Scott's Dog Teams Came From Siberia

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31760, 17 August 1968, Page 5

Scott's Dog Teams Came From Siberia

(Contributed by the Canterbury Museum)

Have you ever thought how much the early explorers of the Antarctic depended on animals for the success of their operations ? Mules, ponies and dogs were all used extensively in every early Antarctic endeavour.

Many still think that Captain R. F. Scott did not use dogs but depended wholly on ponies and tractors in his attempt to reach the South Pole in 1911. This, of course, is far from true, for when the Terra Nova sailed from Lyttelton on November 26, 1910, Captain Scott had on board 33 dogs.

Thirty-one dogs had arrived in Lyttelton a month before the Terra Nova and had been quarantined on Quail Island. These were shipped from Vladivostok after having been driven across Siberia by C. H. Meares and a Russian dog handler named Gerof Dimitri, both members of the expedition. All the dogs were Samoyede and had come from the Gilyak tribe of the Amur region in Central Siberia and each had been presented to the expedition by a support-

ing institution which exercised the right to rename it. So the dog whose adventures we are to follow lost his Russian name Dyk (in English phonetics Deek) and was renamed Sir Andrew because he had been presented by Sir Andrew Judd’s Commercial School. The remaining two dogs had arrived aboard the Terra Nova: they had been presented by Admiral Peary after his North Pole conquest and were of Eskimo or Husky breed. Names Resumed To their credit the members of the expedition soon returned to the more romantic and descriptive Russian names, and so Deek (which means “The Wild One”) left his rather unimaginative name behind him in Lyttelton when he boarded the ship to join the ponies and the ship’s pets (a squirrel, two rabbits and a cat) to face the joyless journey south. On arrival at Cape Evans, where Captain Scott built his hut, the dog teams were kept busy assisting in the work of laying depots during the autumn far out on the Ross ice shelf and stocking the staging point established in the old Discovery hut 12 miles to the south. After resting through the long, dark winter they resumed the depot laying during the spring, until as a member of Meares’s team Deek set out at the beginning of November, 1911, in support of the Scott Polar party. From the foot of the Beardmore Glacier, beyond which their services were not required, they returned to base to await the return Of the South Pole party. Search Parly With winter approaching and the lack of news worrying the support teams. A. Cherry-Gerrard and Dimitri at considerable risk undertook a search journey in the hope of locating the now feared lost party. They covered a distance of 160 miles to reach One Ton Depot where blizzards made further progress impossible. With no sign of the explorers they returned to Hut Point in the face of atrocious weather: only the strength of the dog teams saved them from perishing. Of all members of the team, Deek worked hardest. Had the party known then that Scott Bowers, Wilson and Oates were at that moment marching out in the same blizzard only a few miles south of One Ton Depot

the Scott story could well have had a happier ending. One more winter and Deek was out again with the search party which located and buried the three bodies before returning to Cape Evans and thence to Lyttelton. The new expedition leader, Dr E. L. Atkinson, presented Deek to Dr T. D. Acland of Christchurch, who cared for this even-tempered son of the snows until the dog died during September, 1920. Dr Acland had Deek’s head mounted and presented it to the Canterbury Museum.

He found rest and contentment here in Christchurch and it is Atting that his head is among the most treasured links with the Antarctic past that form part of the museum’s Antarctic collection. In the words of Dr Atkinson: “He did every journey requested of him and was, without exception, the hardest working dog of them aII.”—B.N.N.