Part III: Antarctica and Academe - Scott Polar Research Institute

ship at N9 on Friday, when it sailed, and had taken 21/2 days (61 hrs) on the 40 mile
journey including 36 hrs camped only 11/2 miles from base. They found that their
battery was flat when they tried to start up again, so they had walked that last 11/2
miles!
The Bransfield had 15 ft of snow on the decks, which had blown off the shelf.
They were shoveling the snow off in an attempt to clear the forward hatches and
although the cliffs there are 30 ft high and level with the boat deck, unloading was
impossible. The initial mistake this year was not to do a closer reconnaissance of the
coast before moving to N9. But then Stuart felt it was a last resort, so probably
would not have used the present berth anyway! At 5 o’clock three vehicles set off for
N9 to bring in the remaining sledges and move the caboose. The party included the
Bowen IH (Etchells/Rutherford), the Rothera snowcat (Hurley/Main) and the keg
(Allman/Quinn). At 8.30 pm two vehicles set off for the ship - the Halley snocat
(Turner/Hogg), and the small Adelaide Snowcat (Johnson), taking three passengers.
After dinner Eric and I had a long talk with Ernie Thornley (incoming BC) to discuss
the various points that needed emphasizing. I lent Luiz a copy of the BAS BC
Manual. Then there was the usual talk around the bar and to bed at midnight.
Conditions were at last improving; it was another dull day, but workable. One
vehicle returned from the ship with cargo: the outward journey had taken four
hours, including laying drums (to mark a route), and inward journey 13/4 hrs. At
9.30 am Alec Hurley was back and Andy Allman from N9 reported that the low shelf
had cut back another 50 yards. Etchells was on his way back from N9 with the IH
towing two sledges of fuel/general cargo and the caboose. Only three sledges now
remained there - two of fuel and one of Armco steel. It was reported that yesterday a
piece of shelf broke away a little to the north of Bransfield; it was 400 x 200 metres in
area! I spent the morning up top, unloading cargo and stacking it on the dumps.
The temperature was just about freezing and conditions deteriorated as we worked.
Essentially, it was a matter of towing the loaded sledges to the dumps with snowcat
or IH and unloading boxes marked '1401 etc onto the '1400' dump, 1301 etc. to the
'1300' dump and so on. They were general stores of all descriptions: including very
heavy tins of bolts for the armco, steel tubing and angle iron, plywood sheets and
boxes of all shapes and sizes.
This took us up to lunchtime. Afterwards we had some excitement round about
2.30 pm; I was talking on the radio with Stuart about plans when he said "Ooooh!"
and broke off the conversation. We learnt that a piece of shelf to which the ship was
moored had broken back 40 ft and fallen on her. Fortunately no one was working on
deck, but the bulwarks had been bent, lines and deadmen lost. The snow was by
now level with the fo'csle, except where they had dug it out. So Bransfield had to cast
off and Stuart was appraising the situation before possibly setting out for N9 again;
all was again fluid. While we were talking about this setback the second vehicle
arrived back from the ship with Steve Norris, David Smith and two mess boys and
others. Only one sledge remained at Precious Bay by now. I had a message from
Garrick Grikurov (a Russian geologist and an ‘Honorary Fid’, because he had spent a
winter at Deception Island base). He asked whether we planned to visit the Russian
base Druzhnaya. I replied, explaining that we had no firm plans owing to the
difficulties over a bad relief. In the evening there was yet another film - "All the Way
Up", a comedy which was quite welcome in our situation.
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