Forgotten Footprints by John Harrison

Author:John Harrison [John Harrison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908946218
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2012-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

The season was growing late, and they were anxious to push south, leaving Laurie Island at noon to steam south west; by 21:00 they were laid to, in heavy ice. Next day it was so dense at 07:00 that further progress would only be possible by burning precious coal. Captain Robertson turned north-west, the only direction in which there was still loose ice; even so, some of it was fifteen to twenty feet thick. They followed the pack roughly along the line of latitude 60°S but by mid-month they had inched their way back into the pack as far as 62°S and now sailed between the wakes of Ross and Weddell.

On 18 February they crossed the Antarctic Circle in open sea; at times no ice was visible. It was eighty years ago to the day that a little west of there James Weddell had made his famous farthest south in an ice-less sea, at 74°15´S. They hoped to go beyond Weddell’s farthest south by Sunday, but progress immediately slowed: ‘We made little southing next day, owing to the increasing tightness of the pack, which Captain Robertson did not consider expedient to negotiate.’ It was five years since de Gerlache had been trapped, and it was at the forefront of their minds: ‘Any mistake now would finish our work for the season, and we had no wish to repeat the experiences of the Belgica and drift helplessly about all winter, frozen up in a sea of shifting ice.’

Reading early accounts it is interesting what attracts their interest. Those who journey to the interior soon quit the ocean and wildlife, so accounts of attempts on the pole are all about snow and ice conditions, weather, navigation, logistics and the health of men and animals. For them, sea voyages are just the parentheses around the real business of the trip. But The Voyage of the Scotia is written by three ship-based scientists and they are very good at describing the sea ice that controls their movement and safety. Because they observe closely, the writing is vivid. The following passage tells you sea-water freezes in a way you would never imagine:

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