Sunday August 25th - Wednesday September 11th

Only Brownie and I were now left in the base camp, until the return of the boat journey who are expected back in about a week’s time. I think we were both anxious to be left thus to get on with out own work, for with the others there we were continually being interrupted and held up by very irregular hours. Our first action when the others had left was to have a really good wash - the first real one since Tromsö! - and it was a very thorough one in warm water, and then to bed. As we are so to speak the permanent residents at the base, we have the pick of the bunks and have each chosen bottom ones. There are 9 bunks, three stories high along the long wall of the bedroom. They are just 6ft long - a little too short really, but adequate in width and a four inch side to prevent you falling off. The worst point is that there is only about 2ft between the stories, so that if you sit up quickly or move about much you crack your head on the bunk above. Also this makes them very difficult to get into at first. As a soft foundation we tried the air-inflated rubber “Li-lo” mattress the first night, and found them so comfortable that we have continued with them.

Our day is divided naturally into four parts by our three meals. Before breakfast (at the beginning) and after supper, we devote our attention to camp duties, and the rest of the time to our scientific work. Before breakfast, time is usually spent in fetching driftwood from above the high water mark in the N. bay about 100yds from the house, and making a large dump in front of the house for winter use. Brownie is responsible for practically the whole dump, for usually when I had taken the meteorological readings at 7a.m. I got breakfast, and what with lighting the fire, fetching water, stirring the porridge or cutting the bacon, I had no time to fetch more wood than enough for current use so as not to draw on Brownie’s dump. I also gradually filled the water butt as a reserve against a non-rainy day. At first our evening duties consisted in bringing up to the house the 120 bags of coal that were just landed on the shore - in a most inconvenient position. Sandy suggested we should do two bags a day, and we were quite pleased when we did six on the first day. Soon we developed a technique of getting the bags on to our backs and climbing up a staircase of other bags, so that we did 10 the next day and improved daily, finishing up with 27 on the last day - finishing the whole job in 10 days. Then we had to get indoors all the cases containing things that would be damaged by frost. Next we put up ropes all the way from the house to the ionosphere hut and between all the meteorological instruments so that we wouldn’t get lost during a storm, and now we are engaged in piling stones round the ionosphere hut to prevent its being blown away. We usually knock off work just before 10 o’clock and listen to the news bulletin on the Empire short-wave programme. We can usually hear Droitwich at that hour, but not earlier. Here we keep G.M.T. - a bad plan I think. And so in bed about 10.30p.m. Sometimes when the wind is from the S.E. we scavenge round the house and have a bonfire of the rubbish.

As regards the scientific work, I had more or less got the meteorological station going before the others left, and the first thing to get going afterwards was the ionosphere. Brownie engaged himself with the electrical part of it, and I fitted up the darkroom. By knocking a hole between the living room and the darkroom, we managed to arrange it so that the ionosphere camera is in the darkroom and can be controlled from the living room, which saved our having to carry the large and clumsy camera into the darkroom several times a day. We took our first record on 27th August, and had no end of trouble at first with the photographic part, and with the calibrator which would not lock in with the time base. Brownie thought it was the Petter engine that was at fault - its speed certainly seems to vary a certain amount, but try as he could, he could not get the flywheel off the engine. The generator also gave trouble, and we spent no little time with it. Gradually the photography got better, though, but there always seemed to be something wrong, until after a few days we took the camera down and found the cause of the trouble, and since then all has gone well. A few days later Brownie found a loose connection, and on joining it up properly the calibrator locked in with the time base, so we had unjustifiably been putting the blame on the Petter. Since then, apart from some little difficulty with the clock and a few other little troubles, it has improved daily, and the records we now get seem good to us. We are now engaged on an International day: these occur once a fortnight when we take runs (each occupy 30 - 45 minutes) every two hours from 4p.m. Wednesday to 4p.m. Thursday. It has been made a bit easier today as there is a magnetic storm in progress; this shortens the runs and gives most interesting results. Our magnetometer became lively for the first time this morning, and we have had an active day.

some of the equipment in the hut

Apart from this, Brownie has been engaged on battery-charging and on his big transmitter. I have been getting other things out and set up, and have gradually been finishing getting all the meteorology ready. What takes quite a lot of time now, but what is quite fun and keeps us at regular hours, is that we send weather reports every day at 7.30am. 12.30pm. and 5.30pm. G.M.T. to the wireless station at Bear Island, who then send them on to Tromsö, and thus out to the world. We generate the power by bicycling a dynamo. It looks absurd, but is effective and is warming exercise. We could not get through the first two days, chiefly we think because we had not heard a time signal for several days and probably we called him up at the wrong time. Since then we have only failed once to get through when our transmitter broke down one morning, and they asked for the morning’s report at noon - so they do seem to value it a bit. It’s nice to be in such constant communication with the world too, for we couldn’t get Advent Bay on Saturday, and the England transmitter is not going yet. It’s not always easy getting up for the 7o’clock observations, but the weather reports make one be pretty punctual, as the message has to be coded.

'Brownie' Whatman using the bicycle generator

to transmit messages to Bear Island

The weather has been getting more and more wintery. Whereas it had been quite warm in August, September set in cold with hard frosts, and by 3rd. Sept. the stream was frozen dry, and we were glad of the full butt as the nearest snow-drift is about 7 minutes walk from here. We were nearly at the bottom of our reserves when after a calm day on the 7th the N.W. wind started blowing on the 8th bringing snow with it, and since then the ground has been covered with snow, and deep in some drifts. The North Westerly has been blowing continuously since then, and it has seemed much colder, so that we keep the stove going continuously now; it’s overcast all the time and we haven’t seen the sun for a week. Up till now we have lit the fire for breakfast and for supper and have had a cold lunch, for the driftwood burns up so quickly that we cannot spare the time to look after it all day. It really is true that one becomes an absolute glutton here, why, I don’t know - I freely admit it and everybody is the same - we just eat and eat and eat. We haven’t much time to cook, so we have either porridge or bacon and eggs for breakfast, and cook something tinned for supper, except that recently we have had seal meat, which is excellent. We have also started on our vitamin food and have a Redoxyn tablet each morning which contains all the Vitamin C of five lemons, and Bemax and Cod Liver Oil on alternate days - one of these is distinctly preferable to the other!

It has not been in the slightest monotonous, but there have been only two events. On the evening of Sunday 1st., as we were having a camp clearance and bonfire we were surprised to see a rowing boat coming in and it turned out to be Dan and Andrew. They had been seal-hunting and being quite near they called in and we had a grand time at supper. They were having difficulty in setting up the ice-cap stations as there had been no snow on the glacier and the dogs could not get a grip on the blue ice. However they had dumped a great deal of stores at the foot of the glacier, had done a lot of work at the advanced base, and Sandy and Robert were studying ice conditions. They left us some seal and went off after supper.

The next event was on Saturday 7th when I noticed Hansigne, the missing bitch, had come to camp again to look for food. She always used to do so, and Andrew had made three attempts to follow her but always lost her in the end. We hadn’t seen her for some time and we decided to take the opportunity - a good one as she would leave tracks in the snow - and also take our first bit of holiday - so we gave her some seal (she was thin and ravenous) and shut her up until we had sent our noon weather report, and told Bear Island that we wouldn’t send a message that evening. So we put Hansigne on a rope and took the boat to the foot of the glacier, somewhere beyond the top of which we knew she lived. We kept her on a long lead and at first she started off with enthusiasm and pulled me up the glacier, but after a bit she hesitated and when we reached the boulders on the top of Base mountain - here the going was difficult as the stones were covered with recently fallen snow - she led us all over the place and round in circles and back on her tracks, and we couldn’t decide whether she was trying to fox us or whether she was really lost. It was only snowing lightly intermittently, so we let her loose and followed her tracks. She trotted off to the north and we followed at a discrete distance. Then she doubled back and got further ahead until we lost sight of her. She kept on going over the same ground as she did when on the lead so that her tracks were mixed up with the old ones. We got quite lost after a bit, but going in the direction where she had last been seen, I very luckily struck a single recent track going south. After a bit the tracks doubled and split as if she had gone one way and returned and gone off at right angles. We followed the tracks and found as we expected - that they doubled back after a few hundred yards. So we started off on the branch track and soon came to another double one, and just as we were wondering if this would lead anywhere we heard what sounded like a yelp several hundred yards away, and was astounded to see Hansigne with two puppies not 10 yards away. The puppies tried to hide under rocks, but we got them out and photographed them, and then putting them in our rucksacks we started for home. Poor Hansigne, she had absolutely no shelter at all, and was lying right exposed in the open and I am sure if we hadn‘t found them that day the puppies would never have survived this cold and windy week at the top of that open hill. Coming down the glacier we found that the safest way was to sit and slide. So we got then back, and now they are all in the dog house, and we only wish we could let Andrew know.