For thirteen months, we lay caught in the vise of this ice field. Two of the sailors went insane. Every member of the ship's company was afflicted with scurvy, and all but three of us were prostrated by it.
Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer: Autobiography of the First Man to Reach the South Pole (not to be confused with Sven Anders Hedin’s book with a similar title which I reviewed here) is a short but detailed account of Amundsen’s famed journey to the South Pole along with some of his other adventures. Starting with his early obsession with exploration, having come across at age fifteen, a book about the intrepid British explorer Sir John Franklin and his attempt to find the fabled Northern Passage in the Arctic, Amundsen was inspired to leave Norway and pursue glory. Being singularly focused on exploration from an early age, Amundsen embarks on a quest to train his body for the hardships he would endure by a strenuous physical regimen, climbing mountains in his native Norway, as well as joining the Royal Norwegian Army. Amundsen would also equip his mind by reading all the books on Arctic exploration he could find and by working on several ships to get the proper experience required to get a skipper’s license.
In 1897, at 25 years old, Amundsen embarks as the first mate in the Belgian Antarctic Expedition whose mission is to get readings of the South Magnetic Pole. The expedition encountered harrowing obstacles and was only to return to port two years later in 1899. This, however, did not deter a young Amundsen, who decided his expeditions would have to have a scientific nature to them and not be merely “adventuring.” Amundsen relocates to Germany to pursue further studies of magnetic observations at the Deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg. This constant drive to ensure research is carried out during his many explorations comes up again and again throughout the book.
It is the dawn of a new century, and a young and ambitious Amundsen sets out to do what many thought impossible. His next great feat is traversing the Northwest Passage solely by ship in the sloop Gjøa. The fabled Northwest Passage is the sea lane between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, which remains frozen for most of the year. Amundsen’s route takes him through formidable obstacles from Greenland to Alaska. Encountering many Inuit along his way, Amundsen documents their ways and culture.
Amundsen goes on to narrate the feat he is most known for, reaching the South Pole while in a race against Captain Robert F. Scott. Amundsen reaches out a helping to Scott offering to share his lodgings and his experienced counsel, but Scott staunchly refuses the Norwegian’s help. Scott eventually makes his way to the South Pole only to find Amundsen’s expedition had already reached it; Scott then makes his fateful trek along with his crew back to base camp losing every single member to exposure and starvation. Disappointingly, Amundsen finds that British children at the time were being taught that Scott was the one to first reach the South Pole, one of the first of many complaints we find throughout the book.
Unfortunately, there are large sections of the book dedicated not so much to the extreme climatic conditions and hardships Amundsen endured and overcame but to both the financial and personal obstacles he encountered -- from being fleeced by a willy Dane who took control of Amundsen’s finances, to the betrayal felt by Amundsen in the hands of his own brother, and even the Norwegian Explorer’s Club. And as brutal as these were, nothing came close to what Amundsen endured at the hands of Gentile, the pilot of the zeppelin Norge, which carried Amundsen and his crew across the Arctic from Greenland to Alaska. The journey provides for a lot of adventurous moments but the focus of the final chapters centers around Gentile’s terrible character. Although it is understandable Amundsen wanted to set the record straight, this part makes for rather dull reading. Truly a shame, because the descriptions of his exploratory journeys fraught with danger and adventure earlier in the book were quite enjoyable to read.
