Icycle
I recently saw the IMAX film Shackleton鈥檚 Antarctic Adventure, which uses a mixture of 85-year-old archive footage combined with modern reconstructions. Some scenes clearly showed a bicycle, but why would anyone take a bicycle to Antarctica and what would they use it for? Was it introduced by modern film-makers or did the expedition really take a bicycle with it?
鈥� Captain Thomas Orde 鈥� Lees of the Royal Marines actually took a bicycle on Shackleton鈥檚 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
He was rather eccentric, and had been hired for his skills at climbing and skiing and for his expertise with internal combustion engines. It seems that he was a keen cyclist and managed somehow to squeeze his bicycle into the overloaded Endurance. Orde 鈥� Lees records taking it out on the ice on one occasion after Endurance had been frozen in the Weddell Sea. 鈥淎s I had no audience to deride me, I ventured on a little trick riding with some little success. No one knows what it means to me to have a bicycle and a place to ride it, however rough and heavy the going.鈥�
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When I overwintered in the Antarctic nearly 40 years ago we too had a bicycle on the base. It was ridden on newly formed sea ice before a layer of snow had a chance to build up. After the snow arrived we had to resort to more traditional methods of polar travel.
Robert Burton
Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
鈥� Bicycles have been used sporadically in the Antarctic from the time of Captain Robert Scott鈥檚 fatal expedition in 1912. Indeed, one of the relics discovered in Scott鈥檚 hut at Cape Evans, now in the care of the Antarctic Heritage Trust, is a rusted bicycle. This was a gift from a New Zealand firm to the geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor (1880 鈥� 1963) who later founded the Geographical Society of New South Wales and its journal The Australian Geographer. Prior to joining the expedition Taylor studied in Cambridge where cycling is a very popular form of student transport. This undoubtedly explains his enthusiasm for bicycles,.
This enthusiasm was soon snuffed out when he tried to make a 25 鈥� kilometre return journey to Turk鈥檚 Head from the Antarctic base camp and got into difficulties. He had to be rescued and later wrote: I made a vow that the first bicycle ride in the Antarctic would be my last, and have every intention of keeping that vow.鈥�
While, I agree that bicycles are not a very practical form of transport in the Antarctic, they certainly have their uses 鈥� especially their wheels. These are put to more uses than the bicycles themselves. Herbert Ponting, the famous polar photographer, used a cart that was fitted with bicycle wheels to take his equipment over the ice, hauled by a sledge dog. Antarctic researchers use bicycle wheels, fitted with cyclometers and attached to the back of sledges by a flexible link, to measure distances.
Bicycles rarely get a mention in expeditionary accounts but they occasionally appear in photographs, as in Shackleton鈥檚 Endurance expedition. Most are taken south by cycling enthusiasts but are generally more useful in ports visited on the way. My own bicycle which was in use for several years in South Georgia, reduced the time spent getting from base to research sites to less than a fifth; though it could only be used during the summer and early spring.
McMurdo station, a very large US installation in Antarctica, has several bicycles in use, mainly mountain bikes, that are used for both recreation and transport.
Robert Headland
Scott Polar Research Institute
University of Cambridge
鈥� Captain Thomas Orde 鈥� Lees was a physical training instructor at the Royal Marine base in Deal, Kent. He was a bit of an oddball who liked skiing, climbing and motorcycling. He turned up at his first interview with Shackleton on a motorcycle and, apparently, Shackleton was subsequently annoyed by his bicycle antics in the Antarctic.
Orde 鈥� Lees took a Rudge 鈥� Whitworth bicycle on Endurance partly because he thought he could use it for exercise. Here are some notes from his diary.
鈥�9 June 1915 [Not far off mid 鈥� winter in Antarctica] 鈥� A beautiful bright day. Temperature 鈥� 24, minimum 鈥�27. Just one of those calm clear days when the low temperature is entirely unappreciable. First of all I went for a short walk to try to find the condition of the surface along the sledge track and finding it suitable I then went for a cycle ride but the valve rubbers were perished with the cold and as I found I had to blow the tyres up pretty often I returned, got my ski and went out towing behind Marston鈥檚 dog sledge. This is always very enjoyable.鈥�
鈥�30 October 1915 [After the Endurance was finally crushed by the ice, the crew abandoned it and dumped many of their possessions. Shackleton was very strict about how much and what they could carry. Orde 鈥� Lees had, of course, to leave his bicycle behind.]
鈥淪everal members lost really valuable things in this way; others lost the whole of their personal outfits through having left them in the ship. My greatest sentimental loss was my dear old bicycle which I have had for 16 years, the best Rudge 鈥� Whitworth that ever lived.鈥�
David Rootes
Poles Apart
Logistic Support Team during the filming of Shackleton鈥檚 Antarctic Adventure
This week鈥檚 questions
Smoke stacks
What is smoke? Why does it sometimes rise straight up and why, on a cool morning, does wood smoke sink into the hollows?
Jemima Campbell
New Zealand
Head trauma
How much does a human head weigh? Obviously I can measure the volume of my head by simple water displacement, but I can鈥檛 tell its density, nor can I work out the weight and density of its various components. Can any of your readers help me out?
Bruce Firsten
Miami, Florida