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The
Antarctic left Gothenburg on October 16, 1901 and
arrived at Buenos Aires on December 15. It was here that the
expedition was joined by an American artist, F. W. Stokes,
and an Argentinean naval officer, Lieutenant J. M. Sobral.
The Argentinean government offered Nordenskjöld free
food, fuel and help if their officer could join the
wintering party...an offer too good to refuse. The ship left
for the southern latitudes on December 21 and arrived in the
South Shetlands on January 11, 1902. They landed, spending a
short time on one of the islands, and then proceeded on
south to explore the Orléans Strait.
Nordenskjöld wrote in his diary, "We were now sailing a
sea across which none had hitherto voyaged. The weather had
changed as if by magic; it seemed as though the Antarctic
world repented of the inhospitable way in which it had
received us the previous day, or, maybe, it merely wished to
entice us deeper into its interior in order the more surely
to annihilate us. At all events, we pressed onward, seized
by that almost feverish eagerness which can only be felt by
an explorer who stands upon the threshold of the great
unknown". Soon
Nordenskjöld made what he considered to be his most
important geographical discovery of the expedition: contrary
to popular belief, they soon saw that Louis-Philippe Land
was connected to Danco Land and that the Orléans
Strait ran into Gerlache Strait. He wanted to continue on
but time was short so they turned around and headed back
until the sound between Louis-Philippe Land and Joinville
Island was reached. French explorer Dumont
d'Urville originally
discovered the sound but since no ship had ever sailed
through, he named it after the Antarctic. Once they
made it across the sound, they landed on Paulet Island and
from there crossed Erebus and Terror Gulf and made a depot
on Seymour Island. The ship then steamed southwest towards
the unexplored region of eastern Oscar II Land Coast. They
made it as far as 60°10'S before running into a line of
ice. They followed it eastwards until reaching 63°30'S,
45°7'W on February 1 at which time the ship was forced
to turn back. By February 9 they spotted land again and for
his winter campsite Nordenskjöld chose Snow Hill
Island, southwest of Seymour Island. He and five others were
put ashore with equipment, supplies and sledge dogs after
which the Antarctic headed north for the
Falklands. The
first project the men completed was a small magnetic
observatory which served as shelter until the prefabricated
hut could be built. A group of strong storms rocked the camp
which gave them an idea of what was to come. By the
beginning of March the weather had started to improve.
Nordenskjöld made a number of trips by boat and dog
sledge to establish depots. When spring arrived,
Nordenskjöld, Sobral and seaman Jonassen set off for
the eastern part of Oscar II Coast again with the men towing
one sledge and the dogs the other. On a good day they could travel 30
miles but this was the exception as the terrain was filled
with crevasses, one of which nearly cost Nordenskjöld
his life. They finally reached their goal as
Nordenskjöld wrote, "We did not make much ado about
choosing our camping-ground (October 18) but pitched our
tent on the ice at the foot of a projecting, brown,
weather-worn, rocky headland, torn by the frost into a mass
of mighty blocks. The reader can easily imagine with what
feelings I hurried forward to these rocks, the first spot
trodden by human foot on the whole of the eastern coast of
the mainland of West Antarctica". Bad weather hounded them,
Jonassen hurt his arm, the tent was torn to shreds in a
storm and the dogs found their sack of food which they
promptly ate, consuming it all along with part of the sack,
some harness and the whip; it was time to go home. The three
men made it back to winter quarters on October 31 having
covered 380 miles in 33 days. Lieutenant
José Sobral When
spring arrived, Nordenskjöld and Jonassen set off on
another sledge trip, this time to discover whether the huge
gulf they had found the previous year behind Cape Foster
connected with the bay north of Cape Gordon. Good weather
allowed them, within five days on the ice, to determine this
to be true and they named the stretch of water the Crown
Prince Gustav Channel. The men now made for a peak on Vega
Island in order to get a better glimpse at the ice
conditions in Erebus and Terror Gulf as they wanted to cross
over to Paulet Island. As they approached the land, Jonassen
spotted what he believed to be penguins. He took out his
field glasses and was astonished to see that it was actually
three men! When they met, Nordenskjöld described the
three as "black as soot from top to toe; men with black
clothes, black faces and high black caps, and with their
eyes hidden by peculiar wooden frames...my powers of
guessing fail me when I endeavour to imagine to what race of
men these creatures belong". When they told him who they
were he still didn't recognize them. They were Gunnar
Andersson, Lieutenant Duse and Toralf Grunden and their
story was incredible. The
Antarctic headed back to the Falklands after dropping
Nordenskjöld and his party off at Snow Hill Island.
They spent the winter of 1902 there and picked up Gunnar
Andersson. They left the Falklands on November 5, 1902 for
the return trip to pick up the wintering party. The first
sign of trouble came on November 9, at a latitude of only
59°30'S, when pack ice was encountered. Within two days
the ship was held tight. Carl Larsen was able to ram his way
forward but on November 17 a storm hit that put the
Antarctic in jeopardy as Andersson wrote, "At 2:30 am
on 21 November I was awakened by loud orders from the
captain's bridge, and I dressed myself hurriedly and
hastened on deck. Three or four ship's lengths on our
larboard lay an iceberg which was considerably higher than
our mainmast and about three times as long as the
vessel...We were in evident danger of being carried by the
pack which lay close around the Antarctic, right on
to the ice-mountain. To add to our difficulties we were in
the midst of a blinding snowstorm. The engines were going
full speed, and we had the jib and fore-sail set.
For a long time the vessel moved
slowly forward a few yards, only to be pressed back by the
floes, but after a while the pieces of ice gave way before
the united pressure of steam and sail, and the
Antarctic glided past the iceberg into the lead which
had been formed in its lee". When the storm let up, the ship
was able to move into open waters around the South Shetlands
and eventually make landfall at Deception Island. After
leaving Deception Island efforts were focused on an attempt
to correctly chart the Orléans and Gerlache Straits
since the Belgica Expedition, led by Adrien de
Gerlache in 1898, had failed to do so. The charting was
completed on December 5 and the Antarctic then
steamed for Antarctic Sound which would lead them to
Nordenskjöld's winter quarters. Unfortunately, as the
ship approached the sound, the lead between the ice became
narrower and narrower and by the time the ship reached the
vicinity of Mount Bransfield, the way was completely
blocked. Andersson went ashore at
Louis-Philippe Land in order to get a better look at the ice
in the sound. Andersson reported back that Erebus and Terror
Gulf was a complete sheet of ice but Larsen decided to try
and ram his way through anyway. Many days later found them
no better off. Larsen gave up on his idea and decided they
would try to reach Nordenskjöld by sledge party. The
ship finally broke free from the pack ice and Larsen headed
once more for Antarctic Sound. On December 29 Andersson,
Duse and Toralf Grunden were put ashore at Hope Bay. The men
immediately established a depot for the wintering party in
case the ship was not able to reach the winter quarters.
They then set off on the 200-mile journey to Snow Hill
Island. Larsen and the rest of the men on the
Antarctic tried again to make their way to the
southeast. She was still caught in the pack ice as a fierce
storm blew her southwards... first bow first, then sideways,
then stern first. This event continued until they
reached the vicinity of Paulet Island. In his diary on
January 10, 1903, scientist Carl Skottsberg wrote, "During
the afternoon the pressure on the sides of the vessel--which
had begun yesterday--could scarcely be marked, but after
dinner, just as we sat down to a hand at cards, the ship
began to tremble like an aspen leaf, and a violent crash
sent us all up on deck to see what the matter was. The
pressure was tremendous; the vessel rose higher and higher,
while the ice was crushed to powder along her sides". The
ship was able to rise above the pressure of the ice but
later that night the Antarctic began to list to
starboard. Everyone prepared to abandon ship but fortunately
the pumps were able to keep up with the leak. Nearly two
weeks went by like this as the ship drifted southeastwards
in the ice. On January 16 the ice opened up to the point
where the ship was able to right herself and on February 3
the pressure from an ice floe at her bow shook the stern
loose and for the first time in weeks she was afloat.
Unfortunately, this only worsened the leak so in an act of
desperation, Larsen decided to try and beach the ship on
Paulet Island. By February 12 the ship had managed to
drift into a large lead that had opened in the direction of
Paulet Island. The engine was started and the sails hoisted
in a furious attempt to reach the island. But, this only
made the leak unmanageable and, as the water rose, the order
was given to abandon ship. "We stand in a long row on the
edge of the ice", wrote Skottsberg, "and cannot take our
eyes off her...The pumps are still going, but the sound
grows fainter and fainter...she is breathing her last. She
sinks slowly deeper and deeper...Now the name disappears
from sight. Now the water is up to the rail, and with a
rattle, the sea and bits of ice rush in over her deck. That
sound I can never forget, however long I may live. Now the
blue and yellow colours are drawn down into the deep. The
mizzen-mast strikes against the edge of our floe and is
snapped off; the main-mast strikes and breaks; the crow's
nest rattles against the ice-edge, and the streamer, with
the name Antarctic disappears in the waves. The
bowsprit--the last mast-top---She is gone!" The
Antarctic sank 25 miles from Paulet Island and the
shipwrecked party now began the nightmare journey to it
across the ice. While
the Antarctic was trying to find a route to pick up
Nordenskjöld and the others, Gunnar Andersson, Lt. Duse
and Toralf Grunden's attempt to reach the winter quarters on
foot was being compromised by their lack of knowledge of the
geography of the area. After being put ashore, the men
headed off in a south-southwesterly direction which,
according to James Clark Ross's chart, would bring them to
Sidney Herbert Sound. Unfortunately, instead of finding a
continuation of land after their struggle across the eastern
end of Louis-Philippe Land they found themselves at the
frozen entrance of the Crown Prince Gustav Channel.
Andersson wrote, "We stand silent and perplexed and gaze at
the new and wonderful scene. Mile upon mile of snowy plain,
such as we have never seen before, meets our eyes. One can
actually imagine that a gigantic snow-clad city lies before
us, with houses, and palaces in thousands, and in hundreds
of changing, irregular forms--towers and spires, and all the
wonders of the world. At first sight it appears
incomprehensible, but it must be, after all, a bay covered
with a frozen-in mass of numberless icebergs". The men set off across the bay on skis
for Vega Island and, after 15 hours, reached the island and
set up camp. The men thought for certain they were on James
Ross Island and therefore would soon be able to reach
Admiralty Sound. They climbed a peak on the island and to
their dismay discovered their way blocked by an expanse of
open water which they immediately recognized as Sidney
Herbert Sound. But....they could see open water to the south
so they assumed the Antarctic had experienced little
difficulty reaching the winter quarters on Snow Hill Island
that summer. This final reasoning sealed their fate for the
coming winter. Before Larsen dropped Andersson and the other
two men off at Hope Bay, plans had been made between them
that entailed the following: whoever was the first to arrive
at winter quarters on Snow Hill Island was to gather the
winter party and make for a rendezvous with the trailing
group back at Hope Bay. After seeing all the open water to
the south of them, Andersson and his men took it for granted
that the Antarctic had already arrived at Snow Hill
Island and were proceeding to Hope Bay to pick them up. They
gave it no further thought and were back at their depot at
Hope Bay on January 13 where they settled down to await
arrival of the ship to pick them up. According to Andersson, the winter
passed quickly. When spring arrived, Andersson made a short
trek to see if the channel up to Vega Island was frozen and
indeed it was. The men thankfully departed their hut on
September 29 in search of the others. All of them were a fit
to see as they were blackened by soot from head to foot with
long scraggy beards and dirty, ragged clothes. They had just
started their journey when a storm came up, trapping them in
their small tent. Andersson wrote, "The storm grew more and
more violent while the cold increased in intensity, and
during the following night the tent-wall fell on my head and
the snow packed itself over me, so that I lay fast as though
in a vice. I was not released from my position until the
storm had subsided, some 30 hours later". They reached Vega Island on October 9
and found the depot left the previous summer. The next two
days were spent taking care of Grunden's and Duse's
frostbite. After further exploration they were able to
confirm that Sidney Herbert Sound actually connected with
Crown Prince Gustav Channel but any decent from the island
would be extremely difficult. Therefore, the men retraced
their steps and began the last leg of their journey to meet
up with the others by way of the sea ice around the island.
They reached Cape Dreyfus, soon renamed Cape Well-met, on
October 12. Andersson wrote, "At 1 pm we had halted at the
cape in order to prepare dinner. Groups of seals lay here
and there upon the ice; we had just passed by a couple of
the animals, and a large family lay some distance further
out. 'What the deuce can those seals be, standing up there
bolt upright?' says one of us, pointing to some small, dark
objects far away on the ice, in towards the channel. 'They
are moving', cries another. A delirious eagerness seizes us.
A field-glass is pulled out. 'It's men! It's men!' we
shout". At long last the men were reunited with their
leader. The
story of Captain Larsen and the stranded men from the
Antarctic is another story of incredible courage.
They had existed in a makeshift hut on Paulet Island
throughout the long winter months of 1903. The marooned men
spent their first full day ashore on Paulet Island on March
1, hunting penguins and seals to supplement their food
supplies for the coming winter. By the end, 1100 penguins
had been killed. Work was also started on a stone hut which
was not a job for the weak at heart. Stones had to be
gathered and carried long distances to the site where the
double-walled structure was built. When it was finished, it
measured 34 feet by 22 feet with most of it taken up by the
living quarters; twelve feet was used for the kitchen. Two
stone beds were built along the walls of the living area,
each measuring seven feet wide and accommodating 10 men
each. By mid March, storms were quite
violent and soon one of them blew the kitchen roof off. The
winter days dragged on as the cycle continued: sleeping,
cooking penguin (and occasional seal or fish), hunting and
evenings spent talking or reading out loud from one of the
few books that survived the sinking of the Antarctic.
From time to time they would have a sing-along but the men
acutely feared what their final outcome would be. Skottsberg
wrote, "Many hundred dreams have been dreamed in our island
but I do not know if they helped to brighten our existence.
They grouped themselves around two objects--food and rescue.
Why, we could dream through a whole dinner, from the soup to
the dessert, and waken to be cruelly disappointed. How many
times did one not see the relief vessel in our
visions--sometimes as a large ship, sometimes as nothing but
a little sloop? And we knew the persons on board; they spoke
about our journey; took us in their arms; patted us on the
back...". But the reality of the situation was far different
as food supplies dwindled away. On June 7, Ole Wennersgaard
died. They buried him in a snowdrift until they could
properly bury him in the spring. The
months dragged on until October arrived along with a breakup
of the sea ice in the gulf which was a clear indication that
the sea was clear for a ship to try and reach the three men
they had left at Hope Bay. Carl Larsen took five crewmembers
from the Antarctic and headed off for Hope Bay at
dawn on October 31 in hopes of contacting a rescue ship.
They fought the weather all the way but on November 4 they
finally reached Hope Bay. To their dismay they found the
depot and stone hut but no sign of the men. Attached to the
hut was a board on which a note had been written informing
anyone who found it that Gunnar Andersson, Lieutenant Duse
and Toralf Grunden had wintered there. A sketched map was
found in a flask that showed Larsen the route the three men
were taking in their attempt to reach Snow Hill Island.
Larsen realized he would have to make the same journey but
for him it would be by water. Bad weather delayed
them for three days before they were able to launch their
small boat into Antarctic Sound. Larsen wrote, "We broke up at 4 am and
then rowed the whole day in the direction of Sidney Herbert
Bay. Only here and there did we meet with scattered ice. The
fine weather continued the whole of the next night, and we
were making rapid progress towards our goal when, just as we
passed Cape Gage and came into Admiralty Sound we met with a
hinder which could not be forced by the boat. We found the
ice extending in a straight line right over the bay towards
Cockburn Island and Cape Seymour, and inwards across the
whole of the sound. So at 2 am we drew the boat up on the
ice and retired to rest". As Larsen and his companions
struggled across the gulf, close by was a rescue ship
working it's way through the ice around Joinville Island.
The folks back in Sweden and Argentina had become very
concerned with the fate of the Antarctic when she
didn't return. After all, both the British
(Discovery) and German (Gauss) expeditions had
barely escaped the unusual ice conditions that summer.
So, arrangements were made for France,
Sweden and Argentina to send rescue ships to the vicinity of
Snow Hill Island the following spring. Lieutenant Julian
Irizar, the Argentinian naval attaché in London, was
chosen to lead the Argentinean rescue expedition aboard the
corvette Uruguay. Meanwhile, as rescue preparations
were being made, Nordenskjöld returned to Hope Bay
along with Andersson, Duse and Toralf. On October 26,
Nordenskjöld, Andersson and Sobral undertook a journey
to Seymour Island and left an inscribed message on a
boathook which was raised as a signal on a cairn of rocks.
November 7 became a day of great excitement: on this day
Larsen and his men began their epic row across Erebus and
Terror Gulf; as they were doing this, two more members of
the wintering party, Gösta Bodman and Gustaf Akerlund,
left winter quarters for Seymour Island; and finally it was
on this date that Lieutenant Irizar and the Uruguay
reached the ice shelf off Seymour Island. A small party of men were put ashore
to explore the region and that very afternoon discovered the
boathook previously planted by Andersson and Sobral. Irizar
slowly inched his ship along the edge of the ice until a
tent was visible on the shore. Irizar and Lieutenant Yalour
landed, walked to the tent and proceeded to wake up the two
men inside--Bodman and Akerlund. The two officers then
followed the Swedes across the ice to the winter quarters.
Nordenskjöld may have been consumed with delight but
this was quickly tempered when the Argentineans informed him
that they had not seen any sign of the Antractic.
They quickly agreed to abandon the camp so that the search
for the missing ship could start. All of a sudden the dogs
started barking and when they went outside, to their
astonishment was Bodman greeting Larsen and his party who
had just completed the 15-mile journey across the ice.
Nordenskjöld wrote, "No pen can describe the boundless
joy of this first moment...I learned at once that our dear
old ship was no more in existence, but for the instant I
could feel nothing but joy when I saw amongst us these men,
on whom I had only a few minutes before been thinking with
feelings of the greatest despondency". All the men had
finally been reunited. The
Hut at Winter Quarters
Dr.
Otto Nordenskjöld, a Swedish geologist, led one of the
most fascinating and incredulous journeys ever attempted to
the Antarctic regions. The Germans, under the command of
Erich von
Drygalski (the Gauss
Expedition) and the British, under the command of
Robert
Falcon Scott (the
Discovery Expedition) were in the final stages of
their respective plans for research south of the Pacific and
Indian Oceans as the 32-year old Nordenskjöld completed
preparations for his expedition to the southern reaches.
Seven other scientists along with 16 officers and men made
the voyage south. The command was placed under an
experienced Antarctic explorer, Captain Carl Anton Larsen ,
who had commanded the Jason during a whaling
reconnaissance mission in 1892-93 as far south as
64°40'S into the Weddell Sea. A young
geographer-geologist-anthropologist, named Dr. Gunnar
Andersson, was going to join the ship at the Falkland
Islands and assume leadership after Nordenskjöld's
group was dropped off at their wintering station. Plans then
called for the Antarctic and it's remaining crew to
carry out research in the region during the summer and fall
before returning the following year to pick up
Nordenskjöld and his men. A good plan but one that went
terribly wrong.
By the end of November the sea
ice had still not broken up. In early December
Nordenskjöld made a sledge journey to Seymour Island
and made some important fossil discoveries but heavy on his
mind was the fact that the sea ice was not breaking up and
the ship was no where in sight. The ship had been expected
any day in January and February yet still she didn't show up
and their fate was sealed on February 18 when a storm came
in from the south and froze the sea completely over. The men
were depressed, to say the least, at the prospects of
spending another cold winter in the damp, cramped winter
quarters on Snow Hill Island.
What supplies could be saved
were loaded onto the whale boat and ferried from ice floe to
ice floe. They were in constant danger from icebergs
threatening their campsites on the ice but after 14 days and
a six-hour row, they finally struggled ashore on Paulet
Island on February 28, 1903. The only hope the men had was
that Andersson was able to make arrangements for a rescue
party if the Antarctic had not returned by autumn.
Even if this were accomplished the men knew they would be in
for a very difficult winter ahead as there would simply be
no possibility of a rescue ship making it through the sea
ice this late in the season.
But, those days turned into
weeks and it finally occurred to them that something had
gone terribly wrong. On February 11 they started building a
winter hut made with stone walls to a height of the tallest
man. The sledge, turned upside down, served as the roof
which was then covered with some planks and an old tarp.
Inside the structure they put up the tent in order to give
them some extra added protection. The floor was covered with
penguin skins and on March 11 the hut was ready for
occupancy. As winter set in, the snow surrounding them kept
the inside temperature to a comfortable few degrees below
freezing...any warmer would melt the ice on the walls and
ceiling. The three men hunted penguins to supplement their
food resources and eventually killed 700 of them. They even
managed to kill a few seals and catch some fish through
holes in the ice. They each took turn on duty and
entertaining one another in the evenings. 
Otto Nordenskjöld's uncle
was the discoverer of the Northeast Passage around Siberia.
Nordenskjöld held a doctorate in geology and lectured
at Uppsala University. He led geological expeditions to
Tierra del Fuego in 1895-97 and to the Yukon in 1898. Upon
return from the Antarctic Expedition,
Nordenskjöld received much fame but remained in debt
for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he led further
expeditions to Greenland in 1909 and to Peru and southern
Chile in 1920-21.