The Voyage of RRS Shackleton, 1960/61
Recent nostalgic reminiscences about the ‘old’ RRS Shackleton prompted me to get out my own files and to wonder how many others might remember the ship in her grey days, i.e. before she acquired the polar red hull.
My first trip on the Shackleton, as a geophysicist was in 1960/61, and in many ways it was an exceptional voyage. I was following the pioneer work of Don Griffiths (Griff) from Birmingham University the previous year. Griff (who died aged 88 last October), had established a gravity base network and had begun a magnetic survey of the sea bed, which was later to contribute to the plate tectonics ‘revolution’. To build on his foundations entailed taking the ship to some outlandish places for landings with the gravity meter, which was quite popular, and steaming backwards and forwards across the Drake Passage, which was not!
Continuing from Ships page:
As usual, the ship had her own programme of relief of the various bases and the scientific schedule had to dovetail in alongside this essential work. The first ‘relief’ was an unusual one, in that the ship was instructed to take a family of four to Tristan da Cunha, so we actually had a woman aboard – an unusual occurrence for the 1960s!
The approach to Stanley was also a little unconventional. The previous year, Captain ‘Frosty’ Turnbull was aware that a sandbank had built up in front of the Public Jetty, so he took a run at it – only to find that the sandbank had dissipated and that we were going rather too fast! The reaction on the faces of the welcoming crowd was a sight to behold, as smiles changed to the realisation that the jetty was about to be hit, and they turned tail and fled!
The ship’s officers had their own agenda for geophysics and decided that we really must have a magnetic traverse through the Lemaire Strait, which separates Staten Island from the tip of South America. It is also the location of an 8 knot tidal rip, which, taken at the right time, almost doubled the speed of the Shackleton! It also meant that we had (just) touched the Pacific Ocean.
My concern, as a very raw geophysicist, was in knowing how to persuade an experienced, and to my eye a very ancient sea captain, to take the ship where Alan Cameron and I wanted to go in the cause of science. We found that the most diplomatic way was to tell the mess boys what we wished to do – they in turn would mention it to the Mate, Ken Archibald, and so it filtered through to the Captain, who thought it was his own idea! After a while, the ship took a pride in landing us on as many sites as possible – mostly little lumps of rock sticking up out of the sea. If there were no previously recorded landings, so much the better, with the result that we landed at dozens of places around the Peninsula.
The highlight was probably the trip to the South Sandwich Islands, where we landed on Zavodovski, Leskov, Visikoi, Candlemas, Vindication and Saunders Islands. Only heavy pack ice prevented us from knocking off the southernmost islands in the group. In most cases, there was a heavy swell running, and jumping in and out of the motor boat with an uninsured but costly instrument was rather fraught. I later realised that the gravity meter cost the same as the average semi-detached house (about £3500!). For many of these islands, our landings were the first on record, apart from a claim by HMS Protector to have landed by helicopter on Visikoi, but that was cheating! So proud did we feel of our achievements, that we left a tin with our names and claiming the island in the name of Her Britannic Majesty on one or two of the landings! (so much for the Russians dropping engraved titanium bars onto the bed of the Arctic Ocean!).
Two tricky moments stand out in my memory from these boat landings. One was on South Georgia, where I slipped on the kelp as I jumped, and was only saved from a 2 tonne motorboat crashing down on me in the next swell by Ken reaching down and hauling me bodily out of the way. The other occasion was on Elephant Island. We had tried to locate the site of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s boat camp at Cape Wild, but had found absolutely no trace of the remaining boats, so turned away to take the gravity reading before returning to the ship. The chosen site was a lump of rock sticking up out of the sea, in front of a glacier snout. The old hands reassured me that they had watched glacier snouts for hours and nothing ever dropped off, so I was about to be left on the rock to earn my pennies. Some premonition warned against the venture, so we sheered away – only to have the glacier calve straight onto the rock, and send a tsunami racing up the bay, which nearly swamped the motorboat!
It wasn’t only the motorboat which led a charmed existence – the ship herself had a few risky moments too. Much of the ship’s survey programme entailed steaming very slowly, in uncharted waters. On one occasion, Fids were stationed in the bows watching out for rocks looming up, and shouting warnings to the Second Mate, Jim Martin, who in turn could signal to the helmsman on the bridge. In spite of these precautions, we touched bottom three or four times during the voyage, including sitting on a reef off Bransfield Island for half an hour or so, until the tide lifted us off. The Fids were watching a film at the time, and the projector jumped a bit when the ship hit, but it wasn’t long before everybody went back to where the film had left off! The most serious bump was at Base W on Detaille Islet, where the rudder was damaged on an uncharted rock whilst at anchor during a gale, necessitating a dry docking at Capetown on the way home.
Occasional engine breakdowns (and the ship only had the one!) prompted the famous photographic opportunity of the Shackleton under oar power, when the mad Mate got the crew to sit in their cabins with the lifeboat oars sticking through the portholes, whilst the Fids cruised about in the motorboat taking photos! The pictures clearly show the gash near the bow from the Stanley jetty incident, (but loyalty prompted us to pass this off to admiring Chileans as an encounter with an iceberg!)
As ever, there was intense rivalry between the two FIDS ships, especially as the John Biscoe had been painted red and yellow that year for the first time. Whilst at the Argentine Islands, the Biscoe Fids captured the Shackleton’s motorboat. It disappeared behind an iceberg, only to reappear painted bright red overall – and very sticky! Revenge was, however, sweet, and that night a small group of Shackleton Fids rowed across to the Biscoe, with muffled oars, and painted appropriate slogans on the hull of the red ship, such as ‘EIIR – POST HERE’; ‘FIRE’; ‘CALSHOTT SPIT (the name of the red lightship off Southampton), etc. The irony was that Captain Johnstone sailed early the following day and it was thought that the Biscoe sailed to the next base to be visited, unaware of its adornments!
Instead of returning to UK by the usual South American route, the Shackleton had been offered to the South Africans to enable them to relieve their scientific bases in the Tristan group and at Marion Island in the Indian Ocean. Returning Fids thus had the opportunity to visit one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world again, on the way to Capetown, and for some of us, the chance to sail the third ocean of the cruise to Marion Island.
We were all kicked off for the South Africans’ trip to Tristan, because they needed the space, and thus we spent over three weeks in South Africa, with very little money to support us. Alan Cameron and I bought an old Austin 10 for £35 and toured around Cape Province, once we realised that its maximum speed of 35 mph would not allow us to get to the Kruger National Park! We sold it again for £25, just before sailing for home, so didn’t do too badly!
Whilst in Capetown, we met the new Administrator for Tristan da Cunha – the nearest thing to a Governor. He had heard about the volcanic origins of Tristan and asked me about the likelihood of its erupting again. I assured him that this was most unlikely, as it had been quiet for centuries. Three months later, the volcano reawakened with a bang! A great flow of lava streamed through its only livelihood – the crawfish canning factory and the whole population had to be evacuated. Fortunately, I have never met the Administrator again, but the episode serves to remind me how the work that we were doing helped to define our new theories of the Earth. No geophysicist, however inexperienced, would ever make such a statement today!
Peter Kennett, 28.12.07
(FIDS/BAS 1960-1965. Geophysicist on the Shackleton and at Stonington Island)