A century ago, Antarctica was a seriously tough place in which to be a scientist. In February 1912, a German expedition established its research station on an ice-shelf in the Weddell Sea, only for that section of shelf to break loose ‘with an explosive boom’, and drift away — pursued by the German ship. When Apsley Cherry Garrard journeyed to the emperor penguin rookery at Cape
Crozier in July 1911, to investigate the embryology of the birds, he and his companions carried reindeer-fur-lined sleeping bags which froze solid during the days, weighed 21 kg at their heaviest, and could take up to 45 minutes of melting and wriggling to enter each night.
During his desperate retreat to Cape Denison in early 1913, Douglas Mawson was ‘regularly strapping the soles of his feet back on with lanolin cream’, and shedding ‘large sheets’ of skin from his hands, yet he continued to keep daily weather records. Comfort for these early scientist-explorers was slight, hazard was profuse and dedication vital.
Things have changed since the Heroic Age. Antarctic research bases are now snugly insulated, and re-provisioned by plane. Skidoos have replaced man-hauled sledges. Sleeping bags are of goose-down. Fatalities are rare. But of course the winds still blow, the winters are still lightless, Antarctic science remains an arduous pursuit and Antarctic scientists are a necessarily hardy and passionate tribe. Among them is Chris Turney, an Australian and British geologist and climatologist, who has now written a partly excellent book about the birth of polar science 100 years ago.
The Terra Nova centenary has already seen a blizzard of new Scott-ish books, to add to the vast existing bibliography of Antarctic literature. And for the first half of 1912 it is hard to work out what Turney has to say that is new about this under-inhabited and over-described continent.
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