For a polar campaign the great desideratum is tempered youth. It is the vigour, the dash, the recuperative power of youth that is so necessary to cope with the extreme discomforts and trials of such exploration, which approximate to the limit of human endurance and often enough exceed it.
Douglas Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard
Late February 1911, London, Mawson receives bad news
And so it has come to this. After repeated enquiries by Douglas Mawson as to where the industrialist Lysaght’s promised £10,000 is – none of which receive a straight answer from Shackleton – Mawson writes to Lysaght directly. Coming to understand that Shackleton and Lysaght have had a falling out of late, he tries to salvage what he can, using a favoured tactic of promising sponsors a percentage of any economic discoveries: ‘Surely I can rely on you for £1,000 anyway – this would give you a good interest in the results.’
In response, Lysaght’s wife is frank. Her husband is unwell and can’t see him, but he has in any case already paid the money to another. ‘All that he could afford,’ she says, ‘indeed more – he did for Sir Ernest Shackleton this time last year.’1
Shackleton!
Scarcely bringing himself to believe that the worst really has happened, Mawson discovers after more heated enquiries that Shackleton has ‘invested’ Lysaght’s money ‘in other ways’, the nature of which Mawson might guess as somehow being tied up with one scheme or another. The point remains: Lysaght’s funds have fallen through, and Mawson is left with a gaping hole in the very finances he needs right now, particularly for the purchase of a suitable vessel.
Undaunted by such financial fragility, Mawson decides to go even deeper into debt, by moving on the canny suggestion by Kathleen Scott to include an aeroplane on the expedition – if for nothing else because of the amount of publicity it would generate, for who could forget the magnitude of the reception Louis Blériot received upon crossing the English Channel just two years previously? And it has only been a little over a year since none other than Harry Houdini flew the first plane in Australia, when he got off the ground just outside Melbourne, before taking it up to Sydney and flying it there at Rosehill Racecourse. The flight captured the public imagination in precisely the way Mawson hopes to do with his polar expedition, and he has come to the conclusion that by announcing to the public that they have bought a plane and are going to fly it in Antarctica – doing a demonstration flight in Australia on the way through – fund-raising would be made all the easier.
Enquiries are made to purchase a French plane, letters are written, commitments are made, and he moves on to the next and most crucial thing of all: recruiting the first of his most senior staff. While these will mostly be Australians, there are a few important foreign exceptions. Not only are men required with the right skills and expertise but also, like the most robust of Antarctic vessels, they must be made of the right and sternest stuff. There is little use being a well-skilled man if you are unable to endure the harshest conditions on earth, the privation, the isolation …
Early March 1911, Montreal, John Davis receives good news
It’s not working. And nor is he. Like a reformed alcoholic trying to stay sober, start a new life and put his old life out of his head, John King Davis has journeyed to the east coast of North America, far removed from all things Antarctic, where he is hopeful of finding a job with the Canadian Northern Railway shipping service. Yes, he has loved his Antarctic experience, but in some ways he has loved it too much, for it is so all-consuming, so devouring, it leaves little room for much else. Maybe in Canada he’ll find the ‘else’ part – and at least by going he won’t be endlessly hanging around, waiting for Shackleton’s next expedition to Antarctica to happen.
Yes, he feels, as his train pulls into Montreal station, he has made the right decision. But the problems prove to be many. Upon arrival, he is taken from the station to the hotel in nothing less than a sleigh. In temperatures of just ten degrees, it is hard not to think of his times in the frozen far south. And, as his bowler hat provides inadequate protection, he discovers in the sanctuary of his hotel room that the climate has achieved something that the Antarctic did not. After the journey in the sleigh, his ears are lightly frostbitten.
Now, while Canada has been described to him as a land of opportunity, a place where a young man can quickly make his fortune, it has to be said that those opportunities are not jumping out to grab him, wrestle him to the ground and fill his pockets full of cash. The job with the shipping service fails to materialise, and he is at a loose end, looking at the possibilities of finding work in Calgary instead, when there is a knock on the door. It is opportunity. But not the one he is expecting. For he now receives a cablegram from his old friend Dr Mawson. The cablegram informs him that Mawson is in London, mounting a polar expedition of his own. He wants Davis to be skipper of his ship, and second in command of the expedition. Is Davis interested?
Very, very interested indeed. And to hell with his previous reasoning that he needed to get away from Antarctica. All of that is instantly forgotten, and no matter that there are no other details of the expedition offered. ‘Here,’ he later recounted, ‘was a definite offer and there could be only one answer. Seeing again in my mind’s eye the frozen and mysterious ramparts of the last continent and counting the land of opportunity well lost for such a cause, I cabled an acceptance.’2
Mid-March 1911, London, Mawson is getting organised
Delighted to receive an affirmative answer from Davis, Mawson, in London, continues recruiting. Key appointments are the men he intends to put in charge of the Greenland sledge dogs he is about to purchase, dogs that he hopes will haul him on his proposed Far-Eastern Journey to explore and chart parts of the coast directly south of Australia. (Having seen the failure of Shackleton’s ponies on the Nimrod expedition, Mawson is more convinced than ever that the answer to animal locomotion in polar climes lies in many light, fast dogs that, in extremis, can be eaten as you go, and not in a few heavy ponies, which need to be butchered and stored.)
To begin with, to look after these dogs Mawson likes the look of Lieutenant Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis of the Royal Fusiliers. When he turns up at Mawson’s tiny offices at 9 Lower Regent Street, Ninnis proves to be a strapping, fine figure of a man, standing six foot four inches, with a splendid record as an athlete put in the shade only by his excellence at playing polo. Yes, there is the small matter that the 23-year-old has no experience with dogs, but that is countered by the fact that he comes across as a man who is capable of turning his hand to anything, and that is precisely the kind of man that Mawson wants. Though Ninnis previously applied to be a part of Scott’s expedition and was rejected, Mawson now readily accepts him.
Another who makes the cut is a 27-year-old Swiss citizen and lawyer, Dr Xavier Mertz, who is an accomplished mountaineer and expert skier, good enough to have won the ski-jumping championship of Switzerland two years earlier before becoming the world champion in the discipline shortly afterwards. Of an affluent engineering family, the heavily moustachioed Mertz is an affable and adventurous young man of many skills, who was about to join the family business when he heard of Mawson’s expedition and immediately journeyed to London to meet the Australian. In so doing, he displays a spirit that impresses Mawson.
True, Mertz has no more experience with dogs than Ninnis, but still Mawson decides to take a chance and puts the two foreigners in charge of the Greenland dogs that are to be purchased through the Danish Geographical Society. Instinctively, he feels they will work well together.
There are a handful of other non-Australasian recruits, including none other than Mawson’s old friend from the Nimrod expedition, the Yorkshireman with the penchant for whisky, Frank Wild, who got to within 97 nautical miles of the Pole under Shackleton’s leadership and, before that, was an able seaman on Scott’s Discovery expedition. Mawson is honoured to have a man of such experience with him, even if, at the age of 37, Wild will also be the second oldest. He appoints him to command the expedition’s central base, the one to be established next along the coast from the main base, where Mawson and the bulk of the men will be.
Mid-March 1911, Cape Evans, Scott and his men settle in, as Oates has a ‘fit’
In the realm of the intellectuals, with all this scientific carry-on, all this collection of data and endless speculation about the whys and wherefores and whatnots of magnetic inclinations and declinations, whatever they are, geological formations and meteorological phenomena, it is not that Oates is completely uninterested, just that it is not quite his thing. He has come to this expedition as a man from the army, where entirely different things are valued – courage, marksmanship, horsemanship and so forth – and it takes some time to adjust.
The scientific fellows, whom he refers to mock-derisively as ‘the faculty’, have odd ways about them. Such as their absurd lack of desire to drink brandy. The thing is, the scientists actually have brandy here at the lower ends of the earth, but the faculty won’t let any of them at it, for the brandy is reserved for ‘medical comforts’.
On sledge journeys near and far, the bottles of brandy go out but always return unopened. Maybe the faculty are quietly quaffing the brandy on the side and simply not sharing? This, at least, is a theory he puts past the man who has become his great friend on this expedition, Atch Atkinson, who is greatly amused by it.
‘Saw ’em again this morning,’ Oates would growl to Atch, ‘all full.’
‘But say,’ Oates asks of Atch one day, ‘what do they give ’em for anyway?’
‘Oh, fits,’ Atch replies.
And just how does one throw a fit?
Well, Atkinson explains, generally by throwing oneself to the snow, crawling about on one’s hands and knees and having a lot of uncontrolled spasms.
Doesn’t sound too hard.
Later that same day, when the time is right, Bill Wilson – sometimes affectionately known to the men now as Uncle Bill – looks up to see Oates before him, on his hands and knees on the snow, trembling and twitching violently.
‘Look at that man,’ says Atch in Wilson’s ear, with what he hopes is a suitable tone of alarm. ‘He’s got a fit.’
‘Yes, he’s got a fit all right,’ Wilson replies dryly. ‘Rub some snow down his back and he’ll soon be all right.’3
28 March 1911, London, word of Scott’s doings in the Antarctic breaks
News of Captain Scott’s safe passage to McMurdo Sound in early January reaches London by cable the day after Scott’s ship has safely returned to Stewart Island, New Zealand.
While the press coverage leads on the staggering news of Terra Nova’s ‘discovery’ of Fram in the Bay of Whales in early February, Mawson is far more focused on the report that Scott’s second party have landed at Cape Adare, precisely where Mawson told Scott he intended to go. Mawson even gave him all his plans to that effect!
There is no way around it. Though Mawson does not want to think ill of Captain Scott, it really seems as if, after the Englishman refused to drop him and some companions at that very spot because he said it didn’t fit in with his projected program, the blighter has then gone and plucked the plum from Mawson’s plans and incorporated it into his own … all without Mawson!
In response, Mawson is full and frank in the views he gives on the subject to the Daily Mail:
It surprises me very much to hear that Captain Scott has landed a party at Cape Adare in face of the agreement between us and in view of the information I gave him. When I was in England last year it was practically arranged that I should accompany Captain Scott. I was only, however, prepared to join if Captain Scott would land me with a party at Cape Adare to carry out magnetic work along the northern coast of the Antarctic Continent. After maturely considering this, Captain Scott decided that it could not be done, at any rate the first year. Then it was that I arranged to organise an Australian expedition for scientific work along the coast between Cape Adare and Gaussberg.
My plans were put before Captain Scott and there was no secrecy in the matter. Australia has supported Captain Scott, but in the face of the information now to hand some dissatisfaction is inevitable in the Commonwealth. Captain Scott personally wrote to me the last thing before leaving Australia and asked me to furnish him with full details of my plans, and this I willingly did, giving him all particulars, including the statement that I intended to land at Cape Adare. Naturally I am sorry that circumstances have driven Captain Scott to take the course he has done.4
One interested reader of these remarks is Kathleen Scott, who quickly writes him a warm note in an attempt to mollify him. Mawson has a great regard for Scott’s wife and is quick to respond himself, standing by his central point before softening somewhat:
Dear Mrs Scott,
… I do wish Captain Scott had been franker with me – instead of it all proceeding from my side. I think it is quite unnecessary for explorers to act in the way Amundsen has done.
Had Captain Scott truly desired to settle an Eastern party on K.E. VII Land this year it seems to me that the men he has had pluck enough to do it. The K.E. Land well wants doing and none but a strong expedition like Captain Scott has can do it. Any old ship from Australia can land at Cape Adare.
So you saw my complaint in the Daily Mail – it was rather rotten wasn’t it. I was woken up after midnight by a telephone message on the phone and that is how they put it.
I am glad for your sake that Captain Scott has much the best chance of getting to the Pole, though he will have a hard race … 5
Shortly thereafter, Kathleen Scott graciously invites the strapping Australian to a long lunch at her home, which goes some way towards placating him.
For his part, Sir Ernest Shackleton, also in London, has no intention of being left out on either issue, and he weighs in with typical self-assuredness, starting with the Scott/Amundsen ‘Race for the Pole’. He tells the Daily Mail:
Captain Scott will undoubtedly follow my route. Both men are experienced. Captain Scott has the advantage in my mind in equipment, being well supplied with motor-sledges and ponies. But against this must be set the hereditary knowledge of skiing and handling of the dogs that the Norwegians possess. The ice conditions will be much the same for both.
As to who has the right to operate where, he is equally forthright:
One of Scott’s parties is wintering in the area which Dr Mawson, who will shortly start, has included in his sphere of exploration. What concerns the public most is, who will get to the South Pole first; and I for one consider it a moot question. I personally want to see the British flag flying on the spot towards which we struggled in 1909 for so many weary months, frost-bitten, cold and hungry.6
And that’s that, then.
Early April 1911, London, Davis arrives to meet with Mawson and finds the ends are loose
And there he is!
Mawson is standing at Euston Station when – after John Davis’s long journey from Canada, across the Atlantic to the port of Liverpool and then by rail – his train pulls in.
Despite their jointly serious natures, the two are hail-fellow-well-met, gripping hands tightly in the same manner as they are about to get to grips with their great adventure, but it is not long before Davis is surprised. Mawson being Mawson, Davis has been expecting that when it came to the organisation, he would find all the ‘i’s dotted, all the ‘t’s crossed and nary a loose end to be found anywhere.
To his amazement, however, he finds that the Australian has no funding in place, no ship, no supplies, no equipment, and every end he can see is loose! Davis realises he has been invited to be master of a ship that doesn’t actually exist yet, or at least is not in the explorer’s possession.
On their way back to Mawson’s tiny office at 9 Lower Regent Street, which is of course where Davis’s whole Antarctic adventures began with Shackleton nearly three years earlier, they begin to talk. It becomes clear from the first that this is to be a different kind of polar expedition, that it has nothing to do with trying to claim the South Pole and is all about advancing the cause of science, with a bonus of making a significant territorial claim for Australia on that part of Antarctica. He also learns of the significant problems Mawson has had with fund-raising, and the work that remains.
And so it begins. Over the next weeks, they pound the pavements, knock on doors and pursue every contact they have, trying to get to people who are not only wealthy enough to contribute but who will also care enough to help what is fundamentally an Australian venture at the very time that Scott – an Englishman, by God – is already getting ready to make his own push on the Pole.
For Mawson and Davis, it is not easy to keep going under such circumstances, to keep knocking, keep ringing, keep asking for a meeting on the off-chance it will actually lead to something solid, but they have no choice. Not for nothing would Mawson write of this time, ‘The whole of my stay in London was about as distressing a time as could be imagined.’7
In his letters to Paquita, however, while acknowledging that there are difficulties, he is ever and always upbeat in his conclusions:
Everything here is very unsettled and I am looking forward to better times, possibly busier. No word as to funds has come from Australia and I am in the dark as to what has been done there. I am confident of success, however. Although I have asked for £40,000 for the Antarctic Expedition, I can if necessary conduct a very creditable one in a ship of Nimrod or Pourquoi Pas class for as little as £25,000. I tell you this so that you need not feel so anxious about the funds. If you know me aright, you will understand that once having said I am intending to go to the Antarctic I shall go, even if it is in a whaleboat (excuse the fact that it would not be possible to do this). Captain Davis is here now and we have been going into details regarding ships – I have a private agent in Norway enquiring also. Several suitable ships may be had, there is no anxiety on that account.8
No, no anxiety on account of ships being available, but huge anxiety when it comes to getting the money to pay for a ship and an entire expedition. Both men are nearly in despair – the more so when in the space of a fortnight negotiations to buy both Scott’s old ship Discovery and the French ship Pourquoi Pas fall through – when at last comes a breakthrough.
10 April 1911 and the day thereafter, London, Mawson addresses the Royal Geographical Society and goes on with it
On this day, Mawson outlines his plans for his Australasian Antarctic Expedition to a meeting of the highly prestigious Royal Geographical Society. He tells this august gathering of the good and the great of the geographical world that, at year’s end, a ship’s complement of 50 men will head south from Australia, with almost every member of the land party a specialist scientist recently graduated from the universities of Australia and New Zealand. Now, although it was his hope to chart the whole of the coast stretching from Cape Adare to Gaussberg, given that Captain Scott has now landed his own party at Cape Adare – small furrowing of the brow – he has done the only thing he could do and has modified his plans, no longer intending to make his own central base there.
From Hobart, they will instead pass through the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties to Macquarie Island, 930 miles south-south-east of the Tasmanian capital, where they will establish their first base, leaving a party of five men. They will be left there to conduct meteorological, biological and geological studies, while also setting up wireless antennae that, ideally, will allow their Antarctic base to reach them and allow them to communicate with the Australian mainland.
Then, broadly along the path forged 70 years earlier by Dumont d’Urville, Charles Wilkes and James Clark Ross, they will head ever further south along the meridian of 158 degrees east until they reach the ice pack. If possible, they will push through the ice to get to the continent itself and there establish the main Antarctic base, of 12 men – equipped and provisioned to survive a year – before proceeding to the west to drop two more parties of six and eight men respectively. All three bases will be at a sufficiently large distance apart for a full picture to be built up of the conditions of that part of the Antarctic continent. Once established in the midsummer, they will get through the winter and then, in the coming of the spring, all three parties will explore and chart the continent in their area, linking up with each other on sledging expeditions, so that a complete charting of the coast can be effected.
And even as the ship is doing all this, and then afterwards, she would take soundings and conduct marine sampling along the way to find out more about the contours and content of the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica.
Mawson explains that, from the main base, a party will once more head towards the South Magnetic Pole, to determine exactly how far and in what direction it has moved since Mawson himself went there three years before, all as part of a process whereby members of the entire expedition will collect valuable magnetic, meteorological and biological data about Antarctica. Their ship, meantime, will have returned to Hobart, before heading back to Antarctica a year later to pick them all up.
In response to Mawson’s paper, President Leonard Darwin – white-haired and pointy-eared, rather like his famous father, Charles – expresses regret over the fact that Scott’s second party has landed at Cape Adare. And yet this regret is not owing to the consequences for the Mawson expedition but rather to any effect it may have on the overall objectives of the Scott expedition. Judging by Darwin’s statements, it was not quite the done thing, not quite sporting, for Amundsen to have landed at the Bay of Whales, but still quite all right for a part of the Scott party to have taken up at Cape Adare.
Still and all, what, what, the society recognises the scientific value of the AAE and graciously donates the sum of £500 to the Australian’s cause.
It is a small amount, yes, but far more valuable is the Royal Geographical Society’s seal of approval, which will surely help further donations start to flow.
Thus buoyed, the following evening Mawson dines late into the night at the Travellers’ Club with publishing magnate William Heinemann. As a man who has not only published Shackleton’s The Heart of the Antarctic but also lays claim to introducing the literary works of H. G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling to the world, Heinemann is one whose stature equals his wealth, and it is enormously important for Mawson to gain his support. Happily, all goes well, and the deal is struck – Mawson will receive an advance of £1000. Bit by bit, in dribs and drabs, the money is starting to come together. And it is not just from his personal efforts …
22 April 1911 and several days thereafter, Australia, Mawson’s finances are helped by well-connected friends and a ‘Sydney girl’
The open letter to the editor of the Adelaide Advertiser that appears on this day – signed by Professor Orme Masson, Professor Edgeworth David and Professor G. C. Henderson – makes no bones about it. Their fellow Australians, from whom they are seeking donations, must understand that the Mawson expedition is set on a higher plane than merely claiming boasting rights for being first to the bottom of the world.
For all that, it is perhaps the lack of ‘sporting excitement’ in the whole venture – with no push to be first to the South Pole – that fails to grip the imagination of the public. Though Masson takes it upon himself to write to nearly 500 of the wealthiest graziers in Australia, the net result is just ‘one promise of £20, two to consider the matter … and one promise of fresh meat’,9 though this is countered somewhat by small amounts that continue to drip in from some of the more humble members of the public.
After Professor David addresses a gathering at Sydney Town Hall, he shortly after opens a letter addressed to him in which he finds two £1 postal notes, signed simply, ‘Sydney Girl’.10 Equally impressive, from another field, that well-known Melbourne girl, the great Nellie Melba, contributes £100.
The truly big money, however, is always going to come less from the public at large than from the public purse – and on this front things are going better. In what is now Mawson’s home state of South Australia, the premier commits £5000 for the expedition, while Victoria goes to £6000 and New South Wales to £7000. After a meeting in Melbourne Town Hall chaired by Governor General Lord Denman, attended by the prime minister, the Hon. Andrew Fisher, the leader of the opposition, the Hon. Alfred Deakin and many other dignitaries, the Commonwealth Government commits £5000, just as they did for the Shackleton expedition. And, after representations by Lord Denman, the British Government commits £2000.
25 April 1911, London, Mawson’s ideas take flight
In the absence of her husband, Kathleen Scott has remained a deeply involved member of the polar community. On this day, she writes to her Australian friend Douglas Mawson, whom she has corresponded with since meeting him early the previous year.
Dear Dr Mawson,
I believe I can help you about aeroplanes. Think you can do far better than Blériot if you mean to take a monoplane. There is a machine that the Vickers people have bought which is infinitely more stable, heavier and more solid and will carry more weight. Its cost is £1000 but I think it could be worked to get it for £700 or even less … being sincerely. Kathleen Scott
Suggest yourself for lunch any day or dinner if you let me know before.11
Mawson immediately follows up, as the Vickers sounds like exactly the modern machine he needs to capture the public’s imagination. It is with a similar passion – to be on the prow of modernity – that Mawson has decided to pioneer radio communications within, and from, Antarctica. It was only a little under a decade earlier – 1902 – that Marconi demonstrated it was possible to communicate via radio over long distances, and Mawson is determined that his expedition will have the state-of-the art equipment so that all three bases on Antarctica will be able to communicate with each other. The base will be at Macquarie Island, which will be a relay radio station to Hobart, and from there to all the world.
Late April 1911, London, Mawson and Davis find a vessel for their dreams
There is good news, and there is better news. Davis has found a whaler just made to go to the Antarctic with.
Yes, Aurora – a steam yacht – is over 30 years old, having been built in Glasgow in 1876 for whaling in the northern seas, but she is solid and superbly designed for the task set for her. Her oak hull gives her great elasticity should the ice press in upon her, while her greenheart hardwood sheathing will enable her to withstand whatever abrasion she will encounter from butting up against the jagged edges of ice floes. For the heavy work of breaking through the pack ice, the ‘cutwaters’ of the acutely sloped and overhanging bow are protected by iron plates, allowing the ship to rise above any ice impediment before crushing it down.
The ship’s power is provided by a coal-fired steam engine – helped by sails to allow the coal to be burnt only frugally and to act as insurance should the coal run out – capable of driving her at up to ten knots. At 165 feet long, 30 feet wide and 18 feet deep, she is capable of carrying over 600 tons: 150 tons of cargo and three times as much in coal.
Not least important is the reasonable price – Davis advises she can be purchased for just £6000, less than half the original asking price.
1 May 1911, London, Mawson rattles the tin
The key problem that Mawson and Davis have after they sign the contract to buy Aurora is actually having the ready cash. Their fund-raising efforts to this point have simply not produced the money they need.
Enter Sir Ernest Shackleton, who, just when they need him most, at last comes good. It is courtesy of his intervention that Mawson succeeds in gaining an audience with the greatest media magnate of his day, Lord Northcliffe, of Amalgamated Press Company, the owner of the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and The Times. Lord Northcliffe is made up in fairly even parts of acute business acumen, diverse passions, huge generosity of spirit and an enormous appetite for work. On the parquet floor of his home’s lounge room lies the skin of a massive polar bear, shot and skinned on the Jackson–Harmsworth Polar Expedition to the Arctic that Northcliffe sponsored. However, more often than not he is to be found here in his spacious and elegantly appointed office in Fleet Street’s Carmelite House. This is where Mawson has come to make his pitch.
Ahem. If the good lord could just front them for £12,000, they would have the bulk of the money they need to purchase a ship, fit it out and buy the first of the specialist supplies and equipment they require. And the Daily Mail, with a circulation of well over a million copies, could have the newspaper rights to the story once they have completed their journey.12
Northcliffe hears out Mawson’s plans. It is his view that that sort of money could be raised from the readers of the Daily Mail in as little as two days, but he needs to be sure. It is out of the question for the paper to push it and then be associated with failure. After more discussion and more assurances, Lord Northcliffe agrees to publish an appeal within his pages for support of Mawson’s venture.
2 May 1911, Cape Evans, Scott’s men hunker down as winter approaches
There are strange soccer games and there are strange soccer games, but this, this, surely is one of the strangest of them all. For on this morning, on a ‘pitch’ marked out the previous day on the badly cracked sea ice not far from the hut, two teams, captained by Oates and Tryggve Gran – who is good enough to have played in Norway’s first international match, against Sweden, even if they did lose 11–3 – go up against each other.
The players include the Canadian Silas Wright, who has only ever played ice hockey; Griffith Taylor, whose own sport is ‘rugger’ and is bemused to find the rules of soccer so different; Anton, the five foot nothing Russian groom who has likely never seen a soccer ball let alone kicked one; a laughing Captain Scott himself; and two of the biggest men in the navy, Tom Crean – an extremely capable Irishman, raised on a farm in County Kerry before joining the British Royal Navy – and Taffy Evans, a noted Welsh player. All of them find breathing difficult in the biting wind at a temperature of ten degrees below, but it is a great deal of fun, with much high hilarity interspersed with many solid falls on the terrifyingly slippery surface, one of which causes a serious knee injury to Frank Debenham.
Nevertheless, both teams play like German bands, with their enthusiasm matched only by the amount of noise they generate. The two stars of the show prove to be Atch Atkinson and Tryggve Gran, though it is widely agreed that the real winner on the day is the blizzard that springs up just after half-time.
With that howling wind behind you, even a small kick on the icy surface can go a very long way … including right into the goal, allowing one team to beat the other like a red-headed stepson and go to an unassailable 3–0 lead. The other side gives no quarter, but so freezing are the conditions, so powerful the wind, that it is decided that 20-minute halves are quite sufficient and the two teams finally leave the pitch shaking with cold but deeply satisfied, resolving to have a return bout.13
8 May 1911 and a month thereafter, London, Mawson and Davis receive good news
On this delightful spring morning, as London produces all too rarely, Mawson and Davis excitedly purchase the first edition of the Daily Mail to see on page nine, boldly emblazoned and running almost the entire length of the column, an open letter from Sir Ernest Shackleton addressed to the editor, beneath the headline:
AN APPEAL FROM SIR E. SHACKLETON
THE AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION
A DEBT OF HONOUR
Sir – Will you allow me, through your columns, to make an appeal on behalf of the Australian Antarctic expedition under the command of my old comrade Dr Douglas Mawson?14
Shackleton begins by reminding the reader how much Australia has done, ‘financially and otherwise’, for polar exploration, particularly his own expedition and that currently being undertaken by Scott. Australia is now set to send out her own expedition, ‘to draw back further the veil that shrouds the greatest unknown area of our world’.
As there is a propitious gathering in London of many of the good and the great from all over the British Empire for the coronation of George V on the 22nd day of the following month, and they will be all plumped up on imperial pride and pageantry, Shackleton makes a well-aimed appeal to them. For how could men of the Empire forget that the fine man Mawson – with his bountiful academic credentials and extraordinary abilities as an explorer – was a member of that three-man party who raised Queen Alexandra’s Union Jack at the South Magnetic Pole? It was the greatest unsupported sledge journey the world has known, north or south! Shackleton knows from experience that Britons can and will be counted upon:
The Australian expedition has its sentimental side. We are as anxious today as we have ever been that Britons shall keep their place in the vanguard of Polar exploration. For these reasons I appeal with confidence to the British nation to come to the aid of Australasia in this great enterprise.
ERNEST SHACKLETON
Cheques should be addressed to the Editor, The Daily Mail, Carmelite House, E.C.15
And that is just the beginning. For the next two days, posters appear all over London proclaiming ‘£6,000 WANTED TODAY!’, backed by favourable editorials imploring readers to do the right thing, all while the editor of the paper, Thomas Marlowe, is quietly contacting leading businessmen in England and Australia to ask them to contribute.
The response to Sir Ernest’s appeal is ‘instant and magnificent’, an overwhelming overnight success. The following day, the Daily Mail reports that by 7 pm the previous evening a staggering £6000 has been pledged in donations large and small, half of the total sum called for. The largest single donation to date is £2500 (the same amount donated to Scott’s Terra Nova expedition) by Sir Anthony Hordern of the well-known Sydney emporium.16
Yet not everyone gets misty-eyed at the thought of Mawson, an Australian, receiving British financial support. For no sooner has the appeal appeared than Edgar Speyer, treasurer of the British Antarctic Expedition, and Sir Clements Markham KCB write to all the newspapers in protest. They thunder that because the Terra Nova expedition – currently being undertaken by Captain Scott, whom they characterise as the ‘founder of the Antarctic Land’ – is still short by £8000 to £10,000 in its funding, that is precisely where British people’s money should be invested.
This, Speyer and Sir Clements vociferously proclaim, is before:
new schemes are taken up and funds are diverted from the patriotic objectives which are now in the course of our tried explorer. One important expedition ought to be provided for before any appeal from promoters of any other scheme is listened to, which is intended to divert support from a well-equipped expedition actually in being.17
In response, the editor writes that while they are happy to run this above letter in their pages, the intention of Scott’s ‘unmannerly sponsors’ is clear: ‘It appears to us extremely ungracious, in view of the generous support which Captain Scott as well as Sir Ernest Shackleton had received from the Australian Government and people.’18
Fortunately, the churlishness of Edgar Speyer and Sir Clements Markham appears to have next to no effect, as the required money is raised within a week, together with many British firms promising a vast array of standard and specialised foodstuffs free.
As the Daily Mail notes: ‘We imagine as to cigars, cigarettes, and tobacco, owing to the generosity of the British-American Tobacco Company and Messrs Sandorides, the expedition will be able to smoke to their hearts’ content without coming to the end of their stock.’19 No doubt a good part of this largesse is stimulated by the fact their product names will be freely advertised when Mawson’s stores go on display at the Imperial Exhibition, Crystal Palace, the following week, but Mawson is no less grateful because of it.
Overcome by the tide of British generosity, he now writes to the Daily Mail editor on his own behalf:
Sir,
Please allow me to thank the readers of the Daily Mail and Sir Ernest Shackleton for the magnificent effort which has resulted, in less than a week, in the supply of so large a sum of money and so great an amount of stores for myself and my companions in our forthcoming Antarctic expedition.
With renewed thanks,
Yours faithfully,
DOUGLAS MAWSON20
Most importantly though, the Mawson expedition now has the money it needs to actually pay for the ship it has already bought. The next major task is to continue recruiting the rest of the crew, and to that end an advertisement is placed in Northcliffe’s London papers by Captain Davis on 7 June 1911.
Happily, the applicants come from far and wide. Such is the glamour of polar exploration at this time – to go where Scott and Shackleton have been! – that Davis is soon besieged by young and adventurous seamen seeking a position. He holds the interviews aboard Aurora and is soon well on his way to filling his roster for the ship, while most of the shore party will come from interviews with young scientists and the like in Australia.
Early June 1911, Adelaide, Paquita awaits
Meanwhile, Paquita waits at home, meeting the postman daily in the street for the longed-for latest letter from her beloved fiancé. Although Mawson is a devoted correspondent, because of obvious delays in receiving seamail Paquita receives her most up-to-date information regarding Mawson’s current activities through the press.
Her Douglas, she finds, is continuing apace in London making preparations for the expedition. He is recruiting new expedition members, tirelessly meeting a whole range of Antarctic experts, courting the rich and influential for further funds and seemingly working on a dozen fronts at once.
6 June 1911, Cape Evans, Scott celebrates
It has been another good ‘day’ and night, the two blending into each other almost seamlessly, as it is only the intensity of the darkness that varies. On this evening, Captain Scott is particularly content as he fills out his daily journal and reviews the productive day. A moment earlier, he stepped outside to see that ‘the moon has emerged from behind the mountain and sails across the cloudless northern sky; the wind has fallen and the scene is glorious …’21
Today, he and his crew have celebrated his 43rd birthday with an immense decorated cake, which they devoured at lunch, followed not long afterwards by a special celebratory dinner, where they enjoyed excellent seal soup, roast mutton and redcurrant jelly, fruit salad, asparagus and chocolate. ‘After this luxurious meal everyone was very festive and amiably argumentative,’ Scott records in his diary.22
Ah, but soft now. For as he writes, he pauses for a moment to take it all in. In the nearby dark room, he can hear one group passionately discussing political matters, while a few others lingering at the dinner table are divided over the origin of matter, while and yet another group debate military matters. As Scott listens in, the individual snatches of conversation sometimes meld together in most ludicrous fashion. True, such debates rarely have any conclusive ‘winners’ but they give a great deal of pleasure to all involved, most particularly when one man or t’other imagines he has at least been triumphant in making a particular point, if not necessarily winning the whole debate. Scott sums up: ‘They are boys, all of them, but such excellent good-natured ones; there has been no sign of sharpness or anger, no jarring note, in all these wordy contests! All end with a laugh.’23
Not that there is not plenty of work for them to do, for all that, in their preparations for their forthcoming sledging journeys. One of the most important of these is overseen by Oates – to try to get the ponies, most of which appear to be little more than skin and bones, in as good a shape as possible for the severe trial that awaits them. It is obvious that the bitter cold of the Antarctic winter and their depot-laying journey have entirely worn them out, and they seem to always be starving.
In an effort to put some meat on their bones, give them some strength, Oates tries giving the nags extra supplies of food to go with their compressed fodder – a mixture of oilcake and oats, which was intended to be saved for the polar journey itself but which Oates feels they now must get immediately.
The other factor is ensuring that the ponies get exercise, and at Oates’s behest Scott orders all those who are going on the forthcoming trips to daily take one pony out on a small walk in the darkness, weather permitting. And yet, if the men meet this task with a certain level of reluctance, it is more than matched by the reluctance of the ponies themselves to venture out in the freezing conditions, and they all too frequently lash out with their hind hooves against any living target foolish enough to come within range.
Early June 1911, London, Mawson’s ship is fitted out
From the moment Aurora arrives at South West India Docks on the Thames – where she is to undergo an extensive overhaul and refit in preparation for a new phase of her career – Douglas Mawson is impressed with her roominess, among other things. ‘With the Aurora,’ he exults, ‘I believe Shackleton would have reached the pole. So cramped were the conditions [on Nimrod] that from that cause alone he lost several ponies.’24
Not that the ship doesn’t need a lot of modifications before becoming the specialist exploring vessel Mawson needs, capable of travelling as far south as any. She must become a ‘barquentine’, powered by both sail and steam, capable of travelling vast distances to get to the frozen continent then quickly manoeuvring through the pack ice under her own power – and still capable of sailing away if she runs out of coal.
New accommodation quarters are constructed for the crew on the below deck, with a new foremast fitted. Sails – a sine qua non on Antarctic voyages – are stowed to take advantage of the region’s westerly winds and economise on coal but perhaps more importantly included as an alternative means of propulsion should the propeller become inoperable as it punches away through the pack ice – a real possibility.
Now, as she is a ship devoted to pure scientific endeavour, two laboratories are conveniently located on the upper deck, and to assist the scientists in their endeavours steam is laid on to a forward steam-windlass to be used for manipulating the deep-sea dredging-cable. As she is to spend much of her time well sealed up against the cruel Antarctic weather, particular attention is given to ventilation throughout. For the purposes of having both a sure supply of fresh water and emergency ballast, six large water tanks are installed in the bottom of the hold.
After the refit is complete, the specialist equipment and supplies that Mawson and Davis obtained in England are loaded aboard, including no fewer than 3000 cases of stores and 48 Greenland sledge dogs of various shapes and sizes (arranged through the Danish Government). As to the motor launch and wireless station masts, they, along with other equipment, are being built in Sydney and will be loaded when Aurora reaches Hobart.
As they all work away together, the likes of Ninnis and Mertz and the other new recruits get to know Mawson, at least a little, for the first time, even as they come to understand a little of the excitement of what awaits them.
‘I can hardly believe that I am off on a Polar Expedition,’ Ninnis records in his diary with enormous enthusiasm. ‘[Mawson is] a splendid fellow. He is quiet and a scientist all over; also a gentleman, ditto. My respect for him increases daily.’25
Late June 1911, South West India Docks, Aurora receives a fragrant visitor
It is an immutable natural law, since time immemorial, that when a beautiful woman comes among sweaty, working men, every man is instantly aware of her attractiveness and his own unworthiness. So it is on the day when the great Anna Pavlova, the famously accomplished and beautiful Russian ballerina – who first came to major fame, by the by, when she was playing the title role in the famed ballet Paquita – sweeps aboard Aurora, shimmering success, fame and beauty all in one.
A friend of the all but equally internationally renowned Australian opera soprano Nellie Melba, Pavlova met Mawson during the London social season and accepted his invitation to visit the ship with the wonderful name. (As an eight-year-old growing up in St Petersburg, she was stunned when she first saw Sleeping Beauty performed and dreamt of one day growing up to dance just like Princess Aurora – a dream she has recently realised.)
She is gracious to one and all, charming them with her poise and beauty. To Mawson, she gives a small silk doll,26 to the totally smitten Ninnis, a signed photograph, which he clasps to his chest like the Crown jewels. To all, a few words and a smile …
It is hard to tell, but perhaps the thing that pleases her most is a panting young husky bitch, all slobbering tongue and thick fur, which she picks up and fondles. Forevermore, this husky is known as Pavlova in her honour. Soon enough, the dancer is gone, but her memory lingers far longer than the delicious waft of perfume she trails behind her, and all feel deeply honoured to have received such a visit from such a lady.
One other episode that is particularly touching to Davis occurs at around this time …
As captain of a ship going to Antarctica, he receives an invitation from James Young Buchanan, who 39 years earlier went to Antarctica himself aboard the first steam-powered vessel inside the Antarctic Circle, HMS Challenger, as a physicist. This dear old gentleman respectfully requests Davis’s company at a dinner at his home in Norfolk Street, where he would like him to meet two other men who were on the same voyage, Sir John Murray and Admiral George Richard Bethell of the Royal Navy.
Davis accepts, and at the end of the ‘delightful and memorable evening’27 – dining in an exquisitely furnished room where the light from the roaring fire dances upon the gleaming silverware along with the light from the shaded candles upon the table – after discussing the events of the old days and the plans of Davis for the new days, Mr Buchanan calls for the butler.
Very good, sir, yes, sir, of course, sir.
Shortly thereafter, the butler returns with an old bottle of Madeira, at which point the host of the dinner, savouring the moment, warmly commands him, with no little ceremony, ‘Open the Challenger Madeira!’28
This particular vintage, he explains to Davis, was first bought on a stopover at the island of Madeira on their way to the Antarctic in 1872, and it is only ever brought out for such special occasions as this. Joined by his two old shipmates, Mr Buchanan then raises his glass and the party drink a toast to the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911 and to its leader, Dr Douglas Mawson.
It is a wonderfully kind gesture, deeply appreciated by Davis, the more so when, a few days later, two bottles of that same Madeira arrive at the Aurora, with a note suggesting they should be opened when Dr Mawson reaches Antarctica.