Beyond Endurance: An Epic of Whitehall and the South Atlantic

by Nicholas Barker

  But the ship’s company had been magnificent with actions and reactions of the cut-throat razor variety. It was the kind of experience that cannot be reproduced as an exercise; if there was a moment when the ship’s company truly became a team this was it. With the benefit of hindsight it was probably ideal training for what was to come.

  Visiting Montevideo before or after visiting Argentina is always useful because you get an entirely different perspective. Uruguay is in many ways a poor relation and the people are particularly scathing about their ‘neighbour’. The Ambassador, Patricia Hutchinson, was particularly well informed and quite often Uruguayans were first to the post over Falklands matters. After the fall of the Falklands the Embassy played a major part in the repatriation of prisoners.

  We also embarked a Uruguayan officer, Mario Fontanot, who was to join us for experience in the Antarctic. He soon became a lively addition to the mess.

  Bahia Blanca, our next port of call, is largely devoted to the Argentine Navy. We were met there by Julian Mitchell and Anthony Williams. In my report of proceedings I said of Anthony Williams:

  He was less positive than his colleague, Mr Harding. He knows the Argentine extremely well but is always at great pains to avoid offending them rather than taking a more definite approach. However, he was extremely diplomatic during our round of calls, particularly so as the Argentine President Videla had suddenly resigned and there was considerable unrest amongst senior officers and officials while his successor is chosen. This is not an easy period on the military or political front.

  During that visit I flew up to Buenos Aires for special briefings and to meet the Argentine Antarctic team led by Commodore Cesar Trombetta. We each followed our prepared programmes at a special meeting where, in a friendly atmosphere, areas of cooperation were agreed. These included daily communication schedules and opportunities for cross-operating helicopters. As things turned out this programme of co-operation was stillborn. I can only conclude that Trombetta received a directive that encouraged him to be increasingly elusive.

  It had also been decided that we were unlikely to visit Mar Del Plata. This was because of a South African entry in the Whitbread Round the World Race. Diplomatically we could not possibly have our break there at the same time. The risk was, of course, that one of us might be reckless enough to have a chat with a South African. It was another example of the muddled thinking that can sometimes emanate from Whitehall.

  Our visit to Bahia Blanca was something of a watershed. I had to climb in my white uniform up a tarry pile on the jetty side to reach the car that was to take me to my call on Admiral Lombardo, the Argentine Fleet Commander. The Naval Attaché had forgotten to order a gangway.

  Bahia Blanca is primarily a wheat exporting port, but included in its environs is Puerto Belgrano – the main Naval port. Admiral Lombardo, as it turned out, was later to lead the Argentine Falkland Campaign. Our host ship was the cruiser Belgrano. On behalf of Admiral Lombardo I was well looked after by Captain Zaratiegui with whom I struck up an immediate rapport. We had several evenings together. I learnt he was waiting to be promoted to Rear Admiral together with a special posting to be in charge of what amounted to the operational base from which a Falklands Campaign could be launched. I told him we were to visit the base, Ushuaia, at the beginning of the following year. In the event when we arrived there Captain Zaratiegui was conspicuous by his absence. I later learned that he had been prevented from seeing me. However, we made many friends among the officers and ship’s company of the Belgrano. To this day I do not know how many of them survived.

  I was also able to further discuss the demise of Endurance directly with Anthony Williams. I placed emphasis on the message this would send to the Argentines. I am sure he thought my fears were overstated. But I did learn from him something extremely useful. It appeared that the two old school friends, Galtieri and Anaya, were creating a power base within the Junta. I have already labelled Anaya as the ‘nasty bastard’ of the emerging triumvirate. He was more politely described by a brother officer as a ‘solitary, severe and self-disciplined person’. Martin Middlebrook offered a very similar assessment in his book Fight for the Malvinas.

  I was beginning to form a picture of the likely main players in the new political régime. Of course I had met Anaya the year before and found little to like. Lombardo, however, was much more approachable. According to Martin Middlebrook it was not long after (on 15 December) that Anaya called for a contingency plan for a Falklands invasion strategy. This was to be used perhaps as a lever within the negotiations scheduled for February, 1982. If talks remained deadlocked the plan would be put into action before January, 1983.

  But at this stage it is unlikely that Anaya’s plans were known to anyone other than Lombardo and, to a lesser extent, Galtieri. If the British became aware of the Argentine agenda the plan could be scuppered by the deployment of a nuclear submarine. This had happened previously in 1977 when Anaya was Fleet Commander. Ambassador Williams was in regular contact with John Ure, the Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, who had been dispatched on a visit to the Falklands and Buenos Aires in June, 1981. His mission in Port Stanley was to review the dispute (with the Islanders) in preparation for the policy reappraisal. This had become necessary following the collapse of Nicholas Ridley’s lease-back proposal. John Ure said that he formed the impression that opinion among the Islanders had not hardened irrevocably against lease-back. This was very different from the mood I had encountered. And wouldn’t this have hardened since the news of the scrapping of Endurance? He recommended that a genuine effort would have to be made to educate Islander and UK opinion about the danger of inaction and the safeguards on which the Government would insist. His Argentine brief was to reassure the Junta that Britain’s intention was to secure a peaceful solution to the Falklands question. Part of the strategy was an attempt to dissuade Argentina from forcing the pace. His conclusion was that the Argentine Foreign Office was reasonably relaxed about progress, and still well disposed towards a lease-back arrangement. He warned, however, that the Military leadership was more hawkish and might demand a more forward policy. He warned that there was a risk of Argentina using Britain as a scapegoat for its domestic problems. It was now less possible to depend on continued Argentine patience and understanding. He also argued that the British Government had to be more visible in the support of a negotiated settlement.

  Nicholas Ridley decided that the immediate aim should be to play for time. Rex Hunt referred to this approach as an example of ‘Better Notting’. Certainly it was a model of diplomatic procrastination. The Secretary of State also made no recommendation that lease-back should be reviewed. But John Ure must have encouraged Nicholas Ridley in his view that it remained a negotiating option. Certainly he made a special effort to re-enlist Lord Carrington’s support for the scheme. Meeting the Foreign Secretary earlier in the year, he argued there was really no alternative to lease-back. Whilst he recognized the strength of Island opposition, he calculated that it might only be possible to stall Argentina for one more round of talks.

  Meanwhile, back home the campaign to save Endurance was gathering momentum. The Pebble Mill repeats had helped. Groups of MPs and Peers were forming ranks behind the cause and The Times was publishing a steady flow of supportive correspondence. All this was putting renewed pressure on John Nott.

  We sailed from Bahia Blanca on 1 December, and at sea there was time to reflect. It seemed to me that the ball was beginning to roll in the right direction. Now I could devote my entire attention to operational tasks. I was particularly looking forward to the visit to Port Stanley.

  We arrived in Berkeley Sound on 4 December and disembarked a survey party. They were to set up their season’s camp at Green Patch Farm. On 5 December we sailed round the corner to Port Stanley. 8 December is an important day in the Falkland Islands calendar: it is a national holiday which marks the celebration of the (First World War) Battle of the Falklands.

  I
called immediately on Rex Hunt. I brought him up to date with what I had done, and learned, and asked him to spell out the present mood of the Islanders. It was not quite that portrayed by John Ure.

  After the visit of the Assistant Under-Secretary of State, Rex and Mavis had been home on leave. He later described how Nicholas Ridley took the chair at a meeting of FCO officials which included Head of the Foreign Office, Sir Michael Palliser, Anthony Williams and John Ure. Anthony Williams was still maintaining that Argentine Foreign Affairs Ministers and Officials were reasonably relaxed. Nicholas Ridley emphasized the point about doing more to educate opinion and pointed to the safeguards that the Government would insist on when leaseback returned to the diplomatic agenda. He identified a number of measures to assist the ‘education campaign’. These included assurances to the Islanders on access to the UK, and a resettlement scheme for those dissatisfied with any arrangement reached. There were also further land distribution schemes.

  Rex said that, as the day wore on, he listened to the discussions with mounting incredulity. The Islanders under discussion were clearly not the same people that he had come to know so well. His colleagues talked as if the Falkland Islanders could be manipulated (or persuaded or educated) into doing something that they had made perfectly plain they had no wish to do. There was an air of unreality in the meeting far removed from the true situation in the islands. His only contribution was to make clear his own belief that the Islanders wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the Argentines. He did not believe, under any terms, that they could ever be given the guarantees they would require. Rex went on to explain how Michael Shersby and Eric Ogden (the two MPs, who had travelled south with him) had been struck by the tone of the islands newspaper, The Penguin News. The paper had reported a deepening crisis with Argentina and commented indignantly on an Argentine note which had stated that Islanders’ wishes could not be considered as there was a considerable lack of knowledge in the Islands as to the friendly intentions of Argentina which could only improve life on the islands.

  ‘In other words,’ said The Penguin News, ‘Falkland Islanders are not wise enough to determine their own future.’

  Talks between the Governments had been scheduled for Geneva in December, but because of the change in the Junta leadership that month the Argentines had requested a postponement until January. In the event the talks were further postponed until the end of February and the venue was changed to New York because Mr Luce (who had by then taken Nicholas Ridley’s place at the FCO) had other commitments in January.

  Chapter 7

  SOUTH GEORGIA AND CAPE HORN

  Rex and Mavis Hunt embarked on 9 December to sail with us for the first work period. We were to visit South Georgia and Signy, British Antarctic Survey bases. It would be a foreshortened work period. The ice had not yet retreated far enough from the Antarctic Peninsula for us to do any meaningful work in that area. The plan was to return to Stanley for Christmas.

  It was a great pleasure to have Rex and Mavis on board once more. The extra stimulus of conversation they brought added a little warmth to the cold windy passage to South Georgia. We had also embarked a BBC film crew and sixteen members of a Joint Services Expedition to South Georgia. We stopped several times to collect plankton samples for the Marine Biological Association of Plymouth. And, as always, we enjoyed the wildlife. We had a Wandering Albatross following the ship, and, as we got closer to South Georgia, there were seals and penguins aplenty. Throughout my time in the Antarctic I never grew tired of watching them from vantage points on the upper deck.

  Rex and I were encouraged by the accelerating campaign to save Endurance back in London. We decided, at this range, that there was nothing we could, or should do to add to the momentum. But I had already promised myself that Endurance would again prove her value through the course of the season.

  We were to disembark the Joint Services Expedition and their stores at Royal Bay. The weather prevented anchoring off the beach as planned and disembarkation was begun by helicopter with the ship under way. The katabatic wind funnelled between two mountains made this very difficult; at one stage the winds accelerated to over 50 knots inside the bay. It was not unexpected. High winds in South Georgia are an absolute fact of life. However, the two Wasps managed to offload the Joint Services team of sixteen and their eight tons of equipment safely. The TV crew were similarly landed with three of the ship’s company on the Ross and Hindle Glaciers. The purpose was to get additional location shots for a forthcoming BBC film about Ernest Shackleton’s epic journey.

  Rex and Mavis had planned to drop in on Annie Price and Cindy Buxton who were filming for Anglia’s ‘Survival’ series at St Andrew’s Bay. These remarkably courageous ladies had already spent the winter in their tiny beach hut and were now looking forward to pushing on with their project during the warmer season.

  Rex himself filmed out of the open-doored helicopter as it flew into the bay. Tim Finding, the pilot, brought them down over Cook Glacier towards the tiny hut on the beach. As the helicopter closed in, Cindy Buxton, also a qualified pilot, hung out a large Union Jack to indicate the wind direction. For some unknown reason Tim approached downwind, although it was probably his intention to turn into the wind at the final stage of descent. But he was descending rapidly, or, as Rex later wrote, ‘too rapidly’. The helicopter hit the ground with violent forward momentum at speed and tipped up on its nose.

  ‘For a moment,’ said Rex, I thought we were going right over, but the rotor blades saved a complete capsize by hitting the ground. The aircrew and pilots were thrown to the side.’

  It was a very nasty incident for those in the helicopter. For those of us on board Endurance there were several very long minutes of worry. We did not honestly expect to find anyone in the helicopter who had not suffered horrendous injury. The relief when we heard they were not seriously injured was enormous.

  Leading Airman Bob Nadin helped Mavis out of the stricken helicopter before climbing out himself. He also collected the camera from Rex who was grimly hanging onto it. Poor Tim, still in the front seat, was totally mystified as to why the camera should be so important. He was later to learn, as if further proof was needed, that Rex was a passionate amateur photographer. Tim was equally unsure of the cause of the accident. At first he thought that the engine had failed to respond; he kept opening the throttle but the aircraft continued to descend. The answer, of course, was the unpredictable wind which had been blowing hard off shore 20 minutes earlier, but had veered 180 degrees by the time the helicopter approached the landing area. Quite simply they ran out of lift and were blown to the ground. Parts of the fuselage and rotor blades were flung more than 100 yards from the crash. The gearbox assembly whistled past Cindy’s ear. Unfortunately for the pictorial record, but reassuringly for Rex and Mavis, Cindy and Annie had put the safety of those on board the helicopter first. They had rushed back to the hut to grab fire extinguishers. But as the Hunts emerged from the wreckage the girls were standing ready to douse them in foam. Happily the aircraft did not catch fire, and the extinguishers were rapidly replaced by large mugs of gin and tonic. Tim used the radio to report the accident to the other helicopter piloted by Tony Ellerbeck. He landed cautiously and surveyed the wreckage.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a write-off,’ he said. ‘I suppose this means we cannot go south,’

  He was well aware that we were not allowed to operate in the ice with only one aircraft. But Tony was as relieved as any of us to find everyone unscathed and in good heart. He returned to Endurance with Tim and Bob. Cindy and Annie took the Hunts between the groups of elephant seals and penguins across the beach. Mavis had already said she had no intention of returning to the ship by helicopter. Once the Hunts were back on board we returned to St Andrew’s Bay to recover the salvageable parts of the aircraft. The fog became so dense by the late afternoon that we had to give up.

  On 15 December the ship moved round to Grytviken for the Governor’s visit to the British Antarctic Survey Base.
We were also to carry out photographic work for the Survey in the vicinity of Bird Island. Although some helicopter runs were completed successfully we were again hampered by strong winds and poor visibility. As the forecast suggested we were to exchange poor weather for worse, the ship returned to Leith to allow the Governor to visit the old whaling station. In particular he was keen to examine the scrap metal that the Argentines had contracted to remove.

  We returned to St Andrew’s on the 19th in an attempt to salvage more of the helicopter and to ditch the carcass, but bad weather again meant that this had to be abandoned.

  Amidst all this there was considerable signal traffic from Endurance to Northwood and London.

  At the time of the accident Mavis had been predictably resilient. She had suffered some symptoms of shock but, like her husband, had been determined to carry on the ‘parish tour’.

  We always intercepted the weather reports from Argentine Antarctic ships. This was the first time I began to have doubts about the integrity of Cesar Trombetta, the Commodore of the Argentine Antarctic Squadron. We had kept our part of the bargain, reporting positions and so on, but we were not getting the expected feedback. The weather reports had included details of his position, course and speed, so we knew pretty much where he was. In all probability it was when he heard the extent of signal traffic from Endurance that the weather reports ceased. This meant we lost touch with his movements for about a week. He also knew we had been delayed because of the loss of our helicopter.