Ice Coffee: the history of human activity in Antarctica

This month, in a very special episode of "Ice Coffee" Amanda Zimmerman shares her insights on life at McMurdo Station. Timely stuff for those listeners applying for USARP slots for the first time. Best of luck with your applications, people.

Large quantities of stores, lumber and conviviality go ashore and become Trepassey House, home to FIDS and their dogs for several subsequent years. 

The Tabarin mooted, Marr demurred Base E arises on Stonington Island, five nautical miles from the BGLE hut on Barry Island but two hundred yards from the Johnny-come-five-years-ago East Base.  Ted Bingham leads the first iteration of the FIDS and sets the tone for subsequent cohorts.  Scones, rum, freshies and the sort of treats that make Brits wave their hands about like Wallace from "Wallace an...

Finn Ronne makes ready for his return to Stonington Island, getting away late, in debt and with morale already fraying at the edges.  My apologies to anyone who downloaded the place holder episode used to keep this place held while I finished editing episode 113.  Here's the real deal.

With a hundred meg of storage in my name and a lot of audio snippets with nothing better to do I give you the bits episode.  Mind the neck bolts. This episode features the first competition I've run in a long time.  As usual it's biased in favour of early listeners who are old and who are me.  Voices from the past. Voices I hope will feature in the future. One voice that long since broke. We belon...

Hope Bay's second tranche of winter residents settle in. Then they head home to a less than heartening reception than their Swedish predecessors experienced, though Taylor didn't die in a public transport accident, so there's that. 

Penguin sex gets the attention it deserves after Murray Levick deprived the world of his observations due to his prudish Victorian era sensibilities.  Professor Lloyd Spencer Davis gives you the good oil on the oily birds getting it on (early birds only get worms). Extended and diminished visibility and lights in the sky at high latitudes receive some attention from a non-physicist who will accept...

James Marr takes his military expedition south and sets up shop on Goudier Island at Port Lockroy in Bransfield House, and also Base A. 

More fuck! than you can poke a stick at.

So fuck! it warrants spelling fark!

Fuck!

Keystone cops. Byrd at his finest. Fumes and fuming.

Lincoln Ellsworth convinces Sir Hubert Wilkins to head south once again and achieves very little. 

The War to End All Wars didn't do what it said on the box and political and economic pressures to fascist all over Europe, China and the Pacific led to another protracted period of bloodshed and barbarism.  This episode is short and short on Antarctic content but it's important to understand the motives and outcomes of the morass of conflicts we came to call the Second World War because war and it...

Nazis don't deserve theme music, soundscapes or even my best efforts at editing out narrating flubs. 

Driven south by the Third Reich's thirst for fat, the Schwabenland (ship version) carries two cool flying boats and a load of fucking nazis to Antarctic shores.  No house keeping and no calls to action, this episode, because I hate nazis and writing, recording and editing this episode made me grumpy.  Given that I parted brass rags with Quark expeditions because one of their guests called me a naz...

The British Graham Land Expedition comes to a close but it's not the last we'll hear of its members or the repercussions of the work they carried out.

The British Graham Land Expedition near the end of their second year in Antarctica.  Much flying, sledging, surveying and the first crossing of Graham Land. Huzzah.

John Rymill picks up where Gino Watkins' death left off and leads the most efficient Antarctic expedition to date.  Lots of new discoveries, competent seamanship, sledging and flying ensue.  The BGLE set the mold for safe and competent operations in the high southern latitudes.

I've traveled with Santiago for three austral summers and his humour and humanity have buoyed my moods while his perspectives on the birds we encountered opened my eyes to biological vistas I'd previously not spotted due to my focus on the mud.  I only just met John Marsden ten minutes before pressing record but his tales of high latitudes aviation warrant further attention than the ten minutes af...

Lincoln Ellsworth's money returns to Antarctica with new pilots, no meteorologist and Norwegians all but ready to throttle him.  Job's a good 'un, though, in spite of the lack of oomph, patience and skill the money bags brought with him.  Herbert Hollick-Kenyon nails one of the best put downs in Antarctic history while puffing on his pipe, munching on boiled sweets and reading westerns.  Lots of p...

Ellsworth's money gets it into its head to be the first to cross Antarctica. Wilkins, Balchen, Braathen and another polar pig get tangled up in his weak sauce Ahab routine. Soundscapes featuring Port Circumcision and the waters just off Two Hummock Island, which I'm sure is the British Hydrographic Office's cleaned up label for a rude sailor name originally given that land mass by some sailors who...

Two interviews with three fellow Drake Passage crossers and a thunder accompanied decompression after recent upheavals. Anyone who feels hard done by in the third act is welcome to a right of reply.  Also putting out my shingle via Patreon once more. https://www.patreon.com/Ice_Coffee outlines what's on offer in return for financial support but I won't start processing episode releases through the...