Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

stove. A galvanized hip bath was a silly little contraption and only held part of me at
a time, then overflowed! Still it was usually a pleasant relaxation to have a bath
again, although one attracted surprisingly little dirt. It wasn't so pleasant though in a
cold spell, when icy draughts came up through the floor boards. In fact during the
winter, if we spilt any water on the floor it froze, because there was no insulation. So
it was good to slip into bed after a doubtfully hot bath to warm up again.
The other buildings. The other buildings were a shed divided into generator room and
meteorological store, where hydrogen was chemically generated for the met balloons
(a dangerous activity; fortunately in the second year we had cylinders of hydrogen
gas, heavy to move around). We erected a two-seater privy. There was a standard
Nissen hut, rather the worse for wear and painted red. In it we kept our food and
chandlery stores, ropes, blocks etc., sledges, skis, clothing and spare bedding, and all
sorts of other stuff. It was like a cross between a very primitive and untidy general
store in a small village and a junk store. Because the base was undermanned we
‘rather let it go.’ But we spent much time patching it up and filling in gaps in the
structure with wood or tow. When there was a blizzard, which was quite often
except in summer, fine drift snow tended to accumulate inside, dusting the contents
with white; and after the worst storms we had to dig out deep drifts.
On the shore near the point stood a red-painted wooden hut, erected by the
whaling company as an explosives store, which still contained explosives – powder,
charges and detonators. We opened one of the tins to see whether the powder had
deteriorated, laid a train and had quite a reasonable puff. It must have lain there over
twenty years and was still effective. This hut was very well constructed, more
weatherproof then our base, and would serve well as an emergency hut if necessary
(in the case of fire or other damage to our main hut). But the explosives were of no
use to us, so in the second year Charlie and I spent some time disposing of them; we
cut a hole in the ice some way offshore, sledged the boxes across to it and dumped
them in the sea.
Clothing. On the whole the clothing for our first year was inadequate by normal
standards. For general wear about the base we had khaki battledress (serge and
tropical action rig – the latter was windproof), naval work suits (as overalls), sea boot
stockings and socks, long winter drawers and vests, string vests (knitted from real
string), striped pyjamas, scratchy army shirts which improved with washing, etc. No
handkerchiefs were provided and during the second year I found myself just about
out of them. Towels were provided. For winter wear there were Labrador pattern
anoraks (windproof outer and blanket inner with puppy skin trimmings to the
hood), and windproof overtrousers, ‘Scapa scanties’ (a naval term for heavy knitted
woolen long John drawers), sealskin boots, stiff leather boots, duffel slippers and
leather gloves with duffel inners. None of our clothing was waterproof, except heavy
oilskins and sou'westers (oilskin fishermen's hats).
But there were serious deficiencies. A major problem was that when we first went
down, FIDS’ policy was to hold stocks of clothing on each base, and issue items to
base members as needed. Unfortunately the stocks of clothing at Signy when we
arrived were minimal, particularly the large sizes. Trousers were in especially short
supply and, in a message sent out within two weeks of arriving, I requested Dr
148