Into White Silence Read online

  My own trip into the Antarctic void was an experience so powerful that even today I find it difficult to describe in words the sheer immensity of the place; the impact it has upon the psyche. Unlike William Downes, I embarked for the south with no real understanding of the abyss. I had no comprehension of what it would mean to face a nothingness so grand, an emptiness so immense that you are forced to look not outwards – for that way lies madness – but inwards, into the shadows and depths of your own soul.

  Naturally, I can’t speak for everyone who travels ‘down south’, but for me the moment I first set foot on that rocky, snowbound coastline was among the most frightening, most humbling, most shockingly awe-inspiring of my life.

  As a writer with a growing reputation, I had happily accepted an invitation from the Australian Antarctic Division, as a part of their Arts Fellowships program, to spend a week as the writer-in-residence at Casey Station during the Antarctic summer. Having spent years fascinated by the heroic tales of men like Mawson, Shackleton and, of course, Scott and Amundsen, I needed little to convince me to accept the position. Antarctica had, for me, always been something of an impossible dream, an enigma crouched at the bottom of the world, a place to imagine but never seriously expect to experience.

  And so – my head filled with romantic images of warm huts and long evenings of comradely bonhomie, gently lit by the ethereal light of the southern aurora – I had blithely agreed to travel to Wilkes Land on the east coast of the continent with the incoming stationers for the following season. These were the eighteen or so men and women who had accepted the task of wintering, who would spend the long night of an Antarctic winter isolated on the bottom of the world, thrown back on their own resources and ingenuity to solve the multitude of problems that would present themselves in the months to come.

  On the afternoon of Monday 14th December, at around 2.45, I stepped onto Antarctic soil for the first time. From the south, the wind was howling off the Law Ice Dome at something in the order of forty knots, taking the temperature well below zero, and the short ride ashore from the Polar Research Vessel Aurora Australis had been a rough one. The gale had whipped Newcombe Bay into a chopped frenzy of ice and water and the seven of us who had, just a few minutes earlier, scrambled from the womb-like comfort of the Aurora down a pilot ladder and into the furiously bucking ship’s tender had been quickly soaked to the skin, despite our layers of clothing and thermal wear.

  Pulling away from the Aurora – that enormous, warm, bright-orange ship that had been our home for the previous week and a half, I looked back, partly for the view but mainly to avert my face from the driving spray, and was shocked by the speed with which that giant, secure vessel shrank into insignificance against the iceberg-punctuated horizon. In that moment – and, I think, for the first time – the immensity of Antarctica settled upon me. A scant few minutes later, soaked to the skin and freezing cold, I clambered up onto the rough stone ‘wharf’ blasted into the rock, downhill from Casey.

  A kind of stunned silence settled upon those of us setting foot upon the continent for the first time. A strange feeling of numbness and disbelief. Living aboard the Aurora during the long sea voyage down and through the ice, most of us had fallen easily into comfortable routines of sleeping, eating, playing chess and generally enjoying the company of others on a shared adventure. As the ship travelled further south and the temperature outside dropped below zero, more and more time was spent inside the ship, where the temperature was a constant and balmy 25 degrees; in the week since our departure from Hobart, our horizons had grown ever closer.

  To be thrust so suddenly, without ceremony or time for introspection, from such a warm and cloistered environment onto the rocky, savagely beautiful and utterly unforgiving coast of Antarctica is to know something of your own insignificance.

  The ‘wharf’ to which we’d been delivered is about a kilometre or so from the station itself. On a calm and sunny day the water is startlingly clear and almost looks inviting, daring the brave to strip off their layers and take the plunge into the icy blue, although the station doctor was emphatic as to the potential effects this can have on the human body.

  A few metres uphill, set on a pile of enormous, half-exposed boulders, the station’s fuel farm crouches behind an enormous sign – fashioned in the style of the HOLLYWOOD landmark on the hills above that famous suburb. In bright orange letters, each about three or four metres tall, the word CASEY looks imperiously out across the water towards the crumbling remains of the old American Wilkes station on the Clarke Peninsula, almost directly across the bay.

  From the moraine, high inland to the south of the station, the wind howled its icy breath over us while we stood on the rocky wharf, numb as much from the sheer overwhelmingness of the situation as from the cold.

  ‘Welcome to Antarctica.’ Jeremy, the current station leader, who’d come down to meet us, grinned. ‘Glad you could all make it. Of course, the weather’s not always this nice. Sometimes it’s bloody awful down here.’ It was hard to tell whether he was joking.

  * * *

  From the Journal of Lieutenant William Downes

  3rd October, 1921

  Hobart, Tasmania

  (Continued from previous entry)

  My acceptance of the position clearly pleased both Mr Rourke and Captain Smythe-Davis and, after shaking hands officially on the agreement, Rourke immediately seized his coat and hat from his desk and shrugged back into them.

  ‘Good, then. Now that it’s all official, let’s go out and take a look at the ship. I think you’ll find her quite impressive.’

  Captain Smythe-Davis declined to join us, on the grounds that he had plenty of work to get on with and so, after organising to meet up with him later in the day for an early evening meal, I followed Mr Rourke back down the stairs. As we headed along Elizabeth Street towards the waterfront the man spoke not a word, but walked with an almost maniacal vigour; indeed, despite my longer legs, I had to hurry my pace to keep up with him.

  At the docks, he led the way to a small pier, alongside which were moored a number of dories, ranging in size from small tenders to larger working boats, most of the latter laden with fishing equipment. The black-painted boat he led me to was unremarkable from the others, apart from the man waiting on the dock alongside it. Slouched against a timber upright, smoking a pipe with some especially pungent tobacco, was a man I recognised immediately – the leather-faced sailor from the Imperial Arms Hotel. When he spotted Mr Rourke approaching, the man straightened slightly and emptied the contents of his pipe into the harbour before jamming the stem back into his mouth.

  As we reached him, Mr Rourke nodded.

  ‘This is Mr Ryan, the ship’s bosun. Dick, this is Lieutenant William Downes. He’ll be joining us as second officer from today.’

  If the man recognised me, he gave no indication. In fact, he said not a word and gave only a tiny nod to acknowledge that he’d even noted my presence.

  ‘A man of few words, Dick,’ Mr Rourke explained somewhat needlessly, before nodding at the dinghy. ‘Get in.’

  Climbing down into the boat, I first settled myself on the midships thwart, expecting that I would take one of the oars which hung loose in the rowlocks, and the bosun would take the other. I’d barely had time to sit, though, before a rough hand tapped my shoulder and I turned to find Ryan standing in the boat behind me, balancing easily despite the rocking motion. With a sharp nod he made it clear that I should move to the bow seat and let him take both oars.

  Mr Rourke climbed down, perched himself in the stern and, without another word, we shoved off. Ryan rowed strongly and smoothly, clearly well practised at handling the craft, and we slid quickly between other moored boats and pulled out towards Battery Point.

  From my position in the bow, I found myself looking back across the water towards the city which, despite the predominance of grey stone from which it is built, seemed to capture and reflect the morning light as it sparkled off the river, lending the pl
ace a picturesque, almost festive atmosphere. The morning was clear, the air scrubbed and clean from last night’s storms, and the view of Mount Wellington was completely unobscured. As we rowed further from the waterfront, the sounds of the busy harbour grew muted, replaced only by the splash of the oars and the gentle labour of Ryan’s breathing.

  Taking in the view, I found myself filled with a strange, almost indescribable sense of optimism, which I can only attribute to having decided irrevocably to join this most ambitious expedition. Having made that decision, it was a joy to find myself being rowed across that sparkling harbour, under a crystal sky and into the unknown, as it were. Perhaps the only low point was that I could not help but think of dear Elsie, who would be waiting for me back at Weatherly, uncertain for so long as to whether or not I was even alive. I determined to write to her as soon as I had the time, and to inform her in the broadest possible terms about the nature of the expedition and my decision to take up Mr Rourke’s offer.

  My thoughts of home were interrupted as the bosun pulled us around Battery Point and into Sandy Bay.

  ‘There she is.’

  Mr Rourke gestured at a large vessel, hanging at anchor amid the flotilla of smaller yachts and fishing boats that use Sandy Bay as their mooring place, and I will be honest in admitting that, immediately, the euphoria which had filled me during the ride out began to ebb.

  The ship to which Mr Rourke pointed was a black two-masted vessel of possibly 120 feet in length, rigged as a brigantine with square sails on the foremast and a gaff-boomed mizzen. Amidships, between the two masts, a stubby funnel, painted as black as the hull, poked through the deck, just astern of a long deckhouse.

  The vessel sat low in the water, only a bare few feet between the waterline and the scuppers, and it took me several moments to realise what was unsettling about her. Despite the slight swell coming up the river with the rising tide, which was setting the surrounding boats rocking gently, the black ship was floating completely motionless, almost as though she’d been grounded.

  Speaking candidly, I immediately thought her the ugliest ship I’d ever laid eyes upon. In the stern of our little dinghy, though, there was no mistaking the pride in Mr Rourke’s tone as he pointed.

  ‘The Polar Exploration Vessel Raven. Had her built specially for our expedition, to my specifications. What do you think of her, Downes?’

  For a moment, I wasn’t sure whether the man sought an honest reply or a flattering one. Behind me, I could feel the narrowed eyes of Mr Ryan upon me, waiting for my answer.

  ‘She seems to be sitting rather low in the water,’ I eventually offered and, strangely, Mr Rourke chuckled.

  ‘She does give that impression, I’ll grant you. But rest assured, there’s a reason for it. She passed her sea trials earlier this year with flying colours.’

  Drawing closer, a number of things struck me about the ship. Perhaps the most immediately apparent was how lifeless she seemed. The other vessels we’d passed on our way out, even those at anchor, all had people walking the decks and crewmen in the rigging doing maintenance. There was smoke from galley stoves and men painting or splicing or polishing brightwork. Most flew pennants of one kind or another from their mastheads and all flew some form of ensign denoting their nationality.

  Not the Raven. It seemed, at least from a distance, that not a soul was aboard; there was no plume of smoke or steam from her boilers and not a flag or pennant to be seen anywhere. Even her yardarms and booms were bare of sails, lending her masts a sinister, almost skeletal appearance against the morning sky.

  And then there was the colour. She was black, but a shade unlike anything I’d seen on a ship before, a strange matt ebony that, from certain angles, appeared almost deepest blue. Oddly, she seemed to absorb the light as it reflected from the sparkling water.

  ‘You’re wondering about the colour, aren’t you?’ Mr Rourke asked, as though he could read my thoughts.

  ‘It is rather unusual,’ I admitted, which comment he received with further mirth.

  ‘Take a close look at her.’

  By now, Ryan had drawn us up under the ship’s stern, steering to where a bosun’s ladder dangled to the water on the shoreward side. As we passed into the shadow of the clipper-style stern, I glanced up and looked at the ship’s name and port of registration: Raven, Hobart, formed in raised, white letters on the nameplate. I understood immediately the reason for the ship’s strange colour.

  ‘She’s made of iron!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Not quite, Mr Downes, but close. Steel. She’s fully clad. Two inches of steel plating, riveted over a hull of solid oregon.’

  We drew alongside the ladder and, seizing a painter line attached to the bow of our dinghy, Ryan leapt nimbly aboard the black ship and made us fast. Mr Rourke climbed aboard second, making surprisingly easy work of the rope ladder, and I followed his example. As I took hold of the wooden rungs, I placed one hand against the side of the ship’s hull. Up close, the black metal seemed more of a dull grey and the coldness of it sent a shiver up my arm. Then I scrambled up and was assisted by Ryan through a gate in the ship’s rail and onto the deck.

  ‘Welcome aboard, Mister Downes,’ he said, putting undue emphasis on the ‘Mister’ and making it immediately clear to me that, despite having pretended not to recognise me earlier, he had known me immediately. At the stern of the vessel, just aft of the mizzenmast, was a low poop deck with the helm and compass binnacle mounted in the centre, and Rourke steered me towards it.

  ‘She may not be the prettiest ship you’ve ever laid eyes on, Mr Downes,’ he told me, ‘but I’ll wager she’s one of the toughest. Her hull was designed by Norwegian shipwrights, along the lines of the ice-strengthened boats they’re so good at building up there. You know the Fram was Norwegian-built, don’t you?’

  I confessed my ignorance of the fact, and Rourke nodded.

  ‘Well, she was. Amundsen knew what he was doing when he picked her for getting to the pole, that’s for certain. So I went the same way with the Raven. I had her timbers laid and built in Europe then had a crew bring her across to Clyde in Scotland for the steel-cladding.’

  By now we’d reached the helm, an enormous spoked monster of a wheel, unadorned with any of the carving or brass work that one usually expects on such a thing. The wheel itself turned a barrel around which a thick cable twined, before feeding through a heavy block and tackle system and into a tiller box immediately behind the helmsman’s steering position. Rourke gave the wheel a slight turn and it was clear how much effort was required to move it, even just a small amount.

  ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘with all the steel on she’s damned heavy, and ten knots is about the best we can expect from her, even with the sails up, but once we get into the ice, we’ll be glad of every last plate of it. Let’s have a look below.’

  Stepping off the poop, we made our way forward along the starboard side of the main deck, past the funnel house and towards the long, low deckhouse built around the base of the foremast. As we walked, Mr Rourke explained where he’d first conceived the idea of cladding a ship in steel for use in ice conditions.

  ‘Got it from the war, didn’t I? Took a look at all those bloody great battleships and thought to myself, “if those buggers can stop cannon-fire, they should be able to knock a few lumps of ice out of the way, shouldn’t they?”’

  I wasn’t certain whether or not he expected an answer to his question, but I replied that I couldn’t see any reason why not, though I will admit that I had some reservations. Memories of the disaster that beset the Titanic spring to mind, but where that ship was solid metal, the Raven has the more flexible wooden hull beneath her steel shell and perhaps this lends her an advantage over that doomed liner.

  ‘Of course it should!’ Mr Rourke answered his own question. ‘Armour plating, that’s the key. And given where we’re going to be taking her, I wanted to give my ship every advantage I could muster.’

  Ducking my head, I followed him down a set of
three steps into the sunken deckhouse and we continued forward along a narrow companionway which ran down the starboard side, with the galley and a cabin opening off it. The cabin was to be shared by the bosun – the taciturn Mr Ryan – and the ship’s steward. The other was the domain of the cook. At the forward end of the deckhouse another two steps led us further down into a low-roofed forecastle, immediately below the foredeck of the ship.

  ‘Crew’s quarters,’ Rourke explained. ‘We’ll be sailing with a compliment of fourteen sailors, and they’ll sling their hammocks in here, but of course there’s just a skeleton crew aboard at the moment.’

  Down a steep ladder, through a hatch set into the floor, we descended into another, lower forecastle area which was to be used for stores, then began moving aft below the deckhouse and through the upper hold.

  ‘Engine room’s directly below here,’ Mr Rourke explained, as we ducked through a midships bulkhead. ‘She’s powered by a reciprocating steam engine. Puts out a good amount of horsepower, but of course it needs to, given her weight. Once she’s moving, though, she takes a bit of stopping.’

  In the middle of the ship the circular column of the funnel filled the entire central section of the deck and, aft of this, we stepped forward into the chartroom, which could also be accessed from the main deck via another narrow companionway. From there, we entered the wardroom – directly below the poop at the stern-end of the ship and lit by a pair of rectangular skylights built into the deck on either side of the tiller box.

  The middle of the wardroom was taken up by a long wooden table, with bench seating fixed to the deck around it; along the sides were six small cabins, each with two bunks apiece.

  ‘You’ll be in there,’ Mr Rourke indicated the middle cabin on the portside of the room, ‘sharing with the expedition meteorologist. It’s going to be a tight squeeze, I’m afraid.’