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THE WHITE SOUTH
DISASTER IN THE ANTARCTIC...

The noise of the shattering ice was so loud that we had to shout if we wanted to make ourselves heard. The floeberg was quivering. It was like being on a ship battered by giant seas. We could actually see the ice shaking. The boats rocked and the packing cases tied together rolled over. Our floe was like an island in the midst of chaos. All round us the ice was breaking up now. We were right in the thick of what we had been watching for so long. And in a little while I should be down in that maelstrom, fighting to get a rope across to the ledge. I felt fear gripping at me...


Hammond Innes


The White South (1949)



Disaster in the Antarctic

Dawn was breaking as the first news of the disaster reached London. It was 10th February and the rattle of milk bottles was the only sound in the black, frost-bound streets. Up in the City, Covent Garden and Billingsgate were halfway through the day's work and the pubs were open. In nearby Fleet Street a Reuter's operator was handed a news flash and his fingers ran automatically over the keys of his machine as he transmitted the message to subscribers. Two blocks away, in the office of a big London daily, a sleepy sub-editor heard the clack of the message as it came through on the teleprinter. He watched it as the carriage of the machine jerked back and forth. Then the yellow tongue of paper was thrust through the slit in the glass top. He tore it off and stood there reading it:

CAPETOWN FEB 10 REUTER: SOS RECEIVED FROM FACTORY SHIP SOUTHERN CROSS.
SHIP IS CAUGHT IN ICE IN WEDDELL SEA AND IN DANGER OF BEING CRUSHED.
NORWEGIAN FACTORY SHIP HAAKON 400 MILES FROM POSITION OF SOUTHERN CROSS
GOING TO RESCUE.

REUTER 0713

The sub-editor yawned, tossed the sheet of paper into the news basket and returned to the work of subbing a feature page article. In a big office block in Fenchurch Street, the telephone rang incessantly on the third floor. These were the offices of the South Antarctic Whaling Company and only the cleaners were there. The telephone went unanswered. In Whitehall, at the Admiralty, a messenger hurried along the empty, echoing corridors. He handed a message to the duty officer. The duty officer rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, read the message through, placed it in a basket marked 'for immediate attention' and inquired about tea. High up above Queen Victoria Street an operator at one of the switchboards in Faraday Buildings noted the urgency of an incoming call from Capetown and searched the telephone directory. Then she switched the call from the offices of the South Antarctic Whaling Company to the flat of Albert Jenssen in South Kensington.

Albert Jenssen was still in bed. The telephone woke him and he was half asleep as he groped for the receiver and lifted it to his ear. A moment later and he was sitting up in bed, wide awake and speaking rapidly into the phone. When he had finished, he replaced the receiver automatically and sat there for a moment, regardless of the cold air that blew in through the open windows, a dazed expression on his face. Then he fell upon the telephone and call after call went out from the flat in South Kensington: cables to Durban, the Falkland Islands and the whaling stations of South Georgia; calls to Sandefjord and Tonsberg in Norway, to Leith in Scotland, to the BBC, to a Cabinet Minister and finally to the Admiralty. The duty officer at the Admiralty was forced to abandon his second cup of tea and interrupt an admiral in the midst of shaving.

And by eight o'clock messages were pouring over the ether: Admiralty to C-in-C. American West Indies; Admiralty to H.M. Sloop Walrus, at Port Stanley in the Falklands; Director South African Naval Forces, Capetown, to Admiralty, London; British Broadcasting Corporation to Australian Broadcasting Commission. And as the official messages increased in a desperate effort to avert disaster, the news agencies joined in and the tempo grew -Reuter's Correspondent, Capetown, to Reuter's London; U.P. to New York; Tass to Moscow; Havas to

By midday more than 150 million people knew that a ship of 22,000 tons belonging to a British whaling company was locked in the grip of the Antarctic ice and was being slowly crushed. As they sat at their desks or worked in their factories they were secretly thrilled at the thought of over 400 men face to face with death in the pitiless, frozen wastes of the Antarctic.

The Admiralty ordered the sloop, Walrus, to proceed to South Georgia, refuel and then make an attempt to reach the Southern Cross. A South African naval corvette was despatched from Capetown, also with orders to refuel at South Georgia. The Board of Trade diverted a tanker, unloading in Durban, to South Georgia to fuel search vessels. Del Norske Hvalselskab of Sandefjord, Norway, announced that their factory ship, Haakon, which had steered for the Southern Cross within half an hour of receiving the first S O S at 03.18 hours, was now within 200 miles of the ship's last position. The United States government offered the services of the aircraft carrier Ohio then cruising off the River Plate.

Meanwhile events moved fast in the Antarctic. An early report that the Southern Cross had dynamited an area of clear water and was being warped round, was followed by the news that the way out of the ice was blocked by several icebergs which were charging into the pack. The tanker, Josephine, and the refrigerator ship, South, were standing by on the edge of the pack, together with the rest of the South Antarctic Company's fleet, unable to do anything. By midday the whole of the starboard side of the Southern Cross was buckling under the pressure of the ice, and at 14.17 hours Captain Hide, the master, gave the order to abandon ship. In a final message before unloading the radio equipment on to the ice, Eide warned the Haakon not to enter the ice beyond the line of the icebergs. That was the last message received from the Southern Cross. All that night the lights blazed in the South Antarctic Whaling Company's offices in Fenchurch Street. But no message came through from the survivors. Utter silence had closed down on the abandoned ship and it was clear that this was the worst sea disaster in peacetime since the Titanic went down in 1912.

The most detailed picture of the events leading up to the disaster available on the morning of the 11th was contained in a feature article in London's largest daily. The writer's main sources of information were Jenssen, London manager of the South Antarctic Whaling Company, the company's agent in Capetown, the Admiralty, Del Norske Hvalselskab and the files of his office library. The article gave the full story of the South Antarctic Company's whaling expedition. It was headed - DISASTER IN THE ANTARCTIC - and read:

The Southern Cross left the Clyde on 16th October last with a total of 411 men and boys. In charge of the expedition was Bernt Nordahl, factory manager. Hans Eide was master and as assistant manager was Erik Bland, son of the chairman of the South Antarctic Whaling Company. About 78 per cent of those on board were Norwegians, mainly from Sandefjord and Tonsberg. The rest were British. With her sailed an ex-Admiralty corvette, converted to act as a whale-towing vessel, and the refrigerator ship, South. 'The Southern Cross arrived at Capetown on 14th November where her catchers and a tanker were waiting for her. The expedition sailed on 23rd November. The fleet then consisted of the factory ship, a vessel of 22,160 tons, 10 whale catchers, each of under 300 tons, two buoy boats (catchers used for towing), three ex-naval corvettes for towing whales, one refrigerator ship. One of the towing vessels was later sent back to Capetown to pick up electric harpoon equipment. The company intended to experiment during the season with the electrocution of whales, a method of killing that was in its infancy prior to the war.

The whaling season in the Antarctic is of four months' duration - December, January, February, March. These are the summer months and whaling expeditions are limited to a certain period by international agreement in an attempt to preserve the whale and allow uninterrupted breeding. Unrestricted killing during the last century in the Arctic resulted in the complete extermination of whale in the Northern Hemisphere for many years. The present season for fin whale opened on 9th December. But prior to that, operations are permitted against the sperm whale. Most expeditions avail themselves of this in order to test equipment. This season, apart from the South Antarctic Company's expedition, there were eighteen others - ten Norwegian, four British, one Dutch, one Russian and two Japanese.

'On 29th November the Southern Cross sighted South Georgia and was in radio-telephone communication with the shore-based whaling stations on this island. They reported unprecedentedly bad conditions. Temperatures were much lower than normal with pack ice still piled against the western and southern shores of the island. Their catchers, operating in a 200-mile radius, spoke of heavy drift ice with bergs much more frequent and much bigger than usual. On 2nd December the Southern Cross commenced operations, her catchers killing 36 sperm whale in seven days, despite low temperatures and severe gales. On 9th December she began full-scale operations. She was then about 200 miles west of South Thule, the most southerly of the Sandwich Group, and steaming southwest. Reports of both Nordahl, the factory manager, and Captain Hide, the master, to the London office all spoke of violent and incessant gales, low temperatures, loose pack ice and an unusually large number of gigantic icebergs.

'Whale seemed very scarce by comparison with the previous bumper season and on Boxing Day Nordahl reported trouble with the men. This is almost unheard of in Norwegian or British whaling fleets where the men have a financial interest in the catch. But when Jenssen was pressed for further details he said he had no statement to make on the matter.

The matter must have been serious, however, for Colonel Bland, chairman of the company, left London Airport on 2nd of January for Capetown in a privately chartered plane. He undertook the journey against the advice of his doctors. He had been seriously ill for some time with heart trouble. With him went his daughter-in-law, a German technical adviser on the electrical harpoon and Aldo Bonomi, the well-known photographer. His daughter-in-law, Mrs Judie Bland, is the daughter of Bernt Nordahl. On 3rd January news was received at the London office that Nordahl, the leader of the expedition, had disappeared the previous night, presumed lost overboard.

'Colonel Bland arrived at Capetown early on the 6th and left the same night, together with Nordahl's daughter, in the towing boat which had been dispatched to collect the new harpoon equipment. On reaching the Southern Cross on the 17th Colonel Bland assumed control of the expedition. Only 127 whale had been caught at that time against a previous season's total of 214. In a week of bad gales the ten catchers had only brought in 6 whale. Bland sent his catchers out in a wide search. They found heavy pack ice to the south and south-east and one of the catchers had difficulty in extricating itself from the ice. All catchers reported few whale. Meanwhile radio contact had been established with the Haakon, 600 miles to the south-west. The Norwegian ship reported whale in plenty. Colonel Bland decided on the 18th to steam south. A great deal of loose pack was encountered, but on the 23rd the vessels were in open sea in Lat. 66.01 S., Long 35.62 W. with an abundance of whale.