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From issue: Summer 2002

Hot Issues Thrive in a Cold Climate

by Paul Titus

To conserve, or not to conserve, that is one of a number of dilemmas facing a multi-milliondollar project to restore and preserve the huts linked to the heroic period of Antarctic exploration.

Shackleton's Nimrod Hut at Cape Royds, the first of four huts to be restored in a multi-million dollar project. Picture: Kevin Rigarlsford

At stake are four huts, built by Ernest Shackleton, Robert Scott and other early adventurers, and 15,000 artefacts in Antarctica's Ross Sea region. In charge of the eight-year project is the Christchurch-based Antarctic Heritage Trust, which faces a number of decisions, including how to conserve buildings and artefacts in an extreme environment and whether they should be maintained as they are, restored to their original appearance or replaced with replicas.

Scott's Hut at Cape Evans after winter 1911. Picture: H Ponting, Antartica NZ Pictorial collection

The huts stand as frozen time capsules, portals through which visitors can catch a vivid glimpse of the early era of exploration. When the explorers abandoned their bases, they literally walked out the door and left behind equipment, supplies and personal belongings. Though picked over by souvenir hunters, much remains - from stoves, boots and sleeping bags to books, scientific equipment, sledges, tinned food, packets of biscuits and even legs of ham.

The interior of Scott's hut as it stands today. Picture: Photo New Zealand

The term "hut" is misleading. The prefabricated buildings were large enough to hold parties of up to 25 men, albeit in cramped conditions. Three of them are on Ross Island - Discovery Hut from Scott's 1901 expedition, Nimrod Hut from Shackleton's 1907 expedition and Terra Nova Hut from Scott's ill-fated 1910 expedition - and the fourth is at Cape Adare and dates from the 1898 British expedition led by the Norwegian Carsten Borchgrevink.

Each has its own unique character. The interior of Discovery Hut is blackened with the smoke from blubber-fuelled heating fires. Cape Adare contains a stove that nearly asphyxiated members of the original party while outside are the remains of two dogs chained to tethering pegs. Terra Nova Hut contains a bicycle, a cache of seal blubber and a box of penguin eggs gathered in 1916. One of its walls is adorned with pages cut from magazines, including a discrete back view of a woman showering.

From 1917 until the 1950s no one visited the huts and they filled with snow and ice. When the modern era of Antarctic occupation began, several teams of volunteers cleared and repaired them. Since 1987 the Antarctic Heritage Trust has had the responsibility to care for the huts. It has sent expeditions to stabilise and weatherproof them and conserve artefacts.

The organisation's executive director, Nigel Watson, says the huts are powerful places for visitors but after 100 years and the ravages of time many artefacts are in poor condition. "The rate of decay is increasing and the expert opinion is that we need to act now to ensure the legacy is preserved for future generations. We are lucky they have lasted 100 years but they won't last 200 years without a major restoration effort."

Over the years, various proposals have been put forward to preserve the huts including building domes over them or shipping them and/or their contents to New Zealand. The intentions of the Antarctic Trust are not so grandiose but it intends to raise $35 million to do the restoration. On board are project managers Arrow International and advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

In February Princess Anne visited Antarctica to launch the initiative with a $212,000 donation. The New Zealand Government has pledged $400,000 over two years and the Los Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Trust has contributed $200,000.

Watson and his trust board deputy chairman, Anthony Wright, say conservation plans for each of the four huts will be drawn up based on international best practice. Following site surveys, interdisciplinary teams will prepare technical plans, costings and work schedules. Conservators will remove some artefacts from Antarctica to treat them and reinsert them in their original setting.

Shackleton's Nimrod Hut at Cape Royds will be the first to be tackled. Conservation architect Chris Cochran heads the team writing the plan, which includes polar historians, conservators, structural and fire engineers, and cost consultants. The process includes a peer review by a leading British period of public consultation will follow before it is adopted.

According to Wright, restoration will re-introduce the sense of immediacy the huts had during the heroic era. Each of the four sites requires a different level of intervention so the degree of replication in each will vary.

"The intent is to carefully strip away the damage that has been done through decay and theft to create a vibrant experience for those who visit the huts in person or through webbased initiatives. In some cases it will be necessary to recreate things that have been damaged or lost through souveniring."

In the case of Cape Royds the prefabricated hut itself, originally bought in London for £154, will require minor repairs. More extensive reconstruction is planned for two outbuildings - a garage that housed Antarctica's first motor car and stables built for four Manchurian ponies. The walls of the garage and the stables were built of plywood storage boxes similar to tea chests. Most of them have deteriorated and the yet-to-be-finalised conservation plan calls for the construction of replica boxes to rebuild the walls.

Not all involved in Antarctic heritage support this degree of restoration. Sheridan Easdale, curator with the Antarctic Trust from 1995 to 2001, believes such reconstruction or replacing artefacts with replica items in thehuts does not enhance the experience of viewing them.

"The few people who are privileged enough to see the huts are blown away by the experience," she says. "Their unique attraction is to see what is left. Do tourists benefit by seeing something that is not genuine? I would rather see the remains of the stables rather than replications."

The huts are the largest artefacts in Antarctica and they should be treated the same as other artefacts or archaeological sites, Easdale says. "The aim should be conservation.We have got to be realistic and accept that they will suffer some natural attrition but there is a lot we can do to prevent it."

Emeritus curator of Antarctic history at Canterbury Museum Baden Norris echoes her views.A member of the 1963 party that excavated the ice from Scott's Discovery Hut, Norris opposes replicas, turning the huts into museums or even too much tidying up.

"I am not saying we should do nothing to the huts but it may not be possible to keep such temporary dwellings intact forever.With a bit of common sense we can slow the deterioration."

Historic Places Trust chief executive Bill Tramposch is on the Antarctic Trust's board of trustees and is enthusiastic about the restoration project. He said it was important to explore pros and cons about how to carry it out. It was easy to reach overkill when reinterpreting heritage sites.The key question was how to preserve the huts in perpetuity in a way that told the story of human achievement in Antarctica and kindled the public imagination. Only in that way would the project obtain the funds it required.

For further information on the work of the Antarctica Heritage Trust, see the website.

Paul Titus is the principal in Titus Writes , a network of freelance writers, photographers and graphic artists.

For further information on the work of the Antarctica Heritage Trust, see the organisation's website.

Monuments honour ice heroes Dotted throughout Antarctica are huts, statues, plaques, cairns and monuments that commemorate expeditions and those who lost their lives on them. Statue of Mary, McMurdo Sound Photo: Andy Radka, PhotoNewZealand The range includes a stone hut built on the Antarctica Peninsula by the survivors of a shipwreck during a 1903 Swedish expedition and a plaque on King George Island that marks the visit of the German ship Greenland in 1874, the first steamship to travel to Antarctica. The youngest is probably the plaque that lists the names of the first Indian Antarctic expedition in 1982. Among those commemorated are members of Polish, Norwegian, Russian, Czech, German, Japanese, Argentine and Chilean expeditions. The four heroic-era huts in the Ross Sea region all have the status of Specially Protected Areas, the highest protection listing under the Antarctic Treaty system. While some key historic sites have been lost - including the hut Roald Amundsen's party built at the Ross Sea's Bay of Whales during its successful bid to be the first to the South Pole - more than 70 hold the legal status of Historic Sites and Monuments. The Chairman of the Antarctic Heritage Trust's conservation advisory group, Chris Cochran, says the most successful restoration project in Antarctica is the British base Port Lockroy on the Antarctic Peninsula. Established in 1944 as a meteorological station, it was abandoned in 1962 and remained derelict until it was fully restored in 1966.