Rollicking Tradition For Antarctic Mid-Winter

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30782, 21 June 1965, Page 11

Rollicking Tradition For Antarctic Mid-Winter

Mid-Winter’s Day has no special significance to most New Zealanders. It Is Just the shortest day of the year. But to the men who have to spend a winter in the Antarctic June 22 is the most watched for and welcomed day in the calendar."

.To the meat at the South Pole Mirny, Scott Base, Mawson. and other bases round the continent Mid-Winter's Day marks the end of nearly two ninths of darkness. The sun is. at its lowest, the night at its blackest, but after June 22, tie pale noon twilight lengthens each day. and the men know they are half-way through the long, cold winter. Since the early days of exploration the mid-winter festival has been almost important as Christmas Day, and its celebration by a Mid-Winter’s Day dinner has become an Antarctic tradition. Next week more than 500 men will carry on the tradition and exchange greetings at bases manned from Britain, the United States, Russia. New Zealand. Australia, France. Belgium, Chile, and the Argentine. Mid-Winter’s Day will also be celebrated in Christchurch by the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Antarctic Society, which will hold the traditional dinner. The occasion will also mark the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the branch. In spite of its youth it has an association with the Antarctic going back to the days of Captain Scott's last expedition. Two honorary life members, Messrs W. Burton and W. McDonald, who will attend the dinner, were members of the crew of the Terra Nova.

Antarctic literature does not record Mid-Winter’s Day celebrations until the time of Scott’s first expedition. There have been some rollicking parties in the last 60 years but perhaps none to equal the first .Antarctic party in 1842 when the crews of Sir James Clark Ross's ships Erebus and Terror celebrated New Year. There was dancing until five o'clock in the morning aboard the Erebus, and an Irish blacksmith in a letter home said there were three fights in the forecastle.

A public house was erected on an iceberg and called “The Pilgrim of the Ocean.” Games there included climbing a greasy pole and jumping in a bag, and the blacksmith records that “when the essence of the barley heated our gents the snow balls went flying.” Borchgrevink’s men. the first to winter on the Antarctic Continent in 1899, apparently did not celebrate MidWinter’s Day in their hut on the windswept shingle beach at the foot of Cape Adare. But they did celebrate Queen Vic-

t aria's birthday with what was described as “an admirable repast.” After dinner the 10 men gave three cheers, stood up, joined hands, and recited “those beautiful lines” of Tennyson. “Hands AH Round.” Presumably the three Norwegians and two Lapps in the Party just listened politely. On Scott’s first expedition the mid-winter festival was observed aboard the Discovery in Winter Quarters Bay, McMurdo Sound, on June 23 as the previous day was a Sunday. The sailors on the mess deck had plum puddings, mince pies, and an extra tot of grog with what was virtually a Christmas dinner.

The officers and scientists celebrated rather more elaborately. Their dinner included turtle soup, New Zealand mutton, champagne, port, and liqueurs. There were speeches and songs until the early hours, and then everyone went out on the ice to cool heated brows. But the temperature was in the minus thirties, and the frolickers were driven back to the ship by rapidly-growing frost bites. Mid-winter celebrations were rather more hectic at Shackleton Base on the Weddell Sea side bf the continent more than 50 years later. George Lowe describes the party held by Sir Vivian Fuchs and his men as undoubtedly the biggest “bender” the Antarctic had ever known. It began with a cocktail party before noon, and included a fireworks display.

After a vast meal of turkey, plum pudding, and all the trimmings, everyone slumped into sleep. But by evening, says Lowe, the party spirit returned with gale force and continued throughout the next day and night. A skiffle band filled the night with noise, one man did a dance of the seven veils garbed in red drill marker flags taken from a petrol

dump on the ice, drink flowed freely, and everyone watched and cheered. There was one exception—the man seated with his back to the “orgy” intently reading an article in the Encylopaedia Britannica. A slightly more sedate function will be held by the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Antarctic Society. Greetings will be exchanged by telegram with the leaders at McMurdo Station, Scott Base, Mawson, and Campbell Island, and there will be brief speeches. One of the guests will be Mr R. Thomson, the new superintendent of the Antarctic division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. A New Zealander, Mr Thomson led an Australian expedition in 1962-63 from Wilkes Station to the Russian base at Vostok across 900 miles of largelyuncharted territory.