1912 (30 page)

Because of all the delays, the German expedition had left it too late. By 15 March 1912 the
Deutschland
was trapped in the sea ice. Picks and dynamites were tried, to no avail. It was hopeless. The ship's engines were turned off and the vessel quickly lost warmth.

This was the worst outcome of all. No Antarctic base was set up for the winter and now everyone was trapped on the
Deutschland
. Yet their predicament seemed to galvanise the men. They quickly set up a research station on the sea ice and made measurements as originally intended. They drilled holes to observe and record the growth of ice and the ocean temperature; to collect samples of water and plankton; and to measure the speed, direction and depth of the water below their feet. On the surface they established a weather station, from which kites and balloons with self-recording thermometers attached were sent up every few days. And by early April a magnetic observatory was established, completing the scientific set-up. The activities kept everyone busy and, for a while, their minds off the situation.

But science could not heal the party's bitter divisions. Some confrontations were relatively harmless: at one point, ‘König used a wet sponge this morning to wake Przybyllok who then angrily beat König's door in with climbing boots. He acted afterward as if nothing had happened.' Some tried to play music to entertain, but it was not a huge success. Filchner wrote later that ‘in this remote wilderness one's musical ear becomes more strict rather than uncritical. Unfortunately we did not have a single musician on board and hence accordion concerts turned into dreadful ear-torturing trials.' The men withdrew to spend a greater part of each evening in their cabins.

Other problems were considerably more serious. Criticisms were met with threats of duelling. In Filchner's book on the expedition there is barely any mention of alcohol. He claims he gave control of the expedition's stocks to the navigation officer, a teetotaller, while individuals kept ‘modest private stocks of alcohol in their cabins'. ‘I can heartily recommend fruit juices, mineral water, soda drinks etc and do not consider light wines for special occasions harmful.' If only this were the case. Filchner regularly remarked in his diary upon the damage alcohol did to the expedition's collegiality. It was a way of escape, and some of the characteristics it unmasked in the men were not to Filchner's liking. Vahsel apparently indulged in an ‘abundant consumption of whiskey' and would insult Filchner in front of the other officers. He wrote of the captain, ‘He is a sly fox.'

Some of the allegations are extraordinary. ‘This drunkenness is a cancer,' Filchner declared, writing after one of the captain's soirées. ‘The captain is always in the thick of it.'

One evening Filchner was woken at ten o'clock by the expedition doctor, Wilhelm von Goeldel, shouting. ‘He fought with the carpenter and the boatsman,' Filchner wrote. ‘Goeldel was totally drunk, threatening with a pistol. Przybyllok was also
drunk. I brought them both to bed with the help of König. I myself got to sleep at around 2 am.'

By April, Filchner and Vahsel were no longer speaking. ‘The captain opposes me wherever he can,' Filchner declared. Von Goeldel and the ship's first officer, Wilhelm Lorenzen, were now also openly hostile to the German leader. After the expedition Przybyllok commented, ‘The expedition doctor…had twice threatened members of the expedition that he would shoot them down with his revolver. And one had to sit daily at table with such gentlemen!' The others on board were ‘a bunch of pigs' and their behaviour towards Filchner was ‘shameful'. Meanwhile, Brennecke had instigated a Great Ship's Council, supposedly as a means of representing the crew's views to Filchner. It soon became an opportunity to bypass the command and openly judge the leadership.

One of the most important issues the council investigated was an incident involving König, who claimed he had been shot at on the ice. The Austrian had brought news of the shooting to Filchner and showed him the bullet he had retrieved. Word got out and König was asked to explain himself to the Great Ship's Council. Filchner was worried. Von Goeldel was ‘behaving like a madman' and had declared he would place König in ‘a strait jacket at the first opportunity'. At the council König was interrupted with frequent jeers and declarations of ‘Fool!', ‘Crazy Man' and ‘Strait Jacket'. It was touch-and-go. Filchner only managed to keep the mob at bay by declaring the shot had been accidental. In the end, von Goeldel did not follow through with his threat and the matter was dropped. Who had shot at König remained a mystery, though Filchner had his suspicions.

By June the bad feeling was too much for Filchner and he desperately needed to get off the ship for a while. He might not have made landfall on the Antarctic coastline, but he could at least make another contribution. Filchner decided to test one of the more controversial claims made about the Southern Ocean. In 1831 the eccentric American sealer Benjamin Morrell had returned from a purported journey south and subsequently published a popular account of his travels,
A Narrative of Four Voyages
. The book is highly entertaining, full of flamboyant claims and outlandish descriptions of the lands and people Morrell allegedly visited. In it he describes taking his schooner, the
Wasp
, south into the western Weddell Sea, where he found a 480-kilometre coastline he dubbed New South Greenland—though some later called it Morrell Land.

Pushing on south, Morrell subsequently claimed that, because of a shortage of cooking fuel at 70°, he was ‘compelled to abandon, for the present, the glorious attempt to make a bold advance directly to the South Pole. The way was open before me, clear and unobstructed; the temperature of the air and water mild, the weather pleasant and the wind fair. Under such tempting auspices, it was with painful reluctance that I relinquished the idea…The vassals of some petty despot may one day place this precious jewel of discovery in the diadem of their royal master. Would to heaven it might be set among the stars of our national banner!' Morrell's pleas in America fell on deaf ears.

Despite concerns about its colourful discoverer, the existence of Morrell Land excited debate for decades. At a meeting of the RGS in 1870 a paper on Morrell's claims incited fervent discussion. Francis Galton, editor of the bible of exploration,
Hints to Travellers
, was suspicious. Morrell, he said, had claimed to have made an excursion into the interior of Africa at about 23°S, describing it as ‘consisting of rich valleys, with large herds of
cattle roaming over them, whereas it was a barren desert'. Charles Enderby, the former owner of a sealing company that had funded the discovery of one of the few known parts of the Antarctic coastline at the time, thought Morrell ‘appeared to be a kind of Baron Munchausen'.

The most stinging comment, however, came from a Captain Davis: ‘No doubt the work was a very remarkable one, and also very amusing…southward of that parallel [50°] it was evident that Morrell was out of his latitude…had Mr. Morrell restrained his tongue and pen, a great part of his narrative might have been believed…He visited Auckland Islands, having made the voyage from Kerguelen Land in twenty-two days, or at the rate of about 180 miles a day [in icy seas]…Mr. Morrell then wound up with what may be considered a “clincher”, by characterising the island as “a delightful retreat for a few amiable families”. Of the same spot, Sir James Ross said, “Well adapted for a penal settlement.”'

By mid-June the
Deutschland
's northwesterly drift had brought her sixty-five kilometres east of Morrell's alleged sighting. Filchner grabbed the opportunity. Here was a chance to achieve something and dodge any future shots from his trigger-happy colleagues. Filchner left the ship on 23 June and, with two companions he could trust—König and Kling—made off with enough provisions for three weeks of unsupported sledging. With just two to three hours of daylight a day, the three men slowly worked their way over the sea ice and around open patches of water, much of the time by moonlight, with temperatures regularly approaching -35°C. Kling later wrote, ‘We proceeded at a rapid pace through the ghostly shadows thrown by piled-up floes and snow hillocks. We glided along noiselessly, as if we were heading for Valhalla. Everything around us was as silent as the grave; only the monotonous crunching of the sledges and König's shouts to his dogs broke the demonic silence.'

Acutely aware of what had happened to Nansen after he left the
Fram
in the Arctic, Filchner took frequent sightings of their latitude and longitude. The three men pushed on and, dragging their sledge of supplies and equipment, managed to get fifty kilometres from the ship. There was no sight of land. Finding a break in the ice, they dropped a lead weight and reached a depth of sixteen hundred metres before the line snapped. There was no hint of a shallow seabed: there was no coastline anywhere in the immediate vicinity. During their trip the three men saw ‘phenomena on the western horizon which looked like ice-covered land; later it turned out that we had been deceived by mirages'. Filchner was convinced that, if Morrell had made it this far south, he had most probably seen a mirage. The American sealer had been wrong, or had made the whole thing up.

Filchner and his two accomplices headed back to the ship. Correcting for the drift of the sea ice, they successfully intercepted the
Deutschland
. The small team had covered 160 kilometres in three weeks. For a while, Filchner's success seemed to surprise those on board: this was not the action of a coward, as Vahsel was now portraying Filchner to the crew. It was not long, however, before the situation on the ship changed irrevocably.

On 8 August 1912 Vahsel died. Filchner is circumspect about the cause in
To the Sixth Continent
, and suggests it may have been a heart attack. But on board it was common knowledge that the captain suffered from syphilis and, privately, Filchner considered this the most likely culprit. Vahsel was given a sailor's burial on the Antarctic Circle. The question now was who to put in charge of the
Deutschland
. There was little choice, and Filchner feared for his life. With the level of suspicion on board, he could hardly set about putting his preferred man, Kling, in the post. In the end Filchner chose Lorenzen, a man he disliked almost as much as Vahsel. But when Lorenzen had signed his
name in the log book with the title Captain, Filchner made a point of striking out the title, leading the sailor to faint—or pretend to—in shock. Przybyllok described him as acting ‘like a young girl who wants a new outfit'.

If Filchner had hoped things would improve with Vahsel's death he was to be bitterly disappointed; if anything, morale worsened. Filchner and Lorenzen argued constantly. By mid-September the
Deutschland
had edged far to the north, and Filchner was desperate to start the ship's engines and get going; Lorenzen would not hear of it. Filchner wrote in frustration, ‘Lorenzen is not able to lead a ship, every time he is challenged by decisions, he wants to faint (by purpose!). Shit gang here on board.'

Dr von Goeldel became ever more frustrated with König, who was struggling psychologically. The doctor was even suspected of trying to poison the Austrian biologist. Meanwhile, Filchner was suffering from constipation and haemorrhoids, a situation well known to von Goeldel. Because of the continued poor relationship between the two men, the expedition leader asked Kling to get his medication for him—but the doctor would not acquiesce. ‘Kling was supposed to get laxatives from von Goeldel,' Filchner wrote. ‘Von Goeldel made him swallow the double ration (although he didn't need it!).'

Their relationship did not improve. By 17 October, Filchner was writing in his diary, ‘At night I slept on the bench in my room so that von Goeldel can't shoot me through the walls. I locked the door and have a gun and cartridges next to me…I will sleep always on the floor, gun loaded.'

Finally, on 26 November at 63°S, the
Deutschland
broke free of the ice and headed straight for South Georgia, leaving behind its prison of eight awful months. The ship had covered a staggering 10° of latitude, drifting north in a clockwise direction around the Weddell Sea.

On 19 December the inhabitants of Grytviken greeted the return of the
Deutschland
. But the relative calm of the whaling station was soon shattered by shouts of alarm and the sound of scuffles on board. The chief of police went on the
Deutschland
and asked Filchner whether he needed help to restore order. Fearing how this would be interpreted at home, the German leader declined. Lorenzen screamed that he wanted Filchner off the vessel: ‘I am the commander. He has no more say on board this ship.' Many of the crew were utterly demoralised. Hearing an untrue rumour that they would not be paid, they fell in behind Lorenzen and announced, ‘We don't want anything more to do with Dr. Filchner.'

The Norwegian whaler Larsen attempted reconciliation, but failed. The bad feeling ran too deep. The mutineers were taken off the
Deutschland
in South Georgia and sent home via Buenos Aires, completing their journey on a passenger steamer. It was an ignominious end to what had promised to be a fine enterprise.