Shackleton.

“During the evening, the party congregated in the Billabong, and held a concert. The voices, accompanied by Hussey’s indispensable banjo, sounded strangely out of place amidst the profound silence of the hummocks, yet it is gratifying to hear that ring of hearty laughter that betokens contentment and harmony, the attributes of excellent leadership, and good eating.”

— Frank Hurley

Now in the collection of the Royal Museums of Greenwich.

Just add water…

“Bannocks were made from flour, and weighed about 2 1/2 oz. They could be made in advance of use, and were sometimes served stale for luncheon with a sweetener such as jam. The taste was varied with the addition of grains like barley, and they wre often fried. When the flour supply was low, bannocks were made from dog pemmican (dried meat mixed with fat).”

— John Thomson, The Orde-Lees Diaries

[Some typical Antarctic dry food supplies (pictured above are supplies from the Terra Nova Expedition) © RGS-IBG, as reprinted in Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day, and Other Stories of Antarctic Cuisine by Jason C. Anthony.]

“The camp routine is as follows: Camp rise at 8am, breakfast 8.30. Generally fried seal steak with bannock and tea. Routine duties, viz. seal scouting, tidying camp, etc., till 1pm. Lunch variable (today boiled suet rolls); the cook was subject to a severe ranting for allowing dirt to contaminate the pudding cloth. Afternoon is spent at individual’s discretion, reading, walking, etc. Generally seal or penguin hoosh at 5.30pm, and cocoa. Turn into sleeping bags immediately after. Take an hour’s watch each alternate night.”

— Frank Hurley

“The blizzard cleared at noon and it was a beautiful evening, but we would far rather have the screeching blizzard with its searching drift and cold camp wind, for we drifted along 11 miles to the north during the night. If only we could get along at this rate for the next month or two we should be up to the land by new year, but that is too much to hope for.”

— Thomas Orde-Lees

Frank Wild surveying the wreck of the Endurance

“Pay the official visit to the wreck with the Chief and Wild. Yesterday’s mild blizzard has put the final touch to the destruction wrought by pressure and the salvage gangs. Large snow ramps have formed around the remains of the hull, almost entirely burying the decks, the fo’c’sle being entirely buried beneath the floe. But for the stump of the foremast and the funnel, one would be sceptical if told that that collection of fragmentary timbers and twisted rails was once a ship. After saluting the ensign, with a detonator fired on the poop, we returned sadly to camp.”

— Frank Hurley

“The canvas erection is completed… It has been christened the Billabong, a tribute to the good luck which rewarded our salvage efforts in the recovery of stores from the original Billabong. During the afternoon, we installed the ‘Hash Chute’ stove, which proved a great success. It simply roars away like a furnace, generating far more heat than the galley stove on board ship. The cook can now prepare the meals in comfort, and, we hope, cleanliness. The general appearance of the camp reminds one of an Alaskan mining settlement in winter. In the centre, surrounded by the piles of stores, is the eating house, belching from its chimney a trail of brown smoke that has already left its trademark across the snow. The tents are arranged in a row conveniently near, with the huskies pegged out in their respective teams contiguous to the tents. Around us is a vast, illimitable champagne of snow, which not even the most fertile imagination could conceive to be the frozen bosom of the sea. It is beyond conception, even to us, that we are dwelling on a colossal ice raft, with but five feet of ice separating us from 2000 fathoms of ocean and drifting along under the caprices of wind and tides, to heaven knows where.”

— Frank Hurley