The Worst Journey in the World (12 page)

From first to last these pumps were a source of much exercise and hearty
curses. A wooden ship always leaks a little, but the amount of water
taken in by the Terra Nova even in calm weather was extraordinary, and
could not be traced until the ship was dry-docked in Lyttelton, New
Zealand, and the forepart was flooded.

In the meantime the ship had to be kept as dry as possible, a process
which was not facilitated by forty gallons of oil which got loose during
the rough weather after leaving South Trinidad, and found its way into
the bilges. As we found later, some never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed
stevedore had left one of the bottom boards only half-fitted into its
neighbours. In consequence the coal dust and small pieces of coal, which
was stowed in this hold, found their way into the bilges. Forty gallons
of oil completed the havoc and the pumps would gradually get more and
more blocked until it was necessary to send for Davies, the carpenter, to
take parts of them to pieces and clear out the oily coal balls which had
stopped them. This pumping would sometimes take till nearly eight, and
then would always have to be repeated again in the evening, and sometimes
every watch had to take a turn. At any rate it was good for our muscles.

The pumps were placed amidships, just abaft the main mast, and ran down a
shaft adjoining the after hatch, which led into the holds which were
generally used for coal and patent fuel. The spout of the pump opened
about a foot above the deck, and the plungers were worked by means of
two horizontal handles, much as a bucket is wound up on the drum of a
cottage well. Unfortunately, this part of the main deck, which is just
forward of the break of the poop, is more subject to seas breaking
inboard than any other part of the ship, so when the ship was labouring
the task of those on the pump was not an enviable one. During the big
gale going South the water was up to the men's waists as they tried to
turn the handles, and the pumps themselves were feet under water.

From England to Cape Town these small handles were a great inconvenience.
There was very much pumping to be done and there were plenty of men to do
it, but the handles were not long enough to allow more than four men to
each handle. Also they gave no secure purchase when the ship was rolling
heavily, and when a big roll came there was nothing to do but practically
stop pumping and hold on, or you found yourself in the scuppers.

At Cape Town a great improvement was made by extending the crank handles
right across the decks, the outside end turning in a socket under the
rail. Fourteen men could then get a good purchase on the handles and
pumping became a more pleasant exercise and less of a nuisance.

Periodically the well was sounded by an iron rod being lowered on the end
of a rope, by which the part that came up wet showed the depth of water
left in the bilge. When this had been reduced to about a foot in the
well, the ship was practically dry, and the afterguard free to bathe and
go to breakfast.

Meanwhile the hands of the watch had been employed on ropes and sails as
the wind made necessary, and, when running under steam as well as sail,
hoisting ashes up the two shoots from the ash-pits of the furnaces to the
deck, whence they went into the ditch.

It is eight bells (8 o'clock) and the two stewards are hurrying along the
decks, hoping to get the breakfast safely from galley to wardroom. A few
naked officers are pouring sea-water over their heads on deck, for we are
under sail alone and there is no steam to work the hose. The watch
keepers and their snotties of the night before are tumbling out of their
bunks, and a great noise of conversation is coming from the wardroom,
among which some such remarks as: "Give the jam a wind, Marie"; "After
you with the coffee"; "Push along the butter" are frequent. There are few
cobwebs that have not been blown away by breakfast-time.

Rennick is busy breakfasting preparatory to relieving Campbell on the
bridge. Meanwhile, the hourly and four-hourly ship's log is being made
up—force of the wind, state of the sea, height of the barometer, and all
the details which a log has to carry—including a reading of the distance
run as shown by the patent log line—(many is the time I have forgotten
to take it just at the hour and have put down what I thought it ought to
be, and not what it was).

The morning watch is finished.

Suddenly there is a yell from somewhere amidships—"STEADY"—a stranger
might have thought there was something wrong, but it is a familiar sound,
answered by a "STEADY IT IS, Sir," from the man at the wheel, and an
anything but respectful, "One—two—three—STEADY," from everybody having
breakfast. It is Pennell who has caused this uproar. And the origin is as
follows:

Pennell is the navigator, and the standard compass, owing to its
remoteness from iron in this position, is placed on the top of the
ice-house. The steersman, however, steers by a binnacle compass placed
aft in front of his wheel. But these two compasses for various reasons do
not read alike at a given moment, while the standard is the truer of the
two.

At intervals, then, Pennell or the officer of the watch orders the
steersman to "Stand by for a steady," and goes up to the standard
compass, and watches the needle. Suppose the course laid down is S. 40 E.
A liner would steer almost true to this course unless there was a big
wind or sea. But not so the old Terra Nova. Even with a good steersman
the needle swings a good many degrees either side of the S. 40 E. But as
it steadies momentarily on the exact course Pennell shouts his "Steady,"
the steersman reads just where the needle is pointing on the compass
card before him, say S. 47 E., and knows that this is the course which is
to be steered by the binnacle compass.

Pennell's yells were so frequent and ear-piercing that he became famous
for them, and many times in working on the ropes in rough seas and big
winds, we have been cheered by this unmusical noise over our heads.

We left Simon's Bay on Friday, September 2, 'to make our Easting down'
from the Cape of Good Hope to New Zealand, that famous passage in the
Roaring Forties which can give so much discomfort or worse to sailing
ships on their way.

South Africa had been hospitable. The Admiral Commanding the Station, the
Naval Dockyard, and H.M.S. Mutine and H.M.S. Pandora, had been more than
kind. They had done many repairs and fittings for us and had sent fatigue
parties to do it, thus releasing men for a certain amount of freedom on
shore, which was appreciated after some nine weeks at sea. I can remember
my first long bath now.

Scott, who was up country when we arrived, joined the ship here, and
Wilson travelled ahead of us to Melbourne to carry out some expedition
work, chiefly dealing with the Australian members who were to join us in
New Zealand.

One or two of us went out to Wynberg, which Oates knew well, having been
invalided there in the South African War with a broken leg, the result of
a fight against big odds when, his whole party wounded, he refused to
surrender. He told me later how he had thought he would bleed to death,
and the man who lay next to him was convinced he had a bullet in the
middle of his brain—he could feel it wobbling about there! Just now his
recollections only went so far as to tell of a badly wounded Boer who lay
in the next bed to him when he was convalescent, and how the Boer
insisted on getting up to open the door for him every time he left the
ward, much to his own discomfort.

Otherwise the recollections which survive of South Africa are an
excellent speech made on the expedition by John Xavier Merriman, and the
remark of a seaman who came out to dinner concerning one John, the
waiter, that "he moved about as quick as a piece of sticking-plaster!"

Leaving Simon's Town at daybreak we did magnetic work all day, sailing
out from False Bay with a biggish swell in the evening. We ran southerly
in good weather until Sunday morning, when the swell was logged at 8 and
the glass was falling fast. By the middle watch it was blowing a full
gale and for some thirty hours we ran under reefed foresail, lower
topsails and occasionally reefed upper topsails, and many of us were
sick.

Then after two days of comparative calm we had a most extraordinary gale
from the east, a thing almost unheard of in these latitudes (38° S. to
39° S.). All that we could do was to put the engines at dead slow and
sail northerly as close to the wind as possible. Friday night, September
9, it blew force 10 in the night, and the morning watch was very lively
with the lee rail under water.

Directly after breakfast on Saturday, September 10, we wore ship, and
directly afterwards the gale broke and it was raining, with little wind,
during the day.

The morning watch had a merry time on Tuesday, September 13, when a fresh
gale struck them while they were squaring yards. So unexpected was it
that the main yards were squared and the fore were still round, but it
did not last long and was followed by two splendid days—fine weather
with sun, a good fair wind and the swell astern.

The big swell which so often prevails in these latitudes is a most
inspiring sight, and must be seen from a comparatively small ship like
the Terra Nova for its magnitude to be truly appreciated. As the ship
rose on the crest of one great hill of water the next big ridge was
nearly a mile away, with a sloping valley between. At times these seas
are rounded in giant slopes as smooth as glass; at others they curl over,
leaving a milk-white foam, and their slopes are marbled with a beautiful
spumy tracery. Very wonderful are these mottled waves: with a following
sea, at one moment it seems impossible that the great mountain which is
overtaking the ship will not overwhelm her, at another it appears
inevitable that the ship will fall into the space over which she seems to
be suspended and crash into the gulf which lies below.

But the seas are so long that they are neither dangerous nor
uncomfortable—though the Terra Nova rolled to an extraordinary extent,
quite constantly over 50° each way, and sometimes 55°.

The cooks, however, had a bad time trying to cook for some fifty hands in
the little galley on the open deck. Poor Archer's efforts to make bread
sometimes ended in the scuppers, and the occasional jangle of the ship's
bell gave rise to the saying that "a moderate roll rings the bell, and a
big roll brings out the cook."

Noon on Sunday, September 18, found us in latitude 39° 20' S. and
longitude 66° 9' E., after a very good run, for the Terra Nova, of 200
miles in the last twenty-four hours. This made us about two days' run
from St. Paul, an uninhabited island formed by the remains of an old
volcano, the crater of which, surrounded as it were by a horse-shoe of
land, forms an almost landlocked harbour. It was hoped to make a landing
here for scientific work, but it is a difficult harbour to make. We ran
another two hundred miles on Monday, and on Tuesday all preparations were
made for the landing, with suitable equipment, and we were not a little
excited at the opportunity.

At 4.30 A.M. the next morning all hands were turned out to take in sail
preparatory to rounding St. Paul which was just visible. The weather was
squally, but not bad. By 5 A.M., however, it was blowing a moderate gale,
and by the time we had taken in all sail we had to give up hopes of a
landing. We were thoroughly sick of sails by the time we finally reefed
the foresail and ran before the wind under this and lower topsails.

We passed quite close to the island and could see into the crater, and
the cliffs beyond which rose from it, covered with greenish grass. There
were no trees, and of birds we only saw those which frequent these seas.
We had hoped to find penguins and albatross nesting on the island at this
time of the year, and this failure to land was most disappointing. The
island is 860 feet high, and, for its size, precipitous. It extends some
two miles in length and one mile in breadth.

The following day all the afterguard were turned on to shift coal. It
should be explained that up to this time the bunkers, which lay one on
the port and the other on the starboard side of the furnaces, had been
entirely filled as required by two or more officers who volunteered from
day to day.

We took on board 450 tons of Crown Patent Fuel at Cardiff in June 1910.
This coal is in the form of bricks, and is most handy since it can be
thrown by hand from the holds through the bunker doors in the boiler-room
bulkhead which after a time was left higher than the sinking level of the
coal. The coal to be landed was this patent fuel, and it was now decided
to shift farther aft all the patent fuel which was left, and stack it
against the boiler-room bulkhead, the coal which was originally there
having been fed to the furnaces. Thus the dust which was finding its way
through the floorboards, and choking the pumps, could be swept up, and a
good stow could be made preparatory to the final fit-out in New Zealand,
while the coal which was to be taken on board at Lyttelton could be
loaded through the main hatch.

In the meantime the gale which had sprung up six days before and
prevented us landing had died down. After leaving St. Paul we had let the
fires out and run under sail alone, and the following two days we ran 119
and 141 miles respectively, being practically becalmed at times on the
following day, and only running 66 miles.

By Tuesday night, September 27, we had finished the coaling, and we
celebrated the occasion by a champagne dinner. At the same time we raised
steam. Scott was anxious to push on, and so indeed was everybody else.
But the wind was not disposed to help us, and headed us a good deal
during the next few days, and it was not until October 2 that we were
able to set all plain sail in the morning watch.

This absence of westerly winds in a region in which they are usually too
strong for comfort was explained by Pennell by a theory that we were
travelling in an anticyclone, which itself was travelling in front of a
cyclone behind us. We were probably moving under steam about the same
pace as the disturbance, which would average some 150 miles a day.