Shackleton's Heroes (41 page)
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Authors: Wilson McOrist
June to August 1915 â Each man was issued with two pairs of finnesko boots, made from reindeer skin with the fur on the outside.
June to August 1915 â After the loss of the
Aurora
, Wild wrote that he and Joyce were very busy making clothes. First of all they cut up a canvas tent and made a pair of trousers for everybody, which Joyce said looked like âOxford bags'.
30 September 1915 â At Cape Evans, Spencer-Smith writes a letter to his parents. He tells his âDear Father and Mother' they are setting out for the second season's sledging and that this is a âshort note to say “au revoir” in case I should not come back'.
March to June 1916 â The
Discovery
hut's sole heating came from burning seal blubber chunks on this stove. Richards remembered that some of the blubber oil would run out of the back of the bricks and onto the floor and, every so often, when there was too much on the floor, they would shovel it up into a tin and use it again for fuel.
March to June 1916 â There was no lighting in the
Discovery
hut. The men were there over the winter months â the sun did not return until mid-August â so for lighting all they could do was make an improvised blubber lamp which was a bit of string or wick in some blubber oil, in an old tin, usually an empty corned-beef tin like this.
March to June 1916 â The axe the men used to chop up the frozen planks of seal blubber sits next to the blubber stove, in which seal chunks are still to be found.
11 March 1916 â Cans of McDoddies rhubarb. Joyce tells us that there were a few cans of these at
Discovery
hut when they arrived on 11 March, but they were soon eaten, and thereafter, at
Discovery
hut, the men ate only seal meat.
8 May 1916 â There is a hill by
Discovery
hut which has a cross on it, Vince's Cross, in memory of George Vince, who was a member of the
Discovery
Expedition. He died in 1902, the first man known to have lost his life in the McMurdo Sound region. Joyce, Wild and Richards stood at the top of this hill to watch Mackintosh and Hayward walk towards Cape Evans.
January 1917 â A wooden cross was erected on the hill behind Cape Evans in memory of the lost men from the Mount Hope Party.
PHOTO BY DAVID BARNES
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
The Robson Press (an imprint of Biteback Publishing Ltd)
Westminster Tower
3 Albert Embankment
London SE1 7SP
Copyright © Wilson McOrist 2015 Â
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ISBN 978-1-84954-903-5 Â
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Â
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