South (38 page)

“Our first meal, owing to our weakness and the atrophied state of our stomachs, proved disastrous to a good many. They soon recovered though. Our beds were just shakedowns on cushions and settees, though the officer on watch very generously gave up his bunk to two of us. I think we got very little sleep that night. It was just heavenly to lie and listen to the throb of the engines, instead of to the crack of the breaking floe, the beat of the surf on the ice-strewn shore, or the howling of the blizzard.

“We intend to keep August 30 as a festival for the rest of our lives.”

You readers can imagine my feelings as I stood in the little cabin watching my rescued comrades feeding.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ROSS SEA PARTY

I now turn to the fortunes and misfortunes of the Ross Sea Party and the
Aurora.
In spite of extraordinary difficulties occasioned by the breaking out of the
Aurora
from her winter quarters before sufficient stores and equipment had been landed, Captain Æneas Mackintosh and the party under his command achieved the object of this side of the Expedition. For the depot that was the main object of the Expedition was laid in the spot that I had indicated, and if the transcontinental party had been fortunate enough to have crossed they would have found the assistance, in the shape of stores, that would have been vital to the success of their undertaking. Owing to the dearth of stores, clothing, and sledging equipment, the depot party was forced to travel more slowly and with greater difficulty than would have otherwise been the case. The result was that in making this journey the greatest qualities of endurance, self sacrifice, and patience were called for, and the call was not in vain, as you reading the following pages will realize. It is more than regrettable that after having gone through those many months of hardship and toil, Mackintosh and Hayward should have been lost. Spencer-Smith during those long days, dragged by his comrades on the sledge, suffering but never complaining, became an example to all men. Mackintosh and Hayward owed their lives on that journey to the unremitting care and strenuous endeavors of Joyce, Wild, and Richards, who, also scurvy-stricken but fitter than their comrades, dragged them through the deep snow and blizzards on the sledges. I think that no more remarkable story of human endeavor has been revealed than the tale of that long march which I have collated from various diaries. Unfortunately, the diary of the leader of this side of the Expedition was lost with him. The outstanding feature of the Ross Sea side was the journey made by these six men. The earlier journeys for the first year did not produce any sign of the qualities of leadership among the others. Mackintosh was fortunate for the long journey in that he had these three men with him: Ernest Wild, Richards, and Joyce.

Before proceeding with the adventures of this party I want to make clear in these pages how much I appreciate the assistance I received both in Australia and New Zealand, especially in the latter dominion. And among the many friends there it is not invidious on my part to lay special stress on the name of Leonard Tripp, who has been my mentor, counsellor, and friend for many years, and who, when the Expedition was in precarious and difficult circumstances, devoted his energy, thought, and gave his whole time and advice to the best interests of our cause. I also must thank Edward Saunders, who for the second time has greatly helped me in preparing an Expedition record for publication.

To the Dominion Government I tender my warmest thanks. To the people of New Zealand, and especially to those many friends—too numerous to mention here—who helped us when our fortunes were at a low ebb, I wish to say that their kindness is an evergreen memory to me. If ever a man had cause to be grateful for assistance in dark days, I am he.

The
Aurora,
under the command of Captain Æneas Mackintosh, sailed from Hobart for the Ross Sea on December 24, 1914. The ship had refitted in Sydney, where the State and Federal Governments had given generous assistance, and would be able, if necessary, to spend two years in the Antarctic. My instructions to Captain Mackintosh, in brief, were to proceed to the Ross Sea, make a base at some convenient point in or near McMurdo Sound, land stores and equipment, and lay depots on the Great Ice Barrier in the direction of the Beardmore Glacier for the use of the party that I expected to bring overland from the Weddell Sea coast. This program would involve some heavy sledging, but the ground to be covered was familiar, and I had not anticipated that the work would present any great difficulties. The
Aurora
carried materials for a hut, full equipment for landing and sledging parties, stores and clothing of all the kinds required, and an ample supply of sledges. There were also dog teams and one of the motor tractors. I had told Captain Mackintosh that it was possible the transcontinental journey would be attempted in the 1914-15 season in the event of the landing on the Weddell Sea coast proving unexpectedly easy, and it would be his duty, therefore, to lay out depots to the south immediately after his arrival at his base. I had directed him to place a depot of food and fuel oil at lat. 80° S. in 1914-15, with horns and flags as guides to a sledging party approaching from the direction of the Pole. He would place depots farther south in the 1915-16 season.

The
Aurora
had an uneventful voyage southwards. She anchored off the sealing huts at Macquarie Island on Christmas Day, December 25. The wireless station erected by Sir Douglas Mawson’s Australian Antarctic Expedition could be seen on a hill to the northwest with the Expedition’s hut at the base of the hill. This hut was still occupied by a meteorological staff, and later in the day the meteorologist, Mr. Tulloch, came off to the ship and had dinner aboard. The
Aurora
had some stores for the Macquarie Island party, and these were sent ashore during succeeding days in the boats. The landing place was a rough, kelp-guarded beach, where lay the remains of the New Zealand barque
Clyde.
Macquarie Island anchorages are treacherous, and several ships engaged in the sealing and whaling trade have left their bones on the rocky shores, where bask great herds of seals and sea elephants. The
Aurora
sailed from the island on December 31, and three days later they sighted the first iceberg, a tabular berg rising 250 ft. above the sea. This was in lat. 62º 40’ S., long. 169º 58’ E. The next day, in lat. 64º 27’ 38“ S., the
Aurora
passed through the first belt of pack ice. At 9 A.M. on January 7, Mount Sabine, a mighty peak of the Admiralty Range, South Victoria Land, was sighted seventy-five miles distant.

It had been proposed that a party of three men should travel to Cape Crozier from winter quarters during the winter months in order to secure emperor penguins’ eggs. The ship was to call at Cape Crozier, land provisions, and erect a small hut of fibro concrete sheets for the use of this party. The ship was off the Cape on the afternoon of January 9, and a boat put off with Stenhouse, Cope, Joyce, Ninnis, Mauger, and Aitken to search for a landing place. “We steered in towards the Barrier,” wrote Stenhouse, “and found an opening leading into a large bight which jutted back to eastward into the Barrier. We endeavored without success to scale the steep ice foot under the cliffs, and then proceeded up the bay. Pulling along the edge of perpendicular ice, we turned into a bay in the ice cliff and came to a cul-de-sac, at the head of which was a grotto. At the head of the grotto and on a ledge of snow were perched some adelie penguins. The beautiful green and blue tints in the ice coloring made a picture as unreal as a stage setting. Coming back along the edge of the bight towards the land, we caught and killed one penguin, much to the surprise of another, which ducked into a niche in the ice and, after much squawking, was extracted with a boat hook and captured. We returned to our original landing, and were fortunate in our time, for no sooner had we cleared the ledge where Ninnis had been hanging in his endeavor to catch the penguin than the barrier calved and a piece weighing hundreds of tons toppled over into the sea.

“Since we left the ship a mist had blown up from the south, and when we arrived back at the entrance to the bay the ship could be but dimly seen. We found a slope on the ice foot, and Joyce and I managed, by cutting steps, to climb up to a ledge of debris between the cliffs and the ice, which we thought might lead to the vicinity of the emperor penguin rookery. I sent the boat back to the ship to tell the captain of our failure to find a spot where we could depot the hut and stores, and then, with Joyce, set out to walk along the narrow land between the cliffs and the ice to the southward in hopes of finding the rookery. We walked for about a mile along the foot of the cliffs, over undulating paths, sometimes crawling carefully down a gully and then over rocks and debris which had fallen from the steep cliffs which towered above us, but we saw no signs of a rookery or any place where a rookery could be. Close to the cliffs and separated from them by the path on which we traveled, the Barrier in its movement towards the sea had broken and showed signs of pressure. Seeing a turn in the cliffs ahead, which we thought might lead to better prospects, we trudged on, and were rewarded by a sight which Joyce admitted as being the grandest he had ever witnessed. The Barrier had come into contact with the cliffs and, from where we viewed it, it looked as if icebergs had fallen into a tremendous cavern and lay jumbled together in wild disorder. Looking down into that wonderful picture one realized a little the ‘eternalness’ of things.

“We had not long to wait, and, much as we wished to go ahead, had to turn back. I went into a small crevasse; no damage. Arriving back at the place where we left the boat we found it had not returned, so sat down under an overhang and smoked and enjoyed the sense of loneliness. Soon the boat appeared out of the mist, and the crew had much news for us. After we left the ship the captain maneuvered her in order to get close to the Barrier, but, unfortunately, the engines were loath to be reversed when required to go astern and the ship hit the Barrier end on. The Barrier here is about twenty feet high, and her jib boom took the weight and snapped at the cap. When I returned Thompson was busy getting the broken boom and gear aboard. Luckily the cap was not broken and no damage was done aloft, but it was rather a bad introduction to the Antarctic. There is no place to land the Cape Crozier hut and stores, so we must build a hut in the winter here, which will mean so much extra sledging from winter quarters. Bad start, good finish! Joyce and I went aloft to the crow’s nest, but could see no opening in the Barrier to eastward where a ship might enter and get farther south.”

Mackintosh proceeded into McMurdo Sound. Heavy pack delayed the ship for three days, and it was not until January 16 that she reached a point off Cape Evans, where he landed ten tons of coal and ninety-eight cases of oil. During succeeding days Captain Mackintosh worked the
Aurora
southward, and by January 24 he was within nine miles of Hut Point. There he made the ship fast to sea ice, then breaking up rapidly, and proceeded to arrange sledging parties. It was his intention to direct the laying of the depots himself and to leave his first officer, Lieut. J. R. Stenhouse, in command of the
Aurora,
with instructions to select a base and land a party.

The first objective was Hut Point, where stands the hut erected by the
Discovery
expedition in 1902. An advance party, consisting of Joyce (in charge), Jack, and Gaze, with dogs and fully loaded sledges, left the ship on January 24; Mackintosh, with Wild and Smith, followed the next day, and a supporting party, consisting of Cope (in charge), Stevens, Ninnis, Hayward, Hooke, and Richards, left the ship on January 30. The first two parties had dog teams. The third party took with it the motor tractor, which does not appear to have given the good service that I had hoped to get from it. These parties had a strenuous time during the weeks that followed. The men, fresh from shipboard, were not in the best of training, and the same was true of the dogs. It was unfortunate that the dogs had to be worked so early after their arrival in the Antarctic. They were in poor condition and they had not learned to work together as teams. The result was the loss of many of the dogs, and this proved a serious matter in the following season. Captain Mackintosh’s record of the sledging in the early months of 1915 is fairly full. It will not be necessary here to follow the fortunes of the various parties in detail, for although the men were facing difficulties and dangers, they were on well traveled ground, which has been made familiar to most readers by the histories of earlier Expeditions.

Captain Mackintosh and his party left the
Aurora
on the evening of January 25. They had nine dogs and one heavily loaded sledge, and started off briskly to the accompaniment of a cheer from their shipmates. The dogs were so eager for exercise after their prolonged confinement aboard the ship that they dashed forward at their best speed, and it was necessary for one man to sit upon the sledge in order to moderate the pace. Mackintosh had hoped to get to Hut Point that night, but luck was against him. The weather broke after he had traveled about five miles, and snow, which completely obscured all landmarks, sent him into camp on the sea ice. The weather was still thick on the following morning, and the party, making a start after breakfast, missed its way. “We shaped a course where I imagined Hut Point to be,” wrote Captain Mackintosh in his diary, “but when the sledge meter showed thirteen miles fifty yards, which is four miles in excess of the distance from the ship to Hut Point, I decided to halt again. The surface was changing considerably and the land was still obscured. We have been traveling over a thick snow surface, in which we sink deeply, and the dogs are not too cheerful about it.” They started again at noon on January 27, when the weather had cleared sufficiently to reveal the land, and reached Hut Point at 4 P.M. The sledge meter showed that the total distance traveled had been over seventeen miles. Mackintosh found in the hut a note from Joyce, who had been there on the 25th, and who reported that one of his dogs had been killed in a fight with its companions. The hut contained some stores left there by earlier Expeditions. The party stayed there for the night. Mackintosh left a note for Stenhouse directing him to place provisions in the hut in case the sledging parties did not return in time to be taken off by the ship. Early next morning Joyce reached the hut. He had encountered bad ice and had come back to consult with Mackintosh regarding the route to be followed. Mackintosh directed him to steer out towards Black Island in crossing the head of the Sound beyond Hut Point.