Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/327

550 found by Shackleton's men in 1916—the hardships that wasted his life will be only a horror of the past, and his via dolorosa a highway as practicable as Piccadilly.

And now let me come down to tin tacks. No matter how well the thing is done in future, its organizers will want to know at first all we can tell them about oil, about cold, and about food. First, as to oil.

Scott complains of a shortage of oil at several of his last depôts. There is no doubt that this shortage was due to the perishing of the leather washers of the tins which contained the paraffin oil. All these tins had been subjected to the warmth of the sun in summer and the autumn temperatures, which were unexpectedly cold. In his Voyage of the Discovery Scott wrote as follows of the tins in which they drew their oil when sledging: "Each tin had a small cork bung, which was a decided weakness; paraffin creeps in the most annoying manner, and a good deal of oil was wasted in this way, especially when the sledges were travelling over rough ground and were shaken or, as frequently happened, capsized. It was impossible to make these bungs quite tight, however closely they were jammed down, so that in spite of a trifling extra weight a much better fitting would have been a metallic screwed bung. To find on opening a fresh tin of oil that it was only three-parts full was very distressing, and of course meant that the cooker had to be used with still greater care." Amundsen wrote of his paraffin: "We kept it in the usual cans but they proved too weak; not that we lost any paraffin, but Bjaaland had to be constantly soldering to keep them tight."

Our own tins were furnished with the metallic screwed stoppers which Scott recommended. There was no trouble reported until we came up to One Ton Camp when on the Search Journey. Here was the depôt of food and oil which I had laid in the previous autumn for the Polar Party, stowed in a canvas 'tank' which was buried be-