Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Afloat in the Southern Ocean
Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o'er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.
William Blake, 'To Winter'
I ONCE MET a former captain of the Antarctic support ship HMS Endurance . He had a great love of
the south.
'I took a ship where no ship had been before,' he said, 'and that was a thrill. In the mid-eighties
I felt that we were pushing back the boundaries of man's knowledge. It was good sailoring down
there.' Like Scott, he had been obliged by the Navy Act to conduct a church service on board each
Sunday, and described reading the lesson on deck in the wintry sunshine while Antarctic terns flew
around the prow.
The Royal Research Ship Bransfield was old and decrepit, but we had 'good sailoring' on her,
too. The journey to the Falklands took a week. There were three decks: one for the officers and
senior BAS personnel, one for other BAS people and one for the crew. Each had its own mess. Ours
- the middle one - was furnished with chipped blue formica tables seating twelve, each equipped
with a row of sauce bottles standing to attention in slots.
I was sharing a cabin with an amiable cargo supervisor from BAS HQ. She had been invited up-
stairs to eat in the wardroom, but I had not, which made her feel very embarrassed, but I couldn't
have cared less. The cabin had a long leatherette couch along the porthole wall. The walls were mint
green and the carpet and bunk curtains were orange, a colour scheme designed to make you puke
should the roll of the sea fail.
The builders were with us, which made the trip more entertaining and the lounge friendlier. One
day a pair of them pretended to the others that everyone was obliged to participate in iceberg patrol
and handed out hard hats emblazoned with the words BERG ALERT and broom handles to shove away
stray islands of ice. Two chippies fell for it, and dutifully stood on the lower deck wearing the
Berg Alert hats, smoking and occasionally glancing around to see if any giant icebergs were bearing
down on the ship. When they spotted the others taking photographs of them, the game was up.
The BAS men who were leaving Rothera after two-and-a-half years sniggered into their beer as
they imagined the winterers back on base. It was traditional to sabotage winterers upon departure,
and on this occasion a trout had been stowed in the ventilation system, a gallon of green food col-
ouring poured into the water tanks and small cubes of stilton cheese balanced on the lattice ceil-
ing of the bar. The winterers had tried to effect proleptic revenge, knowing something horrible lay
ahead, and half a mackerel was found in a bunk shortly after we sailed, provoking much discussion
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