MUSEUM OF NATURE

Press, 19 August 1978, Page 16

MUSEUM OF NATURE

By

DAVID HARROWFIELD,

on behalf of the Canterbury Museum

Last December, the Canterbury Museum was honoured to receive a visit from Eric Webb, the last surviving member of the shore party of Sir Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition from 1911 to 1914. Mr Webb, who lives in England, was born at Lyttelton in 1899. After attending the University of Canterbury, he joined the Mawson expedition as chief magnetician. During Shackleton’s 1907-1909 expedition, a party which included Mawson had reached the region where the South Magnetic Pole (not to be confused with the South Geographic Pole) was located. It was the field data collected by Eric Webb that made possible for the first time the accurate fixation of the Pole. This work is still appreciated and acclaimed by leading geophysicists today. To ensure the work of the expedition was of a high standard, Eric Webb trained as a field observer in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution, Washington, which also supplied some of the instruments. One of these, a Bausch and Lomb field magne-

tometer — one of two used during the expedition for standardising (“absolute”) observations — has recently been placed in the Canterbury Museum. Having established a base in January, 1912, at Cape Denison in Adelie Land, south of Australia, the expedition settled down to winter and the preparing of equipment for the busy summer sledging season. During this time, winds in excess of 100 miles an hour were recorded, and with a scientific programme operating, Eric Webb often had to crawl the 350 yards through snow to his magnetograph hut. When spring arrived, six parties departed into the field to undertake mapping and scientific observations. On November 10, Webb, Bage, and Hurley set out to manhaul their sledge on a 300-mile journey towards the South Magnetic Pole. Despite atrocious conditions, readings of declination and dip, sometimes taking more than four hours at a time, were made at a number of stations. On December 21 when a dip of 89 degrees 43.5 min was obtained, the Union Jack and Commohwealth Ensign were

hoisted, and the party began its long trudge back. The success of the journey and the parties’ per* sonal safety now depened on relocating two depots of food and fuel. Webb described the marches as “painfully laborious.’’ Even so, despite unpleasant conditions, magnetic observations were continued at regular intervals and Cape Denison was reached on January 11, 1913, three days within the time allowed for the return of all field parties. The expedition was one of success and sadness, Two members of Mawson’s party — Ninnis and Mertz — had perished, Mawson himself miraculously survived a solo 120mile journey back to the winter quarters. The magnetometer now in the museum, after its return from Antarctica, was used by the Carnegie Institution in Australia, and during the years 1915 to 1917 for an extensive survey of China. Its subsequent use is dhcertain, but in 1936 the instrument was placed in the Apia Observatory in Samoa, where it remained !n service until 1967 when superseded by a more accurate magnetometer. Because of the continuing interest being shown by the D.S.I.R. in the National Antarctic Centre, it was appropriate that the Canterbury Museum should be selected by the geophysical division as the final resting place for this much-travelled instrument.