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Z - F I D S N E W S L E T T E R No. 55 16 Feb 2024
Editor: Andy Smith (email andy@zfids.org.uk)
Website: www.zfids.org.uk
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News about Halley
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The Station Leader, Thomas Barningham ("Barney") has sent the
following report on the 2023-24 summer season. Many thanks to him for
that:
"The final 5 of us were uplifted back to Wolfsfang Runway yesterday,
with the main group of 31 PAX uplifted on 2nd February.
A lot of things didn’t go our way this season, our backs were against
the wall from the start with long delays, large amounts of snow
accumulation and what seemed like a never-ending amount of work. But
the team did it. Everybody knuckled down and got the work done, and
whilst it was tough, the atmosphere and comradery were brilliant.
Everybody at Halley this year really put a shift in, and their hard
work paid off.
The Malik Arctica finally relieved the station, the first ship we’ve
seen in 6 years. It was an intense period of work that was completed
in 9 days. A total of 250 tonnes of waste were removed from the ice
shelf. We bunkered 500 m3 of fuel and brought in fresh frozen and dry
food stocks for the next 3 years. Importantly, new science came in.
We have new radar systems ready to be installed in the coming years
and a container full of ice core drilling equipment.
Either side of the ship relief, all the site infrastructure were
raised, including the cabooses and labs that couldn’t be raised last
year, and the modules, undergoing a double raise and a realignment -
a lot of hard graft.
A second microturbine was installed, completing the project that was
started 6 years ago. The winter science network now has duty and
standby microturbine power. A brilliant engineering achievement.
The RIFT-TIP project had a great season with a successful deployment
of seismometers around the Halloween crack tip and two ice cores
drilled through the ice shelf, one reaching a depth of 120m.
It’s been an incredible season where Halley showed what BAS is all
about - ice shelf ship relief and traverse to station, ice core
drilling, East Antarctica aircraft fieldwork, in house lab
renovations, complex engineering projects and a serviced and
calibrated network of science instruments.
Halley can put its best foot forward once again and continue to
support the science that goes on through the unoccupied winter, and
now, support more and more summer-based project work, be that on
station, or further afield."
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John 'JD' Davies has been at Halley this season, and notes that three
others from the 1997 wintering team have also been there, 27 years
later: Martin Bell, David Maxfield (DJ max) and Vicky Auld. John has
sent some photos which may be found on the 2018+ Zfids page. Bob Wells
has sent a picture from the Malik Arctica webcam, when the ship was
alongside the new edge of the Brunt Ice Shelf.
Vicky Auld
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Congratulations to Vicky, who was winter BC in 1998 and is now BAS
Deputy Chief Pilot, on the award of a second clasp to her Polar
Medal.
Sadly, there are deaths to report.
Patrick "Tony" Haynes
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We are sad to learn of the death of Patrick (Tony) Haynes at the age
of 85 in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 3 December 2023. He was Cook at
Argentine Islands in 1960 and 1961, and Cook and GA at Halley Bay
in 1965 and 1966. (Information from Geoff Lovegrove).
George Blundell
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George Blundell (Halley Bay 1961/2 Geophysicist) died on 22nd November
2023. He was the Auroral Observer in both years, and in 1967 published
his results in BAS Scientific Report No 48.
Chris Ruffell
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Chris Ruffell died on 11 April 2023. He was the Carpenter in 1962.
He lived in and around Perth and Albany, Western Australia and is
buried in a memorial park just north of Perth. (Information from Doug
Finlayson.)
Survey of Royal Society Base, 1956
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Three men from the first winter of 1956: Stan Evans, Charlie Le Feuvre
and Ken Powell, did a survey of the local area. The final version of
this was produced by JF Horrabin and has been shown on the Zfids 1956
page for a while. Recently the Royal Society Archives provided us with
two additional images. One was a copy of the map signed by all members
of the Advance Party and the Main Party. The other was the original
sketch map drawn by Evans. These are both now on ZFids.
Winterers database
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The Database of Winterers 1944-2020, hosted on the BAS Club website,
previously held only winters at FIDS/ BAS bases (plus the involuntary
winters of 3 Fids at the Argentinian base Belgrano in 1978).
Following a suggestion by Clive Sweetingham, this has now been
expanded to include the men of the Royal Society IGY Expedition who
wintered at Halley Bay in 1956, 1957 and 1958, before the base was
handed over to FIDS. The Excel spreadsheet containing the new data
may be found on the relevant page of the BAS Club site, but currently a
technical problem is preventing the presentation of the data as a
searchable table.
Midwinter (and other) magazines
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All 29 "Splode" magazines have been added to the website. In addition,
the Spasmodic News and Pengwinge Vol 1 No 6 from 1966 have been
added.
Z-70
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This event, a successor to Z50 and Z60, will celebrate 70 years of
science at Halley (Bay). It will take place Friday 9th - Sunday 11th
October 2026 at Northampton Town Centre Hotel. An organising committee
has been formed and planning is underway. More information and a
booking form will be published in due course. We have signed up some
excellent speakers for the event and it should be well worth attending.
Penguin colony location
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Many Halley Fids will have visited the nearby emperor penguin colony
which used to be at Windy Creek (and before that at Mobster Creek and
originally at Emperor Bay). The El Nino of 2016 resulted in the sea
ice being swept away and the penguins suffering a total breeding
failure. A colony was re-established at the Dawson Lambton Glacier, but
since the Brunt Ice Shelf calved in January 2023, satellite evidence
has shown that the penguins have returned to a site closer to the base,
at the mouth of the Halloween Crack, just east of the McDonald Ice
Rumples. [From the Icesheet No. 128]
ZFids website www.zfids.org.uk
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Apart from what has been noted above, there have been a number of
additions to the site. Scans from 1972 by Norman Eddleston and Tony
Jackson include Midwinter and Christmas dinner menus, and three
different versions of the base photograph.
On the 1964 and 1965 pages there are links to a film produced by Lewis
Juckes which documents his time at Halley and in the mountains during
those years. Well worth a view. Also a book by Lewis called
"Antarctic Basalt".
More contributions to the website are welcome at any time.
British Antarctic Oral History Project
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All the 272 Oral History interviews being published have now
been transcribed by our team of volunteers. 264 of these have been
published on the BAS Club website (link on the Zfids home page).
You don't need to be a BAS Club member to see them. There are
links on the Z-Fids website to the interviews featuring Halley
people (see the General Index under Oral history recordings). The
remaining interviews are awaiting approval before they can be
published.
Here are a couple of extracts from the interviews:
Maurice Sumner (Met-man/ BC, 1961 & 1963): The Bob-Pi Crossing
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"When you approach this area, you are looking for signs of how to get
across this jumble, and eventually you choose a way which may or may
not have been a good one, but you persevered with it and eventually
got across. But even after you got across, you still had more broken
territory to get across. We did that and were relieved to get across,
because we had the inland sea, the inland frozen bit which was
available to us, and could take us right through to the Tottan
Mountains, which was the 'promised land'. We knew it was there. We
knew Johnson (the base commander) had got there the year before, and
that was a first. It was like a first ascent really. And then we all
wanted to go over of course, and I managed to get there. But it's a
long long way, across ice shelf which by and large is all fairly
secure. You can still fall down holes but less so because we had done
that previous work. I did it with tractors. We had motor toboggans.
We used those. We had some dogs; we used those. Anything but manhaul.
That's a bloody waste of time that was. But we got there eventually
and everybody found their own method really. It was a sort of '18th
hole'. You got to where you wanted to go, and the weather allowed you
to, You just plough on. 20 miles a day and you eventually get there.
"
NERC copyright, reproduced courtesy of BAS Archives Service.
Archives ref AD6/24/1/208.
Bill Bellchambers (Ionosphericist, 1957, 58, 64, 65): The hut in 1957
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"Conditions in general in Halley Bay in ’57 were little different from
those of the Scott and Shackleton expeditions. I suppose the clothing
was more advanced, but we were in a big bunkroom. There were two
bunkrooms: one was big, one was small, so that housed all 22 of us.
That was heated by stoves. All the usual things like keeping the
ventilators clear from snow and so on. You had to do everything for
yourself, well not for yourself but for everybody. Snow had to be
melted for water. The toilet was a barrel set in the snow inside the
hut initially, with just a wooden top on it. Then when the barrel was
full up, it had to be carted out. Now of course when the hut got buried,
we could no longer do that so what we did was we made a big drop by
keep pouring boiling water down. It melted a big hole and we had to
keep it going that way. So there was a hole in the floor of the hut,
down to the ice below, but in order not to ... The only thing that
was taken outside was ... We always used to use the pee-can before
we went and sat down because otherwise that would have frozen down
there in no time and made things difficult. So I think the only thing
we took outside was the pee-can."
NERC copyright, reproduced courtesy of BAS Archives Service.
Archives ref AD6/24/1/156.
Many thanks to all contributors to this Newsletter.
Back numbers
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All issues of this Z-Fids Newsletter, from No. 1 in 2004 (except for the
most recent issue) are available from the Z-Fids website home page.
The most recent issue is sent to those on the mailing list.
The British Antarctic Survey Club
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The Club is now sponsoring the Z-Fids website and if you are not already
a member, I would urge you to consider joining. There is a membership
application form accessible from the home page of the Club's website:
www.basclub.org
Registrations and email updates
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As usual this newsletter is being sent out by email only, to 420
people. If you are on email but have not received it by that route,
please register or re-register on the website (links on the home
page). 437 people have now registered on Z-fids. If you have, your
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Andy
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