8 – The Butter Point Fiasco

I hopped over the rail and went aboard my old ship, the"Glacier", to find chopper pilot Chuck Coustanza, Commander Shirley, (now recovered from the Otter crash), and my eccentric Naval Surgeon friend, Captain Hedblom. The latter showed me his latest inventions on the line of Polar clothing, including a multi‑layered flaming scarlet parka.
"Would you believe," said he, "That my wife, an estimable woman, had the effrontery to tell me "Don't expect me to sew that for you!"". ""Madame", I said. "Do you have the insolence to suggest, that I, a Naval Surgeon, cannot sew a simple seam?" Look at that, every stitch overlocked!"
"That Doctor friend of yours is as mad as a hatter!" said Sir Ed later, and I gave him a cold look as I cannot imagine referring to one of his friends in such a fashion and in the event Captain Hedblom was later to pass into our list of Those To Be Remembered with Gratitude.
Bates and I inspected our bow and the damage was as severe as it was unnecessary. Not only was most of the 2in greenheart sheathing gone from the bows, but a massive iron casting meant to protect the bow swung from a single bolt! Had it gone, the probability of our actually sinking would have been high! The Captain of the "Glacier" offered Sir Ed a reconnaissance flight by chopper and he and Bob Miller came back apprehensive about the thawing conditions and the rivers of melt‑water running off the lower Ferrar and even the Bowers Piedmont at Butter Point.
Our tractors had been loaded without tracks and Bates and I began getting them slung out onto the ice and fitting the tracks. Each machine was essentially a standard farm tractor with a couple of steel braces to lock the front wheels and two extra wheels in the middle to spread the load. Chain‑link tracks were draped over the tyres and one was supposed to steer by means of the brakes. Troubles were two, trying to pull a heavy sledge and brake at the same time uses up a lot of your power, and then the brakes just weren't up to the job, in fact brakes always have been a weakness in the otherwise excellent little Fergusson tractor. The first tractor we tested simply carried on straight ahead, as it happened, for the open water. Bates produced jacks and we removed wheels and stripped and cleaned brake shoes, to find no visible improvement. Bates, ever resourceful then produced some brake resin powder which he blew into the enclosed brake drums, which gave two states, none, or locked solid. At least one could then manoeuvre in a jerky fashion.
We set off across the ice in the general direction of the Ferrar glacier on a trial run, weaving amongst the pressure ridges. It was nothing like the cold hard going of our dog‑sled trip of the previous year, great thaw swamps and pools and polynya covered the surface, but luckily the ice beneath was still firm. It was just too late in the summer, though it was perhaps an unusually warm year.
By Sunday the 6th Jan. we had four tractors mobile, George had packed the dog sleds, and the others the tractor sleds, and Bates and I ferried the first loaded sled out an experimental half mile. Well, we could move, even though the conditions were shocking. On Monday at 11pm the cavalcade started off with five tractors and the 3 dog teams following, the drivers wearing watertight Eskimo sealskin mukluks. Peter Mulgrew was driving a half‑track model, and bogged in a thaw pool. Sir Ed, on another tractor, passed a line to pull him out and threw a track.
I was driving tractor "Aggie". Bates had decided that all machines needed names and had given names like "Aggie", "Lizzie" etc. to each. We paused, spanners tied to belt, for an hour of shortening tracks, wading in slush and hauling out tow lines to stuck machinery. With the low sun, the surface of the melt pools was freezing and more charming conditions could be imagined. We finally camped on a large slab of dirty ice, relatively free of open water. We threw up our dark blue pyramid tent and brewed up an odd meal of soup, sausage and potatoes. Unlike the clean conditions in the fresh cold snow of the previous year, we were covered in grease, dirt and rust and wet to boot. Bates seemed to thrive on it, I supposed having been covered in grease and rust for much of his adult life.
Next morning I opened the tent door to another warm still day, to see George Marsh pottering about the dog lines in seal mukluks and underwear. We refueled from drums and carried on but soon Bates threw a track, it took some trial to get a track length not so tight that wear of the steel links was excessive, but tight enough to keep them on at a turn. We caught up with the main group about two miles west of Butter Point, all standing staring despondently on the bank of a river of melt‑water flowing along the junction of the sea‑ice with the strip of old bay ice we had seen the year before, linking the Base site with the snout of the Ferrar.
"No way to cross this lot!" said Sir Ed moodily, staring at the bare gravel slopes less than half a mile away. Mulgrew began making sarcastic noises about people who recommended bases cut off by rivers.
"If you had bothered to read the reports," said I in rising impatience , "You'll see a bit all about where bridging timber will be needed to cross thaw channels. Where in hell is the timber?" It was on one of the sleds and looked awfully short. I had suggested sixteen feet lengths, these looked more like eight. "Well, they were too awkward to handle," said Mulgrew defensively, "So we cut 'em."
"Christ!" I said. I pulled out an iceaxe and waded thigh‑deep into the 'river', the bottom was hard ice. I came back without a word, climbed onto "Lizzie" and drove through, but I tell you, I half expected "Liz " to go through into the sea. We stopped on the far bank.
"Are you bunch of pansies coming?" I bawled, but Bates was already halfway across in "Aggie", Bates being the sort of person one has to keep moving fast to keep ahead of. I was glad to see this as it was beginning to seems as though there was a distinct lack of drive in some quarters. Near the land we came to an even bigger river flowing along the tide crack. This one had a vertical wall on the far side and without bridging timber a lot of pick and shovel was going to be needed, but our prospective base site was only a couple of chains away.
Sir Ed abruptly decided we should go east along to the snow‑covered Butter Point and see if we could approach the Base site across the Wilson Piedmont. I left the tractor to Carlyon and with Bob Miller waded the river and walked up onto the Base site. The two gently‑sloping gravel or moraine‑covered terraces faced north and with a little bulldozing had ample space for the huts and even a dirt landing strip was not impossible. My original idea of using the Wilson Piedmont as an airfield in the summer was completely out because of the thaw, but the strip of Bay‑ice was still usable though for how long? However, if the sea ice went out completely, there was no access to the northern side of the Ferrar Glacier which offered the only possible route inland, except along the beach and over the glacier snout, though I had always thought that heavy vehicles would go south to the Skelton, not fight up the shorter but icy Ferrar route. Again, in some years when the ice went out there would be no vehicle route to the south either for three or four months of the year as it was necessary to cross the Sound passing close to Hut Point. We walked about four miles to Butter Point over hummocked and thawing snow with puddles of ice and slush, not so funny. Bates had bridged the tide crack and the melt‑water stream but the impossibly soft surface of the Piedmont which sloped up quite steeply from the sea meant they had not tried to take a tractor on it. The thaw river would just have to be bridged or filled with gravel.
John Claydon who had been visiting the American Base at Hut Point came in, in a chopper with Captain Ketchum from the "Glacier". John had found a good airfield on the south side of Ross Island only a mile or two from the American Base, and John was more concerned with keeping his aircraft operational year round, than in any other consideration. Sir Ed and Bob departed with them to look at it, suggesting that Bates and I take a food dump up onto the Ferrar Glacier snout as a reserve for Marsh and Brookes with their dogs. We rattled eleven miles over the bay ice without trouble, and onto the Glacier. So far so good. We were stopped by a thaw channel three feet wide by six deep which Bates, ever resourceful, bridged with pieces of 4 x 2 pine! We finally ran into moraine and ablation holes which were uncrossable, one can't drag sleds on rock. Marsh, Brooke, Ayres and Douglas were following close behind with the dogs, and though I assured George that if he could make the next three miles, they would be onto good going, he looked sceptical. We were in the middle of the glacier which was a mistake, we should have gone back onto the sea ice and had a look close under the Kukri Hills. I still believe a route could have been forced with a bit of pick and shovel and pulley-hauley.
The rising sun had brought up the level of the thaw streams and one which had only been a couple of feet deep on the way up, came up over the foot rests on the way back. Back at Butter Point we climbed into sleeping bags and slept in the warm sun and wet.
On Friday the 11th Jan. Peter Mulgrew picked up a radio message for us to return to the ships. In retrospect, this was ridiculous, we should have all gone to the snout of the Ferrar and if necessary back‑packed the dog‑sleds and gear onto better going and got our exploratory team underway. Then again, why was I not with them? What was the point of our trip up the Ferrar the year before if Richard and George and Co had to find their own way? However, at that point I had not started thinking constructively. The surface on the return journey was even worse and the well marked ice‑edge had gone, being replaced by broken ice and close pack. I coaxed Aggie through slush and over cracks inches wide from one floe to the next and skirted wide open leads. Finally we could see the masts of the ships above a chaos of pressure and ice blocks, but the floes were becoming too small to take a tractor and sled on. Killer whales spouted in the ice ponds, at least a dozen were using one for air, and we all made attempts at joining the 'Pat the Whale' club, though remembering the rending of the Weddell seal by these same fish the year before, personally I observed a certain amount of caution.
Finally the ship called on the radio to say we could not be reached and to come further south. I led off, skirting leads and jockeying across floes, finally reaching a more or less solid ice‑edge and the "Endeavour". Smithy stood on the ice, long white socks rolled down over sea‑boots, hands jammed into pea‑jacket.
"We don't need you to help load the tractors," said he shortly. "Get aboard to hell out of the way!" I must have been tired because I went without a word. We were obviously too late or too early in the season to unload on the west side of the Sound. Within a few days or weeks, the sea would be lapping against the bay‑ice, and we might be able to unload within a half mile of the Butter Point area.
When I woke, we had tied alongside the American supply ship "Towle" on which were Guyon Warren and Murray Douglas, and Bates and I began the never‑ending task of getting our tractors serviceable again. Mulgrew's half‑track for example, had brake drums full of frozen melt‑water, and it took an hour with a blow lamp to get its wheels turning.
Sir Ed re‑appeared having made a simple binary decision, our base would be located on the southern side of Ross Island at Pram Point. To say some of us were appalled is an understatement. Ross Island is fifty miles from the mainland, and cut off from it for half the year. At least five expeditions have located on Ross Island and suffered in consequence. Our IGY scientists were also taken aback, what meaning would seismic data have for example, if the instruments were located on a volcano? Our geological program was immediately cut in half, no work could be done during the whole six winter months. We could not foresee the long term effects. Our Base was not to be occupied for only two years as planned, it is still in use thirty years after, and still cut off from Antarctica by the broad McMurdo Sound.
For the short‑term needs of the Trans‑Antarctic Expedition, Pram Point was to be ideal, it was on the south, cold side of the island, there was little thaw and we had a permanent runway and access south to the Skelton Glacier. There was always clean snow for the dogs. As a scientific base it was hopeless, far better from this aspect would have been Marble Point, where there was already a dirt runway, or close to the sea at the end of the Taylor Valley. A heavy grader could easily form roads up the Taylor valley and most of the access inland and into Dry Valleys would have been by the large tyred Dodge power wagon the Americans used, not by the expensive helicopters. However, there was no discussion on this point, Pram Point it was to be!
Once more onto the ice, dear friends. Our Leader set off with one of the two Weasels given to us by the Americans, to traverse overland to the new site 11 miles away. By 5 pm Bates and I had loaded the Airforce Ops Hut and other gear onto sleds, plus loads of sleepers for hut foundations and hut panels. Murray Douglas drove the second weasel, a fragile vehicle, and we set off following the American tractor‑trail towards Hut Point. It was little better than on the other side of the sound but with no big thaw streams. The surface of the puddles was freezing and sleds would fall through into a foot of water, the articulated runners would drive under the surface skin of ice, which might be an inch or two thick and one came to a halt with a crash!
At last we rounded Cape Armitage onto colder snow and roared across what was to become the airfield, over a tide crack and some snow patches onto a broken, black lava‑flow which was to be my home for many a year, but then occupied by a single lonely tent.

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