Most expedition accounts are written fairly soon after the end of the expedition so this is an unusual book, looking back fifty years to this ground-breaking traverse of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) period. For many modern readers the original account by Fuchs and Hillary will not be familiar so Stephenson is essentially telling the story afresh.
The narrative obviously covers the same ground but in a much more personal fashion. This account is different in several ways from that by Fuchs and Hillary. Firstly, it is a much more personal account, and although he deals with the expedition as a whole you read far more about what he did. Secondly, he is able to stand aside from the controversies that bedevilled the original organisation of the TransAntarctic Expedition (TAE) and the antipathy between Fuchs and Hillary and provide some interesting commentary. Stephenson writes well in an easy to read style and includes plenty of details of the science in his narrative.
Crossing Antarctica had been a dream of Shackleton in 1914 whose spectacular failure rather put off everyone else for decades. Lying up in a blizzard in 1949 ‘Bunny’ Fuchs began to think again about how it might be achieved. It was not until 1953 that Fuchs submitted a proposal to the Colonial Office Polar Committee and there it competed head on with one by Duncan Carse, an ex-member of the British Graham Land Expedition. Whilst they decided to back Fuchs Stephenson provides an interesting analysis by Ken Blaiklock of Carses’s plans, suggesting his ideas were simply not tenable. Even with the acceptance there was still opposition from some quarters who saw TAE as competing for money that should have been spent through the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey. Stephenson provides an interesting commentary on the recruitment of expedition members based on his selection as the sole Australian in the party and the only geologist and provides a fascinating account of the winter at the “South Ice” advance base with only three people. It is his comments on individuals – like the moody captain of the Magga Dan and Fuchs’s repeated insistence that he would not ask for help from the Americans (something he had to backtrack on later) – that provide interesting background to some of the events and decisions that were made. It is clear that Stephenson’s sympathies are largely with Fuchs but he does understand why Hillary acted as he did, given the clear reluctance of the New Zealand Committee to authorise his dash to the Pole.
The book contains many previously unpublished photos, and the A4 format allows them to be displayed very well. As you might expect from a geologist, there are some excellent maps. What is rather unfortunate is the number of proof reading errors scattered through the text with not only misspellings of James Clark Ross and of De Havilland but the substitution of letters for apostrophes.
The book contains several interesting extras. First, Stephenson has compiled brief accounts of the later lives of all except the New Zealand participants. Secondly, in Chapter 7 called “Then and Now” he attempts an assessment of the scientific achievements of the crossing and briefly deals with seven of the ten subsequent crossings including Trans-Globe, Messner and Fuchs, Fiennes and Stroud, Ousland, Hubert and Dansercouer, Arnesen and Bancroft. He has also provided five appendices, some of which seem to me to sit strangely in the book. The first deals with previous explorers of the Weddell Sea and goes over yet again the tales of Cook, Ross, Nordenskjöld, Filchner, Bruce and Shackleton, presumably as supporting evidence for the decisions taken by Fuchs on the route of the Tottan through the ice of the Weddell Sea. This, together with the appendix on the construction of Fram, Deutschland and Endurance, seems rather out of place to me, especially as Chapter 1 already contains an overview of the historical context. On the other hand his appendix on the ice and marine geology of the Weddell Sea does add some interesting science that will be unfamiliar to many readers. Equally his appendix on the IGY explorations carried out from Halley Bay, Ellsworth and Belgrano stations provides an interesting counterpoint to the work of the TAE. His final appendix lists TAE publications. If you consider the expedition as a scientific one, given its costs, the list of publications is not especially impressive. However, if the science is taken as a secondary objective to the exploration then the glaciology, the seismic soundings and the geology of three mountain ranges were important achievements. Overall, an interesting and readable volume that makes a useful addition to the TAE literature.
