My book, The Entire Earth and Sky: Views on Antarctica, is not due out until October 1 but it recently appeared on Amazon.com. Lately, when people other than my writing colleagues ask about the book -- I have taken to talking like a swaggering travelling salesman, as in, "You can pre-order a copy on Amazon.com."
This newish habit of mine makes me feel like an ass, and yet it is hard to stop. Orwell wrote so beautifully about the vanity and selfishness of the writer. He also, I believe, threw in lazy as part of his equation on what writers, in fact, are. Vain, selfish, lazy. Perhaps this is why I enjoy doing historical research, years of combing archives, in search of letters and diaries of men working in Antarctica. I am fascinated by their calm determination, their sense of purpose, and their unending appetite for the unknown. Among my favorite sailors who came to me via letters, was a Scotsman named James Paton. I included a piece of his story in The Entire Earth and Sky.
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I recall sitting in the Canterbury Museum Archives reading Paton's diary. I was rather distracted by the diary as a physical object -- they used to sell the opening pages to advertisers and the adverts themselves seemed meaningful and illuminating, although I did not ultimately use them in my book. (Too many small portals, or portholes, open as I wandered through the pages and photos. The challenge wasn't to find, but to know what I sought while also being wholly open the new.)Here are my rough notes:
The Diary of James Paton, 1904
The book is dark brown and gold embossed on the cover, an oval “Lett’s No. 101 Diary” in ornate hand; the oval fashioned as a belt, secured with a buckle at the base.
Inside the front cover, several pages of ads, including “Eno’s ‘Fruit Salt’”
“Every household and travelling trunk ought to contain a bottle of Eno’s Fruit Salt for preventing and curing by natural means all functional derangements of the liver, temporary congestion arising from alcoholic beverages, errors in diet, biliousness, sick headache, constipation, thirst, feverish cold, influenza, throat affections, and fevers of all kinds.
“The effects of Eno’s Fruit Salt on a Disordered and Feverish condition is Simply Marvellous. It is, in fact, Nature’s Own Remedy, and an Unsurpassed One.
CAUTION: Examine the Capsule and see that it is marked ENO’S FRUIT SALT!’ Otherwise, you have a WORTHLESS IMITATION.
Lett’s Australasian Rough Diary and Almanac for 1904
Being the fourth year of the reign of his majesty king Edward VII.
Date of Birth of and Age in 1904 of The Royal Family...
Including list of New Zealand rates of postage -/1 for each 1/2 oz.
Paton writes, Saturday 5th December 1903
Cast off moorings from the Alexandria Peir (sic) exactly at noon, there were many friends down to bid us Good-bye and wish us God speed, although our send of (sic) was not quite so enthusiastic as the one from Lyttelton it was no less sincere, the short period we had been in Hobart was not lost…
A letter on the ship Terra Nova stationery: logo is Emperor penguin standing on a globe, with the Antarctic continent underfoot. In the ring band around it, the words, British Antarctic Expedition, Terra Nova RYS
The penguin is in profile, gazing steadfastly to the right.
Christmas 1910
“Knowing only too well how little time we shall have on hand when we get to our destination I think I had better begin my letters now. We left Port Chalmers at 2.30 P.M. on November 29th, and all went well until December 2nd when we ran into a heavy southerly gale our decks were heavily laden with cargo. ...we had to turn to and throw a good part of the deck cargo overboard, this was not our only danger, as it soon leeked out that the water had risen as high as the bottom of our furnaces ...all hands were employed all the time up to the waist in water, with the seas breaking over them while the aftergaurd (sic) (the officers and scientists) were kept passing it from the Engine room in buckets,
All this time we had very little to eat (nothing hot) and no rest, and for our own sakes as well as for the poor dumb animals we had on board, it was a relief the weather moderated.
During this gale we had one dog washed overboard, and two of our horses got down and died but several days passed before we could get them out of the stalls to throw them overboard."
And then Paton recounts how life was at sea -- once they arrived in Antarctica. He travelled there a remarkable 10 times and was among the most highly sought polar sailors in the world. However, you won't find him in any museums, save Lyttelton, New Zealand. Paton, like most of the simple seamen, has been all but erased from history.
