Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the plastic letters of the Dog Feed column were jumbled in a heap at the bottom of the board. The
Dog of the Day hook was still next to the front door, field rations were still called Manfood to dis-
tinguish them from Dogfood, and framed photographs of bearded giants gazing adoringly at small
fluffy bundles lurked in the most unlikely places.
In 1991 the Antarctic Treaty nations declared that under the terms of the Environmental Protocol
to the Treaty the huskies were to be 'phased out' of Antarctica by April Fool's Day 1994. The
breeding programme at Rothera was stopped immediately. BAS had kept dogs continually since
1945, though they had not been used in support of scientific work since 1975. With the arrival
of reliable snowmobile travel, the dogs became ever more obsolete and were retained primarily
for recreational purposes. In the Rothera archives I found a telex from the Foreign Office, dated
1963, suggesting that breeding should cease since mechanical transport was increasing, and it was
scrawled with indignant comments from men on base pointing out that one plane was grounded
and the motorised toboggans were stranded while the Spartans, Giants and Moomins were lazing
comfortably on their spans outside the door. Besides mechanisation, another argument for the re-
moval of the dogs was the suggestion that they passed on canine distemper to seals, and, more
plausibly, that the seal chop necessitated by their voracious appetites was now 'inappropriate to
the environmental aims of scientific organisations within the Antarctic'.
I asked Ben about the dogs one day while we were washing up.
'You can't bond with a snowmobile,' he said. 'The huskies kept up our morale. The Antarctic
would have been far lonelier without them. Our dogs kept us sane, no doubt about it.'
'Do you miss them?' I asked.
'Oh yes. You can form relationships with the dogs like you do with two-legged travelling com-
panions. They were my friends. I used to have the same team for two years, and you got to know
them so well - I could anticipate when trouble was going to start from a little mannerism, say, or a
low growl. I could even tell which one had broken wind.' He turned away from the sink and wiped
his hands.
'I'll never forget going down to say goodbye to them at the end of my tour, just before I got
on the ship. Ask any dog-handler if he'd like to take his team with him at that moment, and he
wouldn't think twice, I can tell you.' He thought about this for a moment, and continued, 'The
dogs formed a link with the past, too. They gave the base a bit of historical continuity. That's all
gone now. In a couple of years there won't even be anyone here who remembers the huskies.'
John Sweeny, who was half Ben's age, was the last dog-handler at BAS. He was the Irishman
whom I had met at breakfast on the first day of the conference and who had run along the river
with me in Cambridge.
'How was the trip, John?' someone had asked him over the cornflakes at Girton College.
'Fine,' John replied.
'Where have you been?' I enquired.
'On a skiing holiday,' he said.
I imagined that this holiday had taken place in Sauze d'Oux or Chamonix. Later I found out that
he had skied all the way across Greenland, pulling his sledge behind him.
