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

the trouser problem was not yet solved; they “were sending some trousers with the
next ship”! After a trouserless year that would be a good thing. For use with the dory
there were oilskins and rubber thigh boots (but unfortunately they leaked and we
had no repair outfit - so we seldom used them)!
We had long narrow cross country skis with Kandahar bindings but no metal
edges. We also had a primitive six foot Army sledge, with wooden runners that had
to be frequently primed with Stockholm tar to reduce friction and preserve them.
We also had a bivvy tent in our supplies which, when we unpacked it, turned out to
be very flimsy, with inadequate flimsy bamboo poles, and a mosquito netting
ventilator.
Other equipment. The standard of equipment supplied at our first relief in December
l948 was also very much better than we found on our arrival. Our boat was a small
Newfoundland ‘dory’. In my first year's equipment requests I put in for an outboard
motor for coastal journeys and it actually arrived. A classic ‘Seagull’, it was
uncomplicated and ran very well; I had a lot of experience with the same make on
the River Exe Survey in the summer of l947 before I left home. I was hoping to make
some crossings with it to the south coast of Coronation Island for seal and penguin
census counts, and topographical survey.
We had a number of guns in the armory (actually a rack in one corner): .303 rifles,
.22 rifles, 12-bore shotgun, .45 revolvers. After cleaning the 12-bore we found that the
.303s were all in very bad order. The barrels could not have been cleaned at all last
year and so we gave them the boiling water treatment.
We had three ice chisels for testing the safety of the sea ice and for digging fishing
and sounding holes in the sea-ice. They were simply six foot poles with a chisel like
piece of iron attached to one end.
Daily life and work on base: In April 1948 there was a very long message from Dr Fuchs
about ration scales and a request for demands for stores to be in by 7 May. The food
scale had been reduced, as London was intimating that there was to be a cut in the
budget. It was better that changes should be as requested by the bases rather than
arbitrary cuts in London Office. We spent a number of evenings going through stores
lists and working on stores demands, but at the beginning of May we were still
making out yet more lists. I had had some queries, but no reply to my messages as
yet, which was holding up the stores requisition lists. Ralph sent lists for
transmission to London, also listing missing stores (expected but not received) for the
year.
One of my official duties was to act as Postmaster, responding to philatelists’
orders. Ralph helped me by typing terse notes about the ‘regulations’ to send to
importunate stamp collectors. To one chap who said, as a civil servant, that
regulations could easily be circumvented I wrote a stiff letter. Others who had sent
magazines etc or were decent enough to write a pleasant letter I also sent a covering
note. This kept Ralph and me at work until 3.0 am some nights. As the ‘Civil
authority’, I also received a diverse post-bag of letters that in a larger community
would have gone to the Local Council. There were enquiries about the population
(reply “3 men and 100,000 penguins"), public health ("inadequate"), local industries
("arts and crafts") and so on.
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