Sara Wheeler - Terra Incognita. Travels in Antarctica

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Epub ISBN: 9781407051826

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Published by Vintage 1997

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Copyright Sara Wheeler 1996

Sara Wheeler has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Jonathan Cape

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About the Author

Sara Wheeler is the author of five previous books, including Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Too Close to the Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton and most recently, The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic Circle

ALSO BY SARA WHEELER

To Mark Collins, finally

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe everything to two people: Guy Guthridge at the National Science Foundation in Virginia and Frank Curry at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. Without them, there would have been no journey just a dream.

Mario Zuccelli, who heads up the Italian Antarctic Programme, also contributed hugely by getting me to Terra Nova Bay against what looked liked insuperable odds. Malcolm Macfarlane (in summer) and Warren Herrick (in winter) made me more than welcome among the New Zealanders at Scott Base and in the field. The Chilean Antarcticans started it all by taking me to Marsh, their station on King George Island.

Many people helped me on the ice, and I want to thank them all. I can only mention a few here; the others know who they are. The scientists who took me along when they didnt have to at all include Hermann Englehardt at the Dragon on Ice Stream B, Imre Friedmann in the Convoy Range, Ross Powell at the Mackay Glacier, Brian Howes and Dale Goehringer at Lake Fryxell and John Priscu at Lake Bonney. Tony Stark helped me get to grips with astrophysics at the Pole. My thanks go to the South Pole summer crew 1994/5, with whom I celebrated Christmas, and to Gaetano Rizzi and the Italians with whom I travelled around Victoria Land. At McMurdo innumerable people helped, especially Kristin Larson and Lisa Mastro in the Crary Lab; Robin Abbott, the Helicopter Queen; Kirk Salveson, and everyone at the Berg Field Center. I especially want to thank Lucia deLeiris. She and I had our own camp on the ice for many weeks. At Rothera and elsewhere on the peninsula Ben Hodges, Al Wearden and Steve Rumble generously extended the hand of friendship at a difficult time.

In warmer climes, my editor in London, Tony Colwell at Jonathan Cape, taught me so much. Thanks seem inadequate for what he has done for me but I give them anyway. Joe Fox at Random House in New York took the book on and encouraged me greatly, and, tragically, he died while I was finishing it. Lawrence Larose gallantly took up the baton and made me feel part of the team. I owe a debt to my agent, Gillon Aitken; to Oliver Garnett, who created my polar library almost single-handedly; to Robin Gauldie, who ransacked his encyclopedic mind; to the endlessly obliging Shirley Sawtell and her colleagues at the Scott Polar Research Institute; and to Mike Richardson at the Foreign Office, who sanctioned Terra Incognita from the beginning, and told me funny stories. John Hall, Richard Hanson, Mary Sutton and Bruce Tate at the British Antarctic Survey headquarters in Cambridge were always helpful, and it was a pleasure to work with them. Many people sat through interviews: they all appear in the text, named or unnamed, and I thank them all.

Some people read Terra Incognita in its early versions. On the ice Lisa Williams and Bob deZafra read an entire draft and made many helpful suggestions. Bruno Nardi commented on almost every line of the first chapters in between despatching balloons into the stratosphere. On solid ground, Bob Headland, archivist at the Scott Polar Research Institute, read the typescript carefully and gave me the benefit of his imagination, insight and vast polar knowledge. The SPRI librarian, William Mills, generously helped with bibliographical queries. Professor Robin Humphreys provided a cogent reading, and so, as always, did Phil Kolvin. Cindy Riches once again proved an incomparable reader. She picked over many drafts, and her contribution was incalculable I can see her hand on every page. More than anyone else, she has shared this journey, and that, surely, is what friendship means.

The lines from T. S. Eliots The Waste Land and Little Gidding, both included in Collected Poems 19021962, are quoted with the kind permission of the publishers Faber & Faber. I am also grateful to Faber for permission to reprint the lines from W. H. Audens Atlantic which appears in Collected Poems; to Edwin Mickleburgh and the Bodley Head for permission to quote from Beyond the Frozen Sea; to A. P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of Michael Yeats for the extract from The Cold Heaven by W. B. Yeats which appears in The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats; and to Mrs Angela Mathias for her generous permission to use many lines from The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard.

I am indebted to STA Travel in London for organising all my commercial flights, as they always have, and to Damart for thermal gear, G. B. Britton for Goretex and Thinsulate boots, Moomba Marketing for survival aids, Taunton Leisure and Pentax Ltd for discounted goods, Sunshine Ellis in New Zealand for emergency gear repair, my local Marriott at Swiss Cottage for training facilities, and Johnson & Johnson for condoms to protect microphones against moisture.

The New Zealand Operational Support team of Roger Sutton and Jo Malcolm in Christchurch, and of course Camilla Sutton (Wellington Branch), saw me come and go four times over the course of a year, always with smiles and an open house. They made New Zealand a home for me.