Shackleton’s Hut Howmany Old Alleynians, I wonder, have visited the hut in Antarctica where Sir Ernest Shackleton (1887-90) spent winters during the years 1907- 09, leading his Nimrod expedition towards (but not actually to) the South Pole? by Jeremy Eccles (56-64)
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Celsius would have had trouble standing up. Amazingly, when the huts began to be re-visited in the 1950s, apart from being full of snow and ice, they had withstood the siege. Later, the Antarctic Treaty determined to preserve them, and in 2002, the New Zealand-based Antarctic Heritage Trust took on the task of removing and conserving more than 20,000 items from the three British and one earlier Russian hut, making the buildings themselves waterproof, and then controlling access so that nothing is damaged. Only eight people with sparkling clean boots are allowed in at any one time. One reason that so many artefacts were left behind in the huts could have been sheer relief at being rescued, but also the need to leap aboard rescue vessels as the ice or weather closed in. Consequently, Shackleton left behind three crates of specially distilled Highland Malt Whisky under his hut. This was so well preserved by the conditions that it could be analysed by today's distillers at Whyte & Mackay and an exact replica produced for sale. Sadly, it's untasted as yet by me, but a donation from each sale goes to the Heritage Trust. It should appear at all OA functions! Most visitors to Antarctica go to the Antarctic Peninsular, which is, comparatively, but a hop and a step from South America. This has reported temperatures reaching 20 degrees Celsius this summer, but much of the rest of the continent remains fiercely cold, even as the midnight sun allowed us to make landings at 1am. That extraordinary timelessness permitted by the endless sun was one of the wonders of our expedition. The history learnt from our visits, lectures and books was another. But I suspect the glories of the albatross, so clumsy on land but so elegant and so apparently happy to marvel at its own capacity for eternal flight, will remain the strongest memory back in Sydney. Alongside the humour of Adélie penguin chicks, almost as large as their parents, chasing them furiously for food, and the craziness of a group of adolescent male albatrosses gathering on a misty hilltop to practice their courtship techniques in a process called gamming – will also cause much delight in the retelling over the months.
Love is not cancelled...
The team based at Cape Royds on the Nimrod expedition may not have got to the Pole – though they did make it to within a hundred miles before sensibly turning back. However, they did achieve a number of scientific things including climbing Antarctica's only active volcano – Mt Erebus, which still smokes above Cape Royds – and reaching the South Magnetic Pole. Sir Ernest had also spent parts of 1901 to 1903 at the first British hut in Antarctica – Robert Scott's Discovery expedition hut in McMurdo Sound, just about the southernmost point reachable in the Ross Sea before the so-called Great Barrier of floating ice 600 kms deep cuts everyone off from the landmass of the Continent. During the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Shackleton would later fail to even reach the ice barrier at the back of the Weddell Sea, when his ship became crushed by sea-ice and he had to perform those now infamous heroics in the James Caird, sailing to South Georgia to save himself and his crew. Yes, I'm hot on the history of that 'heroic era' of voyaging Down South, having just travelled on a trip entitled 'In the Wake of Scott and Shackleton' with New Zealand's Heritage Expeditions on the good (but aging) ship, the Akademik Shokalskiy. Twenty-eight days were required to sail through the wild Southern Ocean, visit several fascinating sub-Antarctic islands, and meander around the gentle, ice-floed Ross Sea, taking opportunities to land at historic sites and a couple of national research stations. Ice conditions and wind are key to making these landings safely, and our French expedition leader told us proudly that he'd made more such landings on our trip than he'd managed in 12 previous efforts. You might imagine that a 113-year-old hut in a place where the katabatic winds sweeping down from the Pole have been measured at 320 mph and temperatures have sunk to -89 degrees
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