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 Now that I think about it, the tragic Scott expedition diaries  related numerous reports of rock above ice, even deep in the interior.

Reply Chris Forbes-Ewan

In fact, I would expect exposed rock to be more prevalent inland. Precipitation is high in the coastal regions (of the order of 100 cm rainfall equivalent) and gradually reduces as you go further inland. At the South Pole, average annual precipitation is 2.5 cm rainfall equivalent. According to the book quoted in my previous message, in some of the dry valleys there has been no precipitation for several millions of years.
Going on a tangent--not only did Scott find rocks, he and his companions dragged 16 kg of rocks (which they considered important geological specimens) in their sleds to the bitter end.
There has been speculation that this was irrational and indicated poor judgement that might have been related to their extreme fatigue, cold exposure and poor nutritional status (which undoubtedly included vitamin C deficiency and probably deficiencies of several B group vitamins too). After all, why would people whose lives were in grave danger bother to load themselves down with 16 kg of additional weight in the form of rocks, for heaven's sake!
My position is somewhat different. If I wanted to maintain optimism that I would survive no matter how bad the odds were against doing so, I might just do what Scott and his companions did--carry on as though I WAS damned well going to survive. Advancing scientific knowledge was the second major aim of the expedition (after being first to the South Pole). Getting these rocks back to the coast and then to England was of great importance to Scott ... perhaps retaining them helped keep up the morale of the group.

Response Chris Lawson
 

I suspect you're right. Scott kept dragging the rocks because he knew he'd
lost the race to the pole, and the only thing he could do to help his
self-esteem and team morale was to make sure his was a scientific
expedition as opposed to that damn Norwegian racing team. And 16 kg was
actually not all that much given the kit these guys were carrying. OTOH, it
appears that Scott was not one of the most gifted leaders of all time. He
has been remembered rather fondly becuase the story is so tragic and
heroic, and because he was British (hurrah! hurrah!), but the reality was
that he was a grand motivator but a bloody fool who wouldn't change his
mind once set. His decision to take ponies instead of dogs and his
kerfuffling around (thus delaying the trek to the pole until well past the
best dates for weather) was what really killed the men, not 16 kg of rock.

Response Chris Forbes-Ewan
According to Apsley Cherry-Garrard (who wrote 'The Worst Journey in the World', about the 1911-14 expedition) the ponies did all that was expected of them. They made it to the base of the plateau, acted as food for the men as they died (or were sacrificed), and, all-in-all, were a success.
You're right about the delay caused by the use of horses, though. Horses couldn't withstand the cold and blizzards that might be expected in late spring/early summer, while Amundsen's dogs could. So Amundsen was able to start well before Scott (and also finish well before the March blizzards that finally put paid to Scott and his four companions).
Amundsen was also somewhat lucky--he decided to strike out on a new, untested route up the plateau. Fortunately, it proved to be passable with dogs. Scott adopted the more careful approach of taking the path that Shackleton had found to be passable a few years before.
And Scott was sometimes stubbornly unwilling to change his mind, while at other times he seemed to do so on a whim. For example, the plan had always been to have only four in the team that made the final trek to the South Pole. So equipment for four was retained, and all spare tents, skis, ski poles and so on were returned with the last support party. Then, for no apparent reason, he decided to have five in the party. This meant that five men had to cram into a four-man tent, use cooking utensils designed to feed four, and one had to walk (there were skis only for four). This slowed the group down considerably.
There is a lot more to say about Scott, including the prominent role of nutrition (or rather lack of it) in contributing to the demise of the entire polar party.

On 6/08/02 at 11:17 PM Ray wrote:

>Can anyone recall which of the polar explorers it were who went mad after
>eating their Huskies?
>
>Something to do with an OD on dog livers.

Gerald Cairns replied

Can't remember personalities who suffered this fate but, dog and bear livers at least are so high in vitamin A that they are seriously toxic. I recollect a number of explorers of both poles have suffered this fate

Podargus added

Mawson is probably who you are thinking of, although he didn't go mad.  Just
had the soles of his feet fall off amongst other things.

David Dixon replied

Mertz, a participant in the Australian expedition to Antarctica led by Mawson, is thought to have possibly gone mad due to eating the dog livers they were forced to live on when most of their food was lost when one of
their sleds fell into a crevasse. It was reported that he bit off several of his own fingers before he died. Mawson also was affected by hypervitaminosis, mainly in having slabs of his skin peel off. This can be read in the Leonard Bickell book, "This Accursed Land"

I have  a feeling that the high concentrations in the dogs was that they had been fed exclusively on seal and penguin meat for a long time before the actual journey over the ice. This then concentrated it even more than the Antarctic animals. The problem was further compounded because Mawson and Mertz only ate the liver kidneys brains and other "soft" tissue because they were very short of kerosene for cooking and so they didn't want to waste it on the tougher muscle tissue.

Chris Forbes-Ewan
 

In 1911, Mawson led his own expedition in the ship Aurora. The main aim was to explore the area surrounding the South Magnetic Pole (which Shackleton had reached in the earlier expedition).

A substantial hut (still standing) was built for the group to overwinter, with the Aurora having returned to Australia.

The onset of summer saw Mawson and two others-Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis-set off for a nine-week trek with 17 dogs, three sledges and 782 kg of supplies.

They made slower progress than planned. About 515 km from base, Ninnis and the main supply sled disappeared down a huge crevasse, never to be seen again. With only one week's supply of food, and no food for the remaining dogs, the two survivors' situation was desperate.

They supplemented their meagre rations by killing the weakest dogs and eating the fattiest meat and liver. The rest of the meat they fed to the remaining dogs. This was probably their greatest mistake. Husky liver is very rich in vitamin A. By including huge quantities of the liver in their diet they were ensuring that hypervitaminosis A was not far away. Within a week, they began to feel dizzy, listless, stomach pain and experienced dysentery. Mertz suffered more than Mawson. Soon their skin and hair started to peel off, and symptoms of mental illness appeared. By now, all the dogs had died and man-hauling was the only option.

But Mertz was not capable of man-hauling. His physical and mental condition had deteriorated to the extent that Mawson had to try to pull him on the sled. He died after a 24 raging fit that threatened to destroy the tent.

Mawson was left with one piece of dog liver, 40 biscuits, some chocolate and a small quantity of dried meat, with 161 km still to base. He was also suffering severe hypervitaminosis A.

Crossing a glacier, the snow gave way beneath his feet and he fell 4 metres before the rope tied to his sledge bit into him, stopping his fall to certain death, but leaving him hanging above a precipitous chasm. Then the sled starting sliding towards the edge, until it stopped, at the very edge.

With what must have seemed like his last ounce of strength, he pulled himself out of the crevasse. As he lay on the snow, exhausted, the snow gave way again and he found himself in exactly the same predicament a second time.

Finding reserves of energy that could come only from someone with an indomitable will, he somehow dragged himself back up the harness rope and pitched his tent, trying to sleep while utterly physically exhausted, desperately ill from hypervitaminosis and with only a slim chance of
survival.

Blizzards, more crevasses and advancing illness notwithstanding, Mawson continued his lonely walk. But he finally experienced some good luck. A wind starting to blow from behind and he hoisted a makeshift sail above the sledge, allowing him to sit on the sledge and sail across the icy snow. His luck continued when the sledge sailed straight into a snow-cairn of food that had been set up by a rescue party who had given up all hope of finding Mawson's party, but had left some food in case he made it back this far. But his luck could have been better: a note in the cairn showed Mawson that the rescue party had left that very morning!

When he finally made it to the hut, he was unrecognisable. Even after the ice had been cleared from his face, the first person to come to his aid had to ask him which one of the three he was. His weight had dropped from 95 kg to 50 kg, he was close to death from many causes, not the least of which
was, of course, vitamin A poisoning.

His mixed luck continued. The ship had waited until the morning of the day he made it back to the hut, but could wait no longer. Only a few brave souls remained behind in case Mawson's party had somehow miraculously survived and returned to the hut. So Mawson had to overwinter in Antarctica, in dreadful condition, both physically and mentally. Even by the time the ship returned the following summer, he was still haggard and hairless.

But he recovered. And 18 years later he returned to Antarctica, although he never attempted another long sledging trip. One member of his expedition later described Mawson's feat as 'a triumph of the human spirit over the most formidable adversity.'

And if you think Mawson did it tough, wait until you read about the 'Worst Journey in the World' (which I will describe in a later message).
 

Dog, seal, and polar bear livers all contain toxic doses of vitamin D. There's a truly brilliant book called "In the Land of White Death" by Valerian Albanov, a Russian sailor whose ship was trapped in ice floes and could not stop itself drifting northwards. After *two years* locked in the ice, Albanov (the navigator) and a group of shipmates headed across the ice on make-shift sleds and canoes. They shot plenty of polar bears along the way, and at one stage, Albanov comments on the fine taste of cooked bear liver. The next day he is complaining about the toxic effects of the dish.
This is a *really* good book, largely ignored. The Modern Library Exploration edition has an afterword that is quite extraordinary as it discusses the diary of one of Albanov's companions. The diary had been sitting in a Russian museum more or less ignored presumably because the diarist, a sailor, had nothing interesting to say after Albanov (an officer), but in fact it had some dynamite information in it that I won't reveal here. All that I will say is that Albanov's account is pretty damn interesting. The extra information makes it a classic. What Albanov left out is as important as what he put in. You'll just have to read the book.

At 00:07 8/08/02 +1000, John Winckle wrote:
>Chris
>That's not fair.  For the few hundred of us who read this list, I would
>guess only
>a couple will ever get that book and find out what you are hinting at.
>Surely you can tell us more than that, enough to satisfy our curiosity,
>while not
>so much that we loose interest in reading the book if the opportunity
>presents.
 

Absolutely not! Consider it homework :-)

Honestly, I can't give away any more without undermining the experience of reading it yourself. When I picked up this edition, I thought most of the afterword was going to be useless filler by some celebrity adventurer. But it was just as interesting as the account by Albanov. The only thing I will give away is the fact that by the end of Albanov's account, I was impressed by his leadership skills. By the end of the afterword, I thought he must be
one of the most remarkable and humane leaders I've ever read about. And he wasn't groomed for it. He was an officer, but not ship's captain, and he originally decided to make the trek himself to get word of the ship's
plight to a rescue team, only to find that half the crew wanted to come with him. Very few survived. The weather was atrocious. Although they hunted for food, they were often unsuccessful and had to ration their bullets. The trek was not on solid ice, but across the pack ice, which meant they were constantly falling through the ice and needing emergency warming. It also meant that they were at the mercy of the ocean currents, and often found a whole day's trek wasted as the ocean swept them back.

They were frequently attacked by walruses, which sounds rather comical, but struck dread into the men at the time. All this is in Albanov's account. The afterword I will reveal no more of. It needs to be read without hints
or suggestions for full impact. If that means some Sci Natterers miss out, then so be it. Some things should not be experienced the Readers Digest way.
regards,
Chris Lawson

From: Podargus
 Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 9:07 AM
 

 There is a lot more to say about Scott, including the prominent   role of nutrition (or rather lack of it) in contributing to the demise   of the entire polar party.   It is a long time since I have been involved in such things, but I seem  to remember a suggestion that they had a 'scientific diet' before  vitamins were discovered.  Is there any truth in this idea?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'scientific diet', but there wasn't much science in Scott's choice of food, at least with the wisdom of hindsight and modern nutrition knowledge.

Scott's polar ration consisted of tea, sugar, biscuits, pemmican, butter and cocoa. By either good fortune or good management, Amundsen chose a much better trekking diet. In addition to taking similar foods to those chosen by Scott, Amundsen's rations included powdered milk and chocolate. Scott unaccountably did not include chocolate (although he did take some cocoa).

But Scott's rations were, unfortunately, devoid of vitamin C; nor did they provide much of the B group vitamins essential for the release of energy. For various (rather complex) reasons, the lesson taught by Lind in 1753--that citrus juice cures scurvy--and put into such wonderful effect by Cook (who didn't lose one man to scurvy in all his voyages) had been lost to the English by the time Scott was planning his expedition. Scott accepted the medical 'wisdom' of the time that scurvy results from ingesting a toxin produced as a result of food spoilage.

Through either good luck or inspired guesswork, Amundsen included dried peas (which would have contained some vitamin C) in his pemmican, while Scott's pemmican was only meat and fat. And Amundsen's biscuits were yeast-based, while Scott's were made with baking powder. (Yeast cookery results in retention of some B group vitamins in the food). And unlike Scott, Amundsen fortified his pemmican and biscuits with oatmeal, another rich source of B group vitamins.

Furthermore, Amundsen knew that the Arctic cloudberry (which grows in Norway) is antiscorbutic, and his men ate these berries during the leadup to the polar trek. Scott took some lime juice for this period, but he also took thousands of cigarettes and 35,000 cigars! We now know that smoking tobacco not only reduces fitness, but also reduces the body's level of vitamin C (because ascorbic acid is the first line of defence against the free radicals in tobacco smoke). Smoking also increases the risk of gangrene following frost bite. His men 'smoked like chimneys' for the entire overwintering period leading up to the summer trek to the Pole.

But, in trying to explain the contrasting outcomes, probably the major difference between Scott and Amundsen was the mode of transport used by each group. Again either as a result of pure luck or inspired guesswork, Amundsen chose a route (which had not previously been explored) that allowed him to use dogs to drag the sleds all the way to the Pole (and back). Scott stayed with a proven route (Shackleton had gone further than 89 degrees south on this route a few years earlier), but one that did not allow dog sledding or pony sledding beyond the foot of the plateau (nearly 1,000 km short of the Pole). Consequently, Scott and his supporting parties had to manhaul heavy sleds up the plateau and then continue manhauling for the remainder of the trek.

It has been estimated that Scott's men were expending energy at about 32 MJ per day while eating ~21 MJ. Amundsen's men were probably able to maintain energy balance on their daily ration of ~21 MJ. The huge excess of expenditure over intake, combined with low (or even no, in some cases) vitamin intake, extremes of cold, frequent blizzards, and incredible levels of physical work eventually wore down Scott's party.

Hindsight provides 6/6 vision--we now know that Scott made terrible mistakes. But with the limited knowledge available to him, he probably did about as good a job as anyone could have been expected to do. I believe that his only inexcusable mistake was his last-minute decision to take five men on the final trek to the Pole, apparently on a whim, when he had always planned to take only four, and had skies only for four. But the fate of four would probably have been much the same as that of the five who went to the Pole, given the appalling weather (which was much colder than normal) they experienced on their return from the Pole.

For me, Scott remains a heroic and tragic figure--larger than life, able to think of others even as he lay dying, half-starved and alone in his tent with a howling blizzard outside. With all his companions dead, and only hours to live, his last diary entry read:

"Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for."

With men like Scott, it is no wonder that England--a rather insignificant island off the coast of Europe-- managed to build the greatest empire ever seen.