PRELIMINARY EXPLORATIONS
So much for the winter life up to date; no great excitements, nothing
untoward, but a remarkable bonhomie obtaining in our little company
despite the tedium of so many days of winter gloom. On June 27 Dr. Wilson
with Bowers and Cherry-Garrard started on a remarkable journey to Cape
Crozier, nearly seventy miles distant from Cape Evans, via Hut Point and
the Barrier. The object of these intrepid souls was to observe the
incubation of the Emperor Penguins at their rookery, which was known to
exist near the junction point of the Barrier Edge with the rocky cliff
south of Cape Crozier. It must be borne in mind that this was the first
Antarctic midwinter journey, and that the three men must of necessity
face abnormally low temperature's and unheard of hardships whilst making
the sledge journey over the icy Barrier. We had gathered enough knowledge
on the autumn sledge journeys and in the days of the Discovery expedition
to tell us this, so that it was not without considerable misgivings that
Captain Scott permitted Wilson to carry the winter expedition to Cape
Crozier into being. The scope of my little volume only permits me to tell
this story in brief. No very detailed account has yet been published,
although Cherry-Garrard, the only survivor of the three, wrote the far
too modest memoir of the journey which has been published in Volume II of
"Scott's Last Expedition."
Apart from the zoological knowledge Wilson hoped to gain from the Cape
Crozier visit in mid-winter, there was a wealth of other information to
be collected concerning the Barrier conditions, particularly the
meteorological conditions, but above all we knew that with such quick and
reliable observers as Wilson and his companions we must derive additional
experience in the matter of sledging rations, for the party had agreed to
make experiments in order to arrive at the standard ration to be adopted
for the colder weather we must face during the second half of the
forthcoming Polar journey.
Wilson took two small 9 ft. sledges, and after being photographed was
helped out to Glacier Tongue by a small hurrah party. In the bad light he
was handicapped from the very first, and it took the party two days to
get on to the Ice Barrier. Their progress was dreadfully slow, which was
not to be wondered at, for they were pulling loads of 250 lb. per man,
the surfaces were beyond anything they had faced hitherto, and the
temperatures seldom above 60 degrees. Relay work had to be resorted to,
and in consequence the party took eighteen days to reach Cape Crozier.
They met with good weather, that is, calm weather, to begin with, but the
bad surfaces handicapped them severely. After rounding Cape Mackay they
reached a wind-swept area and met with a series of blizzards. Their best
light was moonlight, and they were denied this practically by overcast
skies. Picture their hardships: frozen bags to sleep in, frozen finnesko
to put their feet in every time they struck camp, finger-tips always
getting frost-bitten and sometimes toes and heels; no comfort was to be
derived within camp, for, at the best, they could only sit and shiver
when preparing the food, and once the bags were unrolled to sleep in more
trouble came. It is on record that Cherry-Garrard took as long as
three-quarters of an hour to break his way into his sleeping-bag, and
once inside it he merely shook and froze. The party used a double tent
for this journey, that is to say, a light lining was fitted on the inner
side of the five bamboo tent poles, so that when the ordinary wind-proof
tent cloth was spread over the poles an air space was provided. There
was, I may say, a sharp difference of opinion as to the value of the
tent; Wilson's party swore by it and Scott was always loud in its praise.
The sailors hated it and despised it; they always argued, when consulted
on the subject of the double tent, that it collected snow and rime and
added much to the weights we had to drag along. Perhaps they were right,
and I remember one occasion when two members of the Expedition dumped the
inner lining after carrying it many hundred miles with the remark,
"Good-bye, you blighter, you've had a damn good ride!"
The scene inside the little green tent baffles description: the three
men's breath and the steam from the cooker settles in no time on the
sides of the tent in a thick, white rime; the least movement shakes this
down in a shower which brings clammy discomfort to all; the dimmest of
light is given by the sledging lantern with its edible candle (for
Messrs. Price and Co. had made our candles eatable and not poisonous),
everything is frozen stiff, fur boots, bags and fur mitts break if
roughly handled, for they are as hard as boards. The cold has carved deep
ruts in the faces of the little company who, despite their sufferings and
discomforts, smile and keep cheerful without apparent effort. This
cheerfulness and the fragrant smell of the cooking pemmican are the two
redeeming features of a dreadful existence, but the discomforts are only
a foretaste of what is to come--one night the temperature fell to 77
degrees below zero, that is 109 degrees of frost. There is practically no
record of such low temperature, although Captain Scott found that Roald
Amundsen in one of his northern journeys encountered something nearly as
bad. One cannot wonder that Wilson's party scarcely slept at all, but
their outward experiences were nothing to what they put up with at Cape
Crozier, which was reached on July 15. To get on to the slopes of Mount
Terror near Crozier the party climbed over great pressure ridges and up a
steep slope to a position between the end of a moraine terrace and the
conspicuous hillock known as The Knoll. In the gap here the last camp was
made in a windswept snow hollow, a stone hut was constructed behind a
land ridge above this hollow, the party using a quantity of loose rocks
and hard snow to build with. Cherry-Garrard did most of the building,
while the others provided the material, for, in his methodical way,
Cherry had built a model hut before leaving Cape Evans. The hut was 800
ft. above sea-level, roofed with canvas, with one of the sledges as a
rafter to support the canvas roof.
On the 19th July the party descended by the snow slopes to the Emperor
penguin rookery. They had great trouble in making this descent, on
account of crevasses in the ice slopes which overhung the level way under
the rock cliffs. As a matter of fact, the attempt on the 19th proved
abortive, although the little band got close to the rookery. They reached
it successfully on the 20th when the light was almost failing, and were
mortified to find only about one hundred Emperor penguins in place of the
two or three thousand birds which the rookery had been found to contain
in the "Discovery" days. Possibly the early date accounted for the
absence of Emperors; however, half a dozen eggs were collected, and three
of these found their way home to England. Wilson picked up rounded pieces
of ice at the rookery which the stupid Emperors had been cherishing,
fondly imagining they were eggs; evidently the maternal instinct of the
Emperor penguin is very strong.
The party killed and skinned three birds and then returned to the shelter
of the stone hut, not without difficulty, it is true. It is worthy of
note that the three birds killed by the party were very thickly
blubbered, and the oil obtained from them burned well.
The Ross Sea was found to be frozen over as far as the horizon. When the
party got back to their shelter two eggs had burst and saturated
Cherry-Garrard's mitts. This optimistic young man found good even in
this, for he said that on the way home to Cape Evans his mitts thawed out
far more easily than Bowers's did, and attributed the little triumph to
the grease in the broken egg! That night they slept for the first time in
the stone hut; perhaps it was fortunate that they did so for it was
blowing hard and the wind developed into a terrific storm.
One of the hurricane gusts of wind swept the roof of the hut away, and
for two days the unfortunate party lay in their bags half smothered by
fine drifting snow. The second day was Dr. Wilson's birthday; he told me
afterwards that had the gale not abated when it did all three men must
have perished. They had not dared to stir out of the meagre shelter
afforded by their sleeping-bags. Wilson prayed hard that they might be
spared. His prayer was answered, it is true, but before another year had
passed two of this courageous little band lost their lives in their eager
thirst for scientific knowledge.
When the three men crept out of their bags into the dull winter gloom
they groped about and searched for their tent, which had blown away from
its pitch near the stone hut. By an extraordinary piece of good fortune
it was recovered, scarcely damaged, a quarter of a mile away.
Cherry-Garrard describes the roar of the wind as it whistled in their
shelter to have been just like the rush of an express train through a
tunnel.
Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry-Garrard started home after this, but were
caught by another blizzard, which imprisoned them in their tent for
another forty-eight hours. They were now running short of oil for warming
and cooking purposes, but the little party won through after a very rough
march full of horrible hardships and discomforts, and reached Cape Evans
on the 1st August, when they had faced the dreadful winter weather
conditions on the cruel Ice Barrier for five weeks. What forlorn objects
they did look: it was pathetic to see them as they staggered into the
hut. Wilson, when he could give a collected account of what he and his
party had faced, was loud in the praise of Birdy and Cherry.
The party were examined by Atkinson, who gave some direction and advice
concerning their immediate diet--they seemed to want bread, butter, and
jam most, and the little loaves provided by Clissold disappeared with
extraordinary speed. They were suffering from want of sleep, but were all
right in a few days. One of the remarkable features of this journey was
the increase of weights due to ice collecting in their sleeping-bags,
gear and equipment. Their three bags, which weighed forty-seven pounds on
leaving Cape Evans, had increased their weight to one hundred and
eighteen at the conclusion of the trip. Other weights increased in the
same proportion, and the sledge had dragged very heavily in consequence.
The three men when they arrived were almost encased with ice, and I well
remember undressing poor Wilson in the cubicle which he and I shared. His
clothes had almost to be cut off him.
From this journey, as stated, we evolved the final sledging ration for
the Summit, it was to consist of:
16 ozs. biscuit.
12 " pemmican.
3 " sugar.
2 " butter.
0.7 " tea.
0.6 " cocoa.
daily 34.3 ozs.
It may seem little enough for a hungry sledger, but, no one could
possibly eat that amount in a temperate climate; it was a fine filling
ration even for the Antarctic. The pemmican consisted of the finest beef
extract, with 60 per cent. pure fat, and it cooked up into a thick tasty
soup. It was specially made for us by Messrs. Beauvais of Copenhagen.
No casualties occurred during the winter, but Dr. Atkinson sustained a
severely frost-bitten hand on July 4 when we had one of our winter
blizzards. Certain thermometers had been placed in positions on the sea
ice and up on the Ramp by Simpson, and these we were in the habit of
visiting during the course of our exercise; the thermometer reading was
done by volunteers who signified their intention to Simpson in order to
avoid duplication of observation. On blizzard days we left them alone,
but Atkinson, seeing that the wind had modified in the afternoon,
zealously started out over the ice and was absent from dinner. Search
parties were sent in various directions, each taking a sledge with
sleeping-bags, brandy flask, thermos full of cocoa, and first-aid
equipment. Flares were lit and kept going on Wind Vale Hill, Simpson's
meteorological station overlooking the hut. Search was made in all
directions by us, and difficulty was experienced due to light snowfall.
Atkinson fetched up at Tent Island, apparently, which he walked round for
hours, and, in trying to make the Cape again, became hopelessly lost,
and, losing one of his mitts for a time, fell into a tide crack and did
not get home till close upon midnight. Search parties came in one by one
and were glad to hear the good news of Atkinson's return. My own party,
working to the south of Cape Evans, did not notice how time was passing,
and we--Nelson, Forde, Hooper, and myself--fetched up at 2 a.m. to be met
by Captain Scott and comforted with cocoa.
Atkinson's hand was dreadful to behold; he had blisters like great
puffed-out slugs on the last three fingers of his right hand, while on
the forefinger were three more bulbous-looking blisters, one of them an
inch in diameter. For days and days the hand had constantly to be
bandaged, P. O. Evans doing nurse and doing it exceedingly well.
Considering all things, we were fairly free of frostbite in the Scott
expedition, and there is no doubt that Atkinson's accident served as an
example to all of us to "ca' canny."
Although we had our proportion of blizzard days I do not think our
meteorological record showed any undue frequency of high wind and
blizzards; but, as Simpson in his meteorological discussion points out,
we suffered far more in this respect than Amundsen, who camped on the Ice
Barrier far from the land. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but in the
light of after events one is compelled to state that had we stuck to our
original plan and made our landing four hundred miles or so to the
eastward of Ross Island, we should have escaped, in all probability, the
greater part of the bad weather experienced by us. Comparison with
Framheim, Amundsen's observation station, shows that we at Cape Evans had
ten times as much high wind as the Norwegians experienced. Our wind
velocities reached greater speeds than 60 miles an hour, whereas there
does not appear to be any record of wind higher than 45 miles an hour at
Amundsen's base at the Bay of Whales. Some of our anemometer records were
very interesting. In the month of July, when Wilson's party was absent,
we recorded 258 hours of blizzards, that is, of southerly winds of more
than 25 miles an hour speed. This was the record for the winter months,
but while we were depot-laying and waiting for the sea to freeze over at
Hut Point, no less than 404 hours of blizzard were recorded in one
month--March. Think of it, well over half the month was blizzard, with
its consequent discomfort and danger. The blizzard which nearly caused
the loss of the Cape Crozier party measured a wind force up to 84 miles
an hour; no wonder the canvas roof of the stone hut there was swept away!
Our minimum temperature at the hut meteorological station was 50 degrees
below zero in July, 1911, and the maximum temperature during the winter
occurred in June when the thermometer stood as high as +19 degrees.
Our ten ponies stood the winter very well, all things being considered.
One nearly died with cramp, but he pulled round in extraordinary fashion
after keeping Oates and myself up all night nursing him. In spite of the
names we assigned to the animals, largely on account of their being
presented to us by certain schools, institutions, and individuals, the
ponies were called by names conferred on them by the sailors and those
who led them out for exercise. The ten animals that now survived were
James Pigg, Christopher, Victor, Nobby, Jehu, Michael, Snatcher, Bones,
Snippets, and a Manchurian animal called Chinaman, who behaved very badly
in that he was always squealing, biting, and kicking the other ponies. A
visitor to the stables, if he lent a hand to stir up the blubber which
was usually cooking there, found himself generally welcome and certain to
be entertained. Oates and Meares, his constant companions, had both
served through the South African War, and had many delightful stories to
tell of their experiences in this campaign; their anecdotes are not all
printable, but no matter. Of Oates it is correct to say that he was more
popular with the seamen than any other officer. He understood these men
perfectly and could get any amount of work out of them, this was a great
advantage, because he only had his Russian groom permanently to assist
him, and he generally used volunteer labour after working hours to carry
out his operations. In the two lectures he gave us on "The Care and
Management of Horses," to which reference has been made, Oates showed how
much time and thought he had devoted to his charges, and to the
forthcoming pony-sledge work over the Great Ice Barrier.
During the latter half of the winter Oates and I saw a good deal of one
another, as we daily exercised our ponies on the sea ice when Wilson's
party was away and afterwards also till the weather was light enough for
me to continue surveying. Oates led two ponies out generally--
Christopher, the troublesome, and Jehu, the indolent while the care of
the rogue pony, Chinaman, devolved on myself. When the ponies went well,
which was usually the case, when they did not suffer from the weather, we
used to have long yarns about our respective services and mutual friends.
Oates would often discuss the forthcoming southern journey, and his
ambition was to reach the top of the Beardmore Glacier; he did not expect
to be selected for the southern party, which was planned to contain four
men only--two of these must have special knowledge of navigation, to
check one another's observations--the third would be a doctor, and it was
expected that a seaman would be chosen for the fourth. So Oates was
convinced that he had no chance, never for a moment appreciating his own
sterling qualities.
By the spring the ponies were all ready to start their serious training
for the southern journey, and the proper leaders now took charge to daily
exercise their animals in harness. The older sledges were used with dummy
loads, varying in weight according to the condition and strength of the
pony. So well in fact and so carefully did Oates tend his charges, that
by the time they were required for the southern journey only Jehu caused
him any anxiety, even so this beast managed to haul a reasonable load for
a distance of nearly 280 miles.
As to the dogs, the list was as follows:
Poodle--killed during gale outward in ship.
Mannike Rabchick (Little Grouse)--died from fall into crevasse.
Vashka--died suddenly, cause unknown.
Sera Uki (Gray Ears)--died after cramp and paralysis of hind legs.
Seri do. do.
Deek do. do.
Stareek (Old Man)--sent back with first supporting party.
Deek the Wild One.
Brodiaga (Robber).
Biele Glas (White Eye).
Wolk (Wolf).
Mannike Noogis (Little Leader).
Kesoi (One Eye).
Julik (Scamp).
Tresor (Treasure).
Vida.
Kumugai.
Biela Noogis (White Leader).
Hohol (Little Russian).
Krisraviza (Beauty).
Lappe Uki (Lap Ears).
Petichka (Little Bird).
Cigane (Gipsy).
Giliak (Indian).
Osman.
Seri (Gray).
Sukoi (Lean).
Borup.
Rabchick (Grouse).
Ostre Nos (Long Nose).
Makaka (Monkey).
Chorne Stareek (Black Old Man).
Peary.
_Note._--Borup and Peary were from the American North Polar Expedition
puppies. Borup was used in Dimitri's dog team which got right on to the
Beardmore Glacier, but Peary was never any use except for the other dogs
to sharpen their teeth on. He was a regular pariah.
Apart from the sledge dogs, we had a bitch called Lassie for breeding
purposes, but she was a rotten dog and killed her puppies, so we might as
well have left her in New Zealand, where we got her.
The dogs came through the winter very well, and during blizzards they
merely coiled themselves up into round balls of fur and let the snow
drift over them. Meares and Dimitri kept a very watchful eye over the dog
teams, and protected them against the prevailing winds with substantial
snow-shelters, always taking the weaker or sick animals into the annexe
where Birdie kept his stores, or else into the small dog hospital, which
was made by Dimitri and perfected by Meares.
The sun returned to us on the 22nd August. We were denied a sight of it
owing to bad weather, for on the 22nd and 23rd August we had a blizzard
with very heavy snowfall, and the drift was so great that, when it became
necessary to leave the hut for any purpose, the densely packed flakes
almost stifled us. We hoped to see the sun at noon on the 23rd when it
was denied us on the previous day, but no such luck, the sun's return was
heralded by one of our worst blizzards, which continued with very
occasional lulls until August 26, when we actually saw the sun, just a
bit of it. I saw the upper limb from out on the sea ice, and Sunny Jim at
the same time got a sight of it from his observatory hill. How glad we
were. We drank champagne to honour the sun, people made poetry concerning
it, some of which--Birdie Bowers's lines--found their way eventually into
the "South Polar Times." The animals went half dotty over it, frisking,
kicking, and breaking away even from their leaders; they seemed to
understand so well, these little ponies, that the worst part of the
winter was gone--poor ponies! Long before the sun again disappeared below
the northern horizon the ponies were no more.
There is not so very much in the statement that the sun had now returned,
but the fact, of little enough significance to those without the
Antarctic Circle, left something in our minds, an impression never to be
effaced--the snowed-up hut surrounded by a great expanse of white, the
rather surprised look an the dogs' faces, the sniffing at one's knees and
the wagging of tails as one approached to pat their heads, the twitching
of the ponies' ears and nostrils, and the rather impish attitude the
fitter animals adopted, the occasional kick out, probably meant quite
playfully, and above all the grins on the faces of the Russian grooms.
Yes, we were all smiling when the sun came back, even the horizon smiled
kindly at us from the north. The Barne Glacier's snout lost its
inexorable hard gray look and took on softer hues, and Erebus's slopes
were now bathed in every shade of orange, pink, and purple. To begin
with, we had very little of this lovely colouring, but soon the
gladdening tints stretched out over morning and afternoon. We were never
idle in the hut, but the sun's return seemed to make fingers lighter as
well as hearts.