“Antarctica is the only continent on earth where humans’ first dwellings still stand.”
(From the “How to be a Good Historic Hut Guide” pamphlet)
And three of these dwellings, or huts as they are known, are less than 20 miles from where we are here in McMurdo. The hut you saw in yesterday’s journal is the youngest of them and Monday we visited it after the divers finished exploring the seafloor at a place called Cape Evans.
The largest of the three historic huts in this area, the Terra Nova hut, sits at this site known as Cape Evans. Lying on the south-western part of Ross Island, about 14 miles north of McMurdo, this area was named in honor of Captain Scott’s second in command, Teddy Evans, on his race to the Pole.
How much do you know how about the history of Antarctica?
Do you know when the first people came to Antarctica?
Who were these people and what were they like?
Why did they come here and what were their adventures like?
The ~100 year old Terra Nova Hut. The hut is 50 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 9 feet high. Originally built in New Zealand, it was reassembled in Antarctica within two weeks by Scott and his men in January of 1911.
Though the span of human presence in Antarctica is not so long, a little over 180 years, the history is rich, exciting, and inspirational. It is not full of wars and violence like most countries, unless you look at the struggle of man versus nature on this harshest of continents. During the “Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration”, from the end of the 19th century until the early 1920’s, the world’s eyes turned to Antarctica as 8 countries launched 16 different scientific and geographical exploration expeditions that became feats of endurance. Books have been written about many of the early visitors and how their determination, strength, and willpower helped them overcome adversities in their quests of discovery and exploration. Captain Robert Falcon Scott, RN, Roald Amundsen, and Sir Ernest Shackleton are probably some of the most common names when you think of Antarctic history.
What was it like to be here, exploring and researching, back then?
While Scott and Amundsen participated in and led various expeditions, their most famous expeditions involved the race towards the pole in 1911. Amundsen secretly sailed his ship, the Fram, south instead of north, and started at the Bay of Whales, on the far side of the Ross Ice Shelf, about 400 miles from McMurdo. Preparations were expansive and depots were laid to refuel the 5 marching men and their 52 dogs. Going in as straight a line as possible for almost 2 months, they were the first to make it to the Pole, on December 14, 1911 – almost 100 years ago!
Scott was more rushed, less prepared, and relied on ponies instead of horses. His ship, the Terra Nova, anchored at Cape Evans, where we went on Monday. They were the ones who assembled the hut about 100 years ago as they prepared for their trip to the South Pole.
Captain Scott's second purpose in his Polar expedition was research. His team conducted various meteorology, geology, glaciology, and biology studies.
Along with hurriedly laying depots, the men did scientific experiments, recorded the weather, wrote the South Polar Times, had evening lectures, and played soccer on the sea ice as they checked and mended the equipment for their polar traverse. During this winter, three of Scott’s men made a side trip, which ended up being labeled the “Worst Journey in the World”, to collect eggs from the Emperor Penguin. Fortunately, no one died on this horrible side-journey.
After 11 months in Antarctica, the 1500 mile round trip polar journey started for real on November 1, 1911. They traveled about 17 miles a day and reached the Pole on January 17, 1912. After more than two months of turmoil and toil, they arrived 33 days behind Amudsen. “Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority.” wrote Scott in his journal.
The return journey proved deadly as the tired men faced blizzards and starvation and their horses proved useless. First, Petty Officer Evans died from the cold and harsh conditions. Then another man, Captain L.E.G. Oates, didn’t want to burden the others and wandered off to his death with the words, “I am just going outside and may be some time””.
Boxes and boxes of crates were left over from Scott's expedition. They would come in handy to future explorers.
The remaining three starving, exhausted men took a wrong turn and got trapped by a horrible storm. Frostbitten, weak, and starving from the 4 months' ordeal, they stayed and died in their tent, 11 miles from a cache of food that would have saved them. Excepts from Scott's last journal entries read:
"Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for." - R. Scott
"Since the 21st we have had a continuous gale WSW and SW. We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more." R. Scott
How the starving, frostbitten, tired men would have loved this seal blubber!
Shackleton led various expeditions but his most famous was the Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917 when he attempted to traverse across the Antarctic continent, from the Weddell Sea past the South Pole and ending here close to McMurdo at the Ross Sea. Unfortunately Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, got trapped in the ice and carried his group away from the continent and their mission. After 8 months of drifting in the ice pack, the ship got crushed by the breakup of the ice and disappeared under the water as Shackleton and his group watched from their home atop a drifting ice floe. His group camped on the drifting ice for more than 5 months until they escaped by sledges and two lifeboats to the remote, uninhabited, frozen Elephant Island. After 3 more months of surviving by eating seals and penguins while fighting off the bitter cold, they all got rescued by their courageous and dedicated leader and his group of 5 who braved 800 miles of rough seas in a tiny, 22 foot, open boat and hiked over unchartered territory to get help from whalers at the island of South Georgia.
The other half of his expedition, unaware of Shackleton’s fate, faced equally daunting challenges as they tried to lay depots of food and fuel for Shackleton’s arrival. Their boat, the Aurora, also floated away with their food, clothing, gear, and supplies but the men were stranded on land, at Cape Evans, where Scott’s party had set off for the pole 3 years earlier and where we visited this past Monday.
How many of these bottles did Shackleton's men find buried in the snow or left over from Scott's expedition?
Fighting the dreaded scurvy, continual frostbite, starvation, and blizzards with clothing made out of discarded tent fabric, food raided from earlier expeditions, and worn and broken equipment also leftover from previous expeditions, Shackleton’s men were similarly dedicated.
My bunny boots compared to their shoes. Which ones are warmer? I've walked maybe 10 miles in mine. How many miles did these shoes cover? Who wore them? (What historic miles they must have seen!)
They laid a total of 6 food and fuel depots hauling up to 1500 pound sleds for 1500 miles while always expecting Shackleton to come traversing towards them. While none of the men with Shackleton died during their 2-year ordeal, many died shortly after in World War I, and 3 of the 10 people of his stranded, cache-laying group died in 1916 during their strenuous, ill-equipped sledge-pulling marathons.
A cross dedicated to the men who died on Shackleton's depot laying expedition (Captain Aeneas Mackintosh, Arnold Spencer-Smith, and Victor Hayward) sits atop a hill overlooking the Terra Nova hut.
With heated floors in my dorm’s bathroom, an assortment and abundance of freshly-made food served hot for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and layers of comfortable, light-weight, water-proof, fully insulating clothing to choose from, my life here is almost the opposite of the early explorer’s lives. While books and movies have made me appreciate what I have here, visiting the Terra Nova hut gave me a much more complete picture of what the early explorers’ lives were like on this continent during their time.
The dining table in the Terra Nova Hut. The linoleum floor was kept below freezing so snow could be swept out. Quilted seaweed and felt insulated the hut while stoves heated it to about 50 degrees. Warmer 70 degree air melted buckets of ice on the top of the hut so the men could bathe.
In the hut, men slept in beds with sleeping bags made of reindeer skin. On their sledging journeys, their bags were eternally wet.
The plush, soft, roomy beds we have now pale in comparison to the tiny, hard beds the early explorers had. How did Scott sleep on this?
Another hut, located about 35 km north of us at Cape Royds, will hopefully be the destination for another excursion. This hut was built in 1908 by Shackleton and his Nimrod expedition, with which he got to within 97 miles of the South Pole. Lastly, I hope we’ll soon have a bit of time to walk the 15 minutes from our dorms to Hut Point to explore Discovery Hut, the oldest of the three huts, which was built in 1902 and used by both Shackleton and Scott.