Lot 330: The sledge party to White Island, February 1902: Shackleton, Wilson and Ferrar preparing to set out; Shackleton and Wilson making camp

Edward Adrian Wilson (1872-1912)
The sledge party to White Island, February 1902: Shackleton, Wilson and Ferrar preparing to set out; Shackleton and Wilson making camp
watercolour on paper
3 x 4¾in. (7.6 x 12.1cm.) (2)

Cyril Longhurst, and thence by descent to the present owner.

'Scott selected Ernest Shackleton to lead the first exploratory sledging journey of the Discovery Expedition. Shackleton was accompanied by Edward Wilson, the assistant surgeon and zoologist and Hartley Travers Ferrar, a geologist. They headed for a 2,300 foot vantage point on White Island (now called Mount Heine) and from there were able to view the great ice barrier stretching towards the south. Edward Wilson called it a Highway to the Pole.' (SPRI caption to Ernest Shackleton's first sledging diary, 18-22 February 1902 , from The Shackleton Collection, Virtual Shackleton, SPRI)

The outing is also recorded by Wilson in his diary:

Monday 17 February: '... The Captain proposed today that Shackle and Ferrar and I should go for a sledging trip to the island [later named White Island] and see what lay south of it. We began our preparations. ...'
Tuesday 18 February: 'Blowing hard and drifting snow, so we couldn't make a start on our sledge trip. We completed our preparations though. Got the pram we were to take, a Norwegian boat, soaked in the water to stop it leaking, and made up our bags of food and clothing and practised our tent pitching and so on. Then we packed everything and took them all over to the south side of Observation Hill, over the "Gap", because so much ice had broken away on the ship's side of the hill that we couldn't start from there. It was a heavy job lugging a boat and three weeks' camping kit over the hill slopes, but we got the latter all over and then came back for the night. The boat was a necessity in this trip, though a big weight to pull on a sledge, but with the bay ice breaking up so rapidly it would have been very risky to go without. ...'
Wednesday 19 February: 'Blowing hard, and drifting snow, so we couldn't make a start today. We took the pram over the hill though and left it with our sledge load of camping kit, so now we have everything ready for a start when the weather clears. ...'
Wednesday 19 February: 'Scored a day somehow in this diary. Anyhow it was on this day that we actually started. Koettlitz and Muggins came over the hill with us, and though it was blowing hard on our side of the hill there was hardly any wind at all where we started from the Gap icefoot. Muggins [Thomas Hodgson, biologist] took a decent photo of our party as we started with our sledging flags all up [copy in SPRI]. The weather was fine and clear and we went along at a good pace over wind furrows and ridges, but fairly good going on the whole, real Barrier surface, though not actual Barrier ice.
'... At 11.30pm the wind was worse than ever and we were all simply done, so we decided to camp at once and wait till the wind dropped. Up to this time Shackle's face had suffered most from the cold. His cheek was constantly going dead white in one place, and Ferrar's nose went too. My face wasn't troubled; but the moment we halted and started to unpack, though we were all doing things as energetically as ever they could be done, the cold and the snow drift and the wind were so bad that we all began frost-bites. Shackle's ears went as well as his face and the whole of the back of one hand. Ferrar's nose went and then he was safe with the cooking stove as soon as we had got the tent up, an awful business in such weather, as it flapped about in our hands like a handkerchief.
'However we dug out our trench and shoved the poles into the flapping business and then while one of us sat on the edge, the other put blocks of ice on it. Shackle and I managed this. We then stayed the tent by rope to the sledge and boat, unpacked our food bag, and all our furs and floor cloth and bundled them all into our little tent. It was a crowded place! Then we had time to look to our frostbites. ...
'We got our foot gear off. The ski boots were frozen to the socks, so that both came off in one and it took us all we knew the next morning to tear the socks out. The sweat of one's feet had lined the boots with ice. We got into our long fur boots and our feet began to get comfortable. Then we got our supper cooked, hot cocoa and pemmican and biscuit and jam and butter, and then we began to get our furs on, an awful job in a small tent, but it was too bad to go outside, as our furs would have been filled with drift in no time. The other two were bricks to me now. They dressed me first, as I was constantly getting cramp in the thighs whenever I moved, and having dressed me, they put me on the floor and sat on me while they dressed each other. At last we were all in our wolf skins and pimmies and settled off to sleep huddled together to keep warm.' (Edward Wilson, Diary of the 'Discovery' Expedition 1901-1904 , A. Savours, ed., London, 1966, pp.115-6.

Wilson probably worked up these watercolours on their return to the Hut, noting in his diary on Monday 24 February, 'Spent the whole day making a map from the angles and bearings Shackle had taken. We did this together and they all worked in most beautifully. I finished off my rough sketches too, and he wrote his report and together with Ferrar's geological report we handed in a very tidy official budget on our sledge trip, to the Captain.'