This is the fifth post in the NiCHE series Animal Encounters, edited by Heather Green and Caroline Abbott. You can read all posts in this series here.
What do you do when an animal in the archives is not an animal at all? Like many graduate students, my first big visit to archives was somewhat overwhelming. I spent many days scanning everything not really knowing what might be useful in the future. So went a day in the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Archives in 2016, which remains one of my favorite places to do research, due to the always knowledgeable and considerate staff, the wealth of available material, and (important for an environmental historian), the beautiful two-mile walk from central Cambridge.
Since I was interested in science in the British Antarctic, one strategy that I thought might be sensible at the BAS archives was to scan the annual station reports produced at each base in the Falkland Islands Dependencies. These reports covered a variety of subjects: there was a daily journal, reports on survey work, meteorological observations, records of machine maintenance -essentially all of the official paperwork documenting each base’s day-to-day activity. One day, as I scanned a collection of files for Base B, located on Deception Island, I came across a set of ornithology files that seemed fairly straightforward. Mainly comprising rudimentary sketches of the rookeries of the diverse birdlife native to the region, egg and chick counts, and approximate dates of bird migrations, and since I was mainly interested in earth sciences, I paid little attention to their content. Until, in files for 1966-67 season, I saw the last bird.
The final page of the Deception’s 1966 ornithology report was not a bird at all, unless you count the British colloquial. It was a large nude photograph of a curvaceous blonde woman lounging on a beach, clearly a pin-up model, perhaps excerpted from Playboy or Mayfair. Indeed, BAS subscribed to Mayfair for at least one of its stations. The caption on this photo read “Found on Beach, Whaler’s Bay, Deception Island, Species Unconfirmed.” I am pretty sure that someone had hand written an observation on the back, suggesting her species was maybe a blue-tit, but honestly, I do not remember precisely; at the time, I did not think that the back was important enough to photograph.
I found this photograph’s inclusion in a scientific report unseemly and surprising, but honestly, it did not seem to matter for my research. I understood that it was a pun on the British slang for a young woman-a bored station member making a joke. Other than quickly wondering how it had managed to stay inside a government report, sent to the headquarters of a government agency, and filed in the archives without its removal, it simply became a somewhat funny anecdote, worth a quick incredulous giggle, before moving on to what I considered more serious work.
In 2019, while visiting the archives again, I was looking for something specific, and the catalog suggested that there might be a copy inside a base magazine for the British station at Faraday. While what I was looking for proved just to be a replica of a document I already had, I was struck by the presence of not only many images of nude women in this text, but also some of the highly graphic sexual language that men had written alongside them. When I showed some of this material to a collaborator who was there for the day, he became uncomfortable – he did not want to look at it. I realized that images of nude woman were not uncommon in the BAS archives. I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, the production of print newspapers and magazines has a long history in polar regions, and in its earliest days, polar explorers cut out photographs of women from magazines to fantasize over during the long Antarctic winters. I spent my remaining two days only scanning base magazines, which became the subject of a 2021 article, arguing that the production and circulation of this material contributed to a chauvinistic culture that justified the exclusion of women, up through the 1990s.
These base magazines, alongside research on pin-ups and other two-dimensional women, repositioned Deception’s 1967 ornithology report. It seemed the objectification of women, or in this case zoomorphism, was an intrinsic part of the culture of Antarctic science and exploration. For a few years, I thought of this report in this context-of course a man would slip a photograph of a nude, and of course it would be condoned at the very highest levels. After all, when the Duke of Edinburgh visited that same base on Deception a decade earlier, the men did not bother to hide the 8×10 photographs of nude women that wallpapered one room. Similarly, Australia’s Mawson station had one building completely papered in Playboy centerfolds, “composed of ninety-two 1970s and 1980s porn pinups…,” which were finally destroyed in 2005 by an unknown person who “assumed the right to play heritage vandal or moral police for everyone.” When the United States Antarctic Program and the Australian Antarctic Division released major reports in 2022 highlighting the perpetual problems in their respective programs, this ornithology report, for me, was archival evidence of the problems that women continue to face in Antarctic science.
But the ornithology report continued to bother me. Not because of its sexism, but because it seemed so strange. It was not placed on display, such as nude or scantily dressed women who adorned the walls at various Antarctic stations. It was not included in a base magazine; vehicles meant to entertain, but just like such publications in other settlings, meant to help the men bond through their experience and process anxieties of living in somewhat extreme conditions for two-year periods. Instead, it was in a scientific report, prepared mainly by one man, and theoretically meant to be read by his supervisor in the United Kingdom, and held for reference by future researchers. The inclusion of a nude woman still struck me as strange. Why would it not have been removed once arriving at the British Antarctic Survey headquarters? It was almost as if the writer didn’t think anyone was actually going to read it.
The 1960s was a turbulent time for the British Antarctic Survey. Facing cuts in funding, the organization scrambled to receive enough support to keep their research station at Halley Bay, which had been established with much fanfare at the start of the International Geophysical Year. High expenses and dangerous conditions coupled with little in terms of scientific output threatened the future of the base, which was only saved when the elite polar community in the UK argued that its closure would be seen as an abdication of British interests in Antarctica, an unthinkable position when Chile and Argentina both challenged the UK’s claim to the region. Indeed, since the 1940s, it was widely recognized that these three countries occupied meteorological stations throughout the Antarctic Peninsula at least in large part, to justify their territorial claims in the region. In 1965, three men (Jeremy Bailey, Dai Wild, and John Wilson), lost their lives at Halley Bay when their tractor fell into a crevasse. In response, one base member their wrote a scathing critique of British Antarctic policy: “If we exist only to satisfy dubious political motives and to maintain the traditional legend of British invincibility,” the anonymous writer fumed, “then clearly we do not success in either; if scientific research is our aim, there are too few results…” The writer decried the lack of investment in science and infrastructure, where rather than bases supporting scientific teams, the men instead “seem to exist to support the bases” and even wondered if “research is not our prime objective.”1
With this context in mind, I returned to the ornithology report with a new perspective. Of course, inclusion of this photograph was sexist; but the report was also a plea, as the author implored the reader for further investment in future ornithological research at Deception Island. Meteorologist John Barlow began his report with the caveat that as a “part-time ornithologist,” it was “difficult…to reject that which appears insignificant and immaterial and set down that which appears relevant.” He hoped that “the professional ornithologists…who will access and evaluation the following information…will make due allowance.” While Barlow had planned to make an intensive survey of Dominican gulls, this program had to be curtained “when it was found that certain vital materials were lacking e.g. set of spring balance scales, millimeter measure rule, callipers, and rings suitable for these birds.” Without the proper equipment, he could only make more rudimentary observations. “If,” he noted, “certain materials had been to hand…, the survey could have been much more intensive, more facts could have been uncovered and the results more comprehensive.” He chastised the British Antarctic Survey Biological Unit for its lack of interested in this work: “The ball is in their court.” Barlow echoed this wish in his work on Cape Pigeons, noting that “Once again continuity is vital if worthwhile results are to be obtained. But this continuity must be laid down as law by the Unit and it is they who must lead the way. Reams of information could be had but isn’t.”
After noting his sadness to come across some oil covered penguins that he supposed encountered discharge from a ship, he concluded with a scathing indictment of biological research on Deception Island. While it was widely known that “Ornithology owes more to enthusiastic part-time helpers than any other branch of the Survey’s biological programme, why doesn’t the Biological Unit give directions to those who are willing to help?” Barlow recalled approaching the Survey’s senior biologist in the UK and offering to assist, but “I have not heard a thing since I left England. So where does one go and what does one do?” He noted the rich fauna on the tiny island meant that there was “unlimited scope for biological survey,” but that any work was being done voluntarily “by men in the dark with no light to guide them.” Unless, he continued, “proper direction and continuity is laid down in our ornithological research and encouragement given…surely that is not asking too much, research by part-time helpers will be aimless and a virtual waste of time.”2 At the end of this rant, signed by Barlow, as well as C.D. Walter, the Base leader at Deception that year, were attached a map of penguin colonies, a photograph of the pigeon nesting grounds, then, last, the “bird” who was not a bird at all. Now I am completely speculating, but from there, this photograph would either draw attention to his disgruntled attitude, or confirm his suspicions that the British Antarctic Survey really did not care about this work at all.
“… doing research on the history of Antarctic science of course yields animals in the archives. Any spent time in the archive reveals an abundance of the charismatic megafauna associated with the region: penguins, seals, whales, working dogs. Much stranger is when the animal in the archive is not an animal at all.”
Fig. 4, left: Daniella McCahey on the foot/bike path from Cambridge, England to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), 2017. Fig. 5, right: Daniella McCahey at BAS in west Cambridge, 2019.
Barlow’s annoyance with lack of scientific training or infrastructure on Deception did not occur in a vacuum; only one year later, in 1967, the “extinct” volcano composing Deception Island erupted. The British station had neither a seismometer (despite years of earthquake recordings), nor any men formally trained in geology, volcanology, or seismology who might have read the presence of fumaroles, hot springs, and earthquakes increasing in number and intensity is a sign of an impending volcanic eruption.3
In conclusion, doing research on the history of Antarctic science of course yields animals in the archives. Any spent time in the archive reveals an abundance of the charismatic megafauna associated with the region: penguins, seals, whales, working dogs. Much stranger is when the animal in the archive is not an animal at all. This woman’s presence is certainly evidence of the pervasive culture of the objectification of women in Antarctica, but that is not all she reveals but also a man at the end of his tether, furious and frustrated by the British Antarctic Survey’s lack of investment into scientific research and a sense that his own efforts had been wasted, in a period when many frustrated scientists suspected that their presence in Antarctica mattered less because of their contribution to scientific knowledge, and more because they were upholding the United Kingdom’s territorial claim to a strategically significant region.
Fig. 6, left: “Excursion No. 12.. into the old caldera of Deception Island…Chinstrap Penguins (Pygoscelis antarcticus)…’ for Pete’s sake, will you stop checking yourself out every five seconds…you’re so vain.!”“, 30 December 2015, by Murray Foubister on Wikicommons, CC BY SA- 2.0. Fig. 7, right: “Chinstrap penguin on Deception Island.” 16 January 2005.Christopher Michel via Wikicommons, CC BY SA- 2.0.
Notes
1 Letter from W. O. Sloman to L. M. Jukes, March 25, 1966, BASA, G8/1/1/1A.
2 J. Barlow, “Ornithological Report 1966 Deception Island,” BASA, AD6/2B/1966/Q.
3 [A Base Member], “The Volcanic Eruption at Deception Island,” BASA, AD6/2B/1867/H.
Header image: Composite image by Caroline Abbott featuring photograph “Excursion No. 12.. into the old caldera of Deception Island…Chinstrap Penguins (Pygoscelis antarcticus)…’ for Pete’s sake, will you stop checking yourself out every five seconds…you’re so vain.!”“, 30 December 2015, by Murray Foubister on Wikicommons (CC BY SA- 2.0) as base image and inverted and digitally edited vectors from “First Mate. Flirt, pulp cover, April 1953,” a 1953 painting by American pinup artist Peter Driben (Public Domain, Wikicommons). Readers should note that vectors from the 1953 painting by Peter Driben (b.1903, d. 1968) is not the actual image discussed in this essay. See Fig. 3 Caption for details.
Daniella McCahey
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