Tales from Bluebell Cottage: Memories of Two Years in Antarctica, 1961-1963

By Brian J Taylor

In 1967, following my return from the Antarctic, I decided to have my ‘Antarctic Journal’ typed with a view to having it published. The mission failed despite the fact that Sir Vivian Fuchs, then Director of the British Antarctic Survey, liked what he was able to read of the ‘book’ and even offered me the services of his literary agent.

Now, in 2020, the storey behind the book is closest, historically, to those accounts written in the 1950s by Kevin Walton and Ellery Anderson, that is when dogs and dog sledging was the principal means of transport, when communication with the outside world relied on a short telegraph on one’s next-of-kin and the arrival, annually, of ship-borne mail and when the normal tour of duty was two years.

Therefore, this book represents a brief period of time in the history of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (F.I.D.S.) and British Antarctic Survey (B.A.S) when the decision was taken to establish a field station at Fossil Bluff, situated approximately half way down the eastern coast of Alexander Island, in order to survey, topographically and geologically, the little explored Alexander Island and the adjacent part of the Antarctic Peninsula.

And so, in late February 1961, Cliff Pearce, John Smith and myself volunteered to become the first to over-winter at Fossil Bluff, a daunting prospect but one to which all three of us looked forward with eager anticipation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Apr 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800468504

Brian J Taylor

Brian J. Taylor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and educated at Franklin & Marshall College, Wharton Business School and Temple Law School. He is currently a practicing attorney and adjunct law professor. He credits his love for Asia and Asian culture to his Taiwanese born wife, Sandra. They currently reside in Malvern, Pennsylvania with their two daughters Quinlin and Chelsea

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to fellow earth scientists Neil Aitkenhead, Dennis Ardus, Arthur Fraser and Phil Nelson who, in 1959, joined me at the Department of Geology, University of Birmingham, to undertake a pre-Antarctic ‘training course’ given by Dr R. J. Adie.

The book also acknowledges, with thanks, the support of fellow ‘pioneers’ John Smith and Cliff Pearce who overwintered with me at Fossil Bluff between 1961 and 1962 (when we were isolated many miles from any other habitation), together with those who supported me throughout a second winter and field season and with whom I continued to share that unique experience of living and working in the world’s ‘Great White South’.

Finally, I am indebted to my daughter, Clare, for her unstinting editorial efforts during the preparation of this book, and to the rest of my family, Judith, Richard, Jo, Elijah, Nathaniel and Francis, for their support.

Author’s Preface

This is the tale of my time in Antarctica in the early 1960s at Fossil Bluff, a remote satellite station of the British Antarctic Survey, situated about half-way down the eastern coastline of Alexander Island. It was with not a small amount of irony that the station hut, which was my home for two years, came to be known in time as ‘Bluebell Cottage’. But how did I get there?

As a teenager growing up in Cardiff in the 1950s, I was always interested in natural history and was known locally as ‘the boy who played with stones’. Later, with my friend Norman Forsey, I toured the Vale of Glamorgan on my bicycle and dug up animal skulls (mainly of dogs and sheep) from adits in the limestone of the south crop of the South Wales Coalfield. While still at school I went in search of Silurian and Carboniferous trilobites and discovered a new site, at Crack Hill Quarry near Bridgend, for Triassic fissure material, including the delicate bones of small reptiles. My A level examiner was suitably impressed.

A degree in geology, with a thesis on the lineage of the fossil mollusc Gryphaea, at Swansea University followed, and a career in the oil and metals industries beckoned – I spent the summer of 1958 in Iraq on a studentship with the Mosul Petroleum Company. But somewhere in the recesses of my mind lurked the Antarctic, but where had this notion come from? Was it the occasional chat with Derick Maling, lecturer in geography at Swansea – he had been with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) at Signy Island in the late 1940s – or was it the imposing memorial to Captain Scott at Roath Park Lake, close to where I lived in Cardiff? Scott had called at the city in the Terra Nova to take on coal before his main journey south. Perhaps it was a combination of both.

Returning from my visit to the Antarctic, May 1960, holding my model of the MV Kista Dan, built in the ship’s workshop while beset in the Bellingshausen Sea.

Copyright Planet News Ltd., London.

In the end, I took the plunge and, after accepting the conditions of service offered by the FIDS, I passed the briefest of medical examinations and had a dental check-up, and then undertook, with four other earth scientists, a pre-Antarctic ‘training course’ at the Department of Geology, University of Birmingham, given by Dr R. J. Adie, the chief geologist with the FIDS. This entailed reading some background material and attending a short lecture but nothing else to whet the appetite. However, it was intimated to me (instructions were to follow later) that with my obvious interest in palaeontology I was to be based at Stonington Island, the FIDS’ most southern base on the Antarctic Peninsular and ultimately Fossil Bluff. Here, I was to map a narrow belt of well-exposed sedimentary rocks known to be fossiliferous. Because Fossil Bluff had only been visited before by reconnaissance parties, I was excited at the prospect of being the first geologist to be based there and excited, too, to be the first one to undertake a detailed survey.

On the 18th December 1959 I set sail, in the MV Kista Dan, from Southampton for Antarctica – my career in southern hemisphere geology was about to begin. However, excitement turned to dismay when heavy pack ice and extensive fast ice in the Bellingshausen Sea prevented the ship from getting into Stonington Island. Although I attempted to redeem the situation by offering to lead a manhauling trip to the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, the project was scuppered and so I sailed back to Southampton in early 1960, extremely disappointed.

My hope of reaching Alexander Island was realised on my second journey south, which started on the 1st November 1960. In March 1961, the British Antarctic Survey established its field station (a one-room hut) at Fossil Bluff and manned it with three ‘volunteers’, Clifford (Cliff) Pearce and John Smith, both Survey-trained meteorologists, and me. We three became the first to overwinter at this remote location.

Hence, no one knew what the conditions at Fossil Bluff would be like, especially in winter. Furthermore, the hut although assembled, was incomplete, the food supply (a mixture of normal base food and sledging rations) was probably inadequate and the only equipment at our disposal consisted mainly of items left behind by the building party. Cliff and I kept personal accounts of our experiences,¹ and these have formed the bases of two books, namely Cliff’s The Silent Sound published in 2004 and this book, a companion piece, virtually unaltered since it was first written in 1967 when I set about describing my two years at Fossil Bluff.²

The two years that I spent at Bluebell Cottage were completely different. The first witnessed the establishment of a meteorological programme at Fossil Bluff and the beginnings of a detailed, bed-by-bed geological investigation that, based on the wide-ranging palaeontological discoveries I made, lent support to this almost ‘macroscopic’ approach. The second year, with Cliff and John having left the base for the UK, I was joined by our colleagues from the parent base at Stonington, who brought with them teams of huskies, a Muskeg tractor replete with caboose and two Otter aircraft. An expansive topographical programme of the southern half of the Antarctic Peninsular was carried out, while the geological programme combined detailed on-site investigations with a series of reconnaissance forays.

Both years were enjoyable but if I had to choose between the two, then I would have to declare a preference for the first – so much then was unknown, the silence of the ‘silent Sound’ was often eerie, even mystical, and almost every bed of rock yielded some intriguing fossil, like a fish tooth, a diminutive isopod or the track of a mud-ingesting worm. Every day in the field had the potential to yield a surprise and no day was given up easily to the weather or some other interruption.

Today, some 60 years later, virtually everything has changed dramatically – women now work alongside men in many disciplines, communication with the outside world is instantaneous, glaciers are carving at an alarming rate and the summer melt is frightening in its intensity – but that’s another story!

Brian J. ‘Tal’ Taylor, August 2020

A Note on Antarctic Place Names: Alexander Island

This book, based on a draft written in 1967, uses both pre-established place names (e.g. Uranus Glacier) and those descriptive names coined by the first party to overwinter at Fossil Bluff in 1961–2. The latter were either overlooked or ignored by subsequent visitors to the site and by meetings of the Antarctic Place-Names Committee. When these places are referred to in this book, they are done so using quotation marks (e.g. ‘Manpack Hill’).

However, the Committee has accepted the name Pearce Dome after Cliff Pearce, and in 2005 agreed to the name Trio Glacier after Fossil Bluff’s first wintering party who crossed and recrossed the glacier on many occasions en route to Mount Ariel. Also in 2005, the Committee approved my field name Three Sisters for a prominent, triple-peaked east-west escarpment forming the southern margin of Uranus Glacier.

In 1977 Taylor Buttresses were named after the author, but these are situated on the opposite side of George VI Sound in Graham Land. How inappropriate!

The Photographs

Unless otherwise stated, all the coloured illustrations represent 35mm transparencies taken by the author with a Zeiss Contaflex I camera on Kodak I or Kodak II film. Because of the amount of reflected light off the snow on bright sunny days, adjustments were necessary to compensate for what would otherwise have been abnormally high light meter readings.

On occasions when the temperatures were extremely low, film was known to fracture inside the camera.

Contents

Introduction

Part I

Southampton to Montevideo

Montevideo to the Falkland Islands

Deception Island, South Shetland Islands

Christmas at Admiralty Bay

Port Lockroy to Adelaide Island

The Establishment of Two New Bases

The Relief of Stonington Island

Part II

Arrival at Fossil Bluff

Polar Clothing, Food and the First Manhaul Trip

Winter Gloom and the Return of the Sun

Problems on all Fronts

Manpacking and the Arrival of a Depleted Stonington Party

Mount Ariel and Relief at Long Last

Part III

The New Regime and Some Abortive Field Trips

A Second Winter and a Muskeg Journey to Belemnite Point

Succession Cliffs and the Arrival of the Stonington Party

Summer Sledging on Uranus and Eros Glaciers

An Antarctic Fenland

Leaving Fossil Bluff and Arriving at South Georgia

Home and ‘Goodbye to All That’

Appendices

Geological Mapping Techniques

The Fossil Environment

Suggested Further Reading

Notes

Introduction

Antarctica, the highest continent in the world with an area twice the size of the United States, is a vast no man’s land surrounding the South Pole. The only human inhabitants are those maintaining the scientific stations established by many nations, Britain among them. Because most of the mountain ranges are within 200 miles of the coast, the enormous interior is filled by an ice sheet up to 12,000 feet thick. There are in reality only two seasons, summer (October to April) and winter (May to September), although occasionally one speaks of spring. The world’s lowest temperature has been recorded in Antarctica: metal hardly rusts, wood does not rot and germs remain inert. Winds of up to 200 mph have been recorded from some parts of the continent but fortunately such phenomena are not encountered everywhere.

In The Worst Journey in the World (1922), Apsley Cherry-Garrard described polar exploration as the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has yet been devised. If everyone took this opinion to heart, no one would volunteer to go south, yet in the 1950s and 1960s there was no shortage of recruits. What, then, attracted them? Was it the money? During this period, the British Antarctic Survey paid new technical and scientific staff between £864 and £1,173 a year (depending upon qualifications) for a two-year stay in Antarctica, and between £910 and £1,830 if the officer, on returning to Britain, was required to enter into a new contract in order to write up his results. It must also be emphasised that all outgoings, such as clothes, accommodation, cigarettes, liquor and even the smallest items like toothbrushes, were free – hence here there was a considerable saving. Nevertheless, although the urge to save money was an important incentive, it was by no means the only one.

In the 1960s, many of the sixty to eighty personnel recruited by the Survey each year were under twenty-eight years of age, usually single and from diverse backgrounds and occupations, although provincial accents usually outnumbered those of public schools. The personnel could be broadly divided into three distinct categories. The scientists, mainly recruited from the red-brick universities, included geologists, geophysicists and zoologists, usually with just a good first degree but occasionally with an MSc or PhD. The technical staff were a heterogeneous group comprising cooks, radio operators, diesel-electrical mechanics and motor mechanics, officers seconded from the army (to drive and maintain the tractors), pilots and engine and airframe mechanics seconded from the RAF (to operate the British Antarctic Survey Air Services Unit), doctors, and several more personnel besides, such as vets and dentists, who usually went down south for a summer season only. By far the largest group were what were usually referred to as general assistants or ‘gash hands’. These most valuable people, whose job it was to assist the scientists in the field, were usually a good cross-section of the community, although schoolteachers were in the majority. However, they all had one interest in common, namely a passion for outdoor activities such as mountaineering, skiing or ‘exploration’ in the broadest sense of the term.

The British Antarctic Survey, which represents Britain’s interests in the ‘White Desert’, originated as a naval expedition under the code name Operation Tabarin in 1943. At the end of the war, this name was changed to the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS), but then, when the Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1961, the name changed again, this time to the British Antarctic Survey (hereafter referred to as the ‘Survey’) while the Falkland Islands Dependencies became the British Antarctic Territory. This sector of the Antarctic, which lies between longitudes 20° and 80° W and latitude 60° S and the South Pole, comprises part of the mainland proper and a fingerlike extension approximately 1,000 miles long known as the Antarctic Peninsula. For the sake of diplomacy, this peninsula, which extends from the Filchner Ice Shelf to Drake Passage, was divided at latitude 69° 24’ S into a northern part known as Graham Land and a southern part referred to as Palmer Land. In the years following my time in the Antarctic, extensive surveys were made from Halley Bay to Heimefrontfjella and the Theron Mountains in Dronning Maud Land, a sector formerly claimed by Norway.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Survey maintained two Royal Research Ships John Biscoe and Shackleton, and annually chartered one of the Dan ships owned by Lauritzen Shipping Lines of Copenhagen. These three ships left Southampton Old Docks in the autumn of each year and returned in the following spring, leaving the men to their self-imposed exile. Some assistance was also provided by HMS Protector, the guardship and then the oldest commissioned vessel in the Royal Navy, whose helicopters proved to be invaluable on a number of occasions. Protector also assisted Shackleton with her geophysical work in the Scotia Sea. In times of need, the British ships were generously aided by United States icebreakers Northwind, Edisto and Glacier, which, with their superior engine power, heavily reinforced hulls, heeling tanks and helicopter support, evacuated or resupplied bases inaccessible to the Survey’s ships. International cooperation of a slightly different nature was provided by both the Chileans and Argentinians on several occasions, including the flying in of medical supplies by an Argentinian Navy plane to a Survey cook seriously ill with ulcerative colitis at the Argentine Islands.

The Survey’s ships, especially reinforced to withstand the tremendous pressure of the ice, were classified in Lloyd’s Register as ice-strengthened ships, implying certain navigational limitations in heavy ice. Usually, therefore, their role was a passive one, waiting for an offshore wind or heavy swell to break up much of the ice before moving in towards their objective. Nevertheless, the ships often took quite a pounding, particularly the John Biscoe with her full for’ard hull shape, and every year the bumps had to be knocked out or new plates fitted, and repair bills were frequently quite exorbitant. The ships occasionally ran onto hidden rocks or shoals when navigating close inshore or in uncharted waters, but much of the damage was done by ice, either as a result of ramming pack or fast ice, or from being buffeted by icebergs, which are more likely to damage the superstructure. Fortunately, apart from one incident when the Shackleton was badly holed and had to put into South Georgia for repair, the ships were never in any serious danger of sinking. One other potential hazard was icing up, when all the rigging and much of the superstructure would become covered in a thick layer of frozen sea spray. In these conditions a ship could become unstable and topple over without being able to right herself.

In the past, the Survey maintained as many as ten shore stations along the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. When I sailed to the Antarctic, several had been closed down as the fieldwork was completed or became more extensive in scope. During my time there, there were only six, namely at Halley Bay in the Weddell Sea, Signy Island, Deception Island, the Argentine Islands, Adelaide Island and Stonington Island (with its satellite station at Fossil Bluff). Nevertheless, the scope of the individual bases and their complement had increased and, with a greater concentration of effort and equipment, there was a reciprocal dividend in terms of scientific results. Many of the six bases were almost entirely devoted to a specific scientific programme; Signy Island, for example, was the Survey’s principal biological centre. Here, work was carried out on freshwater lakes and on the littoral life surrounding the station (with the assistance of skin divers), whereas at Stonington Island, the work was mainly geological and topographical. All of the base huts were very comfortable (some more so than others) and the food was good despite a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. Most bases had a large library, a fully equipped kitchen, a bar and a semi-professional darkroom, and some even had a piano, while Halley Bay, the largest and most southern of the bases, had a cinematograph and an allocation of films.

The Survey, which cost approximately £1,000,000 a year in the 1960s, was administered by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through the Survey’s director, Sir Vivian Fuchs. The administration was conducted both from London (where there were personnel, logistics, supplies, finance and publications officers) and from Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands (where there was a supplies officer and an officer-in-charge). The geologists, geophysicists and botanists were initially ‘housed’ at the University of Birmingham, the physicists at Edinburgh University and the zoologists at Queen Mary College, London, and later at Cambridge. The scientific work was normally published in either the Survey’s bulletins or scientific reports.

The normal tour of duty was two years, with half the men at a particular scientific station replaced each year. Everyone was expected to share the more mundane chores – including gash duties, cooking (where a cook was not provided), dog-feeding and even hut-building – while trying to fulfil their own allotted task. There was a base leader or officer in charge who was also the local postmaster and magistrate, and, occasionally, a field leader was appointed who acted in collaboration with the base leader. Next of kin could send a telegram of two hundred words once a month and a member of the Survey could send a similar message of one hundred words. However, normal mail was usually received only once a year.

FIDS winter bases, 1941–1961 (courtesy of Cliff Pearce).

While in the Antarctic in the 1950s and 1960s, therefore, one was virtually cut off from the outside world, and signs of ‘progress’ at home (such as the increased traffic on the roads, the new motorways, the Severn Bridge and a change in government) often simply passed one by. Sometimes, such a state of isolation was not a bad thing.

In the Antarctic, several modes of transport were available depending on the function of the base (i.e., whether sledging or static). The most ‘primitive’ and certainly the most exhausting method of travelling was by manpacking³ or manhauling,⁴ techniques usually employed either when there was no alternative available or when the destination was not otherwise accessible (manpacking was a last resort). Although I heard it said that a young man in good condition could pull one hundred pounds 10 miles a day over nearly any surface, there were few attractions to manhauling compared with travelling by dog sledge or tractor.

The Survey experimented with several mechanical vehicles, including the Lansing snow plane and Eliason motor toboggan, but neither proved entirely satisfactory. The Lansing had too fragile a body for the power generated and an insufficient payload, while with the Eliason, the tracks frequently broke, the throttle froze while wide open and the suspension was poor. However, the sturdy Bombardier Muskeg tractors were very successful, particularly at Halley Bay where the mountains were between 200 and 300 miles from the base. Ransomes and ‘agricultural’ Ferguson tractors, and even modified International Harvester caterpillar tractors with a scraper blade in the front, were used, often with great success. After 1960, the Survey maintained an ill-fated, amphibious Beaver aircraft and two de Havilland single-engine Otter aircraft (these were replaced by a second-hand Otter and a Swiss Pilatus Porter with a turboprop engine), which were invaluable to the scientists working from the more southern bases at Adelaide Island, Stonington Island and Fossil Bluff. However, probably the most exciting method of transport was by the traditional team of huskies, which, in the 1960s, had not yet been completely superseded by mechanised transport. It is difficult to convey to an outsider just how totally enthralling dog sledging is – it is something quite special and can only be appreciated when experienced.

There seems little need to emphasise that, since the early pioneering days of Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen, the Antarctic is not quite the awesome continent that it was. More and more people are visiting it, and improvements in air and sea transport, as well as in communications, have been such that Antarctica is now (and was, even in the early 1960s) that much nearer to the civilised world. As the Americans and Russians, in particular, pursued their long traverses across the continent, the vast unknown slowly began to yield its secrets. Inevitably, with the advent of humans and their machines, in the 1960s the once-unspoiled continent comprising the world’s largest nature reserve was slowly being contaminated by refuse, which, at some of the bigger American bases, was presenting a real problem. The time when, as David James commented in That Frozen Land (1949), picked bands of heroes spent their days manhauling their groceries over endless ice plateaux and their nights shivering in inadequate tents, had almost certainly passed.

Because of the introduction of sophisticated mechanised transport, the predominantly ice-filled interior of Antarctica became more accessible, and it is significant that, whereas Scott and his party laboured heroically for over three weeks to reach the Pole, by the 1960s it took only a few hours to fly from McMurdo Sound to the South Pole Station. The equipment and sledging rations also improved immensely over the years. All of these factors ensured that the ordinary person could, with a normal element of luck, live quite contentedly in the Antarctic for two years without having to undergo undue physical and mental hazards, while still enjoying the thrill of exploration that inspired those early pioneers.

On the 1st November 1960, I embarked on the RRS John Biscoe as a geologist with the Survey to make the 10,000-mile journey to the Antarctic. My destinations were Stonington Island, an islet off the western coast of Graham Land, and ultimately Fossil Bluff, until then an unestablished satellite station situated 71° 20’ S beside the central east coast of mountainous Alexander Island. As I stood beside the two new Muskeg tractors lashed to the boat deck, which the Survey intended using for the first time, I doubted whether I would arrive at my destinations, despite the assurances of Sir Vivian Fuchs, who was making his customary visit to the quayside to witness our departure.

I longed to see the Antarctic, however illogical that was to seem at times, and, as an aspiring palaeontologist, I was genuinely interested in the geology of Alexander Island. The largest island lying off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, Alexander Island was discovered on the 28th January 1821, by a Russian naval expedition commanded by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and named after the reigning Tsar, Alexander I. The rocks exposed along the islands eastern coastline were known to be very fossiliferous, following the pioneering surveys of the British Graham Land Expedition (1934–7), whose southern sledging party down George VI Sound (A. Stephenson, W. L. S. Fleming⁵ and G. C. L. Bertram) collected forty-eight specimens of fossil shells and plants, and those equally ambitious journeys by geologists Drs V. Fuchs and R. J. Adie of the FIDS (1948–9 and 1949–50), whose collection of fossil molluscs, serpulid worms⁶ and decapods were described and identified by leading experts in their field at the British Museum, London.

After riding down the Solent and crossing the bouncing swell of the Bay of Biscay – frequently a nauseating experience – the expedition’s ship sailed 6,800 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to Montevideo in Uruguay, a captivating city of elegant concrete and glass skyscrapers, tastefully styled private dwellings and delightful sweeps of white beach sand – a city that I found attractive if only for its warmth and tropical atmosphere.

From Uruguay the ship travelled another 1,000 miles of often rough water to Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. Port Stanley, the colony’s largest town and seat of government, was the Survey’s subsidiary administrative centre, and a port for small cargo/passenger vessels and the Survey’s ice-strengthened ships. Between walks to the nearest peaks and some exorbitant spending at the photographic shops, new Survey personnel were introduced to the Survey’s office staff and to the people of Stanley through cocktail parties given by His Excellency the High Commissioner and other dignitaries.

Although the ships were fairly heavily laden with stores from England, additional supplies, especially of fresh fruit and vegetables, were taken on board at Stanley and some of the newly issued polar and ‘rough working’ clothing might be given an airing. From Port Stanley, the ships sailed south to call at one of the northern Antarctic bases, usually Deception Island, in the South Shetlands, before sailing farther south towards Marguerite Bay or the Weddell Sea.

Some of the finest coastal scenery of the Antarctic lies along the routes between the bases. I shall always remember my first views of the Neumayer Channel as the Kista Dan, with her brilliant red hull and white superstructure dazzling under a high sun, nosed her way through a scattering of floes. High peaks rose up on either side, the 9,000-foot Mount Français looming large and seemingly impregnable to starboard, while across the Channel, and almost perfectly mirrored in the still blue-green waters, were the sawtooth peaks of Nipple and Nemo, a series of sharp serrations forming a backbone to Wiencke Island. The scene was supremely tranquil and breathtakingly beautiful.

Equally memorable was my third passage through the Lemaire Channel, when the Kista Dan and John Biscoe engaged in a race to the Argentine Islands. An Antarctic landscape may be toneless due to the greyness of its skies and the reflected greyness of its horizons, but on this particular evening, the scene was delicately highlighted by a low sun. As the two ships steamed out of Flandres Bay and headed towards the Lemaire Channel, I looked across the sea into the purest of blue skies. Lenticular clouds, almost flawlessly formed, split Cleary Peak and the sun highlighted the cliffs of Booth Island and the snow-crested aiguilles of Cape Renard.

Offloading followed offloading, base succeeded base, and eventually one arrived, in my case as near as we could to Stonington Island. Ice, 8 feet thick, was still fast in Neny Fjord and we had to stand off 7 miles, offload the two Muskegs, and relieve