The idea was that loyal fraternity and Royal Navy discipline—rather than cold-weather experience—would pull the gallant Brits through polar setbacks such as scurvy, which killed sailors by the drove and was described by a man on one of Cook’s southern voyages thus: “I pined away to a weak, helpless condition, with my teeth all loose, and my upper and lower gums swelled and clotted together like a jelly, and they bled to that degree, that I was obliged to lie with my mouth hanging over the side of my hammock, to let the blood run out, and to keep it from clotting so as to cloak me…” The sponsor of the Discovery expedition, Sir Clements Markham, wrote in 1875, “a contented state of mind is the best guard against scurvy.” Robert Scott also felt that scurvy was to be prevented by running a tight ship and maintaining a positive attitude, and that avoiding scurvy’s dementia, swollen limbs, loose teeth, putrid gums, and stringy green urine was largely a matter of character. Shackleton developed the disease on the way to the Pole, and thereafter Scott hated him, grumbling that Shackleton had spoiled their expedition.
Unbeknownst to Scott and Markham, in the 1600s Britain’s East India Company had administered to sailors a spoonful of lemon juice a day to ward off scurvy, and in 1753 the Royal Navy surgeon Lind had proven that scurvy, now attributed to Vitamin C deficiency, could be prevented and cured with oranges and lemons. Because of Lind’s studies, which were later successfully applied by Captain Cook, in 1795 the Royal Navy began supplying vessels with lemon juice, and scurvy became, after a few decades, a medical rarity. The respite lasted until lemons were replaced with limes, which were cheaper, but lower in Vitamin C, so that scurvy once again began decimating ships’ crews. Lime juice was dropped as ineffective. With detail-oriented efficiency, the blackened and stinking flesh of scurvy had been managed back into existence, the cure forgotten by the time Scott and company went on their polar quest.
As the Masons in the Coffeehouse had discovered, American explorer Admiral Richard Byrd was also a Freemason. In 1929 Byrd led the first expedition to fly over the South Pole, thereby proving Antarctica’s penetrability by plane and officially ending the dog-and-pony show of the Heroic Age of exploration. Byrd was particularly worried about the possibility of dissension infecting his winter-over crew, and had once written, “Of the thousand or more men who lost their lives in the attempt to conquer the Arctic, many of the deaths were caused by disloyalty or mutiny.” Only 11 of the 42 men living at the remote polar base were Masons like him, so in the middle of winter he established his secret Loyal Legion. He furtively approached each recruit, said that he had a proposal the recruit must swear never to reveal, then subjected the recruit to a fivepage screed of makeshift Masonic inducements: “. . . join with me in trying to prevent the spirit of loyalty of the expedition from being lowered by disloyal, treacherous or mutinous conduct on the part of any disgruntled members,” and “Until you agree and become a member of this fraternity it will be nameless, for its name must not be known by anyone but its members.” Then Byrd administered an oath in which the initiate promised never to divulge the existence of the Loyal Legion, always to follow Byrd’s command, and to “strive just as faithfully after the expedition ends to maintain its spirit of loyalty and… oppose any traitors to it then, as now.” In return, Byrd swore his own loyalty to the initiate, and pledged, “in evoking through you the spirit of the expedition to help save it from malcontents, agitators or traitors, that I will at the same time do whatever is practicable to save these men from themselves and from ruining their own lives.” Byrd spun his covert network of informants as a support group for those not invited to join—sure to boost camaraderie in a small crew isolated for the winter in Antarctica.
Like other famous Antarctic Masons, Byrd felt that public glory was the natural result of dispensing with the petty details. Though the Smithsonian Institute gave Byrd an award for aeronautics, the renowned aviator was said by one of his pilots to be little more than a distinguished passenger with questionable navigation skills. The American Humane Society commended Byrd for his treatment of the dogs he took to Antarctica, unaware that Byrd had decided not to fly dog food to a sledging party, who consequently built an execution wall of snow against which to shoot some of the huskies to butcher them as food for the others. Earlier in his career, Byrd had received a ticker-tape parade in New York City because he told the public he flew over the North Pole. The pilot who accompanied Byrd on the flight later revealed that they did not actually fly over the North Pole, but rather disappeared over the horizon, beyond range of the nearest base, and flew in circles for 14 hours before returning.4
Byrd considered himself to be in the “hero business.” To help nudge the public in the right direction, he manicured the image of his expedition by censoring radio messages, and though he allowed a journalist on his first Antarctic expedition, he insisted that no story be released without his approval. He made the crew turn over all their photos and negatives to him so that his account of the expedition would be the primary one. (On one of Byrd’s later expeditions, a similar order came down, but from President Roosevelt, requiring of each person “the surrender of all journals, diaries, memoranda, remarks, writings, charts, drawings, sketches, paintings, photographs, films, plates, as well as all specimens of every kind.”) On the way back from Antarctica, when the Hearst papers offered Smith, one of the crew, $15,000 for his story of the expedition, Smith’s diary was stolen from his locker. Byrd ordered the ship searched, and swore to Smith that he didn’t know who took the diary, but one of the crew later confessed to Smith that he had stolen it on Byrd’s orders.
Awed by his fantastic public image, some suggested naming the newly discovered ninth planet “Byrd.”5 Byrd’s Antarctic expeditions were sponsored with lard from Crisco and money from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Edsel Ford. After flying over the South Pole, Byrd returned to a hero’s welcome in the U.S., and began raising money to pay off the debts on his expedition. Charlie Bob, a friend who had given Byrd a good sum of money for the expedition, was indicted for fraud associated with his mining company and sued Byrd to get some of the money back, after which Byrd changed the names of Antarctic mountains that he had originally named for the shady sponsor. In McMurdo, behind the Chalet, overlooking the sea ice and the Royal Society Range, a bronze bust of Admiral Byrd donated by the National Geographic Society presides on a pedestal of black Norwegian marble. It bears no Masonic plaque.
Byrd named his first Antarctic base Little America. He had captured penguins on his expedition, but most of them died on the return voyage from drinking cleaning fluid.
At lunch, one day in mid-December, J.T. and I were discussing our plans for next week’s movie, in which an emissary from Zordon would come to Earth to reclaim Antarctica, which is only a fragment blown from Zordon long ago in an intergalactic space battle with its nearby enemy, Planet Raytheon.
Several of us made a movie together every few weeks. We scripted as we went and shot linearly to avoid editing. The only hard rule was that the movie had to be done by the end of the day even if it meant throwing a very bad ending on it and calling it good.
Hank joined us at the table. Overhearing our plans for making movies, he asked, “Were you filming last night?”
“No, but we made a movie on Sunday night,” I told him.
“Oh,” said Hank, “I’m supposed to investigate some people who were down there last night.”
Hank and I were friendly. I admired his ability to weave together disparate facts to evoke the great suffering of the miserable bags of blood that crewed doomed expeditions. He appreciated my comprehensive research on the same subjects, and was curious about the irreverent interpretations I drew from the histories he knew so well.
I first met Hank when I was a fingee and he had taken several of us to Cape Royds on a boondoggle. In Shackleton’s gloomy hut he told us stories