Cultural Perspectives on the Southern continent. University of Tasmania, Hobart June 2010

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1 Antarctic Visions Cultural Perspectives on the Southern continent University of Tasmania, Hobart June 2010 ANTARCTIC VISIONS Abstract Interpreting the Heroic Era through its artefacts The Antarctic huts of the Heroic Era explorers contain some 16,000 artefacts spread between the Ross Island huts, Borchgrevink s hut at Cape Adare and Mawson s huts at Cape Denison. The artefacts range from considerable quantities of canned food to furniture, sleeping bags, scientific equipment and eclectic personal items. The huts are immeasurably more powerful and evocative in their ability to interpret the Era as a result. However at the same time they are but a fraction of the food and equipment that went with the expeditions. Does the present confuse the past? Are we misconstruing the power of these artefacts? Julian Bickersteth explores these issues using his direct experience of the Ross Island huts and knowledge of the Cape Adare and Cape Denison huts One of the most evocative heritage sites on earth, proclaimed Sir David Attenborough after a visit to Captain Robert Falcon Scott s last expedition base at Cape Evans. It is a view shared by many who have made the same pilgrimage (and I use the word consciously, as to many that reach the expeditioners bases, that is what the trip has become). There is no doubt that all five of the surviving Heroic Era buildings have an extraordinary aura about them. A comment that is often made in the visitor books is that it feels as if the expeditioners have just walked out. The remote nature of the sites, the fact that the buildings still stand after a hundred years of being buffeted by Antarctic weather, and the smell of blubber strongly encountered when entering all contribute

2 to this effect. But there is no doubt that the survival of some 16,000 artefacts which populate the sites are a key ingredient to the interpretive experience. The value of these artefacts to gaining some insight into what the expeditioners lives were like is immeasurable, when compared to what the experience would be like walking into an empty and bare building. But are the artefacts that remain giving us a false picture are we misconstruing the place as a result of what remains? 16,000 artefacts sounds quite a large number, but it is but a fraction of the hundreds of thousands that arrived with the expeditions. Let us first of all review the artefacts that remain today in the buildings, colloquially known as huts. Working chronologically, we have Borchgrevink s hut at Cape Adare from the British Antarctic Expedition of , also used by Scott s Northern Party in Inside the living hut some 800 artefacts remain, including a stove and large items of furniture such as a table and chairs, sledges and skis, kitchen utensils, provisions and personal possessions. The latter include clothing, books and papers. The difficulty in identifying the division between the two expeditions highlights one of the problems of interpreting the

3 artefacts in all four of the Ross Sea huts, all of which had at least two distinct periods of occupation. Whilst this paper concentrates on the artefacts that remain within the huts, it should be noted that at Cape Adare it is known that there is a very substantial artefact spread around the site, a situation commented on by the Discovery crew in The scene around us was heartbreaking, stores of every description, tins of dog biscuits, ammunition, broken ski sledges, camp stoves etc, lying from beach to beach wrote Dr Wilson. What remains of these artefacts now mostly lies under an increasing layer of guano. At Discovery Hut, Hut Point, the surviving artefacts from Scott s National Antarctic Expedition , number some 400. Here the story of occupation is more complicated than at Cape Adare, with use also being made of it by Shackleton s expedition, Scott s return expedition in and significantly by the socalled polar castaways the Ross Sea Party contingent of Shackleton s abortive Trans-Antarctic Expedition The artefacts range from snowshoes and skis, a man-haul sledging harness and the frame of a dome tent, to tins and boxes

4 of provisions, two mutton carcases and two Emperor penguin skeletons and skins. But it is the sleeping platform and artefacts from the Ross Sea Party s period of occupation which dominate, with the brick blubber stove, crude cooking utensils, clothing and footwear still remaining approximately in situ. No artefacts outside survive due to the clearing of the site for the adjacent US McMurdo base, apart from a seal carcase and awning from the Discovery on the south verandah. It is therefore somewhat ironic that the most heavily used base, used by all the expeditions, now contains the least number of artefacts. And yet its very sparseness serves to accentuate the bleak and cold nature of the building one can relate to men trying to stay warm in a little curtained area when the rest of the hut was full of ice and snow. It speaks to us a lot more of the use of it as a survival shelter, as opposed to the use it had as an entertainment venue and workshop during the Discovery expedition. At Cape Royds, the expedition hut of Shackleton s expedition, some 4500 artefacts survive. These range from bunks, the Mrs Sam stove and the acetylene gas lighting system, to cooking and scientific equipment, food and medical provisions, clothing, footwear, sleeping bags, sledges, pony and dog tack and

5 reams of unused paper from the Aurora Australis printing project. Whilst principally from Shackleton s expedition, the artefacts also reflect the use of the hut by Scott s expedition, most notably the caribou sleeping bags and the two iron beds, and by Shackleton s Ross Sea Party in Externally apart from large numbers of boxed cans and bottles of food, fodder bales and pony and dog material, at least two iconic artefacts remain, being a wheel from the new Arrol-Johnson motor car and the marine dredge used by Professor Edgeworth David. Scott s hut at Cape Evans, from the expedition, retains the largest number of artefacts numbering some 8,000. These are enormously varied, being foodstuffs in cans, bottles and boxes, along with furniture, stoves, bedding, clothing, scientific equipment, photographic equipment, cooking utensils, pony snow shoes, sledging equipment, seal blubber, penguin eggs and even a bicycle. Whilst dating predominantly from the expedition, there are some artefacts that were off-loaded from the Aurora for the Ross Sea Party in Externally, there are various food caches around the site, skeletons of dogs, coal deposits and the Aurora anchor to the north of the hut.

6 And finally, the most inaccessible of the remaining huts (though this might be argued in relation to Cape Adare), Mawson s huts at Cape Denison from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of Whilst the exact number of surviving artefacts at this site is still unknown, due to the interior being partly ice-bound, they number several thousand and include stores and equipment, reference books, newspapers and photographic chemicals and plates. Externally various sledging and ski equipment and a dog skeleton have been located and the search for the elusive air tractor continues. Why is what we now see at the huts there? There are two main reasons for this. The first is that equipment and supplies were purposely left behind for future expeditioners. For instance, when the Terra Nova returned in January 1913 to pick up the survivors of Scott s expedition, the hut was closed up and sufficient stores were left to see a dozen resourceful men through one summer and winter at least. Secondly, the on-loading of the expeditioners and their equipment for the voyage home was often done at some speed due to concerns in getting caught in the ice pack, so only essential material was taken. The Terra Nova, for instance, when

7 picking up the men from Cape Evans was at the site for only a day, during which the men and any equipment they wanted had to be loaded, the surviving mules shot, the dogs taken on board and the hut closed up. Reading the original lists of equipment and material that were taken on the expeditions and comparing it to what now survives is enlightening. Apart from fresh food (i.e. meat and dairy products), examples of almost all food types remain and even a mutton carcase survives at Hut Point and two hams at Cape Royds. Most notable, and perhaps unsurprisingly, is the lack of any surviving alcohol, as we know Shackleton, for instance, took at least 6 crates of champagne, 3 crates of port, 6 crates of brandy and 24 crates of whisky. However this situation altered with the discovery last season (2009/10) of 3 crates of whisky and 2 of brandy hidden in the ice under Shackleton s hut. Of the other types of materials and equipment, if the broad categories of cooking ware, clothing, scientific instruments, sledging equipment, photographic equipment, medical supplies and tools are considered, multiple examples of almost all these are found at the huts.

8 The notable exceptions are the larger pieces of equipment, such as the new Arrol Johnson motor car, the printing press and the sewing machine at Cape Royds and the pianola at Cape Evans. These had value beyond their expedition use and were presumably winched back onto the relief ships. However elements of these still remain with the spare wheel for the car and paper for the press still at Royds. The other notable exceptions are the personal memorabilia of the expeditioners. Their books, games, pictures, diaries, pipes, rucksacks, sledging flags, guns and much of their clothing are no longer present. Whilst it can be presumed that this material was packed and taken home with them, whatever might have remained is also likely to have been souvenired. The process of souveniring has been happening almost from the beginning of the story. Scott s crew, for instance, when arriving at Cape Adare in 1902, less than 2 years after Borchgrevink had left it, souvenired extensively, Dr Wilson recording that we found bundles of Union Jacks lying about and posted two on the roof. I took one away from there as a souvenir. The Aurora s crew arriving at Cape Evans in 1915 with the Ross Sea Party collected souvenirs. Fred

9 Middleton recorded in 1917 that he went ashore and got a few curios from Shackleton s Hut. It is a process which continued up to recent times, the celebrated case of the author, Thomas Keneally, taking a biscuit from the Discovery Hut in 1968 (and later returning it) being a good example. Luckily a few of these items have ended up in public collections, Canterbury Museum in Christchurch now holding Scott s pipe holder, a pocket watch retrieved in 1939 from Day s bureau at Cape Evans and a wallet from Debenham s bunk in the same hut. So the answer is that the current artefact spread does not misconstrue the range of artefacts that the expeditioners had with them, and indeed, apart from the lack of personal memorabilia, gives a comprehensive indication of the equipment and provisions. Although the weighting may be overly in favour of foodstuffs (as these were, as we have noted, purposely left behind and indeed of limited use back home), and the density of artefacts may be considerably less ( historic photos such as this one of the tenements at Cape Evans instantly convey how much stuff was crammed into the building, and what close quarters the men lived in) the interpretive value put on them in helping create the evocativeness of each hut is both fair and fulsome. However it

10 should also be said that part of that evocativeness that the artefacts contribute to is a sense of desolation and poignancy, the sense of things having been left. One thinks of the harder times, rather than the atmosphere of camaraderie, noise and activity which must have reigned much of the time. For all the sites, there are planned or active programs to ensure these artefacts are preserved as a vital and integral part of the story. These programs are being run by the Antarctic Heritage Trust of New Zealand for the four Ross Sea region huts, and by the Mawson s Huts Foundation for the Mawsons Huts at Cape Denison. AHT has established a full year round program now in its fourth year, with a lab at Scott Base and a mobile lab that is taken out to the huts for summer season work. Over 8,000 artefacts have already been conserved as a result. Long may they survive to tell their tales.

Conserving in the deep freeze. Saving and interpreting the Heroic era huts of the Ross dependency in Antarctica.

1 internationalconservationservices Conserving in the deep freeze. Saving and interpreting the Heroic era huts of the Ross dependency in Antarctica. Australia ICOMOS 2007 Conference Cairns 19 21 July 2007