Still heavily overcast and quite impossible to tell the time. I am about to have breakfast though I feel sure it is closer to lunchtime. Knees feel a little better but I haven’t been out yet.
Colder but a little less overcast as the day goes on. Have mended my Burberry blouse and a blanket glove. Felt very poorly when I went outside for snow just now. It seems nearly midnight – but I can’t see the sun himself. It was really 8 or 9 pm.
Half sleeping, half waking have planned a comedy ‘Brown, Jones and Robinson’ the dialogue rattles off beautifully until one begins to think of writing it down!14
25 January 1916
The blizzard stopped after two days so the five men went on. They were now quite close to the mountain range along which they had been travelling since October, and were steering directly for a detached rounded mountain a few thousand feet high which they were confident was Mount Hope. In the afternoon Joyce steered towards this mountain (which was indeed Mount Hope) but they came across crevasses and pressure ridges and were forced to camp.
In his book, Richards tells us that as they approached the mountains the surface had begun to change and they passed over huge gentle undulations, which would have been pressure ridges. Gradually these intensified until they reached what Richards described as ‘a remarkably broken-up area’ where they camped for the night. They had experienced a long tiring day during which they had made their record mileage (almost 18 miles), so they did not want to try to find a passage through the heavily crevassed area until they had rested.15
Richards says that Mackintosh had kept going gamely, but he was very lame at the end of the day. Behind his knee there was a considerable area of blue discoloration and the others were somewhat puzzled as to why this had not cleared up by now. It was not until they returned to pick up Spencer-Smith and found black patches on their own gums and behind their own knees that they realised it was scurvy. Mackintosh was able to gain some relief by massaging his knees with methylated spirits.16 As their scurvy worsened they often rubbed their joints with methylated spirits, and this seemed to help. (Possibly the ethanol in the methylated spirits dried the skin and this eased the pain, temporarily.)
After weeks of scanty diary entries, Hayward returned to something like his earlier detailed notes.
Joyce:
Turned out usual time. Weather very fine. Underway as usual going very good doing 8¾ miles before lunch. Altered course 2 pts after lunch steering for supposed gap of Mt Hope.
5.10 came into very heavy crevasse, carried on until 6 o’clock camped on the edge of the biggest ice pressure I have ever seen. Distance 9 M, making 17¾ for the day.17
Hayward:
Going good. 8¼ M for run after lunch struck a very hard surface & travelled on some, when within 4 miles of destination Mt Hope 83.30 we dropped into a very badly crevassed area. Made about 1½ miles through it & forced to camp 6.20 pm crevasses all round us. Will reconnoiter in the morning.18
Wild may have been missing life on the sea:
We haven’t quite reached Mt Hope. There are crevasses all around us & we couldn’t find a passage through. However better luck tomorrow. Just 12 months today since we left the ship. It is the longest time I have been off a ship for over 20 years.19
Another day alone for Spencer-Smith
25 January was Spencer-Smith’s third day waiting for the others to return from Mount Hope. Not for the first time he mentions his heart, worrying that it may be ‘ricked’, and he was dispirited that his condition had not improved:
25 Jan: A year ago today we set off from the ship on our first journey – all clothes new and clean: a team of 9 dogs and high hopes. Only the last remain and even they should be accomplished now by the O.M. and Wild by now.
Sunny and warm again all day: I went out twice to try to enjoy it but my knees became painful at once and my toot ensemble is very weak: seems as if the heart is ricked after all: if so, it happened a day or two after we joined up.
More mending done. Finished my book ‘Evolution’. Learnt ‘So he died for his faith’ and have no more literature.
The others should reappear tomorrow and I fear that they will have to find me, in spite of rest, cold bandages, &c – humiliating!20
26 January 1916
On the morning of 26 January Mackintosh, Joyce and Richards set off to find a passage through the crevasses. The three men took great care as the surface became almost impossible to travel over. There were huge pressure ridges to haul the sledges over. Crevasses were everywhere but usually filled in except at the edges, where there was breadth enough for a man to drop in and hang up by his elbows and his harness.21 They could see the crevasses quite clearly and in Richards’s view they ‘fatalistically believed’ they would have no trouble with them; they simply had to find a place where they could get across.22
Eventually, they passed through the dangerous area and sixty years afterwards Richards still remembered the day, and the sights. He tells us it was a beautifully calm day and the sun was shining brightly as they climbed up a snow slope with Mount Hope on their left and the mountain range on their right. Below them was the Beardmore Glacier stretching away to the distance, 25 miles wide, and to Richards everything was on a ‘gigantic scale’. He remembered that ‘the scene was full of colour and simply magnificent’.23
The ice of the glacier was flanked by sheer steep rock faces splashed with vivid colours, and on the glacier itself below where the men were standing they could see a number of dark patches, which they thought was probably rock that had become dislodged from the steep sides.24 Richards says he lay down with the glasses as he could see a blob of rock that looked the same shape as the tent they were using; like Shackleton used. He lay down for quite a long time looking at this ‘tent’ wondering if anyone would come out of it; if it was a tent. But they saw no sign of life.25
Hayward: ‘We have reconnoitered in the morning at least Skipper, Joyce & Richards reconnoitered in the morning. Wild & I remained in camp & made tea several times.’26
Joyce:
We decided to keep the camp up. Skipper Richards + myself roped ourselves together: I taking the lead to try + find course through this pressure. We came across very wide crevasses went down several, came on top of a very high ridge + such a scene. Can’t imagine thousands of tons of ice churned up + the depth about 300 ft, we took a couple of photos then I carried on to the E.
At last we found a passage through + carried on through smaller crevasses to Mt Hope or we hoped it was the Mt by that name; the chart seems a bit off, so! Although we can see a great glacier ahead which we take for the Beardmore which this mountain is on, the position on the chart is wrong.
We had nearly arrived at the ice foot when Richards saw something to the right, which turned out to be 2 of Capt Scott’s sledges. Then we knew for cert. this was the place we had struggled to get to.
So we climbed the glacier on the slope + went up about 1¼ mile + saw the great Beardmore Glacier stretch to the South. It is almost 25 miles wide, a most wonderful sight.27
The final depot is laid at Mount Hope
Joyce, Mackintosh and Richards rejoined Hayward and Wild at their camp, arriving back at three in the afternoon, and then they moved camp closer to where the depot was to be laid. Richards had thoughts that the Mount Hope region could even be gold-bearing. In an interview many years afterwards he tells us he went to the land at the side of the glacier and picked up some quartz, and he noticed it was very much like the quartz found near his home town of Bendigo, a mining town in Victoria. He remembered saying to the others at the time: ‘Well look, we’ve been wandering over this Barrier which has got nothing to offer. Next year, if the ship is not back, what about coming out to these mountains and having a look at what’s there?’28
The final task was to lay the depot, which Wild, Hayward and Joyce duly completed later that day. They were very tired when they retired for the night and their sleep was disturbed by ‘heavy cracks like pistol shots’ in the ice bene
ath them; in Richards’s mind no doubt due to the intense stresses to which all the ice in the area was subjected. However, he recalled that they all experienced a sense of peace knowing that they had placed all the depots for Shackleton, in spite of considerable difficulty.29
Wild:
Have made the Mt Hope depot at last, 7 miles from where we were last night. 2 weeks provisions & 2 full tins of oil so they ought to be alright. We found two sledges here that had been left by Scott’s party. The depot is 2 miles from here. Joyce, Hayward & myself laid it & came back here for supper. The ice pressure around here is tremendous. The B Glacier looks very rough from the Gap.30
Hayward: ‘Immediately after pitching tent Joyce, Wild & self dropped off ½ one of aforesaid sledges & put on 2 weeks provisions for depoting which we three laid 2 miles up glacier running between Mt Hope & the mainland. Took photo.’31
Joyce:
Wild, Hayward + myself then took the depot up the Glacier a fortnights provisions. We left it lashed to a broken sledge + put a large flag up. I took 2 photos of it. We did not arrive back until 10-30. It was rather a heavy pull up.
I was very pleased to see our work completed at last. We had dinner when we arrived back the Skipper telling us how good it was of us to bring him along.
This is his first acknowledgement of the work we done. Still I don’t want his praise. All I wanted to see was the work carried out what men are depending on. As I said when we started sledging I would do this + so with the help of 2 good pals§ we carried it out.
Turned in 12 o’clock. Dist we done during day 22 Miles.32
Hayward was thinking of Spencer-Smith and Mackintosh: ‘Smith will in all probability have to be put in the sledge. The Skipper is quite lame & I contend has hindered far more than he has advanced our main objective of laying these depots to 83.30 for Shacks support.’33
Spencer-Smith waits at 83˚S
Spencer-Smith wrote of a person, ‘T’, possibly to write down the comedy skit he mentioned in his diary two days ago:
26 Jan: By the sun it is nearly 6 a.m. – I didn’t have lunch until nearly 2, expecting the others any minute. I suppose Sunday and Monday delayed them by making it imposs to choose the spot for the depot. Knees no better. Sleeping bag, 2 mats and floor-cloth sopping wet under me.
Mind very active – if only I had T. here as secretary. Northerly wind all day: land partly obscured; sun shining brightly. Had a bit of a ‘dish-up’ effort and washed.34
27 January 1916
It was now late January and a blizzard on the first morning for the men returning from Mount Hope was an indicator of what was to come. In such circumstances they felt it was dangerous to attempt their way back through the maze of crevasses and ice pressure, but during the day conditions eased somewhat so they began the long haul back to Hut Point.35
Richards tells us they were all anxious because they had left Spencer-Smith, obviously a sick man, with no one closer than 300 miles away to the north, and only their party to the south. They were naturally ‘chaffing at any circumstances’ that caused a delay. They thought Spencer-Smith would be alright and that he would be able to resume his journey, but Richards remembered that he was worried because they had to find him, which might be difficult if the weather was poor. They had to locate a little conical-shaped tent in a wilderness of ice and snow that was completely featureless; and there was nothing to guide them.36
Joyce was now suffering severely from snow blindness. He had to go off the lead position and bind his eyes with a piece of cloth, which meant he often fell and stumbled because of the uneven surface. Richards recalled Joyce saying he was falling down like a ‘jumping jenny’.37 Slivers of cocaine were used to help with snow blindness and if they could get any water they would dissolve them and put them in their eyes, but if they couldn’t they would stick the cocaine in raw just to relieve the pain. Richards describes the pain when snow blind as being like coal dust in your eye from a steam train: ‘very unpleasant’.38
Joyce:
Found it snowing – good job we laid the Depot last night. Had breakfast at noon, cleared up 3-30, so got underway got through all the crevasses by about 6 o’clock then I turned the steering over to the Skipper as I had a very nasty attack of S. Blindness. Camp 7 o’clock. Dist 4¾ miles.
We are now Homeward Bound. 360 miles to go. I think with the help of Good Old Provi we ought to be in by the 27th of Feb.39
Wild:
I thank God – on the back trail. They say ‘enough is as good as a feast’ well I have had my feast of sledging this season. Now for a good run back to the Bluff where I hope to find some bacco. Joyce is stone blind with snow blindness. He has been hanging onto the Skipper’s trace. I used it as a guide rope.40
Spencer-Smith looks for the five men returning
27 January 1916 was day five for Spencer-Smith, tent bound and alone. He was completely isolated, 300 miles out on the Great Ice Barrier of Antarctica. He was living in complete silence apart from the noise of the wind and occasional sounds from movements of the snow and ice refreezing and splitting due to changes in temperature, but he makes no mention of this solitude in his diary. He does not write copious diary notes of what went through his mind hour after hour, day by day. He does not give us any reflections on his relationships with any of the other men. He, like many others in Antarctica at those times, seems to simply accept the situation as it was. Douglas Mawson on his 1911–14 Antarctic expedition was alone for over thirty days after losing his two comrades when exploring the coastline to the north-west of McMurdo Sound. To while away the time he thought of topics such as how to fix his cooker and trusting in Providence to pull him through.41 From his diary notes Spencer-Smith was much the same; mending his clothes and reading – but (surprisingly) making no reference in his diary on his religious beliefs to guide the others back safely. He pens no long diary entries which might be expected from a man with his background and education.
27 Jan: Strong southerly and drift kept me at home, apart from other things – but later in the day the weather became calm and bright. Spent part of the time in (1) delivering a lecture, (2) a sermon, both in execrable French.
No sign of the others. Two meals.42
28 January 1916
On the 28th Joyce, Richards, Hayward, Mackintosh and Wild made over 16 miles for the day, so they were then only 11 miles from Spencer-Smith and expected to be at his camp the following day. The dogs were pulling strongly as they only had a few days’ food and fuel on the sledge.
Joyce:
Under way as usual. I am now absolutely blind, hanging on to harness for guidance, but still pulling my whack which is little as the dogs are going well + we have only a couple of days provisions on.
Lunched as usual. Skipper still weak on the pins. Distance during day 16½ miles.43
Hayward:
Picked up our outward trail after travelling an hour and a half, after which going good tracks being easily followed. Total distance for the day 16½ miles, this puts us 20 odd miles on the homeward trail. We shall pick Smith up at lunch as he is approx. 11m on.44
Spencer-Smith starts to worry
On 28 January Spencer-Smith made calculations on the distances from his tent back to the 82°S and 81°S depots, to determine the distance the men had to travel to Mount Hope, surmising that their absence could be accounted for:
28 Jan: Felt very rotten this morning: fine with a gentle northerly, and mountains half-covered in mist.
The mileage since the “80° Depot is as follow:
81° Depot 64m 972 yds.
82° Depot 68m 666 yds.
(this spot): 44m 319 yds.
Total: 176 m 1957 yds.
If these figures are roughly correct and the 80° Depot is truly laid, then this spot is still 35 m. 71 yds from Mt. Hope. But if, as I have always supposed, the so-called 80° Depot is 8 miles north of true 80°, then this spot is 43 miles from Mt. Hope. In either case the long absence of the party is fairly accounted for. But if we are
10 m. ahead of dead reckoning, then there’s a problem! Perhaps however they laid up all the 23rd and 24th.
The mountains to the west are tremendous this evening. No sign of the others at p.m.45
Notes
1. Richards, interview with L. Bickel, 1976
2. Richards letter to A. J. T. Fraser, 9 July 1961
3. Richards, interview with L. Bickel, 1976
4. Ibid.
5. Spencer-Smith diary, 22 January 1916
6. Joyce field diary, 22 January 1916
7. Hayward diary, 22 January 1916
8. Wild diary, 22 January 1916
9. Spencer-Smith diary, 22 January 1916
10. Joyce field diary, 23 January 1916
11. Hayward diary, 23 January 1916
12. Wild diary, 23 January 1916
13. Spencer-Smith diary, 23 January 1916
14. Ibid., 24 January 1916
15. Richards, The Ross Sea Shore Party
16. Ibid.
17. Joyce field diary, 25 January 1916
18. Hayward diary, 25 January 1916
19. Wild diary, 25 January 1916
20. Spencer-Smith diary, 25 January 1916
21. Wilson, Antarctic Notebooks
22. Richards, interview with L. Bickel, 1976
23. Richards, The Ross Sea Shore Party
24. Ibid.
25. Richards, interview with L. Bickel, 1976
26. Hayward diary, 26 January 1916
27. Joyce field diary, 26 January 1916
28. Richards, interview with L. Bickel, 1976
29. Richards, The Ross Sea Shore Party
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