News Story Archives

World-leading Project Saves Heroic Antarctic Legacy

January 28, 2015 - Media Releases

The world’s most extreme conservation project has saved three historic buildings and thousands of artefacts once used by Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton.

The milestone was reached this Antarctic summer after a decade of extensive conservation work by the Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand).

Over the life of the project 62 specialists from 11 countries have undertaken cutting edge heritage conservation unprecedented in its scale and complexity in the polar regions, to conserve Scott’s and Shackleton’s Antarctic legacy.

The three heroic-era buildings and their artefact collections were in danger of loss after a century of extreme environmental conditions. To combat this, and in a world-first, the Antarctic Heritage Trust has been working year round in Antarctica with the support of Antarctica New Zealand.

Working from purpose-built conservation laboratories, artefact conservators, have meticulously conserved 18,202 individual artefacts including food supplies, clothing, equipment and personal items left behind in the historic huts. Heritage carpenters have repaired and weatherproofed Scott’s huts at Cape Evans and Hut Point and Shackleton’s hut at Cape Royds, improving environmental conditions.

During the conservation work previously undiscovered artefacts have been found including most famously crates of Scotch whisky and brandy at Shackleton’s historic base, unseen photographs and a notebook from Scott’s historic hut at Cape Evans.

While ongoing maintenance of the buildings and artefacts from Scott’s and Shackleton’s bases remain a priority, the Antarctic Heritage Trust will now begin conservation work on the first building on the continent at Cape Adare and, upon securing funding, the original building, built for the Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955-58, at New Zealand’s Scott Base.

“The dedication of the conservation teams and the passion for the legacy that they are saving has been the key to the project’s success.We are particularly grateful for the support of the New Zealand Government and supporters worldwide. With ongoing care these sites will stand for current and future generations,”said Nigel Watson, Antarctic Heritage Trust’s Executive Director

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Cape Royds

Midwinter

June 18, 2014 - Antarctic Blog

By Sue Bassett

Midwinter is upon us, for those in the southern hemisphere at least. For those of us in Antarctica, midwinter is traditionally a time of celebration and feasting. We’ve reached our shortest day—our darkest day—and now we move towards the return of the light and the return of the sun in a couple of months’ time. Definitely a milestone to be celebrated!

Antarctic Heritage Trust – midwinter

But where did this ‘tradition’ begin, on a continent with a very short history? Certainly not with the members of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition who, in 1898, became the first expeditioners to winter in Antarctica after being trapped in the ice aboard their ship ‘Belgica’. For them it was all doom and gloom, with tales of ‘dreary, cheerless days’, of hardship, extreme discontent, illness and tragedy. Midwinter was described as ‘the darkest day of the night; a more dismal sky and a more depressing scene could not be imagined’. And, to add ‘another cloud to the hell of blackness’, their beloved cat, Nansen, succumbed to the long darkness at midwinter, and died.

Credit unknown

Nansen, the ‘Belgica’ cat

The midwinter tradition should probably be credited to Robert Falcon Scott, who on his first expedition just four years later describes the festivities of midwinter 1902 in some detail. There were decorations ‘with designs in coloured papers and festooned with chains and ropes’ and ‘the tables were loaded with plum puddings, mince pies, and cakes’. There were speeches, presents, sing-songs, champagne, and great revelry, with which, Scott records, ‘we agreed that life in the Antarctic regions was worth living’.

As we at Scott Base hung the decorations, opened gifts and tucked into our 9-course midwinter dinner, shared with some good friends from neighbouring McMurdo Station, we couldn’t have agreed more. Salute!

Let There Be Light … and Heat!

June 11, 2014 - Antarctic Blog

By Meg Absolon

Let there be light… and heat!

The flick of the switch is usually all it takes for us to enjoy a good read on the couch in a warm room on a cold winter evening. There may be a wood fire or central heating, an electric blanket, underfloor heating or even a lovely heated towel rack in the bathroom. A microwave is a handy way to warm the hot chocolate and the light dimmers can create some ambiance. And everything smells as good as the roast that comes out of the oven. Ahhh…

Back to reality. Lucky for me, my reality is most of the above combined with corrosion removal during the day. And I’ve just completed conserving a fabulous large Homelight Lamp Oil fuel can from Discovery Hut which was a provision of the British Antarctic Expedition.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Homelight lamp oil can

The same brand of oil was also sent down in this beautiful wooden box.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Wooden box

I’ve also recently worked on small oil cans containing oil in remarkably good condition. There were many types of oils and fuels, including calcium carbide for acetylene lighting, brought down on the historic expeditions to create heat and light for the long winters, with seal blubber as the final resort.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Small oil can

At Scott Base today we have all the heat and lighting required to live an exceptionally comfortable winter existence provided mostly by diesel fuel generation with an impressive 22% of delivery by wind power. Plus a toasty gas powered ‘log’ fire to read Scott’s Journal in front of.

Can You Still Tell a Man by His Shoes?

June 11, 2014 - Antarctic Blog

By Stefanie White

My grandmother, my mother and even my best friend have been heard announcing the old view that ‘you can tell a man by his shoes’ implying that shoes can portray a man’s moral character. Today that view may be mostly obsolete, especially in the Antarctic.

In the Antarctic, where there is little room for fashionable and aesthetic footwear, our shoes and boots are practical. Designed for Extreme Cold Weather, they are big, sometimes knee high, and insulated with high soles and thick layers of fleece. With wear and tear, we repair them and with decreasing temperature and new demands, we alter them.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Stefanie (front), with Meg, Sue and Aline holding their practical Antarctic boots.

This was also the case for Scott and his men. They patched, re-stitched and altered their boots often adding hobnails to increase grip for walking on ice and stuffing insulating sennegrass inside to help overcome freezing temperatures.

One may interpret that these men stayed true to their old boots, maintaining and caring for them. These men were professional and practical yet display chaotic domestic habits in the scruff and buildup of dirt on the boot soles. Perhaps, pronate distortions in the boots tell that they were sometimes stressed and exhausted with sore and cold feet.

It was sometimes the case that the historic explorers wore less practical and fancier shoes. Uncovered from under Wilson’s bed, in Scott’s Terra Nova Hut at Cape Evans, a black patent leather pomp, with a decorative grosgrain bow, was found. This rather fancy shoe is completely unsuitable for the harsh Antarctic conditions and may perhaps lend a tale about a man’s more sensitive character. The owner of this shoe was a man with grounded feet; a man with a sense of vanity, style and perhaps even artistic humour.

Overall, we can be sure of one thing: Practical and durable boots are a necessity for surviving the harsh Antarctic conditions and equally as important is the superficial and impractical accessory that can sometimes lift a man’s moral and make him feel at home.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

A dress shoe, found at Scott’s Cape Evans hut.

Antarctic Heritage Trust – boot

Dog Biscuits

March 7, 2014 - Antarctic Blog

By Meg Absolon

I’ve been very fortunate since arriving on the Ice to be working in the on-site conservation laboratory at Hut Point, which is situated directly behind Scott’s Discovery Hut (1901-04). Stefanie and I have been conserving food boxes from an internal wall made from stacked supply boxes.

This wall was built during Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition (1907-09) when they used Discovery Hut as a staging point for depot laying. The Hut is described by various expeditioners as a dark and cold place to spend time and Shackleton’s men wished to enclose a cosy space around the stove to make the quarters more habitable. The supply boxes used were predominately Special Cabin Biscuits and Special Dog Biscuits made by Spratts Patent Limited of London, who also supplied the army and navy.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Meg documenting the supply box wall

Every time we walk into the Hut we get the chance to imagine the many stories and desperate situations the men who passed through Discovery Hut experienced. It’s incredibly exciting conserving the boxes that make up the internal wall in the Hut as we discover new and different details every day.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Box with paw print

Dogs are also part of the amazing history of the Hut, with Scott taking 23 dogs for hauling sledges on his National Antarctic Expedition. In 1908, during Shackleton’s Expedition, three puppies ended up at Hut Point. It was decided to leave the puppies in the Hut for nearly a month while depots were laid for Shackleton’s push to the Pole. Dr Eric Marshal recorded that 24lbs of mutton was chopped up for the puppies as well as dog biscuits and snow left for their survival. The men returned to find the puppies had eaten all the mutton but not the biscuits.

Canterbury Museum

Samson, one of the dogs that went to the ice with Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Sue with dog biscuits

Shackleton’s Car

February 3, 2014 - Antarctic Blog

By Sue Bassett

When Ernest Shackleton led the British Antarctic ‘Nimrod’ Expedition 1907–09 he hoped to reach the geographic South Pole. To achieve this, he took with him dogs, ponies, and a motor car donated by a major sponsor, William Beardmore, who had recently taken over the car company.

The car was a purpose-built 12/15hp New Arrol-Johnston, an open two-seater with a utility tray-back. It had a specially designed air-cooled, four-cylinder engine, used non-freezing oil, had a silencer that doubled as a foot-warmer, produced hot water by passing the exhaust pipe through a hopper that could be filled with snow, and could be fitted with a pair of ski runners on the front wheels.

However, it was also heavy with little traction, sinking to its axles in the snow, and its petrol engine performed poorly from the outset. It was garaged at Shackleton’s expedition hut at Cape Royds and was useful only on the sea ice for transporting light loads, and once fell into a crevasse.

While a couple of parts remain at Cape Royds today, the car left Antarctica with Shackleton and the skis are now held by the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, where they have undergone conservation treatment by our conservators.

A wheel from Shackleton's car still sits outside the hut at Cape Royds

Antarctic Heritage Trust

A wheel from the car still sits outside the hut at Cape Royds

Alexander Turnbull library

Shackleton’s car in the garage at Cape Royds

Credit unknown

Antarctic Heritage Trust – Shackleton’s car

Ross Sea Party Tent

June 12, 2013 - Antarctic Blog

By Sue Bassett

A century on, we continue to share some of the artefacts we’ve treated from Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party, who were stranded for two years at Cape Evans and charged with laying depots for the ‘Endurance’ party, which, unbeknownst to them, was never coming.

For their long depot-laying sledge trips across the ice, they used a canvas dome tent. It opens like a concertina and is supported by four arched iron poles sewn into the canvas. The circular entrance is protected by a fabric tunnel, tied on the inside to keep out wind and snow. The inner walls of the tent are black with soot from the primus stove, and small holes in the canvas have been patched and hand-stitched to prevent snow leaking in during the blizzards that kept them confined for days at a time. Several of the poles have been repaired with lengths of bamboo and twine.

Canterbury Museum

Pitching camp

The men endured shocking conditions, illness, starvation and exhaustion. Not only did they suffer from painful frost bite and snow blindness but also acute scurvy caused by lack of vitamin C in their diet. One team member, Ernest Joyce, is quoted as saying: “Scurvy has got us, our legs are black and swollen, and if we bend them at night there is a chance they will not straighten out. So, to counteract that, we lash pieces of bamboo to the back of our knees to keep them straight”. They also tried to alleviate the pain by massaging the affected areas with methylated spirits. Ultimately, Reverend Spencer-Smith (expedition chaplain and photographer) died of scurvy and was buried in the ice, and later Mackintosh (commander) and Hayward (general assistant) were also lost whilst trying to cross thin sea ice in poor weather.

Miraculously, after Shackleton was able to rescue his entire team from ‘Endurance’, he sailed aboard ‘Aurora’ in January 1917 on the voyage that rescued the party’s seven survivors.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

The partially opened dome tent

Antarctic Heritage Trust

A hand-stitched repair to the canvas tent

Ross Sea Party Improvised Gear

May 27, 2013 - Antarctic Blog

By Sue Bassett

The artefacts conserved by the Trust that remain in Scott’s Cape Evans hut tell something of the harrowing ordeal endured by Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party in 1914-17.

Continuing their futile mission to lay depots to aid Shackleton’s planned crossing of Antarctica, the ill-equipped Ross Sea Party was forced to improvise clothing and equipment in order to survive.

Canterbury Museum

Antarctic Heritage Trust – Ross sea party

Stranded at Cape Evans, they also used Captain Scott’s old Discovery Hut at Hut Point as a staging post for their depot-laying sledge trips. After one such trip, a group waited at Hut Point for over two months for the sea ice to harden so they could walk back to Cape Evans and join the rest of the team. During these months the men recovered from ill health, improvised games and made tools out of salvaged materials.

Lamps were made out of old food tins and fuelled with seal blubber, offering ‘a flickering glimmer of light in the dark interior’. Snowshoes were made out of old plywood supply boxes, such as this one that once held Spratt’s dog biscuits, and clothing such as this jacket was repaired with materials and fabrics scavenged from inside the hut – all testaments to remarkable resourcefulness and determination through extreme hardship.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

An improvised snowshoe made from plywood boxes by Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party members

Antarctic Heritage Trust

A makeshift jacket made by the Ross Sea Party members

Pony Snowshoes

May 22, 2013 - Antarctic Blog

Scott Polar Research Institute

Pony snowshoes

By Sue Bassett

When it comes to working with historical material that is only 100 years old, most things we recognise at least by function, if not from our own lives and times, then perhaps from those of our grandparents. When reading Captain RF Scott’s journals from his last expedition (1910 until his untimely death in 1912), he makes a number of references to the Norwegian snowshoes they took along for their ponies. The ponies hauled the heavy loads as he and his team erected their hut at Cape Evans and laid food and fuel depots southwards towards the Pole. Click here to see a photo of Wilson, Bowers and Cherry-Garrard with their ponies, 1911. When they first trialled a pair of the snowshoes, on a pony they named Weary Willy, Scott wrote: ‘The effect was magical. He strolled around as though walking on hard ground in places where he floundered woefully without them’. Scott offers nothing by way of a description but records that many a discussion was had over the snowshoes’ efficacy and design. Not being a person with much horse or snow experience, I imagined these snowshoes to be quite basic and to look something like a plate or a tennis racquet. My first glimpse of one was during my visit to Scott’s hut where a couple hang on the wall of the stables and others fill some nearby boxes. (A quick search of our project database reveals there are 44 pony snowshoes at the Cape Evans hut.)

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Pony snowshoes

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Pony snowshoes

Shackleton’s 111-year-old Beer Barrel

January 11, 2019 - Famous Discoveries, Media Releases, News Story, Shackleton's Hut

World-leading Project Saves Heroic Antarctic Legacy

Midwinter

Let There Be Light … and Heat!

Can You Still Tell a Man by His Shoes?

Dog Biscuits

Shackleton’s Car

Ross Sea Party Tent

Ross Sea Party Improvised Gear

Pony Snowshoes

Shackleton’s 111-year-old Beer Barrel

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