Into White Silence

by Anthony Eaton

  On the foredeck we stood, and watched, and the silence was almost reverent.

  And then it passed, or rather, we passed it and, as we resumed our steady course to the south, the berg soon slipped away into the darkness behind, continuing its stately progress through the night as though we’d never existed.

  * * *

  From the Journal of Lieutenant William Downes

  8th January, 1922

  Polar Exploration Vessel Raven

  Approx. 65°40’S, 141°58’E

  A fine day, today and for the first time in weeks there is much good feeling aboard our little ship, with most of the party excited and eagerly anticipating tomorrow. Some of the tension and fear that has dogged our passage south from Hobart has abated, and up forward in the crew’s mess I can hear somebody playing a harmonica as an accompaniment to some remarkably bawdy and raucous singing.

  This morning, Mr Rourke mustered all hands and more or less repeated the little speech he’d made to us in his cabin after the storm, justifying his decision to press on in the face of our recent losses.

  For most of us aboard, the increasingly large number of icebergs around which we have had to navigate during the course of the last few days has provided something of a welcome diversion, and made the mundane task of lookout duty far less tedious. It has also, of course, served to remind us how close we now are to our goal and to beginning the real purpose of our journey and so, for the most part, I think the men are willing to accept the decision to continue as a good one.

  There were sceptics, of course, notably Randolph Lawson, who voiced the opinion that ‘Robert Falcon Scott was also a man of great courage and conviction, and look where it got him!’ This, naturally, was a comparison Mr Rourke did not especially appreciate and which led to a sharp exchange of words between him and the photographer.

  In truth, I still do not know what to make of Lawson. Since our brief discussion before the storm he has barely spoken another word to me, aside from the usual civilities, and he maintains the same brash and cheerful countenance, as though he is not particularly worried about what I overheard.

  He is growing in popularity among the men, too, especially the crew, and he spends more and more time in the foredeck mess, playing cards. It seems he prefers to socialise with the men there than in the wardroom.

  Alex, on the other hand, has since the storm given up all pretence at cheerfulness and now maintains a taciturn silence which is starting to wear thin with a few of the men. Nothing seems to lift him from this bleak mood, although as we draw further south, the seas have levelled off somewhat and he seems happier for the easier motion of the ship. After I finish this entry I think I shall try again to take him aside for a talk, and see if I cannot persuade him back into something of his previous sunny disposition.

  For a good deal of today we had sunshine, which was greeted warmly after so many weeks in the mists and fogs of the fifties and sixties. Many of the men took the opportunity to bring up wet clothes and bedding, and thus the rigging was quickly festooned, lending the ship the feel of a Chinese laundry and an oddly gay appearance. Captain McLaren even made a rare joke and suggested that we should leave all the bedclothes in place on the ratlines as he suspected we were making an extra two or three knots headway because of them!

  The nice weather also allowed us to bring out the dogs from their kennels, in groups of five or six, and to exercise them by playing on the deck. This activity was enthusiastically greeted by almost all involved, dogs and men alike, and also gave us the opportunity to give the kennels a jolly good clean out, as some have become quite ripe in the last few days. Even Piotre participated, though he maintained a silent and withdrawn disposition throughout.

  The dogs themselves were overjoyed to be able to romp. The privations of the last few weeks and confinement in their kennels for such extended periods has caused quite a few of them to lose much of their form, but Mr Rourke is confident that once we reach solid land and can begin to train them again, and also get them off the dried biscuit and onto a diet of penguin and seal meat, they will regain their former fitness quickly.

  The chief concern in the activity was that, without Ivan’s steadying hand and experienced eye, several of the dogs became unmanageable at times. We had on three occasions to break up fights, usually between the males, which resulted in Doug King and Tom Irvine both receiving nasty nips in the process. They’re strange creatures, though – they’ll willingly tear one another’s throats out if given a chance, but as soon as they realise they’ve bitten a human, they immediately cringe to the deck and set about howling so pitifully that it’s difficult not to laugh.

  The temperature is now well below zero, despite the sunshine, and it’s impossible to come on deck anymore without rugging up in our furs and finneskoe. The clothes are incredibly warm, even with a stiff breeze blowing and so we should, I hope, remain comfortable throughout the winter ahead.

  Soon after the noon watch finished and the first dogwatch came up, a cry from the lookout sent us all scuttling to the foredeck where we caught our first glimpse of the pack ice. After the trials of the last three weeks, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a more welcome sight.

  It is an amazing spectacle – the whole sea ahead was transformed from black to white, as the water met with a long line of floating brash ice, extending east and west just as far as we could see. The breeze was blowing from the north-west and so the captain ordered all sails down and, with a decent head of steam built up, we approached the ice-edge and were able to turn west and sail along parallel, perhaps thirty or forty yards from the ice-line.

  I had not been at all certain what to expect – a solidly white, frozen ocean, or a series of close-packed icebergs. In truth, the pack is something in the middle – large flat floes of pancake ice cover the surface of the ocean, grinding and overlapping one another like the plates on a suit of armour. Here and there the white is broken by ink-black leads of water and it is through these that we will attempt to push our way south towards the coast. Even in the middle of the pack there are icebergs, their peaks rising high above the frozen seascape like distant mountain ranges. As the day drew into evening, these shimmering peaks picked up the sunset hues of pink and orange, and glowed as though lit from within, looking something like enormous, impossible and absurdly shaped Chinese lanterns.

  A number of small penguins, little black and white chaps just below knee height, were camped on floes along the ice edge. Disturbed by our passing, they reacted with comical alarm, scrambling in ungainly fashion across the ice and flinging themselves headlong into the sea, much to the amusement of all watching. Mr Ryan was all for fetching one of the shotguns from below and attempting to shoot a couple but Mr Rourke decided, quite sensibly I thought, that we should preserve our ammunition until we have the opportunity to retrieve our kills and put them to good use.

  Though we are all keen to put our ship’s special hull to the test, especially given what we have been through to get her here, Captain McLaren has declared that, for tonight at least, we will stand off a couple of miles to sea, in the lee of a large flat-topped iceberg, so that we might make full use of the day tomorrow for navigating into the pack. Even though it is light almost all the time down here, most of the ship’s company are still exhausted from our passage and, with busy days ahead, the opportunity of a decent night’s rest will be gratefully accepted by all aboard.

  On a less cheerful note, this afternoon Doctor Dalby informed Mr Rourke that once the ship is safely within the calm waters of the pack, he intends to attempt the amputation of Per Petersen’s right arm, the condition of which has not improved at all since the accident. Despite the doctor’s best ministrations, he fears that gangrene has set in and can see no alternative course of action. We debated for some time whether to attempt the operation this evening, however the doctor declared that he would rather attempt it on a completely steady ship and after a good night’s rest. In the meantime, Per remains sedated in his hammock and a roster
has been put in place so he is kept under observation at all times.

  * * *

  THIRTEEN

  RANDOPH LAWSON. A CHAT WITH ALEX. A QUIET SORT OF MUTINY. GEORGE SMYTHE-DAVIS CONFESSES A SECRET. THE RAVEN ENTERS THE ICE.

  It is pure fancy, of course, but when I read Downes’ reference to them taking shelter for the night ‘in the lee of a large, flat-topped iceberg’, I can’t help but imagine how much, or little, it might have resembled that first giant, impervious berg that we encountered on our way south, so many years later. Naturally, even without the vagaries of a retreating ice-pack, vanishing ozone layer and other such changes which have been wrought upon the planet in the intervening eighty-plus years, it is next to impossible for the two bergs to be one and the same.

  But still, it’s nice to entertain the possibility, however remote, that the very berg which sheltered Downes and his companions on their first evening at the edge of the pack did, by some strange twist of fate and tides and currents, manage to survive the passing of years so that, almost a century on, I too could travel through its shadow, however briefly.

  As I say, pure fancy.

  So enough of this idle fantasy. For the moment, we are going to leave the Raven drifting cosily near the edge of the icepack, a tiny, floating speck, hovering at the edge of a much larger floating world.

  Instead, we shall turn our attention to another member of the party, one who – as you have no doubt inferred for yourselves by this point – will be playing an increasingly significant role in days to come.

  I shall be honest with you here and say that Randolph Lawson, despite my very best efforts, remains something of an enigma to me, and seems destined to remain so. Unlike Rourke and Downes, whose histories I’ve been able to trace with a little digging and some informed guesswork, Lawson seems to have been born fully formed in 1918 at the age of twenty-six, with no family, no history and no past.

  I should love to be able to tell you that he was the son of a butcher who turned his back on sausage-making and took to the stage, before discovering the joys of capturing light and dark in a box, but this would, of course, be pure fiction.

  The truth of the matter is that, prior to 1918, Lawson, whoever he was and whatever he had achieved, did not exist. I’ve been able to find no record of his birth, no publications, no educational history, no medical or wartime records, nothing.

  Instead, all I can give you are the facts.

  And the facts are these:

  In the aftermath of the 1918 armistice, among the many Australian men and women who returned to England from various places in Europe, a man identifying himself as Randolph Lawson crossed the channel from France, arriving at the Port of Dover on 17th April 1919. His papers listed his year of birth as 1893 and his place of embarkation as Zurich, Switzerland.

  In May 1919, noted British socialists Sydney and Beatrice Webb, co-founders of the intellectual Fabian Society, received the following letter, which can be found today in the society archives at the London School of Economics:

  Dear Mr and Mrs Webb,

  I write in admiration of the goals of your organisation, the Fabians, and also as a student of the ideas of Marx and Engels. I would like to make your acquaintance and offer my services to the furthering of your society’s aims, in any way that I might be of assistance. (I am, for example, a keen and – at least by my own reckoning – talented photographer.)

  Having recently returned to England, I would be most appreciative of the opportunity to discuss with you my experiences during the war, when, having at the outset found myself caught behind enemy lines and with little prospect of safe return to England, I was forced to remain for the duration in Zurich, Switzerland, where I made the acquaintance of certain individuals committed to the struggle to end class oppression, including Mr Vladimir Ulyanov, of whom you no doubt have some knowledge.

  I look forward to hearing from you. I can be contacted at the address at the top of this letter,

  Regards,

  Randolph Lawson

  It is not at all clear whether or not the meeting sought by Lawson ever took place, and there is no record of him having been a member of the Fabians. Likewise, I’ve been unable to discover any evidence of Lawson having been in Switzerland, either in Zurich or elsewhere, during the course of World War I. It is as though, with that letter, he simply materialised out of thin air.

  It is interesting to note that among the émigrés and refugees who spent the years of the First World War in exile, taking advantage of Swiss neutrality, was one Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known to the world as Lenin. Like Lawson, Lenin spent much of the war living in Zurich until his return to Russia in 1917, after the abdication of Czar Nicholas II. Thus, while Lawson’s claim of having met the man is impossible to verify for certain, it is well within the bounds of possibility. (It is also worth remembering that, according to Downes, Lawson also claimed on at least three different occasions to be a distant relative of the famous Australian journalist and poet of the same name – a claim for which there appears to be no substantive evidence.)

  The next fact of note is that, in August 1919, Miss Briony Featherstone, at nineteen the youngest daughter of a minor peer and an occasional attendee at various London parties, became the subject of some controversy when lewd photographs of her were found circulating among young men in London society. She was soon after dispatched by her family to a convent in France for a ‘recuperation’ period of roughly nine months. Several days after her abrupt departure and internment, her father, Lord Joseph Featherstone, and her older brother, Magnus, were spoken to by constables after using a pair of hunting shotguns to blast their way into the South London lodgings of one Randolph Lawson. Lawson, who was absent at the time, departed England shortly thereafter, bound for Australia. Records indicate that no charges were filed against either Lord Joseph or his son.

  In early 1920, a photograph appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, accompanying a brief article about the closing of a factory. The photograph is accredited to RL and is the first of many that would follow over the course of the next several months. In May 1920, an R. Lawson joined the New South Wales Photographic Society and, in August of that same year, attended a talk to the society by the renowned explorer and photographer Frank Hurley.

  The lecture, which was to help raise funds for Hurley’s up coming expedition to Papua New Guinea, covered Hurley’s experiences as the official photographer on Shackleton’s 1915 expedition and also his experiences in France and Africa during the last years of the war. Clearly the man captured Lawson’s imagination, because soon after, Hurley received an application for a position on his next expedition. Lawson’s offer to join as a photographic assistant was declined with thanks.

  Shortly after this rebuff, Lawson suddenly moved to Melbourne in the company of a young lady by the name of Eliza Grace, who somehow forgot to inform her parents – an honest working-class couple – of her departure. Her father then embarked upon a frantic campaign to find his daughter, posting ads in all the major Sydney papers and even commissioning the printing of leaflets for distribution in all her known haunts. This continued for several months until Eliza showed up again on her parents’ doorstep in January 1921. Shortly after, poor Eliza was dispatched to stay with relatives in the country, where she remained for a period of roughly nine months.

  Lawson, meanwhile, submitted a number of photographs to the Age newspaper and was also engaged on a freelance basis to take portraits at the weddings of various members of Melbourne society.

  In May he was questioned by police over his involvement in the disappearance of a twenty-three-year-old actress named Mary Flanagan. Flanagan, who had established for herself a minor reputation on the Melbourne stage, sometimes supplemented her income by working as an artist’s model. When she failed to show up at the Royal Theatre for the final performance of the Victorian Theatre Company’s season of Romeo and Juliet, in which she was playing the lead female role, police were called and her known associates, inc
luding Lawson, were questioned.

  After a long interview, the records of which are patchy at best, Lawson was released without charge and soon after took passage to Hobart aboard the SS Loongana. (Flanagan eventually turned up back in Melbourne in January 1922, at roughly the same time that the Raven was battling the Southern Ocean, and refused to explain her disappearance to anybody, including the police.)

  From these scant few details, we must put together our picture of Randolph Lawson, and an odd picture it is. Despite Downes’ clear dislike of the man and Lawson’s obvious disregard for the consequences of his actions, there is still something about Lawson that I find compelling. Perhaps it is to do with his blatant refusal to accept authority or bow down to the social mores of the time. Either way, perhaps one of my biggest regrets is that I have been unable to uncover more about this curious man’s past. Downes, for all his bravery and righteousness, does get on my nerves from time to time. And Rourke? Well, my opinions on him should be abundantly clear by this point.

  But Lawson – certainly the man was a moral sewer in more ways than one, and well deserving of the title of ‘scoundrel’, by which Downes often describes him. Still, alone among those who agreed to join Rourke, his motivations perhaps have more to do with what he was escaping from than with seeking greater glory for himself. I can’t help but wonder if he was the only truly sane man out of that entire ship’s company.

  * * *

  From the Journal of Lieutenant William Downes

  11th January, 1922