Amundsen Reaches the South Pole: 14 December 1911
1911 · event
On 14 December 1911 five men on skis, with four sledges and seventeen dogs, stopped in the middle of a featureless white plain and took careful sightings of the sun. Their calculations agreed. Roald Amundsen and his companions Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel and Oscar Wisting were standing at the South Pole, the first human beings to reach it. They planted the Norwegian flag, named the site Polheim, left a small tent with a letter inside, and turned for home.
Amundsen had planned the journey as a logistical problem. He had learned from the Netsilik people in the Arctic how to travel and dress in extreme cold, he used dogs rather than ponies or engines, and he laid supply depots in advance and marked them with lines of flags so they could not be missed in poor visibility. His base at the Bay of Whales was closer to the pole than the alternative, and his team included expert skiers.
Robert Falcon Scott and four companions reached the same point on 17 January 1912 and found the Norwegian tent waiting for them. All five died on the return journey, worn down by cold, hunger and injury, only a few kilometres from a supply depot. The contrast between the two expeditions has been argued over ever since, in terms of method, luck and weather.
Amundsen's party returned to their base without losing a man, having covered close to three thousand kilometres. The achievement closed the last great gap on the map of the Earth and stands as a study in preparation. Amundsen later flew over the North Pole in an airship and disappeared in 1928 in the Arctic while searching for a missing expedition, which is the kind of ending his life had always risked.