Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
25
Discovery sailed south from Lyttleton, under sail whenever possible to conserve the
limited supply of coal. On January 3, 1902, the ship encountered the pack, clearing it with
little trouble in five days. It sailed into Robertson Bay, with a landing at the hut on Ridley
Beach. Bernacchi was the old hand, pointing out features, reminiscing, leading a party to
Hansen's gravesite. From Cape Adare the expedition sailed south as close in as possible
along the northern Victoria Land coast, but was forced out repeatedly by gales.
South of Coulman Island, pack and fast sea ice prevented them from entering Lady
Newnes Bay, but to starboard the men could see the magnificent, icebound Mount Mur-
chison with its twin summit, and the vertical, bare rock face of Cape Sibbald rising from
the bay (see Figs. 1.5, 1.7). Discovery attempted to penetrate deep into Wood Bay on the
north side of Mount Melbourne, to scout whether that reentrant oVered a winter haven
and a route to the interior, as Borchgrevink had suggested it might. Ice, however, foiled
the plan, so Discovery sailed back along the peninsula, rounding the steep tip of Cape
Washington (see Fig. 1.12). It was with keen interest that the expedition crossed into clear
water south of the cape, for neither Ross nor Borchgrevink had been able to approach the
land between there and McMurdo Sound.
The coastline south of Mount Melbourne took a broad swing to the west and then
straightened out again and headed south. In places, a foot of fast ice stood out from the
lower foothills; elsewhere, bare rock stretches of those foothills plunged straight into the
sea. The mountains to the south of Mount Melbourne were less grand, with fewer peaks
than those to the north and some with flat, tabular tops. At the lowest point on the sky-
line a broad glacier drained directly through a portal, giving a glimpse of the vast field of
white that rose behind the mountains. In the middle of this mighty glacier was an odd,
beehive-shaped nunatak—an island of land surrounded by ice—which split the glacier's
flow and stood as a striking landmark in this rather subdued portion of the mountains.
Following the steep ice foot south, and watching the mountains unfold to the west,
the men suddenly realized that the wall pinched out in a deep cleft, with the opposite wall
striking back directly east. Discovery backed out and steamed east along its massive, jag-
ged face for a number of hours with the height varying from 70 to 150 feet. After probably
thirty miles the wall made a square right turn and headed due south. To all appearances,
the ship had been following another of the barrier tongues like the ones in Lady Newnes
Bay, but the scale of this one was gargantuan. Scott named this the Drygalski Ice Tongue,
after Professor Erich von Drygalski, the leader of the concurrent German Antarctic Expe-
dition (1901-1903) (Fig. 1.13).
The day was crystal clear as the ship rounded the corner of the ice tongue, with
Mount Erebus 120 miles distant, puYng wisps of steam from its cratered summit. With
Wood Bay out of the question that season, it was important for Scott to find a safe har-
bor for wintering over with the ship. The Discovery worked its way south through heavy
pack, standing oV maybe 30 miles from the coast, its men eyeing any hint of a headland
that might signal shelter. On the second day, they saw a brown bluV or cliV that looked
promising out in the distance, and set a southwesterly course for it. After several hours
of rough pounding, even stopping the ship dead in the water on several occasions, they
reached the mouth of an inlet and steered into it. Here was a perfectly formed harbor,
