MUSEUM OF NATURE

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32346, 11 July 1970, Page 5

MUSEUM OF NATURE

THE “SOUTH POLAR TIMES”

(Contributed by the Canterbury Museum)

Any collector of Antarctic relics would give pride of place in his shelves to a set of the “South Polar Times.”

The director of the museum was delighted to report to the writer the welcome news that two volumes had been presented for the museum’s Antarctic library by Sir Joseph Ward. A third volume, of the original set of three, is being searched for at the moment by the donor. The set is inscribed as presented by Sir Ernest Shackleton, during his Christchurch visit in December 1907, to the donor’s grandfather, Sir Joseph Ward, then Prime Minister of New Zealand.

During the long winter period when the expedition lived aboard their ship frozen into the ice at Hut Point, McMurdo Sound, Lieutenant Ernest Shackleton, as editor, produced at monthly intervals Antarctica’s first newspaper and a very fine job he made of it. Varying in size it informed the members of the expedition of coming events and described activities that had passed. As Scott described it “Each edition should consist of an editorial, a summary of events and meteorological conditions of the past month, certain scientifically instructive articles dealing with our work and surroundings, and others written in a lighter vein.” Wilson As Artist Subsequently caricatures, acrostics and puzzles were added, the principal artist being Dr Edward Wilson, but the fact that the seamen as well as the officers shared in contributing allows the historian to get a very broad picture of life aboard the Discovery during the trying period of perpetual darktiess. The Nigger Minstrel Show and the first and only presentation of Lieutenant Barne’s play, "Ticket of Leave,” performed in the Royal Terror Theatre which the large shore hut was called for the occasion, was amply reported in the pages of the “South Polar Times.” Before the appearance of the first edition, which heralded the sun’s departure,

an appeal was made to the ship’s company for contributions and so enthusiastically did they respond that articles not considered worthy of inclusion inf the “Times” were published in the first and only edition of the supplementary journal “Blizzard.” This is surely the rarest newspaper in the world. When the Discovery was freed after two winters at Hut Point she sailed for Lyttelton on February 16, 1904, taking the printing press with her and one would imagine that the period of polar journalism was complete, but in less than four years, yet another newspaper appeared on the ice-bound continent. ' Second Publication Ernest Shackleton, at Cape Royds during the winter of his 1907-9 Nimrod expedition, produced a publication called

“Aurora Australis,” and he gives an idea of some of the difficulties experienced in printing in polar regions in his book “Heart of the Antarctic.” “A lamp is placed under the type rack to keep it warm and a lighted candle was put under the inking plate so that the ink would keep reasonably thin” he wrote after complaining that salt in the water affected the sensitive plates of the lithographing press. In all “Aurora Australis” consisted of 129 pages. The “South Polar Times” appeared again at Cape Evans under the editorship of Apsley Cherry-Garrard during the winter of 1911 as Captain Scott waited for the spring to begin his polar journey. Issued on midwinter’s day it consisted of 50 pages of typed crown quarto bound with three-ply board edged with seal skin which was pre-

sented to Captain Scott, who read aloud each contribution.

Herbert Ponting’s poem on the “Sleeping Bag" was very well received as was an article entitled “Valhalla.” It will be recalled that in the film “Scott of Antarctic” Ponting recites his poem. The following midwinter when the survivors awaited the spring to search for the bodies of the southern party another but less ambitious edition of the “Times" appeared. This ended the last serious attempt at publishing within the Antarctic Circle but of course regular newsheets appear today at McMurdo Station less than a mile from where the first edition of the “South Polar Times” appeared. Sir Joseph Ward’s gift is an exciting and very encouraging addition to the museum’s priceless Antarctic collections.—B.N.N.