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

year. In May 1949 I pursued the prospect of a year at South Georgia and a message
from Sec Fids asked for a new scientific requisition list, assuming I would be working
there next season. This looked promising and I compiled a list, including camping
equipment. On 19 May Ralph came up on R/T and we had a short session; he had
not yet made up his mind about a third year. I had another message about stores
requisitions for South Georgia in June. On 17 August Ralph and I had another long
talk about South Georgia; he would definitely like to join me there if possible.
I sent a signal to Fuchs seeking his views, and on 24 August there was a message
in from Bill Sladen, from UK: He said opinion at Cambridge was divided as to
whether I should go directly to South Georgia for a third year. Would I prefer a break
of 6 months at Cambridge before South Georgia? This was followed by a message
from Fuchs, saying that it wouldn't be possible for Ralph to have third year. Then
early in September a signal came from Ken Butler: Bill had contacted Professor James
Gray (Zoology) who recommended my return to Cambridge provided I could go to
South Georgia in October l950; Sydney Smith was away and he required my final
decision. I sent off the necessary reply proposing to return to Cambridge. On 15
September a message came from Ken Butler, saying that Sydney Smith had
established there would be accommodation for me in Cambridge and confirming the
South Georgia move. All seemed to be working out well. There was some further
information on 22 October, when John had a long session on R/T with Ralph:
apparently Danny Borland and Gordon ‘Widger’ Stock, two meteorologists, were to
have been my companions in South Georgia had I gone there direct.
On 12 May John and I worked on the extra generator hut and got about half the
framework erected. Next day John and Charlie carried on with the construction, but
it was not until 6 June that John, Derek and I finally felted the new hut. It looked a
scrappy job but was weatherproof and we had been handicapped all along by lack of
decent wood – our projects had previously ‘cannibalized’ all that was available on
our island!
Initially we operated the two new 4-cyclinder Coventry Climax 1.5 KW engines to
generate our electricity and had no difficulties maintaining regular radio
communications over the early winter months, but then we ran into serious
communications problems for the rest of the year. The problem was that, although
we now had two functional, new generators, they were really too big for our needs
and consumed much, much more fuel than the old ones – a serious oversight and
handicap. John realized this a little late, but tried an alternative approach in June
when, as a fuel economy measure, he ran one of these generators on two cylinders
and reckoned that it used only half the petrol needed on all four cylinders. However,
it still used far more than the smaller machines. So we were concerned about
running out of fuel if we used them as planned and turned our attention again to the
old ones, to minimize consumption – we didn't want to go off the air again.
We persevered with the old models, particularly the 500 watt Reliance, which was
the most economic on fuel – when it functioned! At the end of May, to keep it going,
John decided he had to fit new piston rings, but it still refused to work. He spent
another evening trying to get it going and a few days later, after struggling with both
old generators, he got the small one going for an afternoon Ob. I assisted in the
evening when we managed to start the larger one as well. In early June he was still
having problems, working on the generators off and on. (One evening I was
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