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

silver fish, perhaps 4-5 ft long was splashing about, plunging out of the water to
fall on its belly. I took it to be a bonito, although based on no scientific
identification; it just conformed to my preformed picture of the species. Duties
over I sat reading the ‘Voyage of the Beagle’ in the scorching hot sun. A
rehearsal for ‘HMS John Biscoe’ after lunch; a discussion on flags; and Pat
(Toynbee) organised a surprise entertainment. Each of us had to talk
impromptu for two minutes on a subject drawn from a hat; these ranged from
"The sex life of the bull frog" to "Do barmaids eat their young?" Dudley (Beves),
our ‘Times’ newspaper correspondent, appeared in his hat to great amusement
and by unanimouis demand he talked on "The importance of being Ernest".
The steering mechanism continued to break down at intervals all day;
apparently the switch on the automatic steering engine had broken. For much
of the day the hand-steering apparatus was in use - very hard work. On the
bridge Ken (Blaiklock) who was on watch pointed out the various stars and
constellations to me; he was a surveyor. Next day was my turn again as a galley
(kitchen) slave, so there wasn't much to record. In the afternoon Ken (Pawson)
gave a talk on Astronomy. He began with the sun, described sunspot cycles
and went on to discuss their magnetic effects, leading to the question of auroras.
Finally came comets and meteor showers and in the ensuing discussion we
dealt with the effect of sunspots on radio waves. Our group was the source of
much eclectic knowledge.
There was a glorious sunset, which defied description, but I'll try. On a
backcloth of the most delicate pastel shades of turquoise, yellow and red, was
superimposed a radiating system of feathered altostratus cloud. Where these
met a pattern of cumulus, coloured incandescent copper-gold, emerged. As we
watched the colours became suffused more and more with crimson and the
shadowed parts with deep purple; the sea was reddish-purple also.
For me 30 December was a day of leisure and I spent the morning reading
in the sun. There were now many flying fish scudding away from the ship; the
first sign of their presence was a series of white splashes in the trough of a wave
- caused not by the wind, but by the passage of a small flock of these creatures.
When they emerged from the water they looked just like large metallic-blue
dragonflies, some travelling for 20 or 30 feet in the air before being
overwhelmed by a wave. There was a strong wind, lashing the sea into a fury
of spray. The sun shining on the breaking waves gave rise to many small
rainbows, which looked incredibly beautiful against the dark Prussian blue of
the sea. The afternoon passed in much the same way, save for a definite feeling
of thirst - due to the fact that the water tanks were empty! The distilling
apparatus was not working properly and there would be no relief until we
reached St Vincent the following morning. Only two birds were seen. In the
morning a small brown petrel with white rump; it had a bat-like flight and was
probably a Madeiran (or Leach's) fork-tailed petrel. Later, from the stern David
(Dalgleish) and I saw a similar bird, but the wings seemed to be shorter and I
was struck by the resemblance to a sand martin, remarked on by E.A.Wilson in
describing Wilson's storm petrel.
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