Ice Coffee: The History Of Human Activity In Antarctica

This month, in a very special episode of "Ice Coffee" Amanda Zimmerman shares her insights on life at McMurdo Station. Timely stuff for those listeners applying for USARP slots for the first time. Best of luck with your applications, people.

Large quantities of stores, lumber and conviviality go ashore and become Trepassey House, home to FIDS and their dogs for several subsequent years. 

The Tabarin mooted, Marr demurred Base E arises on Stonington Island, five nautical miles from the BGLE hut on Barry Island but two hundred yards from the Johnny-come-five-years-ago East Base.  Ted Bingham leads the first iteration of the FIDS and sets the tone for subsequent cohorts.  Scones, rum, freshies and the sort of treats that make Brits wave their hands about like Wallace from "Wallace and Gromit" while saying, "Ooooh, lovely," but which would leave anyone from any other culture saying "What the hell kind of celebratory repast is this?  Am I being punished for something in some passive aggressive British fashion, because that's the only reason I can conjure that you would feed me mince pies" Or is that just me? 

Finn Ronne makes ready for his return to Stonington Island, getting away late, in debt and with morale already fraying at the edges.  My apologies to anyone who downloaded the place holder episode used to keep this place held while I finished editing episode 113.  Here's the real deal.

With a hundred meg of storage in my name and a lot of audio snippets with nothing better to do I give you the bits episode.  Mind the neck bolts. This episode features the first competition I've run in a long time.  As usual it's biased in favour of early listeners who are old and who are me.  Voices from the past. Voices I hope will feature in the future. One voice that long since broke. We belong Dad.

Hope Bay's second tranche of winter residents settle in. Then they head home to a less than heartening reception than their Swedish predecessors experienced, though Taylor didn't die in a public transport accident, so there's that. 

Penguin sex gets the attention it deserves after Murray Levick deprived the world of his observations due to his prudish Victorian era sensibilities.  Professor Lloyd Spencer Davis gives you the good oil on the oily birds getting it on (early birds only get worms). Extended and diminished visibility and lights in the sky at high latitudes receive some attention from a non-physicist who will accept corrections with gratitude and alacrity. 

James Marr takes his military expedition south and sets up shop on Goudier Island at Port Lockroy in Bransfield House, and also Base A. 

More fuck! than you can poke a stick at.

So fuck! it warrants spelling fark!

Fuck!

Keystone cops. Byrd at his finest. Fumes and fuming.

Lincoln Ellsworth convinces Sir Hubert Wilkins to head south once again and achieves very little. 

The War to End All Wars didn't do what it said on the box and political and economic pressures to fascist all over Europe, China and the Pacific led to another protracted period of bloodshed and barbarism.  This episode is short and short on Antarctic content but it's important to understand the motives and outcomes of the morass of conflicts we came to call the Second World War because war and its wake once more held a lot of sway in what happened in Antarctica and by whom it happened to happen.  No mere happenstance but economic and politically driven outcomes lie in the offing and only those nations not completely economically crippled by conflict could afford to get south again in the short to medium term.  Not a pleasant episode to write or record and likely little fun to listen to.  Huskie antics and people doing heroic and dumb things lie in the offing, I promise. 

Nazis don't deserve theme music, soundscapes or even my best efforts at editing out narrating flubs. 

Driven south by the Third Reich's thirst for fat, the Schwabenland (ship version) carries two cool flying boats and a load of fucking nazis to Antarctic shores.  No house keeping and no calls to action, this episode, because I hate nazis and writing, recording and editing this episode made me grumpy.  Given that I parted brass rags with Quark expeditions because one of their guests called me a nazi and I told him to go fuck himself only re-doubles my anger at having to incorporate nazi assholes into my narrative.  Even Richard Byrd doesn't get me this pissed off. 

The British Graham Land Expedition comes to a close but it's not the last we'll hear of its members or the repercussions of the work they carried out.

The British Graham Land Expedition near the end of their second year in Antarctica.  Much flying, sledging, surveying and the first crossing of Graham Land. Huzzah.