Ernest Joyce

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Joyce (right) with Wild (left) and probably Dick Richards on the Aurora

Ernest Edward Mills Joyce (born December 22, 1875 in Bognor Regis , Sussex , England ; †  May 2, 1940 in London ) was a seaman in the Royal Navy and an Antarctic explorer who worked during the "heroic age" of Antarctic exploration in the early 20th century participated in three expeditions. For a short time, he was also associated with a fourth.

Although most of the times viewed with understanding by historians, and his courage, determination, and leadership skills are widely recognized in extremis, Ernest Joyce is a controversial figure who has drawn both adversarial and positive comments. In addition to questions such as his attitude towards financial compensation or his mysterious departure from the Mawson expedition , the accuracy and neutrality of his diaries have been questioned. His book based on these diaries and his other writings were condemned as selfish and rhymed. Roland Huntford described Joyce as "a strange mixture of imposture, showing off and ability" ("... a strange mixture of fraud, flamboyance and ability").

Early years

Joyce was born in Bognor, England in 1875. After orphaned in early childhood, he graduated from the Royal Hospital School for Orphans before joining the Navy in 1891. His third first name “Mills” could be a later addition of his mother's maiden name.

Expeditions

Joyce's Antarctic Expeditions
Years expedition commander ship
1901-1904 Discovery expedition Robert Falcon Scott RRS Discovery
1907-1909 Nimrod expedition Ernest Shackleton Nimrod
1914-1917 Expedition Endurance : Ross Sea Party Aeneas Mackintosh SY Aurora

Discovery Expedition 1901–1904

Joyce was serving as an able seaman aboard HMS Gibraltar, based in Cape Town, when he took the opportunity in October 1901 to join Robert Falcon Scott's first Antarctic expedition. More of a crew member than the coastal crew, he did not expect to stay in the ice, but when the RRS Discovery froze he was forced to stay and had some experience with sleds and dogs. Among his comrades were Ernest Shackleton , on whom he made a good impression, and Frank Wild , who became a close companion on a later journey and with whom he explored the lower slopes of the previously unclimbed Mount Erebus on this first expedition . After the expedition ended, he returned to the Navy and was promoted to boatswain.

Nimrod expedition 1907–1909

Shackleton recruited Joyce for the Nimrod Expedition to take care of normal goods, sleds, and dogs. To participate, Joyce paid the Navy a transfer fee and later claimed that Shackleton had promised to compensate him for it but had not done so. Before leaving, Joyce took a printing crash course with Frank Wild, who had also been hired, so that an Antarctic newspaper could be produced. Shackleton, Joyce and Wild were the only members of the expedition with previous Antarctic experience.

Joyce's primary occupations during the first months after landing at Cape Royds on Ross Island were tending the dogs and sledding on the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf . Together with Wild he printed copies of the expedition magazine, the Aurora Australis . Shackleton wanted to include Joyce in his group, which would march towards the South Pole, but following the advice of expedition doctor Eric Marshall , he was appointed head of the support group. Marshall found evidence of physical stunting and also described Joyce as unintelligent, resentful, and intolerant. Joyce's support group accompanied the polar group on the march south to Minna Bluff , and in the months that followed he oversaw the establishment of additional depots on the ice to aid the polar group's return journey.

Shackleton and his men returned on the Nimrod's last possible departure date after setting a new south record at 88 ° 23 ′  S , 162 ° 0 ′  E , about 160 kilometers from the South Pole. Joyce had been ready to leave the ship to wait for the men or to find out their fate. The Nimrod finally reached London in September 1909 and, under Joyce's direction, was converted into a floating exhibition of polar artifacts; the proceeds went to charities. After that, Joyce, now without a regular paid job, looked for another expedition.

Mawson's expedition 1911

The rivalry between Shackleton and Scott meant that neither Joyce nor Wild were invited to Scott's Terra Nova expedition , since both were "Shackleton's men". Instead, they joined the Australasian Antarctic Expedition , a scientific expedition led by Douglas Mawson , an Australian geologist who had been on the Nimrod. Mawson would work in a different sector of Antarctica than Scott and had no pole ambitions. Joyce went to Denmark to get dogs for Mawson and then traveled with them to Tasmania, where he left the expedition for unknown reasons. Riffenbaugh writes that he was sent away, but gives no evidence. Whatever the circumstances, Joyce stayed in Australia and got a job on Sydney Harbor.

Expedition Endurance 1914–1917

Ross Sea Party

When Shackleton made his first plans to cross Antarctica, he may have considered adding Joyce to the main group in the Weddell Sea . In any case, Joyce was eventually assigned to the supporting Ross Sea Party , which, under the command of another Nimrod veteran, Aeneas Mackintosh , was to take the Aurora to Scott's old base on Cape Evans and from there lay depots across the Ross Ice Shelf Support Shackleton's Transcontinental March. Joyce claimed that his Shackleton assignment gave him control of all sledging activities. This was firmly rejected by Mackintosh, but it was the cause of later differences.

Serious setbacks

The Aurora's departure from Australia was delayed, and it did not arrive off Cape Evans until January 16, 1915 - very late in the season to be able to set up depots. Mackintosh insisted, however, that goods should be deposited at 80 ° S without further delay. Joyce struggled against it; he wanted more time to get the men and dogs used to the circumstances and to train them, but Mackintosh rejected this. They reached the required width in time and deposited the goods, but the men and dogs were tired. On the return trip, during the bad weather, all the dogs they carried died and the men returned in March exhausted and with severe frostbite to Hut Point , a camp a few miles south of Cape Evans. When Joyce and Mackintosh finally returned to Cape Evans in June, they found that the Aurora had been ripped out of its anchorage in a storm with most of the goods and equipment and was unable to maneuver, trapped in the pack ice, and driven out to sea. The survival of the stranded men from the coastal group and any hope of fulfilling their duties at the depot now depended on their ingenuity and improvisation. Joyce, Ernest Wild (Frank Wild's brother) and others used the equipment left behind by Scott's Terra Nova expedition, with which they could improvise clothes, food, equipment and heating oil with and with the seals they had hunted for the remaining depots in the summer to put on.

The journey to the depot facility

In September 1915 a group of four healthy dogs and nine under-trained and half-healthy men in primitive clothing and improvised equipment set out. Before the march south - with the return journey a distance of over 1200 kilometers - could begin, about 2250 kg of goods had to be transported to a base camp on Minna Bluff. This phase lasted until December 28, 1915, when the differences between Joyce and Mackintosh grew again, this time because of the methods, especially the use of dogs. Weaker members of the group - Arnold Spencer-Smith and Mackintosh himself - were already showing signs of collapse as the group, reduced to six by the failure of a prime cooker, plagued by frostbite, snow blindness and also scurvy advanced south. Spencer-Smith collapsed and had to be transported on the sled. Mackintosh, who could barely walk, struggled on, but when the last depot was made on Beardmore Glacier at 83 ° 30 ′ S, he too collapsed and the leadership was unanimously passed to Joyce. The way back north was a long, hard journey that cost Spencer-Smith his life and took the others to the limit of their endurance before Joyce finally took the group from the ice to the safety of Hut on March 18, 1916, despite severe snow blindness Point led.

rescue

In a relatively short period of time, the survivors recovered enough from a seal-meat diet to consider when the final 15 miles across the pack ice to Cape Evans could be tackled. Mackintosh was particularly impatient to get there, and on May 8, against the urgent advice of Joyce, Richard W. Richards and Ernest Wild, he decided to take the risk. Victor Hayward agreed to go with him. Shortly after they left, a blizzard broke out and the two were never seen again - either they were carried out to sea or they broke through the ice. The others reached Cape Evans in July. Joyce's acute snow blindness limited the work he could do in the months that followed, and he spent some time alone in the cabin at Cape Royds . In the absence of the ship, the remaining survivors lived quietly until January 10, 1917, when the Aurora returned with Shackleton to take her home. They now learned that their depot efforts had been useless as Shackleton's ship had been crushed by pack ice almost two years earlier before he could begin the continental crossing.

Next life

Upon returning to New Zealand, Joyce was hospitalized for his snow blindness and, according to his own report, had to wear dark glasses for the next 18 months. During this time he married Beatrice Curtlett from Christchurch . He was probably no longer suitable for further work in the polar regions, although he tried unsuccessfully to rejoin the Navy in 1918. In 1920, after a period working in Australia, he was hired on a new Antarctic expedition to be led by John Cope of the Ross Sea Party, but the venture failed. He continued to uphold his claims for financial compensation from Shackleton, which resulted in a rupture, and was not invited to join Shackleton's Expedition Quest , which began in 1921. He applied for the British Mount Everest Expedition of 1921/22, but was rejected. In 1923 he was awarded the Albert Medal for his 1916 life saving efforts on the ice . Richards received the same honor as did posthumously Hayward and Ernest Wild, who died in World War I. In 1929 Joyce published a controversial edition of his diaries under the title The South Polar Trail , which was described as "egregiously self-serving" ("incredibly selfish"). He then indulged in various imperfect plans for further expeditions and wrote numerous articles and stories based on his deeds, before finally retiring to a quiet life as a hotel servant in London. He died a natural death in 1940 at the age of 65. Bickel claims that Joyce turned eighty and witnessed the first crossing of Antarctica by Fuchs and his men, but there are no other sources to support this claim. In honor of Joyce, the Joyce Glacier , Lake Joyce and Mount Joyce bear his name in Antarctica .

Joyce the fairy tale uncle

Polar historians have often pointed out that Joyce's versions of events are not always reliable and sometimes tend to be fictional. In The Lost Men , Kelly Tyler-Lewis chose to emphasize Joyce's “fabulism”, citing specific examples, such as his self-naming as “captain” after the Endurance expedition, his false claim that the grave of Scott was , Wilson and Bowers had seen on the Ross Ice Shelf, his misrepresentation of his instructions from Shackleton on his role with the slides (these instructions made it clear that he had no command of his own), contending he had a place in the transcontinental group was offered after Shackleton made it clear he didn't want him or his late-life habit of anonymously writing to the press extolling "the famous polar explorer Ernest Mills Joyce." None of this detracts from his courage and ingenuity in action, but they underscore Huntford's flowery characterization, as quoted in the introduction.

See also

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ Riffenburgh, Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition: The Voyage of the Nimrod , pp. Xxiii.
  2. ^ Huntford, p. 450
  3. ↑ Kelly Tyler's May 17, 2006 article: Joycey at http://www.powells.com./ See also Kelly Tyler-Lewis, The Lost Men , pp. 258-262
  4. ^ Huntford, p. 194
  5. ^ Tyler-Lewis, p. 55
  6. ^ Riffenburgh, p. 126
  7. ^ Huntford, p. 234
  8. ^ Fisher, M&J p. 491
  9. ↑ Riffenburgh, p. 303
  10. ↑ Fisher, p. 315. On the other hand, Kelly Tyler-Lewis says in "The Lost Men", p. 260 that Joyce was never considered for the crossing group (but this does not include the ship's crew)
  11. ↑ Bickel, p. 38. Joyce's interpretation of Shackleton's arrangements turned out to be wrong. See Tyler-Lewis, p. 260
  12. ↑ Bickel, p. 47
  13. ↑ The pack ice was too unstable to return sooner
  14. ^ Shackleton: South (Century Edition 1991) p. 181
  15. ↑ Hut Point was reached on March 9th, but Joyce and Wild turned back to fetch the Mackintosh, which had been left behind in the meantime.
  16. ↑ This hut was Shackleton's old headquarters from the Nimrod Expedition. The Ross Sea Party had already been there and had used the leftover equipment
  17. ↑ Bickel, p. 237
  18. ^ Tyler-Lewis, p. 249
  19. ↑ Tyler-Lewis, pp. 255-256
  20. ^ Fisher, p. 440
  21. ^ Tyler-Lewis, p. 258
  22. ^ Sara Wheeler in the New York Times article: Waiting for the Boss. April 2, 2000
  23. ^ Tyler-Lewis, p. 263
  24. ↑ Bickel, p. 236
  25. ↑ Tyler-Lewis, pp. 258-262

swell

personal data
SURNAME Joyce, Ernest
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Joyce, Ernest Edward Mills
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English Antarctic explorer and sailor
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Bognor Regis
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1940
Place of death London