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SY AURORA walking stick

Date1913

Object number00055229

NameWalking stick

MediumTimber, metal component

DimensionsOverall: 20 × 130 × 20 × 900 mm

ClassificationsCommemorative artefacts

Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Geoff Truscott

Terms

DescriptionThis walking stick was made by a dockyard worker at Williamstown, Victoria, when the famous polar vessel was refitting during the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) of 1911-1914. It is engraved with the following inscription: FROM THE BOTTOM PLANK OF SS AURORA BEFORE LEAVING FOR SOUTH POLE EXPn DOCKED WILLIAMSTOWN VIC. 18-10-1913. H.C. BROWN The walking stick is one of the few surviving artefacts from the famous polar vessel, lost with all hands, in 1917. HistoryThe sturdy timber polar vessel Aurora started life as a whaler in 1876. It was built in Dundee Scotland by Alexander Stephen & Sons of 580 tons and more than 50 metres in length, with an auxiliary engine. It sailed annually in January with the Arctic whaling fleet for the sealing grounds out of St John's Newfoundland where it refitted and then sailed further north on whaling voyages to Lancaster Sound. Aurora remained in the Arctic whaling industry from the 1870s until 1911, when an ambitious antipodean exploring expedition sent the ageing whaler sail to the opposite end of the globe. Purchased for South Australian geologist Sir Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE), the ship sailed first to London where its future master, John King Davis, supervised its refit. On 2 December 1911 Aurora farewelled an excited crowd in Hobart, Tasmania, for the first of three Antarctic and two sub-Antarctic voyages on this first Australasian expedition. The vessel carried Mawson and his expeditioners to their various bases, all the while taking soundings, charting the coast and conducting oceanographic research. In February 1912 Aurora returned to Australia and sub-Antarctic voyaging for the winter, then in February 1913 Davis sailed to Antarctica to evacuate the expedition. Mawson had not yet returned to main base after a sledging expedition that lost two lives so endured another winter in the ice with a small shore party until Aurora returned for a third unscheduled relief voyage in December 1913. No sooner had Aurora returned to Australia in early 1914 than the ship was again called into service. Adventurer Sir Ernest Shackleton bought the vessel for the supply party for his expedition to be the first to cross Antarctica, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. In December Aurora left Hobart, now under the command of Aeneas Mackintosh, to lay depots inland from the Ross Sea coast, ahead of Shackleton’s team that was to cross from the Weddell Sea. Shackleton’s team never arrived. His ship Endurance was trapped in ice in February 1915 and sank that November. In an eerie parallel, Aurora also became beset by ice after it broke its moorings in a blizzard in May 1915, marooning the Ross Sea party on the continent and the crew on the ship. The land party faithfully sledged to lay the depots for the team that would never come, with the loss of three men. The crew on the ship drifted north at the mercy of the ice and southern seas for 11 months. The ‘stout’ Aurora, unlike its counterpart Endurance, survived and limped to New Zealand in April 1916. One of the 18 crew on board was wireless operator Lionel Hooke, whose technical brilliance was widely applauded when he re-rigged the ship’s aerial to increase broadcast range to signal its survival. After an extensive overhaul, Aurora again sailed south to rescue the marooned Ross Sea party. Under the command of Captain John King Davis, Aurora carried the seven survivors to Wellington, New Zealand, in February 1917. In March Shackleton sold the ship. Under new owners New York and Pacific Steam Ship Co, with Captain Jack Reeves at the helm, Aurora sailed to Newcastle, Australia, to load coal for Iquique, Chile, where it was to pick up nitrate for Europe. Tragically it disappeared, along with the Mario, also bound for Chile, which left Newcastle the same day. SignificanceThis walking stick is significant as one of the few remnants from the physical fabric of the famous polar vessel SY AURORA that was lost off the Coast of Nsw in July 1917 after a forty year career in polar waters. Made from timber souvenired from the ship in Williamstown Dock in 1913 it clearly demonstrates the importance of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition in its time and the fame of the SY AURORA

The vessel was at Williamstown Dock under repair in preparation for John King Davis's third voyage back to Antarctica from Australia to pick up Mawson, who had been marooned there earlier that year.