ANTARCTICA 1958 | JOURNAL
Antarctica from Above: Recon Flight to Find Way Through Ice
“Suddenly leaving us stranded on the ice” — from the journals of Graham Knuckey
15th. January, 1958
We were heading south along the 150E in the morning. It was overcast and foggy. In the lighter patches of fog I saw part of an immense iceberg which proved to be over 60 miles long. It was grounded on a bank 280 fathoms deep (Virik Bank). I was on my plotting job still, this time plotting Phil’s radar survey of Davis Bay.
I gave this up in the afternoon as things became very interesting. We got deeper into a maze of massive icebergs and eventually ran into fairly heavy pack ice. We reversed out from this and when in clear water we put the Beaver [a de Havilland airplane] over, towed it clear with the ship’s boat, then it flew one recce [reconnaissance flight]. This showed thick ice to the south and east and west but to the east and west it could be wobbled through. I took a series of shots of the Beaver unloading.
I had a couple of hectic games of checkers with Les Tonagh and others and finished up winning one. Took a magazine to bed for a bit of a read.
Context: Much of the spare time in those pre-internet, pre-digital life on board were spent in activities that sound wholesome by today’s standards: checkers, scrabble, reading books, writing letters home. I’m mostly editing out the descriptions out for brevity, but almost every day’s entry finishes with a description of the night’s activities.
16th. January
First thing after breakfast Bruce Cook and I and a couple of others went over the bows on to the sea ice to carry out magnetic obs. I wanted a position line too. We took some photos then a couple of others came over too. The ice was moving too much for me to observe, then it moved in on the ship which had to pull out suddenly leaving us stranded on the ice.
We collected all our gear on to the hand sledge [sled] and made for the ship, which had anchored again about a mile away. I led the way roped on and probed all the way. The ice sounded hollow in some spots and we found cracks in a few spots. The ship moved out and steamed N by E to attempt to get to the eastern edge of Australian Territory.
I got my plotting up to date so that I can do more tomorrow.
17th. January
The night was quite rough and as we were not prepared for it, things rolled all over the cabin. It had quite an effect on us all and I for one slept from breakfast time until lunch. After lunch
I got down to my plotting once again and as Ian Adams remarked, I am lucky to have something to occupy myself. The others are a bit bored.
The whole day was overcast and snowing with an oily swell which subsided. There is much speculation as to whether we will continue to push South and East. We seem to have done very little today and possibly gone in a circle. There is broken pack everywhere and we are still 150–200 miles from the coast.
We had some very exciting games of scrabble as well. I won the last one with a score of 170 to 163(2nd.)
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