planning to travel to the South Pole instead. In October, he sent a telegram notifying British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who was a preparing a South Pole exploration, of his intentions. “Beg leave inform you proceeding Antarctic. Amundsen,” the telegram read.
Thus began the race to the South Pole . Each party arrived in Antarctica in January 1911; Scott established base camp at McMurdo Sound, while Amundsen set up his camp, called Framheim, at the Bay of Whales on the Ross Ice Shelf, located 60 miles closer to the pole.
The two parties prepared for the journey to the pole by making expeditions south and establishing supply depots along their intended paths. The Amundsen party, which relied on sled dogs, reached farther south than the Scott party, whose Siberian ponies were less equipped for the conditions.
Amundsen set off for the pole with seven men in September, the start of the Antarctic spring. Just days into their trip, the weather turned cold, and they retreated back to Framheim. Hjalmer Johansen criticized Amundsen’s leadership and was expelled from the traveling party; the humiliated Johansen would later commit suicide upon his return to Norway.
Amundsen began his second push for the pole on Oct. 20, accompanied by four men and more than 50 dogs. Scott and his 13 men set off from their camp on Nov. 1 with dogs, ponies and motor sledges.
The Scott party was slowed by many setbacks: the motor sledges did not work reliably in the cold and the ponies could not manage the journey. The explorers had to abandon the sledges and they eventually killed all the ponies for food.
Traveling much lighter, the Amundsen team had few difficulties. On the afternoon of Dec. 14, the five explorers—Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Olav Bjaaland, Sverre Hassel and Oscar Wisting—became the first men to ever reach the South Pole.
Amundsen later wrote: “ After we had halted we collected and congratulated each other . … After this we proceeded to the greatest and most solemn act of the whole journey—the planting of our flag. … I had determined that the act of planting it—the historic event—should be equally divided among us all. It was not for one man to do this; it was for all who had staked their lives in the struggle, and held together through thick and thin.”
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