Chapter 5: My Voyage in Discovery II (continued)

The engine room crew and the bosun were retired Royal Navy and in the Reserve, and had volunteered for these jobs. They were superb seamen. They were good.

The ship had an economical cruise of about 10 or 11 knots and a maximum of about 15 to 16. It had a steel, heavily reinforced ice-breaking stem that went from the bow back along the keel for about a third of the length of the ship.

Water and fuel were pumped aft to raise the bow slightly out of the water for ice-breaking. The ship could cut leads in pack ice about eight feet thick.

Evening in the pack ice in the Ross Sea.

The technique was to bump the edge of thick pack-ice at about two or three knots and keep bumping and bumping until a 'beach' was cut about 15 feet long. Discovery II was then put astern until clear of the pack and then driven onto the 'beach' at about 10 knots. It would climb up the slope and eventually drop through the ice, opening up a crack for sometimes a mile ahead. The ship was nosed into the lead to widen it. It was a noisy, uncomfortable business.

We left Perth about the middle of December 1937 proceeding due south until we arrived off Adelie Land. We nosed slowly eastward along the coast and then entered Commonwealth Bay which Mawson had called the home of the blizzard. A katabatic wind of about 80 knots is persistent in that area.

Some distance offshore in that region there is a relatively shallow area above a ridge on the continental shelf on which icebergs run aground. We counted 18 icebergs in that area and were told that some of them may have been there for 50 years.

One iceberg we encountered in that area was 22.5 miles (36 km) in length. That was the largest sighted during the voyage. They were majestic, about 150 feet above the waterline. They often moved steadily upwind, their motion being determined by the sub-surface ocean current.

Large iceberg from a distance of three miles.

Bureau of Meteorology