Lucy and I are currently onsite at Captain Scott’s 1910 expedition base at Cape Evans where we are working alongside conservation carpenters Gord, Gene and Martin and programme manager Al.

A large part of this season’s work programme is carrying out structural repairs to the stables and latrine area which have been previously damaged due to extreme snow loading.

Captain Scott’s 1910 base at Cape Evans. The stables and latrine area are in the foreground. © Antarctic Heritage Trust

This has meant emptying the space of all objects to allow unrestricted access to floors, walls and roof. One of the larger objects needing temporary removal was a small stove which would have been fuelled by seal blubber and used by Captain Oates and the others to cook mash for the ponies and pemmican for the dogs.

The stove in use in the stables around 1911 © Scott Polar Research Institute

The stove was resting on the top of a fire-pit; an area distinguished by the arrangement of house bricks into a low wall, and containing a heap of scoria (small pebbles of volcanic rock which surrounds the area), ash, stove parts and associated material. This again had to be carefully deconstructed and moved - a simple enough task until you add ice into the equation!

The stove itself was relatively straightforward to lift out, but the stove base and other parts were firmly welded into frozen scoria. With the aid of melting hoses this was thawed, and Lucy was able to excavate the buried sections.

Fran looking glam in her conservation gear © Antarctic Heritage Trust

I then had the task of conserving the parts. Both the stove and its base were in poor condition. It would seem that corrosion had already set in while the stove was still in use, meaning that each time the metal was heated, the corrosion crust got harder. Rust usually forms in layers that are relatively easy to scrape away from the surface, but the resulting deterioration in this instance was a corrosion formation more deeply penetrated, like barnacles on a rock.

As I was chipping away at some collected debris in the recessed trough at the bottom of the vessel, I noticed a distinct colour variation. I presumed I had found some droplets of metal ore, and therefore evidence of metalwork being done on the stove. I was somewhat embarrassed when I explained my ‘find’ to project manager Al, who picked up a piece of scoria from the ground and proceeded to scrub at it, producing the same gold colour! I had previously had no idea that the volcanic stones had metallic properties.

Up close and personal - Fran working on the stove © Antarctic Heritage Trust

Conserving the stove base was a whole other story! The hardened corrosion and subsequent uneven surface was much the same; the problem here was blubber! Seal blubber had obviously been used as fuel and the whole lower section was caked in encrusted fat. There was even a house brick wedged between the front two legs, held fast by the built up blubber. This meant that the conservation needed to be done as quickly as possible, as the thermal hoses and summer sun were melting the external layers of blubber, turning it into a runny gooey mess with the consistency of tar, (and not the most pleasant smell either!).

Once treated the stove base proved to be a real gem. The iron legs are highly decorative with scrolled casting and claw feet that couldn’t be seen previously under the compacted blubber layers. The standard of the craftsmanship of such a utilitarian object as a stove base being yet another example of the quality of many of the items the explorers brought with them.

While we were still at Scott Base I had the opportunity to get a skidoo licence, and after some training, I was let loose on the open roads. At first I was a little hesitant on the throttle; the bike seat is sheltered by nothing more than a plastic windscreen so the feeling of being exposed and of the wind gusting past your face certainly makes you very aware of the speed you are travelling. To start with I was driving with all the pace and style of a granny behind the wheel of a motorised electric shopping scooter!

Franny the Stig on the grid! © Antarctic Heritage Trust

After an hour or so I finally relaxed into the feel of the machine and felt confident to really put some welly into it - and it was amazing!! The route that we had taken took us into the foot-slopes of Mount Erebus, to a spot known as ‘Room with a View’. It’s quite a steep hill with lots of undulating ground which means you get some great ‘air’ as you bounce over the bumps. Riding at 50km per hour on the snow equivalent of a BMX track was the most incredible adrenaline rush.

Room with a View was sadly devoid of a view as we had climbed too far into the low cloud sitting on top of the hill, but a little lower down the scenery was spectacular. We also took a drive out to Pegasus to see the wreckage of a US Navy aircraft that came down many years ago, and it is now a local landmark.

The wreckage of a US navy aircraft © Antarctic Heritage Trust

Just when you think you’ve experienced the best of Antarctica, another unique opportunity comes your way. This was one more incredible day for storage in the memory-bank!

Out in the cold wilds of Antarctica I find the urge to eat chocolate and other sugary food quite impossible to resist. As my friends at home would testify, even when I’m in normal surroundings I have quite a sweet tooth. I was disappointed to discover that it is not cold enough now that summer has arrived in Antarctica, to make homemade ice cream outside in the snow.

As sea ice travel is now banned for the summer we can expect fewer visitors and hence fewer deliveries of all the lovely fresh treats which our wonderful friends at Scott Base have been so generously providing us with. I expect I will develop cravings for all the foods which I miss and cannot bake out in the field.

We certainly won’t go short, however – we have a big store of food out at Captain Scott’s base at Cape Evans which will be more than enough for our next 5 weeks out in the field. Fortunately we are doing such a lot of hard physical work in cold temperatures that our bodies are working pretty hard and using more calories than usual to stay warm. I seem to be able to eat a huge amount of food without putting on any weight.

The polar explorers often complained on their trips that they were always hungry. This of course was because they had to ration out the food to ensure the weight of the sledges was kept to a minimum.

While working inside Captain Scott’s hut at Cape Evans I have been surprised to see well-preserved packets and ration bags containing the sledging rations of chocolate, milk powder and suchlike. They also had whole pats of butter and some quite exotic foods such as olives, tinned asparagus, huge Dutch cheeses, anchovies, potted meats, dates and raisins as well as a vast range of herbs and spices and even curry powder.

A century-old provision sack of cocoa from Captain Scott’s 1910-13 expedition, currently being conserved by the conservation team © Antarctic Heritage Trust

Like us, the polar explorers had little or no fresh food, but they did have fresh or frozen seal and penguin meat and eggs. Along with the abundance of tinned and dried food in the hut, they actually lived remarkably comfortably at Cape Evans.

The hub of Captain Scott’s base at Cape Evans - the boardroom table where the men ate and planned their expeditions © Antarctic Heritage Trust

In the laboratory this week we have a one man sleeping bag made from sections of hide with the thick fur on the inside.

Under the microscope Paul Scofield, Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at Canterbury Museum, identified the fur as reindeer, used because its hollow hairs have good insulating properties. Whilst smooth fur from the flanks was used on the inside of the bag, two outside flaps were cut from the softer more woolly belly. These would have been folded across the chest and secured with wooden toggles.

The bag is in good condition despite being well used, patched and repaired. The skin is still soft and there is only minor shedding of hairs. But it’s filled the lab with that distinct seal blubber smell of the historic huts.

Conserving the sleeping bag © Antarctic Heritage Trust

The state of their sleeping bags was a frequent topic in the men’s sledging diaries. Whilst the fur could be warm and comfortable, the bags became miserable at extremely low temperatures.

Sealed in their sleeping bags at night their breath condensed and froze onto the fur lining. Ice accumulated over weeks so it became an unpleasant experience in the evening to thaw a way in. After one sledging journey the weight of the sleeping bags had increased four times from their usual 10lbs. Relief only came on sunny days when the bags could be turned inside out to rid them of ice and allow them to dry.

Petty Officer Evans and Crean mending sleeping bags at Cape Evans in May 1911 © Scott Polar Research Institute

So perhaps it’s easy to understand why Apsley Cherry-Garrard, in his account of a winter sledging trip, talked of the ‘blissful moment of getting out of your bag…’

The sleeping bag after conservation © Antarctic Heritage Trust

Given we try to be as environmentally sustainable as we can when camping out in the field it does make you wonder what the early polar explorers did with their waste, as they all spent considerable periods of time resident in their respective huts, and the produce that they brought with them all had an extraordinary amount of packaging (which was very typical for the era).

Here at Sir Ernest Shackleton’s base at Cape Royds, many fragments from the original supplies and equipment have been found in the surrounding area.

But it’s very hard to make assumptions as to whether these have ended up here accidentally or whether they were deliberately thrown away. Some of the more interesting objects at the site today are things that were pulled out from Pony Lake (a small expanse of water in front of the hut) including a sea dredge and the wooden wheel from a motor vehicle.

The wooden wheel from one of the 1st motor cars on the continent, the Arrol Johnston, which now sits in the stables area of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s base © Antarctic Heritage Trust

We know from the early polar explorers’ diaries it was common practice for the explorers to put their rubbish down tide cracks (these often form where the sea ice butts up against shorelines, glaciers or icebergs) where it would be swept out in the next tide.

This would have been an acceptable practice at the time but it’s great to know that there are now strict guidelines and environmental protocols in place today.

This example of a tide crack was taken at Captain Scott’s base at Cape Evans and looks out towards the Barne Glacier © Antarctic Heritage Trust

Once we get underway and into the summer work programme time flies by very quickly and the outside world recedes somewhat, and only Fran’s Christmas advent calendar marked the passing days.

The first couple of weeks were spent at Shackleton’s 1907 expedition base at Cape Royds. Now that the conservation project there is complete we have begun an annual monitoring and maintenance programme. This year we took an extra week to audit every single artefact in the hut, checking location and description data against the database. It was 2 weeks of complete contrast – from counting artefacts inside, to Condition One storms outside, to calm sunny days filled with Emperor penguins and Lucy scanning the sea for orca fins at every break. Seen once!

The interior of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1907 expedition base at Cape Royds © Antarctic Heritage Trust

After the remote and wildly beautiful environs of Cape Royds, Cape Evans by comparison seemed a most luxurious set up. Our own tents! A conservation lab with solar power! A kitchen wannigan that is not on a slope, and stays warm when the wind goes above 10 knots. And a lot more visitors – Cape Evans is within easy reach of both Scott Base and McMurdo station, and many people make the most of the opportunity to hop on a skidoo, or join a trip to see the historic huts. Many of the visitors are up this way for work reasons – drilling holes in the ice for divers, installing equipment, monitoring weather stations, counting and tagging Weddell seals.

Our work and home camp set up at Cape Evans © Antarctic Heritage Trust

We had a few different tasks over the 3 weeks we spent at Cape Evans. During January there will be building work on the walls and roof of the stables. Fran, Lucy and I moved a lot of very heavy provision crates out of the way of the building work and into a storage container, and also documented and packed all the artefacts in that area. Along the external wall, where a new waterproof membrane will run down the inside of the wall and into the ground, we excavated artefacts at risk of damage during the membrane installation. One of these was the iconic dog skeleton. Chained to the wall sometime in the last few decades, the skeleton has been disintegrating a little more each season as the ice forms and then melts around it. Lucy’s blog describes the dog in more detail.

Meanwhile Fran conserved the historic acetylene plant that provided gas lighting – a tricky job due to some flaky paint and a hard-to-reach back side requiring Fran’s best contortionist skills.

And of course we returned 1300 artefacts to the hut that were conserved over the last year, and collected another 1500 to be conserved over the upcoming winter season at Scott Base.

Home Sweet Home at Cape Evans - the Scott Polar tent’s design is basically unchanged from those used by Captain Scott and his men a century ago © Antarctic Heritage Trust

I have heard that Captain Scott was opposed to the idea of using dogs as the main means of transport to the South Pole. Nevertheless, his 1910-13 Terra Nova Expedition included a large team of dogs and a dog handler which came down on the ship and lived at their base at Cape Evans.

Captain Scott’s base at Cape Evans © Antarctic Heritage Trust, L Skinner

Ernest Shackleton’s 1914-17 Ross Sea support party also had a small team of dogs. 10 members of this expedition were marooned at Cape Evans when their ship, the Aurora, still containing the majority of their supplies and equipment, broke anchor and was swept away from shore. Ernest Joyce, who was the leader of the sledging party, and his sledging team relied heavily on their surviving dogs to bring their weakened scurvy-ridden bodies back home after their journey across the Ross Ice Shelf to lay depots of stores.

Last month I spent 2 days archaeologically excavating the remains of a sledge dog which is chained to the North wall, outside the stables of the Terra Nova Hut. The stables are undergoing some essential repairs after Christmas, so the skeleton had to be removed.

The century-old remains of one of the expedition dogs © Antarctic Heritage Trust, L Skinner

There are photographs of the dog from the 1950s. Back at this time the skin is dry but the body is still whole and covered in fur. Since then, the ravages of the elements and disturbance of the corpse by opportunistic Skuas (scavenger birds which live in abundance around Cape Evans) have caused almost complete disintegration and decay of the dog’s flesh and skin and scattering of the exposed bones.

Lucy working on the skeleton, located outside the stables where the expedition ponies were housed © Antarctic Heritage Trust

We have been speculating as to the identity of this mystery dog, which expedition it belonged to, how it died and why it ended up chained to the wall. There are no signs that it was shot or intentionally killed and no surviving records which mention it either.

Currently, the carefully labeled remains of ‘Mummy’, so named because he/she resembles an Ancient Egyptian dog mummy, are lying on a purpose-made tray inside the hut. Once the repairs to the stables are complete Mummy will find his/her final resting place within one of the pony stalls inside the stables. The dogs of both Scott’s and the Ross Sea Party’s expeditions were allowed to roam freely around in the stables so it seems to be the most appropriate location to place the dog to prevent continued disintegration of the body.

Every morning at 7.30am, our camp at Captain Scott’s base at Cape Evans puts in a scheduled radio call, or ‘Sked’, to the radio operators at New Zealand science facility Scott Base.

Scott Base © Antarctica New Zealand Pictorial Collection

K170 (the K stands for Kiwi) is our field event call sign, and distinguishes us from all the other teams working at different field sites around the Ross Sea area.

Each team has to check in with Scott Base once a day to confirm everyone is alive and well. Weather forecasts, news and messages are exchanged, helicopter and sea ice travel arrangements confirmed, and if the radio ops are feeling chipper we even get the occasional poem or joke.

For more complex communications with the Christchurch office back in New Zealand (and the occasional brief call home to loved ones) we are fortunate to have a satellite phone.

It reminds me of those early ‘brick’ mobile phones but, looks aside, it is somewhat surreal to have such a clear link to the outside world when you are standing looking across the frozen sea towards the magnificent Transantarctic Mountains.

It’s amazing contrasting the ease and clarity of our modern communications with the early polar explorers. Their practices included firing signal flares and speaking to each other via a phone line which they set up between Scott’s 1910 base at Cape Evans and Scott’s 1901 base at Hut Point.

And while on the topic of modern communications - once the weather lifts and we get visitors, this blog will set off on a journey of its own. First it can be downloaded from the laptop to disk and will then travel by Hagglund (an all terrain vehicle) over the sea-ice to Scott Base. It will then be emailed to Christchurch, New Zealand and then sent on to the team at the Natural History Museum to upload to the blog.

An Adelie Penguin snapped at Cape Royds this week © Antarctic Heritage Trust

The box of pastels © Antarctic Heritage Trust

Unfortunately this brilliant and evocative object can offer a tantalising insight into life on the early polar expeditions, but we have no hard and fast answers as to who might have used it, why and when.

There are of course likely suspects who might have been the owner of such artist’s materials. The first that springs to mind is Edward Wilson, affectionately known as Uncle Bill for his kindly manner and ability to mix with all ranks; he was surgeon, scientist and artist on both the 1901 Discovery expedition and the 1910 Terra Nova expedition, and produced many illustrations of the voyages, including pastels of the Antarctic landscape, the auroras at night and the wildlife.

Antarctica this winter - Edward Wilson was renowned for capturing the colours of Antarctica © Antarctic Heritage Trust

Although the pastels were located at Cape Evans, the men often visited or used the other two expedition bases in the area so it’s not unconceivable that the pastels were associated with earlier expeditions. Perhaps they were used by Michael Barne – a member of Commander Scott’s 1901 Discovery expedition who was the in-house cartoonist and caricaturist (although he appears to have worked predominantly in ink and watercolour).

The Barne Glacier, named after Michael Barne, is a predominant feature in the landscape near Cape Evans © Antarctic Heritage Trust

So who did the set belong too? One imagines that the officers were more likely to indulge in this sort of arty pastime over the more hardy seafaring types, but in reality they could have belonged to anyone who wanted to record their experiences. Nicola and I are looking forward to going South in February; and we’ll be sure to include paints and pencils of our own, as well as a digital camera!

The dome tent opens up like a concertina and is supported by 4 arched iron poles sewn into the canvas. The round entrance is protected by a fabric tunnel which would have been tied up on the inside to keep out wind and snow.

The tent partially open © Antarctic Heritage Trust

The tent is associated with the Ross Sea Party which supported Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 – 17 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton, who had led an earlier expedition to Antarctica in 1907, planned to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. The expedition would begin in the Weddell Sea and end in the Ross Sea.

However, the expedition was abandoned when Shackleton’s ship ‘Endurance’ was crushed in ice in the Weddell Sea. Unaware of this, 10 men, who were located in the Ross Sea area, continued to lay supply depots for Shackleton along the last leg of the proposed route.

The Ross Sea Party had their own challenges - they had been stranded with few rations when their ship Aurora was blown out to sea during a storm, leaving them stranded for nearly 2 years at Cape Evans (the home of Captain Scott’s expedition base for his attempt on the South Pole). With barely any provisions, the Ross Sea Party were forced to shelter in Scott’s hut where they used the stores, clothing and equipment left behind by Scott and his men.

A pair of improvised boots made by the Ross Sea Party, which would have been made from whatever they could scavenge from Captain Scott’s base at Cape Evans © Antarctic Heritage Trust

The tent was used on their long sledging expeditions, covering almost 2,000 miles. The inside is black with soot from the primus stove, and small holes in the canvas have been patched and hand-stitched to prevent snow leaking into the tent during the blizzards that kept them confined for days at a time.

Several of the iron poles have been repaired with lengths of bamboo and twine and this reminded me of the shocking conditions, illness, starvation and exhaustion that the men endured. Not only did they suffer from painful frost bite and snow blindness but also acute scurvy caused by lack of vitamin C in their diet.

Ernest Joyce is quoted as saying ‘Scurvy has got us, our legs are black and swollen, and if we bend them at night there is a chance they will not straighten out. So, to counteract that, we lash pieces of bamboo to the back of our knees to keep them straight.’ They also tried to alleviate the pain by massaging the affected areas with methylated spirits.

Ultimately, Reverend Spencer-Smith died of scurvy and was buried in the ice, and later Mackintosh and Hayward were also lost whilst trying to cross thin sea ice in poor weather.

The Aurora returned with Shackleton aboard in January 1917 and rescued the 7 survivors of the original shore party.

Captain Scott’s base at Cape Evans where the Ross Sea Party based themselves © Antarctic Heritage Trust

If you want to read more about the Ross Sea Party, Kelly Tyler-Lewis has written a great account in her book The Lost Men (Antarctic Heritage Trust staff pick!).