Peter Kinsella's Antarctic Voyage Diary
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Tuesday 30th January 2001, McMurdo Station, Scott's Discovery Hut and Scott Base ( 77° 51.4' S 166° 35.1' E )
It was difficult to keep track of time and which day is which as there was no night time and you sleep when you get a chance between shore excursions. Even the meal times had been adjusted to suit the schedule but in spite of the apparent disruption, the expedition was brilliant. It’s amazing to think that we were doing things day after day in the most remote and potentially the most inhospitable ocean on earth and in relative comfort, which would not have been possible for anyone at all 80 years ago, or even 25 years ago. It certainly speaks well for modern equipment and know-how. The Kapitan Khlebnikov is the only cruise ship capable of making it down here this year.
We awoke this morning parked in the ice just 2 kilometres in front of the US Antarctic Base McMurdo (it is nicknamed Mack Town) which is at Hut Point Peninsula, at the southern reaches of McMurdo Sound on Ross Island. This is as far south as any ship can go. At 0830 hours we went ashore in the helicopters as ice conditions didn’t allow us to use the zodiacs . The weather was great again with brilliant sunshine and very little wind but a bit cooler at -8°C. We were shown around the base, the largest in Antarctica with a summer population of 1200 people. Scott's Discovery hut is only a few hundred meters from Mack Town and the New Zealand Scott base is situated just a few kilometres away. The U.S. base is typically American and has everything, including the only chapel (Chapel of the Snows) on the continent. What was surprising was that they didn’t have a water treatment facility for their sewerage. The U.S. are to build one over the next few years, bearing in mind you only have a couple of months to do anything outside. What they do have is a magnificent marine biology building which is supposed to be one of the most expensive buildings per square foot in the world. You should have seen the size of some of the Antarctic fish they had in the indoor pools!!
They have about 1200 people on site for three months, then about 90 for the rest of the year. Within walking distance of the base was "Scott's Discovery" hut (No 4). It is very historic also and was a most interesting hut inside, as they all were. Scott built Discovery hut at McMurdo as a store in 1901-1902 while he stayed on his ship. In the early 1900s there was far less summer fast ice joined to the mainland than there is today, so he could anchor quite close to the hut. Scott used it again in 1911-1912 as a supply station for his South Pole expedition and Shackleton and his men used it in 1914-1915 as a base and refuge. Without going into much detailed history, 5 of Shackleton’s Ross Sea party made it back to base after setting up the supply bases for Shackleton’s transcontinental endeavour. They were exhausted, and dug the ice out of a portion of the hut to provide shelter. They lived here for some months on seal meat and using blubber for fuel not knowing that less than one metre behind the rest of the ice wall in the hut where they had stopped digging were the food supplies they needed. Two of the five set out to get supplies from Cape Evans hut just 25 kilometres away and died in the attempt. All the huts are pretty well exactly how they were left nearly 100 years ago and would often have meals half cooked still in the pan. The cold preserves everything, including the outside timber etc.
Scott's Discovery hutDuring the afternoon we flew into Scott New Zealand base and were shown around. It was much smaller than the American Base but very tidy and very friendly and quite interesting. It housed only about 100 or more people and almost closes down in the winter. Both bases had shops where you could buy some T-Shirts and badges etc, however generally they only stocked items for the resident workers. The Scott base shop also had a little post office where you could post cards and letters. They would be sent on the next plane when ever one came down with supplies. Planes were coming in to evacuate the base for winter, so our cards were home within a week!!! Although others from McMurdo didn’t arrive home until seven weeks later.
In the evening, after a very busy 2 days we steamed out of Mack Town. We saw large pods of killer whales in the channel and quite a few weddell seals lying on the ice at the edge of the channel . We were cruising north off Ross Island along an iceberg so large it has been named (B15A). It is 145 kilometres long and 35 kilometres wide and is 150 meters thick (30 meters above the water line) and has broken off the Ross Ice Shelf. As we steamed along close to the big iceberg there were hundreds of adelie penguins swimming along side the ship. Midnight - time for a quick nightcap and bed.
