Sheila Markham Rare Books

A Month in the Freezer

John Maggs in conversation with Sheila Markham

Never go to annual general meetings. Once you’re there, someone will invariably want you to join a committee. It happened to me with the Cruising Association - in no time I was on the Library Committee. Of course that’s all quite reasonable and it did give me the opportunity of getting to know Michael Gilkes, eye surgeon, yachtsman and book collector. After qualifying as a doctor, Michael worked with Salvesen of Leith in their whaling stations in South Georgia. He told me about a couple of spare places on an expedition to Antarctica on which he was to be guest lecturer.

Now what, you may ask, is a secondhand bookseller doing down there? It’s hopeless for bookshops. Actually I’ve wanted to visit the Southern Ocean almost since I first joined Maggs in 1947. I spent my first ten years collating. There I was, shut up in a room with a great pile of purchases. One got rather weary and, from time to time, I liked to stop and read some of the stock. One book I read from cover to cover - Lucas Bridges’ Uttermost Part of the Earth, one of the earliest accounts of life in Tierra del Fuego. Among the stack for collation was often Shackleton’s South, and Cook’s Second Voyage. For anyone interested in the region, Niall Rankin’s Antarctic Isle is probably the best account of South Georgia and its whaling industry in 1947.

Anyway, Michael Gilkes gave me all the information and I set off with my wife, Betty, on Boxing Day for a month in the Antarctic, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. As it was an American tour, we all congregated in Miami and then flew, in various stages down to Ushuaia to join our ship. She was a Russian polar research vessel, the Sergey Vavilov, beautifully fitted out and conditions on board were comfortable. One or two passengers grumbled a bit - she wasn’t quite Cunard - but the food was excellent and we all had a ‘room with a view’, and there was even a lift and a very good library.

And what a view! The scenery was quite spectacular. Of course, we’ve all seen photos of icebergs before, by the great photographers such as a Ponting and Hurley, but the real thing is simply marvellous - extraordinary colours and shapes. Our guides kept telling us, 'You’re standing here seeing a sight only one in twenty million will ever see.'

I was rather dreading the Drake Passage south of Cape Horn, which has the reputation of being quite the worst sea in all the world. But I was well supplied with anti-sickness patches and they worked. Also, the ship was efficiently stabilised - she had to be for the oceanographic work - and we were lucky with the weather. South Georgia is notorious for sudden storms blowing up from the south-west in a matter of minutes, but we escaped all that. 0f course it was January and mid-summer and the temperature was warm , in other words, just around zero.

Obviously it’s vitally important to wear the right clothing. Before we left, I consulted the Royal Geographical Society on various practical aspects of the trip. They directed me to Cotswold Camping, an excellent shop that specialises in fitting out Everest climbers. Th simple answer to keeping warm is plenty of layers, and silk, if you can afford it. Footwear is also important. Unfortunately, my boots weren’t up to the job.I made the mistake of economising, and thought I could make do with my yellow sailing wellies. They were fine on what were known as ‘wet landings’ and for crossing glacier streams, but they were useless on muddy tussocks and steep scree slopes. My Musto sailing jacket (with hood) was excellent, and I was also very grateful for my bib and brace waterproof trousers.

There were no special medical requirements for the trip, which was somewhat surprising as the going was sometimes tough in the extreme and many of the passengers were in the category rudely known as Old Age Pensioners. Some seem to spend their time circling the world in cruise liners and expect to live forever.

The biggest contingent on board - and there were about 70 of us - were wildlife photographers. They were fearless, clambering around with thousands of pounds of valuable equipment. It was alarming to watch them climbing down cliff faces to photograph the albatross nests below. One slip and they would have fallen a couple of hundred feet on to the rocks.

The daily trips ashore were an adventure in themselves. A strict drill was observed on the ship. There was a check-out board on the gangway and, before disembarking, we each turned over a disc to indicate we had left the ship and vice versa on return. There are no docks, and the trick was to station two Russian seamen in the surf who could grab the boat and pull it ashore before the next wave turned it over. They were sometimes up to their necks in freezing water but were well protected with their ‘dry suits’. The elephant seals are enormous but rather sleepy, but the innumerable fur seals can be very fast on impossible terrain and rather dangerous.

I must say the marauding birds frightened me. You’ve seen the Hitchcock film? The trouble is, it’s quite possible to get too close to a nest without knowing it, and the birds start swooping around you. One of them made a gash across someone’s forehead and the Russian lady doctor made a great job of fixing it up. Back in Texas he is probably dining out on that scar. Actually the guide books tell you to put a hat on top of a stick and carry it above your head - the birds come down and attack the hat. At least, that’s the idea .

Our voyage took us as far South as Faraday Station, 65 degrees 13' S where we met some of the wonderful young scientists working for the British Antarctic Sur-vey. By and large, they are sick to death with cruise ships. Now that I have been there myself, I must confess I too am concerned about the effect of tourism on the region. I appreciate the comments of Sir Vivian Fuchs in his book Of Ice and Men, but there is a demand for these cruises and if numbers have to be restricted, prices will remain high.
You will have read that all the huskies are being shipped to Canada. Can you imagine South Georgia and the Antarc-tic without a single dog? As I under-stand it, this decision was taken under pressure from extreme environmentalists. Of course, huskies, are not part of the natural habitat but the Brits, in particular, loved their dogs and this comes out very strongly in the literature of these parts. And when the worst comes to the worst, you can eat your dog. Try eating a snow tractor.

The whaling stations have all been shut down, and reduced to corrugated iron rattling in the wind. They make a most dramatic sight - quite deserted and very ghostly. At one time, they were self-contained industrial sites, manned largely by Norwegians and Argentinians living the toughest life you could ever imagine. At one, there is even a derelict small-gauge railway locomotive which was used for moving heavy materials around the whaling station.

You’ve heard the story about the discovery of the ozone hole? A British scientist had been carrying out meticulous observations for some time and began to notice a blip on his meter at the same time each year. Something quite out of the ordinary was happening. So he pursued it in typical Brit fashion and wrote up his observations in an article which appeared in Nature. Meanwhile, the American scientists threw mud at his findings and claimed the blip was no more than a symptom of his faulty equipment. In due course, they were persuaded to check their own records of satellite data and it emerged that they too had observed the same blip - only their computers had ‘been specially programmed to ignore anything out of the ordinary.

There is now a fine museum in Stanley, full of extraordinary bygones. The Falklands are a bit of a time-warp. All sorts of bits and pieces were taken out by the settlers and many are still in use. Nowadays the locals do a good trade with the cruise ships, and there’s a regular flight to Stanley. It’s largely intended for service personnel, but they sometimes have spare places. If you're thinking of going, it is certainly the most direct route - one fuel stop at Ascension and then straight on down. Enquire at the London offices of the Falkland Isles Government.

But the distance is still enormous. At one time, the British were planning a convict settlement in the Falklands. This was when Australia became ‘un-fashionable’ for such purposes. But the plan never materialised and the mission-aries came instead. And that is an amazing story. William Parker Snow, author of Two Years’ Cruise off Tierra del Fuego (1857) was captain of the ship in which some of the missionaries travelled. They were an impossible cargo, quarrelling all the time and taking to prayer at the first sign of a storm. When they finally reached the Falklands, some idiot lit a match and one island went up in smoke - a combination of the dry tussock grass and the enormous winds.

During the trip, I often reflected on the special qualities of the most courageous explorers. Sir Ernest Shackleton is one of my great heroes, and one of the main reasons for my wanting to visit South Georgia. What a man! And my admir-ation for him has increased as a result of this trip. You know the story of course? His ship, the ‘Endurance’ was crushed in ice in the Weddell Sea. After reaching desolate Elephant Island, Shackleton launched his tiny lifeboat again to get help and succeeded in reaching South Georgia. We actually visited King Haakon Bay in South Georgia, and saw the exact spot where Shackleton landed. It was a tremendous thrill to enter the cave where he sheltered on the first night before attempting the terrible mountain crossing to reach safety. Next to Bligh, Shackleton’s is one of the most amazing open boat voyages in history.

Our leader organised a small party to retrace some of Shackleton’s footsteps, and to see where he made his descent from the mountains and encountered the waterfall. As it was the only way down, they lowered themselves through the waterfall on their one bit of rope. On this particular excursion, I was often reminded of Shackleton’s firm belief that he was being helped by an unknown spirit.

Actually the climbing was all a bit much - what with the wretched yellow wellies and no ice axe. But I thoroughly enjoyed the day we spent in Grytviken where Shackleton is buried. Michael Gilkes said a few words in memory of my hero and we stood round his grave and drank a stiff tot from plastic mugs.
An explorer should ideally be a mountaineer and a yachtsman. For the Arctic, he should also be used to handling a dog team and a kayak. On top of all that, he should be a scientist, psychologically ‘normal’ and a personable chap. In other words he’s really go to be a Shackleton.

My adventures have come through books, but my Uncle Claude trained as a botanist and never went into the book business. When the Depression came, he managed to find a job at Kirstenbosch, the marvellous botanical gardens outside Cape Town. While he was there, a barquentine came into harbour - they were a man short and he volunteered to join them on the rest of their round the world trip. He fared extremely well and was the only one still standing up in the roaring forties. I have a special copy of Adrian Seligman’s account of the voyage of the Cap Pilar, illustrated with Maggs photographs.
As for me, I’m no explorer - neither the guts nor the stamina. Which leave the $64,000 question - would I go on the same trip again? No, I wouldn’t. But Betty is keen to pursue Captain Cook to Alaska!

Interviewed for The Bookdealer in March 1994