SCOTTS LAST EXPEDITION

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27405, 19 July 1954, Page 8

SCOTTS LAST EXPEDITION

MEMBERS LIVING IN CHRISTCHURCH TWO HOLDERS OF POLAR MEDAL The youngest man of all those who took part in Scott’s last expedition to the Antarctic 44 years ago is living in Christchurch. He is Mr William McDonald, of Papanui, who was on the Terra Nova when it reached the ice lands for the last time and heard the announcement, shouted across the ice wastes, by the shore party, that Scott and his companions had perished. On Friday, an article on the award of the Polar Medal appeared in “The Press,” and it was said that at least four New Zealanders held this rare award. Mr McDonald has the medal, and so has Mr 'William Burton, of 51 Dudley street, Richmond, who was a petty officer on the Terra Nova and who has a fine collection of souvenirs from the expedition. A seventh New Zealander with the Polar Medal is Mr J. Clissold, now of Hastings, who was a ship’s cook. Mr McDonald, who was born at Glasgow, has spent the last 40 years of his life in Christchurch. As a youth he worked as an able seaman on sailing ships of the then famous Loch line, taking emigrants to Australia. He went back from Australia on the Loch Carron, after one trip and found that at London the Terra Nova was fitting out for the Antarctic expedition. He was keen to join but was told that no more crew were being signed on in Britain, but that more would be taken on at Lyttelton. Mr McDonald, barely 18, then worked, his passage to Lyttelton and joined the crew of the Terra Nova as a temporary naval rating. He spent three years with the expedition, and in 1913 he received his silver Polar Medal from King George V at Buckingham Palace. Souvenirs of Expedition

Mr McDonald’s souvenirs of this historic expedition are as varied as the experiences of a man who has spent years at sea. First of them is the Polar Medal, with the effigy of King George on the obverse and a picture of the Terra Nova, with a sledging party in the foreground on the reverse. He also has a magnificent bronze medal given to members of the expedition by the Royal Geographical Society, the effigy of Scott on the obverse being a wonderful piece of work. He has a penguin mounted in a glass case, a seal’s tooth, and a Huntley and Palmer sledging biscuit which, after 44 years, is as hard as stone and looks almost as if it should have been requisitioned for the sled dogs. Mr McDonald says it was not unlike dog discuit to taste. The expedition’s official crest, a penguin seated on top. of the globe, is set in bronze on a piece of granite picked up from Mount Erebus in the Antarctic. Mr McDonald recalled that the volcano was active all the time, with a persistent wisp of smoke in summer, and in winter the glow from the crater could be clearly seen. Mr McDonald still has cutlery issued to him for the expedition, a leatherbound memorial to Captain Scott, with a coloured photograph of Scott and a dedication panel inside it, charts showing the Terra Nova’s movements through the ice packs, and the expedition’s polar journeys, even a cake, of soap which has fed a mouse or two but otherwise seems to be in excellent condition. On a wall is the telegram summoning him to Buckingham Palace for his investiture, and nearby is a picture of Osman, the leading sledge dog. When the sledge dogs were in pairs, Mr McDonald explained, Osman was put in front of them by himself, and he fairly “smelled out” the crevasses and other dangers. The official dog driver was a Russian called Demetri, he said, who stayed with Sir Joseph Kinsey in Christchurch after the. expedition returned. Later Demetri returned to Russia, ana no-one was then able to manage thp dog. It was sent to the Wellington Zoo, and there, Mr McDonald said, died of a broken heart. Another treasured souvenir in the

possession of Mr McDonald is a “Times” atlas given to him by MajorGeneral Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a scientist with the expedition. Wide Variety of Tasks Mr McDonald’s task, when the ship reached the Antarctic, was to help to lay depots and to do other sledging jobs and generally fulfil the function of “lending a hand” in a very wide variety of tasks, as so many other tattooed able seamen have done in the past. Mr McDonald settled in Christchurch in 1914, when, in February, he joined the Customs Department, and he retired from the department in March this year. In the meantime, he went to the First World War, serving in Gallipoli, Egypt, and France, and being discharged because of wounds. Asked about his medals, Mr McDonald said he had got a “proper ironmongery shop.” Mr McDonald has, in his own words, “knocked about a bit,” but he says the Scott expedition stands out above everything else. Never, he says, will he forget seeing the party on the shore when the Terra Nova nosed up through the ice, hearing the request from his commander for information, apprehensively noting the subsequent pause, and then hearing Lieutenant V. L. A. Campbell answer that the southern party had reached the pole, but had been lost on the return journey. ; The flags that had been hung all over , the ship and all the other decorations ; were taken down. Mr McDonald took ’ part in the closing chapters of one of the greatest dramas of modern times.