 |
| Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition built a hut at Cape Royds on Ross Island in 1908 [Credit: New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust] |
The structures were only built to last for a few years each, for the duration of voyages such as Scott's 1910-1913 Terra Nova expedition when he and his group missed being the first to reach the South Pole by a month, and for the Ross Sea party, who laid supplies in advance of Shackleton's famous cross-continental try. (His ship, "Endurance," sank, but he kept his entire crew alive. The Ross Sea party was not as lucky.)
Like time capsules of their epic adventures, three of the explorers' huts still stand to this day. But conservationists found them in dire disrepair - no wonder, given a century's worth of brutal conditions. Since 2005, teams of 62 experts from 11 countries went about restoring two of Scott's huts, in Cape Evans and Hut Point, and one of Shackleton's at Cape Royds.
"Unless some major conservation work was done, these sites would be lost to future generations," Nigel Watson, Antarctic Heritage Trust-New Zealand's Executive Director, told CBS News.
 |
| The interior of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Cape Royds hut [Credit: Antarctic Heritage Trust-New Zealand] |
"Anyone who has had the privilege of visiting these sites will realize they are very special," Watson said. "You go into them and they still filled with the objects of the original explorers, thousands upon thousands of objects - everything you might want 100 years ago if you were exploring an unknown continent at the bottom of the world."
After a decade of work, the Trust announced last week that it had completed what it described as the "world's most extreme conservation project" to restore the huts. Sounding at times like a cross between "This Old House" and the reality show "Life Below Zero," about life near the Arctic Circle, the $6 million project was as much an act of historical reverence as an impressive feat of endurance in its own right.
Nothing of this scale had ever been tried in a polar region. But the value of these buildings was worth the work.
"We brought down a guy who was the chair of English heritage and he said, look, of all the thousands of sites that he had seen, two had had the most impact on him," Watson said. "One represented the worst of humanity and it was a world heritage site and that was Auschwitz. The other represented the best of humanity and it was Scott's hut in Antarctica."
The world’s most extreme conservation project has saved three historic buildings and
thousands of artefacts once used by Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton.
The milestone was reached this Antarctic summer after a decade of extensive conservation
work by the Antarctic Heritage Trust (NZ). An ongoing yearly maintenance
programme is now in place [Credit: Antarctic Heritage Trust]
Working at times in temperatures that dipped to 13 degrees below zero and in long periods of darkness, the teams fixed the roofs, removed layers of ice and weatherproofed walls. They built subterranean barriers to protect against flooding from melt water.
The restoration teams went out of their way to maintain historical accuracy. They replaced doors and windows installed in the 1970s at Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds with reproductions of the originals. They removed the floorboards, which bore knife marks from cutting up seals, restored them and put them back exactly as they were originally laid.
"These guys went through hell living in this place," Watson said. "What we didn't want to do was remove that history and those witness marks to an amazing story and an amazing sense of those places. It was critical we respected what was there."
The team cleaned corroded and damaged items inside the huts, and treated them to protect them from the elements, such as salt from the oceans, extreme fluctuations in humidity and the constant cycle of freeze and thaw. "In a museum, you have lots of things on your side. You can control humidity temperature and light," said Lizzie Meek, the Trust's program manager for artifacts. "Down there, it's completely uncontrolled."
 |
| A collection of artifacts at the Cape Evans hut after the restoration [Credit: Antarctic Heritage Trust-New Zealand] |
A notebook from one of Scott's crew was found, which included things like dates and subjects of photographs. There was also a collection of 22 damaged negatives from Scott's expedition, which reveal images of icebergs and a mesmerizing portrait of one of the geologists.
There was the whiskey, of course - three crates found locked for a century in ice in Shackleton's hut - and even a block of butter.
"We reckon it's the world's oldest block of butter. It was 100 years old," Watson laughed. "It was pretty rancid. These amazing things are still there."
 |
| Hut Point was Robert Falcon Scott's first expedition base in Antarctica, established for the National Antarctic (Discovery) Expedition 1901-1904 [Credit: Alasdair Turner Photography] |
"All of the modern day explorers that I've met, even if they are traveling unsupported to the pole, they have got amazing backup plans, satellite phones, people tracking their every move," Meek said. "That is the extraordinary thing about the heroic era of explorers. They were so tough."
The hope now is that the huts will last last another century, an enduring testament to these tough, brave men.
Author: Michael Casey | Source: CBS News [February 03, 2015]