Images(5)

SY AURORA commemorative tray

Subject or historical figure Captain Frank Douglas Fletcher (Australian, 1888 - 1936)

Date1913

Object number00055495

(not entered)commemorative tray

NameTray

Mediumsilver plated metal

DimensionsOverall: 195 × 305 × 190 mm, 1015 g

ClassificationsCommemorative artefacts

Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum Collection gift from Alan Fletcher

Terms

DescriptionThis tray was presented to second officer Frederick 'Frank' Douglas Fletcher after he left Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition vessel SY Aurora in Hobart on 18 March 1913. On 2 December 1911 South Australian geologist Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition aboard Aurora farewelled an excited crowd in Hobart, Tasmania, under the command of John King Davis for the first of three voyages to Antarctica. The vessel carried Mawson and his expeditioners south to Macquarie Island; the fierce, blizzardy main base he established at Commonwealth Bay, King George V Land; and the western base on ice 1,200 miles west. In February the ship returned to Australia. Meanwhile the expeditioners endured appalling conditions, sledging in raging blizzards, surveying and collecting specimens. Tragically, expedition leader Mawson’s two sledging companions died and when he returned to the main base on 8 February 1913, Aurora was on the horizon, steaming away. The ship received a wireless message but a blizzard prevented Davis’s return. He continued to the western base to pick up its men, and thence to Hobart where 'Frank' Fletcher left the ship - to marry - before that final relief voyage the following summer. Mawson spent the winter of 1913 in the huts with a small shore party until Davis returned in Aurora on Christmas Eve 1914.HistoryAccording to Frederick 'Frank' Douglas Fletcher's diary entries, he joined Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition in AURORA on 18 April 1912 and remained with the ship until 18 March 1913 when he was paid off at Hobart. The 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 was used by Sir Douglas Mawson on his Australasian Antarctic expedition of 1911-1914 during which time Fletcher served as second officer. Upon the ship's return in 1914 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 9 months in the Ross Sea. In 1917 the vessel was used 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. Aurora on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition Built specifically to withstand ice, the vessel was purchased in 1910 by John King Davis for Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition to explore the coast to the west of Cape Adare, due south of Australia. In late 1911 Mawson sailed from Hobart to Macquarie Island where he left a small communications crew who would relay the first wireless signals from Antarctica to the world. He then set up two Antarctic exploring bases, the western party on Shackleton Ice Shelf under Frank Wild and the main base (Mawson's Hut) for the far eastern party under his leadership at Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay, south of Tasmania where they arrived in January 1912. At each base Mawson and his men undertook a series of scientific investigations, including intensive land exploration along the coast and into the hinterland. The Commonwealth Bay base he later called 'The Home of the Blizzard' because of its exceptionally powerful and persistent katabatic winds. Aurora retreated to Hobart for the winter. Under the command of Captain John King Davis the vessel returned to Cape Denison in December 1912 to pick up Mawson and his team on the 'Far Eastern' sledging expedition - Belgrave Ninnis, an English army lieutenant, and Xavier Mertz, a Swiss doctor - but found that they were overdue. The Aurora waited until late January 1913 but with no sign of Mawson, and with conditions worsening rapidly, left a six man support team at the base and sailed for Hobart. A few hours later Douglas Mawson arrived back at the base only to see the Aurora on the horizon on its way to collect the Western party under Wild - the sole survivor of the sledging expedition. Ninnis had been lost down a crevasse with most of the team's supplies on the outward journey while Mertz died on the return journey, possibly from Vitamin A poisoning from eating the livers of husky dogs. A radio message quickly alerted Aurora's Captain John King Davis but fierce winds prevented his return to pick the men up. Second Officer Frank Douglas Fletcher was on board at this time and recorded the event in his log. Mawson and the other men were left to spend the winter at Cape Denison. They were finally rescued by the Aurora in December 1913. Aurora as the Ross Sea supply party vessel for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton purchased the vessel from Mawson for his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition to carry his supply party to Ross Island. From there they were to lay depots inland to Mount Hope for the main trans-continental party to pick up on their anticipated crossing of the continent. Aurora left Hobart in December 1914 under the command of Aeneas Mackintosh and arrived in McMurdo Sound 24 January 1915 when the sledging parties immediately departed. Unfortunately the vessel broke its moorings in a blizzard in May 1915, marooning the men. It drifted slowly north, beset in the ice with a damaged rudder, limping to Port Chalmers, Dunedin, New Zealand nearly 11 months later, in April 1916. It was during this expedition that Shackleton's ship Endurance became trapped in the ice in the Weddell Sea and was eventually crushed. After camping on the ice for some months Shackleton and his men took to the ship's boats and made their way to the relative safety of Elephant Island where they established a camp. In order to get help, in April 1916 Shackleton and a small party sailed to South Georgia where a Norwegian whaling station existed. They were successful in this, but it was not until August that Shackleton was able to return to rescue his men from Elephant Island. The men from the Aurora party on the other side of the continent had to wait a further five months. Aurora was repaired in New Zealand and with funding from the British, Australian and New Zealand governments was repaired for a relief expedition later that year. It left Port Chalmers for the Ross Sea in December 1916, back under the command of John King Davis. With Shackleton on board as a supernumerary, the expedition rescued the marooned men from Cape Evans in January 1917. The vessel carried the men to Wellington New Zealand and after an auction sale of Aurora's supplies in March, (The Sydney Stock and Station Journal) 9 March 1917, returned to Australia to Newcastle 10 April 1917 where 'Shackleton's famous Antarctic exploring vessel' was to load coal (Northern Times 11 April 1917) under Captain R Reeves. Shackleton had sold the vessel to WR Grace of London (New York The argus 5 nov 1917). Aurora was on display for an afternoon in Newcastle with ferries carrying visitors every 15 minutes to Stockton (15 April 1917). All proceeds were directed to the Red Cross Fund. The vessel was loaded with coal and left for South America, only to return to Sydney Harbour after a bad leak near the ice-breaker. After repairs at Jubilee Dock (Mort's Dock) the 41 year-old ship headed north to Newcastle on 18 June where it again loaded coal and departed for Iquique Chile where it was to load nitrate for New York. It disappeared en route, intending to pull in to Wellington for coal and water. Captain Reeves, four officers and 16 men were on board, including Antarctic veteran James Paton. 'Scotty' Paton had made eight voyages to Antarctica, the first in 1901 with Robert Falcon Scott on the Discovery expedition. Six months later the SY Aurora lifebuoy was picked up near Tacking Point on the north coast NSW by Captain Petrie in the North Coast Steam Navigation Co.'s MV Coombar, on the run from the Richmond River. (The Richmond River Express and Casino Kyogle Advertiser 11 December 1917). The following week the lifebuoy was displayed in the windows of Nicholson and Co in George St Sydney where it 'excited much interest'.. Aurora was reported missing by Lloyds 31 Dec1917 /1 January 1918 (Argus 5 nov 1918) Douglas Mawson Antarctic expedition leader Douglas Mawson was born in Yorkshire, England in 1882 and was just two when his family moved to Sydney. Educated first at Fort Street Model School and then (from age 16) at the University of Sydney, Douglas graduated in Engineering and Science. As an undergraduate he made a geological survey of the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and produced one of the first major works on the geology of Melanesia. He studied the geology of Mittagong with T. Griffith Taylor, later to make his mark in Antarctic science, and during this time came under the influence of Professor Edgeworth David, a leader in Australian geology. Mawson became lecturer in mineralogy and petrology at the University of Adelaide in 1905, describing radioactive minerals from Radium Hill and undertaking extensive fieldwork in the Flinders Ranges, where he studied past glacial activity, and Barrier Range, including Broken Hill. It was this latter study which brought him into contact with GD Delprat, a mining engineer, whose daughter Paquita he would marry in 1914. In November 1907 Mawson met Ernest Shackleton in Adelaide with a view to joining Shackleton's proposed British Antarctic Expedition to study glaciation in action. Shackleton appointed him physicist for the expedition and departed that summer for the Ross Sea. Mawson was 26. Also on the expedition was Mawson's mentor, Edgeworth David. Mawson was a member of the team led by David which climbed Mount Erebus, Antarctica's only active volcano, in March 1908. The following summer, again in a party led by David, Mawson journeyed on foot for over 2000 km to the area of the South Magnetic Pole and back to the Ross Sea coast. The expedition almost ended in disaster, with David crippled by cold and Mawson having to be rescued from a crevasse. Back in Australia, Mawson determined to return and explore the coast to the west of Cape Adare, due south of Australia. He contacted Robert Scott, who was planning an attempt to reach the South Pole and invited Mawson to join his South Pole sledging party. However, after some diliberation, Mawson decided to lead his own expedition. After an enormous fund-raising effort, he raised the capital and put together the equipment, supplies and men for his own 'Australasian Antarctic Expedition', which departed Hobart aboard the ship AURORA, captained by John Davis, in December 1911. On Macquarie Island he left a small communications crew who would relay the first wireless signals from Antarctica to the world. Mawson set up two Antarctic exploring bases, one on Shackleton Ice Shelf under Frank Wild and the main base under his leadership at Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay, south of Tasmania. At each base he and his men undertook a series of scientific investigations, including intensive land exploration along the coast and into the hinterland. The Commonwealth Bay base he later called 'The Home of the Blizzard' because of its exceptionally powerful and persistent katabatic winds. Mawson himself led the 'Far Eastern' sledging expedition with Belgrave Ninnis, an English army lieutenant, and Xavier Mertz, a Swiss doctor. The expedition was five weeks old and 500 km out when disaster struck: Ninnis, with one of the two sleds and most of the party's supplies, was lost down an immense crevasse. Mertz was to die on the return journey, possibly from Vitamin A poisoning from eating the livers of husky dogs. But Mawson survived after an epic solo journey during which he had to haul himself on the end of a rope out of a deep crevasse. Mawson returned to the base only to see the AURORA on the horizon on its way to collect the Western party under Wild. The ship was unable to return because of the risk of being beset by ice and Mawson (with six of the AURORA's crew left to search for him) spent the winter in Mawson's hut before being picked up the following summer. On Mawson's return to Adelaide, he was treated as a hero and his great achievement as an Antarctic leader and scientist were later recognised with a knighthood. In 1914 Douglas Mawson married Paquita Delprat. Mawson returned to the Antarctic twice more, in 1929 and 1931, as leader of the first and second British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expeditions (BANZARE). Sir Douglas Mawson died in 1958 at the age of 76. [Mawson biographical information taken from Australian Antarctic Division 'People of Antarctic history’]. SignificanceThis commemorative silver tray is part of a collection of material related to the career of Frederick Douglas Fletcher on Douglas Mawson's 1912 - 1913 Australasian Antarctic Expedition Antarctica and specifically to SY Aurora, Mawson's supply vessel during that expedition.