Archive for category: News Story

By Ciarán Lavelle

The men of Scott’s 1910 expedition would have been at the peak of their physical fitness on the eve of their expedition south. The harshness and physical demands of not just their sea journey but also their time in the icy south required a great deal of both mental and physical strength and stamina to face the trials and tribulations of such a harsh foreboding environment. In our modern fitness and gym-obsessed world it is interesting to think about these virile men and how they organised their own fitness regimes to keep their strength and stamina at the required level.

This highly degraded rubber object is a fascinating insight into one aspect of their potential fitness regime. Initially documented as being the bladder of a rugby ball it has captured the imagination of the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust team due to the nation’s obvious obsession with the sport. Unfortunately for those rugby enthusiasts among us our initial zeal was dashed as it was discovered that it is not in fact a rugby ball but a punching ball. Renewed excitement followed at the realisation that this may be the very punching ball described in Raymond E Priestley’s personal account of Scott’s Northern Party. Priestley recounts the importance of strenuous exercise for team mate Abbott who turned the old Southern Cross hut into his personal gym for Swedish exercises (our own resident Swedish teammate is still trying to figure out what exactly they are).

Priestley has this to tell us about the ball itself:

‘We had brought a punching-ball with us from the Terra Nova, and for some time this afforded us quite a lot of exercise, but so soon as the temperature fell the rubber of the ball became brittle and useless and a puncture soon followed. It was no use attempting to mend this, and so we did the next best thing. The ball was stuffed with seaweed and from the Gibson Quilting, and though it was very lifeless it was very lifeless it was still of some use.’

The historical account of the damage the ball has suffered links up with the physical condition of the remaining fragments of the ball. Although the majority of the ball has been lost, what remains is a fragile and brittle jigsaw. The nature of the degraded rubber limits what we can do to the object and since the damage is historical it was decided that stabilisation and display of the object in a way that it can be identified as a punching ball was the best option. The fragments were sandwiched between two layers of a netting and each fragment was sewn into its own individual pocket so as to keep them contained and protected.

The end result is that we can display the ball in a way that it can be identified while being protected from further loss from fragmentation. Now when I look the ball I can picture fragments of seaweed and rubber falling to the floor as the members of Scott’s Northern Party took their turn to pummel it by candlelight in the gloom of the Southern Cross hut so as to keep fighting fit in the freezing Antarctic cold.

By Josefin Jiménez

The work to conserve the artefacts from Cape Adare, the base established by Carsten Borchgrevink’s British Antarctic Expedition (Southern Cross) 1898 ̶ 1900, has just begun. Due to Cape Adare’s inaccessible location the artefacts won’t be conserved on the ice at Scott Base this winter but have instead been frozen and transported to Christchurch for treatment.

The team is made up of four conservators, some of whom are old hands with AHT and some of whom are new faces.

Sue Bassett, lead conservator, has led AHT Winter teams through 2013 and 2014, has experience with many interesting conservation projects in Australia and elsewhere, and has a passion for Antarctic history.

The newcomers to the Trust are Ciarán Lavelle, objects conservator, and Josefin Jiménez, paper conservator. Both have been following the project with interest for some time and are delighted to join the team. 

 

Surprisingly the team has a strong Irish connection as both Stefanie and Ciarán are Irish and Josefin, albeit Swedish, has been living and working in Dublin for a year before coming to New Zealand.

It is going to be an exciting year with many fantastic objects to uncover. It is already amazing to see the new objects emerge and, as Borchgrevink’s hut is located in the middle of the world’s largest Adelié penguin colony (population 750,000), some of them are quite literally emerging … from vague shapes covered in guano and feathers, into recognisable historic artefacts (with a very distinct aroma).

By Sue Bassett

During the decade of work by the Trust’s on-ice conservation teams, many personal insights have been gained into the lives of the early expeditioners. Some of the paper items from Captain RF Scott’s hut at Cape Evans provide good examples.

In addition to a range of adventure stories and military novels, there are a surprisingly large number of paperback romances … and, judging by the degree of wear and sooty fingerprints, they were rather well read!

The stories seem to reflect the sensibilities of the era and are of variable quality – although almost all seem to feature prolonged bouts of blushing between the chief protagonists. One of the best (or worst) involves a hero called Dr Love who finds he has feelings for an impoverished actress and resolves to free her from the profession. The end pages are unfortunately missing, so we can only hope that it ends as a proper romance should.

Many of the magazines, too, combine stories of popular interest with the frivolous and banal (not to mention articles on fashion for the ladies). To Scott’s men, who often had to survive gruelling conditions, such throwaway reading matter was likely valued as a diversion. Along the same lines are two scrapbook-style montages tacked to the wall in the officers’ sleeping area. One comprises a wonderful selection of images—all cut from magazines—mainly of women with big hats, parasols and big hair, all surrounding a large central image of a very well-fed cat. The other, a firm favourite of ours, is a collection of cut-out pictures of dogs pasted to the back of a plywood crate lid … presumably by someone very fond of man’s best friend and perhaps also missing his pooch back home.

By Sue Bassett

While Captain RF Scott wasn’t keen on the idea of using dogs as his main means of transport to the South Pole—largely because of the cruelty and sacrifice involved—he did take a team of 35 sledging dogs (and a collie bitch, ‘Lassie’) to Antarctica on his 1910–13 expedition.

The sledging dogs were collected in Siberia, moved by dog-driver to Vladivostok, and transported by steamer to Lyttelton, New Zealand, via Sydney, to be loaded onto the ‘Terra Nova’ for the 5-week voyage to Antarctica. There they lived in the expedition hut’s stables at Cape Evans under the control of their handler, CH Meares. Each had a name and their antics, personalities, highs and lows are referred to frequently in Scott’s journals.

Later, Ernest Shackleton’s 1914–17 Ross Sea support party also had a small team of dogs at the hut. Ten members of the expedition were marooned at Cape Evans when their ship, ‘SY Aurora’, still containing most of their supplies and equipment, broke anchor and was swept away from shore. Ernest Joyce, who was the leader of the sledging party, and his team relied heavily on their surviving dogs to bring their weakened scurvy ridden bodies home after their journey across the Ross Ice Shelf to lay depots of stores.

Nearly a century later, the degraded body of an unidentified sledging dog from one of these expeditions still lay chained to the northern wall outside the stables at the Cape Evans hut. There are photographs of the dog from the 1950s, when it was desiccated but still largely articulated within its coat. Since then, the ravages of the elements and disturbance by opportunistic skuas – scavenging seabirds, which live in abundance around Cape Evans – have resulted in decay and loss of the dog’s flesh and skin, and disarticulation and scattering of exposed skeletal material.

During the Trust’s recent work to carry out essential repairs to the stables, the dog’s remains were re-excavated and moved. As a protection against further deterioration, they were relocated inside the stables and laid out in one of the pony stalls. The dogs of both Scott’s and the Ross Sea Party’s expeditions were usually allowed to roam freely around in the stables so it is a fitting final resting place.