by Chris Turney
Mawson was leading the Far Eastern Party, journeying over the plateau towards Victoria Land with the aim of connecting Cape Denison to the western discoveries of Borchgrevink, Scott and Shackleton. Accompanying Mawson was Xavier Mertz, a Swiss champion ski runner, and Belgrave Ninnis, a young British Royal Fusilier officer who had originally been hired by Shackleton. Strikingly young-looking for his twenty-three years, Ninnis soon earned the nickname Cherub. In contrast, Mertz’s first name caused problems for his English-speaking colleagues, who ended up calling him the ominous-sounding X, though he was a favourite in the hut. To cover the distances involved the expedition’s dogs would be essential, and Mertz and Ninnis had looked after them since London, making the two men obvious companions for Mawson.
The Far Eastern party set out on 10 November 1912, initially making great progress. The dogs covered the ground quickly, and the team collected geological samples, noted the weather and mapped the route. But on 13 December, Mertz considered they were in a dangerous place: ‘At 4 pm we entered a height with crevasses…after there was a nice flat area ahead on which we walked until 12 pm. At 8 pm it cracked a few times underneath us. The snow masses must have broken their vaulting. The noise was like distant cannon fire. My comrades were frightened because they have never heard avalanches going off.’
The next day tragedy struck. Mertz, who was leading the three men, turned to find Ninnis was no longer bringing up the rear. Searching along the way they had come Mawson made a shocking discovery: an enormous crack had opened up across their path, and the British officer had disappeared down it. That evening Mertz wrote, ‘Dear old Ninnis, he is dead. This change was so rapid I almost can’t believe it…150 feet [forty-five metres] down in a crevasse we could see the back part of Ninnis’ sledge. [They could hear a dog whining.] No other noise was recognisable…Ninnis must have died immediately…We lowered a rope with a weight and it struck the dog we could see but this one did not move anymore so it was obviously also dead.’
Ninnis’s death might have been avoided. Had the Briton worn skis instead of finnesko boots, his weight would have been more evenly distributed and the snow bridge covering the crevasse would most probably have held.
They had a ‘bare one a half week’s man food’ and it had taken them thirty-five days to reach their current location. Mawson ruefully reflected that Mertz had ‘suffered the loss of his Burberry trousers: as a substitute he used henceforth an extra pair of woollen under trousers that happened to be saved. The six dogs remaining were the poorest of the pack, for the best preserved animals had been drafted into the rear team, as it was thought that the risk lay in front.’ Now, more than five hundred kilometres out from base and not expected back for a month, the two explorers turned their backs on the icy grave and looked to home. There seemed little prospect of rescue.
The lack of supplies meant the men were forced to eat their way through the few remaining dogs. Mertz was a vegetarian and the tough, smelly dog meat was particularly repulsive to him. On 29 December he wrote, ‘Ginger, the last beloved dog, was killed and the meat was sliced. We cooked a part of it. In the tent it started to rain if the Primus was used for more than an hour….The tent is too small, only one person can move, the other one has to sit huddled in one corner…This morning I rose one hour early to cook the dog meat because if you don’t do this it is uneatable.’
As they trudged on, both men suffered from constant lethargy and dizziness. Mawson’s companion was deteriorating more quickly, with bouts of dysentry, loss of skin, depression and, finally, insanity. The cause of this rapid decline appears to have been vitamin A poisoning, most probably brought on from eating dog livers, which contain toxic levels of the vitamin. The last line in Mertz’s diary reads: ‘The dog meat does not seem to agree with me because yesterday I was feeling a little bit queasy.’ In a final bout of madness the poor man bit one of his fingers off and then fell asleep, never to wake up.
The loss hit Mawson hard and, because of an ever-strengthening wind, the Australian was forced to stay by the grave for three days. During this time he fell into despair. ‘As there is little chance of my reaching human aid alive I greatly regret my inability to set out the coast line as surveyed for the 300 miles we travelled and the notes on glaciers and ice formations, etc.—the most of which latter is of course committed to my head.’ He was a scientist to the core. Two days later Mawson pulled himself together and pushed on, wanting to do the ‘utmost to the last for Paquita’s and supporters’ and members of expedition’s sakes’.
Mawson gave the position of Mertz’s resting place in his diary. If he died, too, at least both men might be found and receive a proper burial. There has been a suggestion that the Australian may have turned to cannibalism, but this seems highly unlikely, given the effort he made to advertise what would have been a dreadfully macabre scene. Mawson trimmed back the amount he was dragging: the sledge was cut in half; photographs were left behind; and the last of the dog meat was cooked, saving precious weight in kerosene. Drinking water would now be obtained from snow left in a container to melt on the sledge top.
Over the next two weeks Mawson steered his way back to base using navigation pages ripped out of Hints to Travellers and the Nautical Almanac. Physically and mentally exhausted, he reflected in his diary that his body was rotting but ‘Providence’—God—was with him. On 17 January, halfway across the southern end of what became known as the Mertz Glacier, Mawson fell five metres down a crevasse. Fortunately, he was connected by a rope to the sledge, now wedged in the opposing wall of ice.
Expecting the sledge to follow him at any moment, he ‘thought of the food left uneaten in the sledge—and, as the sledge stopped without coming down, I thought of Providence again giving me a chance. The chance looked very small as the rope had sawed into the overhanging lid, my finger ends all damaged, myself weak…With the feeling that Providence was helping me I made a great struggle, half getting out, then slipping back again several times, but at last just did it. Then I felt grateful to Providence…who has so many times already helped me.’ Mawson considered suicide during the ordeal, but worried he would ‘fall on some ledge and linger in misery’. The climb back to the surface took four and a half hours.
Mawson struggled on, but not before he constructed a rope ladder to haul himself out of future crevasses. He was suffering various maladies, brought on by physical exertion, lack of food and acute vitamin A poisoning from the dog livers, and—the most jaw-dropping complaint of all—he was regularly strapping the soles of his feet back on with lanolin cream. His diary entries at this time are shocking but restrained: ‘Both my hands have shed the skin in large sheets, very tender and it is a great nuisance.’ Others hint at a dark humour: ‘For the last 2 days my hair has been falling out in handfuls and rivals the reindeer hair from the moulting bag for nuisance in all food preparations.’
He continued, despite his afflictions, to keep weather records. Every day he noted the wind strength and direction, sometimes interpreting what this meant for the local landscape. Just a day after falling—again—into a crevasse that nearly claimed his life, he commented: ‘The wind died down as the morning advanced…It is quite apparent now that the direction of the wind is affected by the glacier valley. Here in the centre of the valley a night wind flows down it and on each side the winds are deflected into it.’ No doubt the routine helped him cope.
Two weeks late and forty-seven kilometres from base camp, Mawson stumbled upon a small snow cairn that had been erected just a few hours earlier by a team of three—led by Archibald McLean, the chief expedition doctor—out from Cape Denison. In it he found supplies and a note dated 29 January 1913 giving the location, and news of the safe return of all parties and the arrival of the Aurora a fortnight before. It was a remarkable stroke of good fortune—a link to home, a promise of life, an affirmation of hope. He scanned the horizon: no one was in sight.
Mawson was terribly weak by now. Hope was one thing, but he had little energy in reserve to cat
ch up with the three men. His diary entry for the day is a classic understatement: ‘What a pity I did not catch McLean’s party this morning.’ With renewed vigour, however, Mawson pushed on and three days later reached the depot known as Aladdin’s Cave, an ice cave at the top of the glacier overlooking Cape Denison. Inside was a wealth of supplies, including oranges and a pineapple—quite a sight for someone who had not eaten fresh fruit for a year.
Resting overnight and then preparing crampons for a safe descent, he was hit by a week-long storm. When the wind finally eased a little Mawson decided to risk an attempt. He staggered down to Cape Denison, three months after his departure, and was greeted by smoke on the horizon. The Aurora had sailed that morning.
When the Aurora returned to Commonwealth Bay, Davis soon became concerned about the Far Eastern Party. Searching Mawson’s correspondence he found hurriedly written instructions that the men were intending to be back by 15 January 1913. They were long overdue.
Davis took immediate control of the situation. The Aurora sailed along the coast searching for signs of life; signals were fired; a large kite was flown to attract attention. Nothing. Sending McLean’s team out towards Mawson’s last known position, he ruminated on board, ‘I am worn out with the constant worry and anxiety…The search party will have had a very bad time. I hope they are safe. It must be hell on the slope. This weather it is bad enough under the cliff.’
By 8 February he could wait no longer. Wild’s team was at risk on the ice shelf and no word had been received by wireless, meaning they could already be in trouble. And, unlike those at Cape Denison, Wild’s party had no ready access to wildlife to tide them over for another year. Davis’s responsibility was clear. Winter was fast approaching and he had to go. Supplies were left at Cape Denison with six volunteers, along with a promise to return next year.
Almost as soon as the Aurora left the bay an urgent message arrived: ‘To Capt Davis, Aurora. Arrived safely at hut. Mertz & Ninnis dead. Return & pick up all hands. Sgd Dr Mawson’. With the conditions rapidly worsening, Davis tried to get his vessel back into Commonwealth Bay, but to no avail.
‘Why did they recall us?’ Davis fumed in his diary. ‘It simply means that we are going to lose Wild for the sake of taking off a party who are in perfect safety…I am just worn out and a heap of nerves.’ Mawson had shelter, food and companionship for another year; Wild and his men were a different matter altogether. Davis had to make the hardest decision of all: he turned the Aurora west, and left his leader and friend behind.
Mawson would have to spend another winter in Antarctica. On the day of his return to Cape Denison he wrote in his diary, ‘My internals overthrown—legs swollen, etc’; and, several days on, ‘My legs have now swollen very much.’ A few weeks later he acknowledged the psychological effects of the experience for the first time: ‘I find my nerves are in a very serious state, and from the feeling I have in the base of my head I [have the] suspicion that I may go off my rocker very soon. My nerves have evidently had a very great shock. Too much writing today brought this on. I shall take more exercise and less study, hoping for a beneficial turn.’
Weakness, headaches, nervous symptoms, sleep disturbance and urinary problems are all symptoms of chronic vitamin A intoxication. Mawson was dangerously unwell and in urgent need of company—he often followed one of the other men around just to be near someone. He had experienced a series of disasters befitting a Hollywood script. The Everest and Antarctic veteran Sir Edmund Hilary later described it as ‘the greatest survival story in the history of exploration’.
The greatest, true—but the cost was high: two dead and, for Mawson, serious illness and another year away from loved ones. On the ice a cross was erected with a plaque acknowledging ‘the supreme sacrifice made by Lieut. B.E.S. Ninnis and Dr. X. Mertz, in the course of science’.
During his enforced second winter in Antarctica, Mawson learned what the other sledging teams had achieved. Most importantly, Robert Bage had led the Southern Party towards the South Magnetic Pole, along with Webb and Hurley. As they pushed ever further south the men took measurements at every camp and found the compass became more sluggish, just as Edgeworth David had noted in 1909; but, spectacularly, there were also enormous swings in the needle, in one instance shifting 90° across just twenty kilometres of travel. A wealth of data had been obtained, but the needle stubbornly held off the vertical.
Slowed by bad weather and limited food supplies, the men were forced to turn back when the greatest angle of dip sat at 89°43’. Webb wrote in his diary, ‘So near yet so far.’ Desperate for a Christmas celebration on the return journey, the men concocted a vicious alcoholic beverage ‘by boiling 5 raisins in a little of our primus methylated spirit. A drink known as “Tanglefoot” and the recipe of one Bob Bage. It was as distasteful as its appearance, and could only be drunk in gulps by holding the nose and breath.’ Their resolve stiffened, the men staggered on. They barely made it. One more day of bad weather and they most probably would have perished. The party had turned back from its furthest south at the last possible moment. In spite of this, Bage stayed the second year and continued the magnetic measurements at Cape Denison.
The other groups had also made significant inroads. The Western Party had given up on the air tractor after it failed fourteen kilometres out from base, but the men had pushed on to discover the first meteorite in Antarctica. The remaining teams had mapped hundreds of kilometres of coastline, collecting geological samples and taking weather observations as they went.
Davis’s work with the Aurora in the Southern Ocean raised more questions than it answered, but the ship had successfully collected Wild’s men in the west and returned to Australia with all on board. Davis was relieved to find the wireless system had never been operational: hence the silence. Cut off, the Far Western Party had succeeded in charting 650 kilometres of coastline, including reaching Kaiser Wilhelm II Land. Alongside these efforts they had made continuous weather and magnetic observations through the year. The Far Western Party’s contributions were especially significant: a picture of Antarctica, continent-wide in scope, was taking shape.
While Mawson had been away the winds at Cape Denison weakened, and a more sturdy wireless mast was erected. With news that a team was staying behind at Cape Denison, the men on Macquarie Island agreed to remain in place as well, allowing messages to be properly relayed between Antarctica and Australia, as originally intended. At last the Adelie Land wireless was working as planned. Mawson could now contact the rest of the world, including his fiancé, Paquita, who was waiting desperately for news. For the first time, an Antarctic explorer could communicate with home in real time.
Many of the men loathed their time on the ice and vowed never to return. The air-tractor engineer Frank Bickerton expressed a common sentiment when he remarked of his sledging journey: ‘This is a dismal rotten country. To think that Regents Street, the New Forest, Bedford River and Dartmoor are in the same world as this hole. Thank goodness they are as far away as it is possible to get.’ And, later: ‘These present conditions are nearly enough to cure a man of a desire to poke his nose into the odd corners of the earth.’ Webb observed, ‘It is doubtful whether later generations, even of Antarctic explorers, can imagine the physical and psychological discipline imposed…It was a different world.’
In the late 1890s de Gerlache’s Belgian expedition imploded while overwintering for the first time in Antarctica. And yet, before 1912, there had been little research into the psychological effects of close confinement with no natural light. Most expeditions followed Shackleton’s philosophy of keeping busy. Scott was fully aware of what the return of the summer sun meant for his men, remarking in July 1911, ‘I am glad that the light is coming, for more than one reason. The gale and consequent inaction not only affected the ponies…the return of the light should cure all ailments physical and mental.’ For most, time spent in Antarctica was a learning experience, one that they never forgot; but for one man on the Australasian expedi
tion, it would change his life.
Sydney Jeffryes came south with the Aurora as a replacement wireless operator for the Cape Denison base. He was pivotal in telling the world what had happened to Mawson and the rest of his team. Over time, though, there was a noticeable change in his character. Sometimes Jeffryes would behave erratically, concerned people were talking about him; other times he seemed fine. Things changed for the worse on 7 July 1913, as Mawson recorded in his diary:
Last night Jeffryes at the table suddenly asked Madigan to go into the next room (to fight) as he believed that something had been said against him—nothing whatever had…This morning after breakfast Madigan was filling his lamp with kerosene in the gangway and Jeffryes went out, pushing him. Asked him to fight again, danced round in a towering rage, struck Madigan, rough and tumble. Madigan got a clinch on him, then I had to speak to him and others. McLean thinks [Jeffryes] is a bit off his head. I think his touchy temperament is being very hard tested with bad weather and indoor life. A case of polar depression. I trust it will go now.
McLean had worked in a mental hospital for a while and spotted worrying symptoms in Jeffryes. By 10 August, Mawson was at a loss, scribbling: ‘What can be done with him [Jeffryes] I can’t imagine, for if I try to get him to keep up to scratch, his miserable temperament is likely to cause trouble in sending [wireless messages]. He takes the crystal out of the setting each evening so that nobody else can use the [wireless] instruments. I certainly feel like skinning him, but will wait another day and see how things go.’
Things reached a head on 3 September, when Jeffreys was caught hammering out a message very quickly. It was so fast that the rest of the team could not read what was sent. When challenged, Jeffryes admitted he was transmitting in Mawson’s name: ‘Five men not well probably Jeffryes and I may have to leave the hut.’ Bickerton had some wireless skills and Mawson asked him to send a message to Macquarie Island, advising that Jeffryes was insane. On his return to Australia, Jeffryes was placed in a mental asylum, where he remained until his death.