1 shovel
3 sleeping bags
1 tent
3 skis & sticks
spare bamboo, lashings & bunting
2 pr sox
2 pr sleeping s†
1 extra mits
2 pr finnesko
safety pins
senna grass
broom
matches
knife.16
Mitts, which Wild spelt as ‘mits’, were made of fur and usually hung around their shoulders by a lamp-wick.
Finnesko, sometimes spelt as finneskoe or finnesco, were their Antarctic boots, made from reindeer-skin with the fur on the outside. When short of boots in the winter of 1915 they made more out of an old horse rug.
Sennegrass, which Wild spelt as senna grass, is Norwegian dried hay with insulation and moisture-absorbing properties. It was placed inside their finnesko.
For three men their personal clothing weighed around 15 lb; tent and poles, 30 lb; sleeping bags, 30 lb; shovel, 12 lb; ice axe, 9 lb; flags and bamboo, 4 lb; alpine rope, 4 lb; a medical case, 5 lb; a repair bag, 3 lb; the primus cooker, 6 lb; senna grass, 4 lb; and the sledge, 60 lb. This was a total weight of 182 lb.17
Their food allowance was packed in lots for three men. A daily ration (for three men) was weighed and put into a linen bag, and seven of these were placed in a canvas ‘tank’, called the food bag. Each food bag weighed 44 lb 10 oz. This would be the ration for a three-man unit for one week and under all circumstances had to be made to last a week. Food was rationed by the week because depots, such as those to be laid at 79°S, 80°S, 81°S etc. were about 68 miles apart. The men would normally expect to march this distance in a week. In addition to their food ration, a little methylated spirits and a gallon of kerosene were allowed each week for lighting and running the primus stove.18
27 January 1915
Mackintosh, Spencer-Smith and Wild reached Hut Point on 27 January, joining Joyce’s party. Spencer-Smith described the Discovery hut as ‘not nearly as nice as the one at Cape Evans and is in a horrible condition of dirt and untidiness’.19
The next step was to place two depots on the Great Ice Barrier, the first near the Minna Bluff location 70 miles out, and the second another 70 miles further south, at 80°S. Their route from Hut Point would run south for about a mile then turn east for 5 or 6 miles, at which point the ascent was made from the sea-ice to the ice shelf, the Great Ice Barrier.20 The Ice Barrier is where the sea-ice joins up to the land-ice and is 15 to 40 feet high.21
Joyce’s party was first away from the hut and he makes a couple of diary entries for the three days it took his team to reach the Barrier. There is only a passing mention of any difficulties, such as falling through the sea-ice, or relaying heavy loads. In his book, The South Polar Trail, Joyce gives us some general information about their sledging routine, which he did not record in his diary. He says they wake at 5 a.m. and, except for the cook, have breakfast in their sleeping bags – a mug of pemmican with biscuits and a mug of tea. They extract their socks which had been placed inside their clothing (to stop them from freezing overnight) and then work at putting on their frozen boots, their finneskoe. After packing up, securing the sledges and harnessing the dogs, they are away, stopping every half-hour for a three-minute rest. He writes that sledging is a ‘hungry and starving game’ and after five hours pulling the leader calls out ‘Luncho’ and up goes the tent where they have their lunch of tea, biscuits and chocolate. Their afternoon went through to around 6.30 p.m., when they again put up the tent and feed the dogs – who then simply coil up in the snow to sleep. Joyce says that it was useless building them any shelter as they would not use it.22
To erect their tent, six bamboo poles had to be slotted into a heavy canvas pole cap, and this was only possible if they took off their outer mitts. The poles had to be quickly put in position then the canvas skin of the tent had to be placed over the poles and then weighed down. Two men hauled the tent over the frame of poles while the other man raced around placing blocks of ice or snow on the skirting of the tent, before the wind lifted the canvas up and off the frame.23
Joyce:
27th – Under weigh. Found the going very sticky + slushy. Altered course to the W. At about 2 miles off Cape Armitage I fell through although the ice looks firm it is badly undercut + it is only snow covered. I carried on until firm ice was struck. Changed my wet clothes we managed to find enough for a shift.24
30th – The haul was very heavy so decided to relay. Makes the work easier. Although it doubles the journey.25
28 January 1915
Mackintosh, Spencer-Smith and Wild followed Joyce’s team south from Hut Point but by the end of their day the three men were disappointed. For Spencer-Smith and Wild this was their first sledging experience and like Mackintosh they found relaying to be irksome. Through their diaries we can see these three men found sledge-hauling much harder than they had anticipated. However, from Joyce’s diary it appears he did not find hauling particularly unpleasant. He had taken loaded sledges out onto the Barrier a number of times (with Scott in 1902–1903 and with Shackleton in 1908–1909) so it was probably all in a day’s work for him. He makes one diary entry for the eight days as his team went from the edge of the Barrier out to where the Minna Bluff depot was laid.
Wild:
We left Hut Point in grand form for about 40 yards then it took us 8 hours to go 400 yards. We stopped then & had some tea & then started again & have come four or five miles.
We got here at 3.0 AM so of course it is Friday now. The dogs have had about 10 scraps today & my arms are aching with banging & pulling them. About 4.0 AM now. Pack up, sleep.26
Woke up with a blizzard blowing, had breakfast & turned in again. Woke up again, nice & fine, had tea & biscuits, and got under ‘weigh’, or tried to but couldn’t budge the sledge.
Unloaded half & the Skipper & I went on with it for about 600 yds. The dogs couldn’t or wouldn’t go on, so unloaded & went back for the other half. Got it along about 80 yds past the first half & pitched tent.
Smithy got dinner ready, while we went & brought the other lot up. We are going to have another go tonight. Can’t say much for the travelling, 680 yds., snow nearly up to our knees all the time.
Relay work no good makes one swear.27
Spencer-Smith:
We now know what utter exhaustion is! We could only do short spells, halting at hard spots and hard spots seemed very few and far between; I was too done to pray for them!
We had come only about four miles, though it seemed like twenty. At last the sledge nearly capsized and stuck in a deep place, and Mac, very disappointed, decided to camp. It was 3 am and felt like it.28
After the first 100 yards we, dogs and men, found it absolutely impossible to move the sledge. We tried again and again. ‘Team. Come along then! What about it today? Getty-up!!!’ And she hasn’t moved an inch.
We used the boot, the whip, words and blandishment, but it was all in vain, and Mac had to give in to Fate, and order a relay.29
Mackintosh:
Try as we would, no movement could be produced. Reluctantly we unloaded and began the tedious task of relaying. The work, in spite of the lighter load on the sledge, proved terrific for ourselves and for the dogs. We struggled for four hours, and then set camp to await the evening, when the sun would not be so fierce and the surface might be better.
On waking this afternoon at 5 pm found it drifting, all land shut out! Therefore nothing to do but remain in our bags and await the God of Blizzard’s orders.
It’s a curious sensation remaining silently in the bags, with just the sound of gentle snow pattering on the tent, the great sense of comfort one finds in the bag, our keen sense of any untoward noise such as the ceasing of the snow or any sign of clearing weather. We are quietly reading in our bags, a jet of steam coming out of our openings – What a weird situation when you come to think of it – what on earth are we so keen about?
I must say I feel somewhat desp
ondent, as we are not getting on as well as I expected, nor do we find it as easy as one would gather from reading.30
Joyce:
From the 31st of Jan until I picked up the Bluff Depot on Feb 9th was very hard work and took us over 16 days to trek the last 100 miles. We built up the depot to about 12 feet high put up flag poles making it about 24ft all told – A splendid mark. Gaze + Jack are two splendid tent mates. The dogs behaved splendidly.31
30 January 1915
Mackintosh, Spencer-Smith and Wild, even with their team of dogs, struggled to start the sledge moving at times. All the men wore a harness that consisted of a broad waistband of double canvas. It was pierced at the back and fitted with an eye, through which passed the alpine rope leading back to the sledge. All the weight was taken by the waistband but the harness was suspended from the shoulders by a light canvas and leather shoulder straps attached to a buckle fixed on the main belt.32
By this day, 30 January, only a few days since they had started out, Mackintosh had ailments to which Spencer-Smith attended. He mentions Borofax, a weak acidic hydrate of boric oxide with mild antiseptic. They see a ‘motor car’ which presumably was one of the three motor sledges that Scott took on his Terra Nova Expedition. Mention is also made of one of their dogs, Towser, who twelve months later would be one of the four dogs crucial in helping them return safely from Mount Hope.
Spencer-Smith:
It was cruelly hard work. Wild went in front. Mac and I harnessed up, but of course could not have our ski on as we both had to be pulling.
The heartbreaking part is the preliminary ‘hoicking’. Mac and I swing the sledge to get a smooth starting place and to break the frozen runners: then I heave back the team with one hand (‘Team’), keeping up the swinging with the other: then ‘Getty-up’ and a mighty heave from both of us to get a slight move on (it usually takes three repetitions of the above) and then we get a strain on our trace – starting breathless, of course – and plug on through the yielding snow, until our combined energies, dogs and men’s give out.
It is the most quaint sight in the world to see a stout seal lying luxuriously on his side, and idly scratching with the upper most flipper.
Wild killed a young seal with the ice-axe, and I helped him skin him, our weapons being (1) a shoemaker’s knife belonging to Wild (2) a table knife. It was a grisly and greasy job!
Temp 31° ‘tonight’ – a very sudden change: this morning all the metal work was sticky with the cold. I can see that cooking will be a delicate operation when we touch the minus temperatures.
Festering sores on Mac’s right hand. Bathed place & sterilised instruments in Hyd. Pot. Iod. Lanced places & freed pus. Applied Boris wool and Borofax and bandaged. Gave tonic.33
Wild:
Smithy & I killed & skinned a seal. We gave the dogs a feed & depoted the remainder.
I fell down a small crevasse with one leg only. It was only about a foot wide but went down a long way.
Came across one of Scott’s depots & found dog biscuits, sack of oats, a couple of weeks provisions, seal meat & blubber & last of all a motor car.34
Mackintosh:
Our throats are hoarse as soon as one dog appears to slacken his name is yelled out, they are doing their best poor brutes, Towser a great fat hulking animal is a fool and a great nuisance always getting tied up in his harness, with the result we had to stop the sledge.35
31 January 1915
Mackintosh, Spencer-Smith and Wild finally reached the Great Ice Barrier with Wild noting they had ‘to climb a steep hill to get onto it’.36 Ahead they could see nothing but a featureless landscape, a gigantic land of snow stretching hundreds of miles to the south where, at the horizon, the snowy wasteland met the sky. At this point, at the start of the Barrier, there were no mountains in the background and as far as they could see there was nothing but a straight or smooth level plain sweeping away to the south.
Spencer-Smith was the only one of the Mount Hope Party to comment on seeing the Barrier. He was so impressed he described the scene as ‘covered with diamonds’, and he was taken in by the solitude, the absolute silence. This comment was unusual in that he gives us a (brief) description of the landscape, but he, and others of the Mount Hope Party, usually focussed diary notes on the events of the day, hardships, the distances travelled, food and the surface they were travelling over.
On the Barrier the surface became harder so they attempted to haul the total load instead of relaying.
Mackintosh:
Of all the back-breaking jobs, ye that have not done such a thing, this is absolute perfection. The great trouble is to get the sledge started. The method is: with one hand we catch hold of the line to which the dogs are attached; this is drawn in, then with the other a wiggle is given in the bow of the sledge, shouting ‘getty up’ to the dogs at the same time.
Sometimes they start – more often they don’t. So again and again this is repeated! Should a move be made we jump aside in case our sledge harness gets entangled and then we pull for all we are worth. This is alright if it only happened once in a way but after 30 shots in an hour one begins to weary!
We managed a direct mile. This is even better than relaying.37
Personally I feel just done up. Smith I am sure who was taking turns with me must have felt the same. When one thinks of it we have to shove 1100 lbs and after doing this about a dozen times you begin to wish the sledge in Kingdom Come.
Sledging I have come to the conclusion is no joke. But such hard, hard work. But we are getting along. Each day one day less.
In the tent Wild is repairing our broken ski sticks which have come to grief on the poor dogs! That made Smith say to me ‘I do feel sorry but we have to get on and as persuasion has no effect this is the last resort’.
All kinds of subjects are discussed from meals we’d like to be eating to quandaries as to what’s happening at the front, religion, seeing we have a parson, politics, in fact there’s precious little that is not turned over in our conversation by one or other of us.38
Spencer-Smith wrote of the Barrier:
A vast wall surrounding an immense snow plain bediamonded by the sun. All the old questionings seem to come up for answer in this quiet place: but one is able to think more quietly than in civilisation.39
Had a long talk with Wild after supper tonight. He seems to have been everywhere during his service in the Navy. He talked mainly of Jerusalem & Egypt tonight – very interesting.40
Late January
The third sledging team, led by Cope and including Hayward and Richards, started their sledging from the ship to Hut Point three days after the others, on 31 January 1915. This team started with a motor sledge but it broke down near Hut Point and was not used again. The six men did not use dogs even though Hayward had experience with sledging with dogs in Canada. Their task over the two months of summer 1915 was to take stores to Hut Point and to lay three depots on the Barrier quite close to Hut Point. After the motor sledge broke down the team worked in two three-man parties; Hayward, Richards and Ninnis pulling one sledge and sharing a tent, Cope, Stevens and Hooke with a second sledge and tent.
Their sledging efforts in this first season were not particularly significant or admirable, but they did put down three depots, named Cope No. 1, 2 and 3 depots, which were all located within 40 miles of Hut Point. These three Cope depots would all be needed by the Mount Hope Party when they returned from Mount Hope in 1916.
Richards’s initial diary entry, at the end of their first day of man-hauling, was one of only a dozen diary notes he made for all of 1915. By contrast, Hayward was writing a prolific diary, for his fiancée, Ethel Bridson, and it started as a daily record. He acknowledges the work makes him both hungry and tired but his description of having to relay was pragmatic. He tells his Ethel all the details of his sledging and how often she was on his mind. He mentions the Ionic, which was the ship that took Hayward and others from England to Australia.
Richards: ‘Hauled 1100 lb wit
h 4 men to Hut Point … snow soft – heavy going (on sea-ice) – no sleep for 24 hours … Last pace a crawl … Turned into bunk 9 a.m. – awakened 8 p.m.’41
Hayward:
I am going to write a daily account of my doings to you as I promised you. I must tell you that I think of you all the time, on the march, in my sleeping bag, & on all conceivable occasions & find the process a great help & comfort.
Decided to stow everything on 2 sledges & haul by relaying, that is haul 1 sledge 1 mile & return for the 2nd & so on, we got under way, & by 6 o/c AM Monday morning had advanced 4 miles in this way, this of course means that we had traversed a total distance of 12 miles.
On the way the Mirage effects were wonderful the Great Ice Barrier seeming close at hand, at times I ought to mention that we have arranged to sleep during the day & get the advantage of the warmer atmosphere & travel during the night when it is colder & therefore more conducive to work.
It is now 5 o/c pm (Mon) & we shall get away again about 6. I am looking forward to the hoosh this morning but am now just going to have another 40 winks, while I have the opportunity. This work makes me both hungry & tired. It is hard to say which most.
Of course I am in my bag writing this & you would be surprised how comfy & warm it is. (10 minutes later) The 40 winks is not a success there is nothing doing, no sleep left in my bag I find. I have been thinking of you & shall just have a little tête à … on the strength of it.
Right away down here ducky life develops on much different lines to those which prevail at home it is a hard life, to say nothing else & one continual struggle with conditions & the elements & in the ordinary way there is very little room for sentiment, as far as I am concerned however I think of you, more than anything else & am quite content, much more so than was the case when slacking about coming over on the Ionic & during the 7 weeks I spent in Sydney as here I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am actually engaged in the thing I am so anxious to complete satisfactorily.
Shackleton's Heroes Page 7
