Francis - Empire Antarctica: ice, silence & emperor penguins

Gavin Francis fulfilled a lifetimes ambition when he spent fourteen months as the basecamp doctor at Halley, a profoundly isolated British research station on the Caird Coast of Antarctica. So remote, it is said to be easier to evacuate a casualty from the International Space Station than it is to bring someone out of Halley in winter.

Antarctica offered a year of unparalleled silence and solitude, with few distractions and very little human history, but also a rare opportunity to live among emperor penguins, the only species truly at home in the Antarctic. Following the penguins throughout the year from a summer of perpetual sunshine to months of winter darkness Gavin Francis explores a world of great beauty conjured from the simplest of elements, the hardship of living at 50C below zero and the unexpected comfort that the penguin community bring.

Empire Antarctica is the story of one man and his fascination with the worlds loneliest continent, as well as the emperor penguins who weather the winter with him. Combining an evocative narrative with a sublime sensitivity to the natural world, this is travel writing at its very best.

Gavin Francis was born in 1975 and brought up in Fife, Scotland. After qualifying from medical school in Edinburgh he spent ten years travelling, visiting all seven continents. He has worked in Africa and India, made several trips to the Arctic, and crossed Eurasia and Australasia by motorcycle. His first book, True North, was published in 2008. He has lectured at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge and the Edinburgh Book Festival, and is a regular speaker at the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. He lives in Edinburgh.

www.gavinfrancis.com

True North: Travels in Arctic Europe

Maps

Antarctica and Ross Island

Weddell Sea Area and the Brunt Ice Shelf

Illustrations in the text

Antarctica: The New Continent, headline banner from the New York Times, 13 March 1904

The Piper and the Penguin, from J.H. Pirie, R.N Rudmose Brown & R.C. Mossman, The Voyage of the Scotia. Edinburgh, 1906 (Blackwood)

Last call of the Shackleton

Extreme Ironing. Photograph by Gavin Francis & Allan Thomas

Halley under the Aurora. Ink drawing reproduced by kind permission of the artist, Paul Torode

Wilson, Bowers and Cherry-Garrard on their return from Cape Crozier. Photograph by Herbert Ponting, from Huxley, L. (ed.) Scotts Last Expedition Vol. II, London, 1913 (Smith, Elder & Co.)

Midwinter message from the Prime Minister of India

Its their ice after all. Ink drawing of an emperor penguin shoving a winterer off his skidoo. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist, Paul Torode

A plaque on the Halley Memorial Sledge. Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Jenny Hine

Members of the Polar Party having a meal in Camp. Cinematograph still from Herbert Pontings fund-raising footage. Reproduced from Huxley, L. (ed.) Scotts Last Expedition Vol. I, London, 1913 (Smith, Elder & Co.)

Rymill, Watkins, Courtauld and Chapman on their arrival at the base. Photograph from Northern Lights: The Official Account of the British Arctic Air-Route Expedition 1930-1931 Spencer Chapman, F., London, 1932 (Chatto & Windus)

Emperor penguins on the sea ice in November

Goodbye and Good Luck

Picture section

Antarctica at last!

Arriving on the sea ice at Halley

Halley Research Station the Laws platform

Snowcat tracks between the ship and the base

Waving goodbye to the ship as the ten-month isolation begins

Abseiling from the ice cliffs, with the emperors on the horizon

Exploring the Hinge of the continent

Sunset over the South Pole

Waiting for Winter

A winter moon over the Simpson platform

The sun returns over the Laws platform

A female emperor returns after three months at sea

Newly hatched emperor chick

Fledging emperor chick

Queuing up at the ice edge

Cases packed, ready for home

80 South in the Shackleton Range

All photographs, unless otherwise stated, are by the author.

Maps by Paul Torode.

In the hope that book dedications,
like all the best stories, gain in being shared,

to Esa

for the space and the silence

and also to

Allan Thomas, Annette Ryan (ne Faux), Ben Norrish,
Craig Nicholson, Elaine Cowie, Graeme Barton,
Mark Maltby, Mark Stewart, Patrick McGoldrick,
Paul Torode, Robert Shortman, Russ Locke & Stuart Colley;

the penguins were good company, but so were they.

It is a wonderful place we are in, all new to the world, and yet I feel that I cannot describe it. There is an impression of limitless solitude about it all.

Ernest Shackleton, The Heart of the Antarctic

AUTUMN IN ANTARCTICA: sunrise and sunset merge in firestorms of light that seem to warn of the coming darkness. At 75 South the polar night of winter will last three and a half months. Light in Antarctica is refracted and reflected between ice and sky as though through a hall of mirrors; the continent bathes in the colours of flame as the autumn days grow colder. Last years sea ice has all been broken out by the storms of summer. It is April, soon after the autumnal equinox, and the refreezing of the sea is already well advanced. Emperor penguins are returning from a summer fishing, fat and gleaming, to mate on the new sea ice close to the edges of the continent. They are the only species evolved to survive these coasts through the winter. That they breed through it, carrying eggs on their feet as they shuffle through the darkness, is one of the wonders of the natural world.

It is a twenty-kilometre journey from Halley Research Station to the nearest rookery of emperor penguins. The breeding ground is one of the largest in the world some 60,000 emperors breed there every autumn. Halleys coast is far across the grinding gyre of the Weddell Sea ice fields, that graveyard of ships, and is accessible for only two months of the year. So remote, it is said to be easier to evacuate a medical casualty from the International Space Station than it is to bring someone out of Halley in winter. Affectionately or otherwise, some residents call it Starbase Halley. I have come here to live for a year on its empty plains of ice, and today I want to get down to the new sea ice to watch the gathering of the emperors.

Our skidoos are kept covered by tarpaulins to protect them against the blizzards of autumn. It is cold for the season, approaching 40C below zero. Russ, one of Halleys scientists, has agreed to accompany me; it is considered too dangerous to go alone. Though we leave paraffin heat lamps burning for an hour under the tarps it takes us a further hour to start the skidoos. We take turns pulling on their starter cords until our arms ache, but finally the engines sputter into life.