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AURORA at Port Chalmers, New Zealand
AURORA at Port Chalmers, New Zealand

AURORA at Port Chalmers, New Zealand

Subject or historical figure (Australian, 1895 - 1974)
Date3 April 1916
Object number00055434
NamePhotograph
Mediumpaper
DimensionsOverall: 88 × 137 mm
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum Collection Gift from Maria Teresa Hooke OAM and her sons John Max and Paolo in memory of John Hooke CBE and Sir Lionel Hooke
DescriptionA photograph of SY AURORA at Port Chalmers, New Zealand, on 3 April, 1916. The SY AURORA, the supply vessel for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Trans-Atlantic Imperial Expedition, spent nine months trapped in drifting ice after the ship broke its moorings during a blizzard in May 1915. It made its way to New Zealand in April 1916 where it underwent repairs in order to return to Antarctica to rescue the ten men that had been abandoned at McMurdo Sound. When AURORA reached McMurdo Sound in January 1917 three of the ten men, including expedition leader Aeneas Mackintosh, had perished. HistoryThe AURORA was built as a wooden auxiliary barquentine of 580 tons in Glasgow in 1876 by shipbuilders Alexander Stephen & Sons Ltd for the Dundee Seal and Whale Fishing Company, which sailed annually from Dundee to the Newfoundland whaling grounds between 1876 and 1910. The vessel, built specifically to withstand ice, was used by Sir Douglas Mawson on his Australasian Antarctic expedition of 1911-1914 after which it was refitted in Sydney when sold to Sir Ernest Shackleton as the supply vessel for his Imperial Trans- Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917. During this time AURORA was beset in the ice and drifted for nine months in the Ross Sea before limping to New Zealand. Young radio officer Lionel Hooke was on board and made repeated attempts to contact both the land party, now marooned and shore stations eventually making contact with radio receiver at The Bluff in New Zealand's far south. In 1917 AURORA was repaired and returned to the Antarctic to rescue the surviving members of the Ross Sea party from Cape Evans. In total the AURORA made five voyages to the Antarctic between 1911 and 1917. SignificanceThis photograph shows SY AURORA, the supply ship for the Ross sea party of Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17 after its safe return from entrapment in the ice in 1916.

AURORA is a significant ship that made an important contribution to Australia's Antarctic history as the expedition vessel for Sir Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition 1911-14 prior to being bought by Shackleton for his ambitious and ultimately unsuccessful Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. It is shown here immediately upon arrival in Port Chalmers.