NZHistory, New Zealand history online - antarctica

Air New Zealand plane fuselage on Mt Erebus

Only one portion of the fuselage of the Air New Zealand DC-10 remained intact on the icy slopes of Mt Erebus. Red and green flags respectively mark out the search area in a grid pattern and indicate the site of human remains. This method was used to identify and document finds of human remains and property.

Recovery operation begins

A break in the weather allowed the first members of the Erebus Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team to leave McMurdo Station at 8.30 a.m. (NZST)* on 3 December 1979. Deteriorating weather initially hampered efforts to get the remaining team members up to the site, and a blizzard later that evening prevented any work until early the following day. Bob Mitchell, the search and rescue coordinator leading the recovery operation, had flown in with the initial DVI team. But he returned to McMurdo prior to the blizzard and advised the media contingent that they hoped to recover more than the 50 to 70 bodies mentioned previously.

Lone woman

Only one woman worked at the crash site, US Navy Flight-Surgeon Sandra Deegan. She had the task of examining the bodies and formally announcing that they were dead.

There was pressure to complete the recovery operation quickly because the ice runway at McMurdo would begin to thaw in mid-December, making it unusable by wheeled aircraft. This would greatly restrict the movement of aircraft, making it difficult to return bodies to New Zealand.

After the blizzard cleared the mountaineers on site broke the bridges that had formed above the crevasses and marked them with red flags (bodies and human remains were marked by green flags). The surveyors completed their grid pattern and the DVI teams began to search 30 m square grids over the wreckage area of approximately 700 by 120 m. They tagged, photographed and bagged bodies, remains and personal belongings with reference to the grid pattern. There were five DVI teams - each made up of two policemen, one mountaineer, and one photographer. McMurdo provided the men who acted as photographers.

Skua gulls

Skua gulls were an ongoing source of anguish to those involved in the recovery operation. The gulls attacked bodies at the crash site, even after they were placed in body bags. They were hard to scare off and the DVI teams eventually took to covering the bodies in ice and snow while awaiting their removal to McMurdo.

Mitchell had planned for the DVI teams to work in 12-hour shifts, with a break offsite before returning. But their determination saw the men work between 15 and 20 hours a day for four days, with just short breaks onsite in their tents. The first bodies were transported back to a temporary mortuary at McMurdo by US Navy helicopters on 4 December, just hours after the start of the operation; the last followed on 10 December.

Eight of the 12 volunteers assisting US Navy Flight-Surgeon James Goodrum at the temporary mortuary at McMurdo were Americans stationed there. They volunteered in the hope this would limit the number of New Zealanders from Scott Base needed to handle the bodies of their countrymen.

Throughout this period the site investigation continued. It operated alongside, and where appropriate in concert with, the recovery operation. At the crash site itself the two teams shared food and accommodation, and assisted each other, for example when wreckage needed to be moved to uncover bodies. Back at McMurdo a police sergeant, flown in after the main police contingent to sort through belongings recovered from the site, passed on rolls of passengers' films for the US Navy to develop for investigators.

*On the day of the Erebus disaster there was a one-hour time difference between New Zealand and McMurdo Station. New Zealand was observing daylight saving time, which Scott Base and McMurdo Station did not begin observing until 1992/93.

Next page: Site investigation and recovery operation conclude

Credit:

Image: New Zealand Police.
Permission of the New Zealand Police required for any reuse of this image.

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

air transport

disasters

erebus disaster

police

antarctica

Quail Island

Quail Island, Lyttelton Harbour (1875)

Our Ellis Island?

This may surprise you. Although many New Zealanders can trace their roots back to 19th-century migrants, just two immigration-related buildings survive from this period, both from quarantine stations: on Quarantine Island in Otago Harbour and Quail Island in Lyttelton Harbour.

Māori knew Quail Island as Ōtamahua, the ‘place to gather sea-bird eggs’. Bird life must have been important, for Captain William Mein Smith named it after the now-extinct native quail. Europeans farmed the island from 1851 but its importance increased after 1874 when the provincial government accepted Thomas Potts’s offer to use it as a quarantine station. Sir Julius Vogel’s assisted migration scheme was peaking and immigrants were flooding into the southern provinces especially. New Zealand’s European population surged from 60,000 in 1860 to 470,000 by 1881. Although most migrants arrived fit and well, the authorities implemented disease prevention measures at the major ports. Before anyone disembarked, officials checked the health of the government migrants and the condition of the ship, and heard complaints. Ships with sick people aboard had to raise the yellow flag and go into quarantine, a dismal introduction to the New World for people who had already been cooped up for three to five uncomfortable months at sea.

Construction started before the island’s sale could be completed, so the government built cheaply and simply. In February 1875 the Rakaia (which had lost 11 passengers and still had 100 mumps cases aboard) became the first ship to use Quail Island. It would not be the last, but with migration tapering off in the late 1870s and steam taking over from the mid-1880s, the need to quarantine people declined sharply. From 1881 livestock were also detained here, most famously the dogs and ponies used by Antarctic explorers. Between 1901 and 1929 the Shackleton, Scott and Byrd expeditions all used Quail Island.

But sickness still drove people here. In 1918 victims of the influenza epidemic were sent here as Canterbury struggled to meet the crisis. Between 1906 and 1925 there was also a small leper colony. Just a few minutes’ walk from the barracks you will find the walls, concrete foundations and drain channels from the leper colony that sat on its own isolated terraces. Another few minutes’ walk away a solitary grave lies behind a neatly painted white picket fence. It belongs to the only leper to die here, 20-year-old Ivan Skelton, who was visiting relatives at Westport in 1918 when he was diagnosed with the ancient curse. Shipped off to Quail Island, he died five years later, far from his family.

Finally, do not miss the ‘Ships’ Graveyard’ on the western side of the island. In the 19th and early 20th centuries old hulks 'graced' most major ports. Otago and Lyttelton harbours still contain ships’ graveyards. Quail Island’s is the bigger. Depending on the state of the tide, you may make out the decaying remains of eight vessels: the Queen, Mullogh, Lyttelton, La Plata, Waiwera, Frank Guy, Darra and Belle Isle. Most prominent are the early iron steamer Mullogh (1859), right up on the beach; the long frames of the former tea clipper and migrant ship Darra (1865), beached parallel to the shore; and the Frank Guy, a bit further out.

The Department of Conservation administers the island, which can be reached by ferry once or twice daily, depending on the season. Allow at least two hours to walk around it. There is plenty to see and in summer the beach is fine for swimming. You will also see traces of a quarry that once supplied ballast to sailing ships, relics from the island’s long farming history and some stunning sea cliffs.

Further information

This site is item number 47 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

On the ground

Several sites and features are interpreted.

Websites

Book

Peter Jackson, Quail Island: a link with the past, Department of Conservation, Wellington, 1990

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Colour images: Gavin McLean, 2001

Historic images:

Alexander Turnbull Library
References: WA-37790-F (photographed by Whites Aviation), 1/2-031143-G (photographed by Steffano Francis Webb), 1/2-031141-G (photographed by Steffano Francis Webb) and PA7-53-19 (photographed by Wheeler and Son)
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

Map filter:

tags:

Date established:

1875

Admiral Byrd's South Pole game

Board game based on the first Antarctic expedition (BAE1) of Admiral Byrd, consists of a map which follows Byrd on his trail by air, sea and land from Dunedin, New Zealand, to the South Pole avoiding the perils of icebergs, crevasses and blizzards along the route.

Byrd used Dunedin as his New Zealand base during his first Antarctic expedition (BAE1) from 1928-1930. A memorial to Byrd, unveiled on 31 October 1967, stands overlooking the port of Dunedin in Unity Park, Mornington.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: Eph-F-ANTARCTICA-1934-01
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

richard byrd

antarctica

Departure of Shackleton's Antarctic expedition from Lyttleton, 1908

This silent footage shows explorer Ernest Shackleton's British Antarctic Expedition, or Nimrod expedition, leaving from Lyttelton, the expedition's New Zealand base, on 1 January 1908. Includes footage of ponies and dogs which stayed on Quail Island prior to the expedition.

The Nimrod expedition was to penetrate the farther south than any previous trips to the Antarctic, getting within 160 km of the Pole. The expedition received significant support from the New Zealand government and the public. A number of New Zealanders were also involved.

See reports of the send-off for the Nimrod, described as 'the greatest yet accorded to any vessel leaving a New Zealand port' in the Star and Evening Post (PapersPast).

Archives New Zealand
Reference: Departure of Shackleton's British Antarctic Expedition, Departure from Lyttleton, New Zealand, 1908
See more about this film on Archives New Zealand's YouTube channel
Permission of Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga must be obtained before any re-use of this material.

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

Media Group:

video

NZ history:

Antarctica and New Zealand

Video thumbnail:

Video URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZCDs2rT6Lo

tags:

RNZAF Antarctic Flight

De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver aircraft from the RNZAF Antarctic Flight on display at the Air Force Museum of New Zealand in Christchurch, 2008.

The RNZAF Antarctic Flight was formed in 1956 to help the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The three-strong flight was led by Squadron Leader J.R. Claydon and equipped with a de Havilland Beaver (see above) and an Auster floatplane. It helped transport men, dog teams and supplies, and carried out geological mapping over two summers (1956–1958) before it was disbanded in 1960. RNZAF operations in Antarctica resumed in 1965 when a Hercules flew the first of what have become annual summer flights from Christchurch to the continent.

Read more about New Zealand's involvement in Antarctica (NZHistory)

Credit:

Winston Wolfe (Wikipedia)

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

antarctica

air force

royal new zealand air force

Sir Paul Reeves in Antarctica, 1986

Sir Paul Reeves, Governor-General of New Zealand (R) and Colonel Thomas W. Wood, United States Air Attaché to the U.S. Embassy, Wellington, New Zealand, stand at the South Pole Station on 3 December 1986.

The sign says the Station stands at an elevation of 9301 feet (2835 metres) with an ice thickness in excess of 9000 feet (2743 metres) and and average temperature -56 degrees F (-48.9 C).

Sir Paul was the first New Zealand governor-general to stand at the South Pole. See further information about this image here.

Credit:

Image and information courtesy Colonel Thomas W. Wood

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

antarctica

paul reeves

Koru capsule on Mt Erebus

A koru-shaped capsule located beside the Erebus disaster memorial cross on Mt Erebus. It contains messages from relatives of the victims of the disaster which were collected for the 30th anniversary commemorations. The 26-kg capsule was due to be placed at the site on the anniversary by six relatives of the victims of the disaster visiting Antarctica, but bad weather prevented them from reaching the crash site. It was eventually taken there in January 2010.

Credit:

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

memorials

erebus disaster

antarctica

New Zealand's interest in Antarctica

The Ross Sea region of Antarctica which New Zealand has administered since 1923.

New Zealand's involvement in Antarctica

The authors of a 2003 report into what motivates New Zealand's involvement in the Antarctic identified four distinct phases in New Zealand's policy towards the Antarctic. These were:

Pre policy: up to 1922
Minimalist approach: 1923-57
Realisation of the value of ‘sovereignty' and science: 1957-1995
Incongruous environmental and commercial emphasis: 1995 to present

They described that there were five key drivers influencing New Zealand policy towards the Antarctic. These were:

Historical and social
Political and legal
Science and research
Economic
Environmental

They considered the shifts in dominance of these drivers over time, and the interplay between them. Overall they concluded that proximity was the fundamental driver of New Zealand's Antarctic policy. They went on to explain that:

Proximity led to New Zealand's claim to the Ross Dependency. The claim to the Ross Dependency has meant that New Zealand has a place in the Antarctic Treaty system, a science programme and an approach to the environment that encompasses notions of ownership as it plays guardian as well as responsible resource user.

Further information:

Barrie Cook, Judith Fretter, Shona Muir, Waverley Parsons and Lesley Woudberg, Antarctic drivers: what motivates New Zealand's involvement in the Antarctic?, GCAS 2003 Syndicate report, Unpublished, 2003.

Credit:

Antarctica NZ

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

maps

antarctica

NZ helicopters on Antarctica

New Zealand based company Helicopters (NZ) Ltd secured its first Antarctic contract with the West German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in 1979. Since 1985 the company has sent teams to Antarctica every summer. The teams and their helicopters are transported to the continent by ship or plane. Their contracts have included tranporting material and personnel to and from supply ships, inshore bases and camps. They have also been contracted by cruise ships for passenger sightseeing.

Credit:

Helicopters (NZ)

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

air transport

antarctica

helicopters