Ernest Joyce

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Ernest Joyce, on the right, with two Ross Sea party comrades

Ernest Edward Mills Joyce (1875–1940) was a Royal Naval seaman and Antarctic explorer who participated in three expeditions during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration in the first decades of the 20th century, and was briefly associated with a fourth. As a young Able Seaman he joined Captain Scott's Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, during which he encountered Ernest Shackleton, who was serving as one of its junior officers. Joyce made a good impression on Shackleton, who recruited him to his Nimrod Expedition, 1907–09, and later asked him to join the Ross Sea party in support of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. After a series of misfortunes befell the Ross Sea party during 1915–16 Joyce, its only experienced ice traveller, emerged as its de facto leader, and was later awarded the Albert Medal for heroism. This expedition was the end of Joyce’s association with the Antarctic and his exploring career, although he tried, unsuccessfully, to join other expeditions.

During his career Joyce attracted adverse as well as positive comments. His effectiveness in the field was widely acknowledged: "Good old Joyce", wrote Frank Wild of his comrade's life-saving depot at Minna Bluff.^[1] To many he was a "jolly good sort",^[2] and Dick Richards described him as "a kindly soul and a good pal".^[3] By contrast Eric Marshall found him "of limited intelligence, resentful and incompatible", ^[4] and John King Davis, in refusing to join the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, told Shackleton: "I absolutely decline to be associated with any enterprise with which people of the Joyce type are connected".^[5] His sudden departure from Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition before it sailed is an unsolved mystery. His diaries, and the book he wrote based on them, have been condemned as self-serving and the work of a "fabulist".^[6] Roland Huntford sums him up as a "strange mixture of fraud, flamboyance and ability"^[7]

[edit] Early years

These Greenwich buildings, now the National Maritime Museum, housed the Royal Hospital school for Naval Orphans during Joyce's childhood.

Details of Joyce's early life are sketchy. He was born at Bognor, England in, it is thought, 1875, but the exact date is not known.^[8] He came from seafaring stock, his father and grandfather before him both being sailors.^[9] After the father's early death Joyce's mother,^[10] with three children to support on her limited earnings as a seamstress, sent the young Ernest to the Royal Hospital School for Navy Orphans at Greenwich. Here, in austere surroundings, he received a vocational education that would fit him for a lower-deck career in the Royal Navy.^[9] Leaving the school in 1891, he joined the navy, aged fifteen, as a boy seaman, progressing during the next ten years to Ordinary Seaman and then Able Seaman.^[9]

No records have apparently been published of his naval service between 1891 and 1901. The latter year saw him, a seasoned Able Seaman, serving on HMS Gibraltar in Cape Town when, in September, Captain Scott's expedition ship Discovery arrived en route to the Antarctic. Joyce volunteered to go with Discovery, and left with her for the south on 14 October 1901.^[11]

[edit] Discovery Expedition, 1901-04

Main article: Discovery Expedition

Ernest Shackleton, whom Joyce first met during the Discovery expedition

Joyce was one of four volunteers, out of several hundred who put their names forward, who joined Discovery in Cape Town.^[9] Despite a relatively low profile on the expedition – Scott scarcely mentions him in The Voyage of the Discovery and Wilson's diaries not at all – he took readily to the life,^[12] and used the time profitably to acquaint himself with sledging and dog-driving techniques and other aspects of Antarctic exploration. Towards the end of the expedition he joined Arthur Pilbeam and Frank Wild in an ascent of the foothills of Mount Erebus, ascending to some 3,000 feet (920 m).^[13] Joyce was badly affected by frostbite; "Barne and Mulock took it in turns to hold his frostbitten foot against the pits of their stomachs and knead the ankle for several hours".^[14] Such experiences, however, did not daunt him; he was drawn to the Antarctic by "a curious combination of affection and antipathy",^[15] and "felt impelled to return again and again".^[15]

During the expedition Joyce encountered several of the figures who would figure prominently in Antarctic polar history during the following years, including, in addition to Scott and Wilson, Frank Wild, Tom Crean, William Lashly, Edgar Evans and, most significantly, Ernest Shackleton. Joyce made several sledging trips with Shackleton,^[16] and created an impression of competence and reliability.. He also impressed Captain Scott as "sober, honest, loyal and intelligent",^[9] and expedition organiser Sir Clements Markham described him as "an honest and trustworthy man".^[9]. His reward, at the conclusion of the expedition, was promotion to Petty Officer 1st Class on Scott's recommendation.^[9] But he had been bitten by the bug of Antarctic exploration^[17], and ordinary naval duty no longer appealed. He left the navy in 1905, but found shore life unsatisfying, and re-enlisted in 1906.^[9] When the chance came a year later to join Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, he took it immediately.

[edit] British Antarctic Expedition (Nimrod) 1907-09

Main article: Nimrod Expedition

When Shackleton was selecting the crew for his Antarctic expedition in Nimrod, Joyce was one of his earliest recruits. The story that Shackleton saw Joyce on a bus which was passing his expedition offices, sent someone out to fetch him, and recruited him on the spot, is frequently told and possibly true.^[18] On the basis of his Discovery exploits Joyce was put in charge of general stores, sledges and dogs. He, Shackleton and Frank Wild would be the only members of the expedition with previous Antarctic experience.

To join the expedition Joyce bought his release from the Navy, and in later years would claim that Shackleton had promised to recompense him for this but failed to do so.^[19] This was one of several disputes over money which eventually strained his relations with Shackleton.^[20] Before departure for the Antarctic in August 1907 Joyce and Wild, on Shackleton's instructions and with the co-operation of Sir Joseph Causton's printing firm in Hampshire, took a crash course in printing, as it was Shackleton's intention to publish a book or magazine while in the Antarctic.^[21]

Inlet on Ross Ice Shelf, where Shackleton originally hoped to to base his 1907–09 expedition. The inlet had broadened, to become the Bay of Whales, and was no longer thought safe.

Nimrod left New Zealand on 1 January 1908, towed towards the Antarctic pack ice by the tug Koonya.^[22]. On 23 January, now under its own power, it reached the Great Ice Barrier, where Shackleton planned to base his headquarters in an inlet discovered during the Discovery voyage. This proved impossible,^[23] and there being no feasible alternative landing site on nearby King Edward VII Land, Shackleton was forced to break a previous undertaking he had made to Scott and take Nimrod to McMurdo Sound.^[24] The site finally chosen for a base was Cape Royds, some 23 miles (38 km) north of Scott's old Discovery headquarters at Hut Point. Joyce went ashore on 1 February, as part of a reconnaissance mission, and remained on land during the chaotic unloading process,^[25] looking after the animals and helping to build the expedition hut. In March he assisted the party which made the first ascent of Mount Erebus,^[26] although he did not make the climb himself.

During the following winter Joyce, with Wild's help, printed copies of the expedition book Aurora Australis, edited by Shackleton.^[27] Otherwise he was busy preparing equipment and stores for the next season's journey to the Pole in which, in view of his experience, he fully expected to be included. However, various mishaps had reduced the number of ponies to four, so Shackleton cut the southern party to that number. One of those dropped was Joyce, on advice from expedition doctor Eric Marshall, who noted that Joyce had a liver problem and the early stages of heart disease.^[28] Joyce does not appear to have resented his exclusion, helping with the preparatory work and accompanying the polar party on the southward march for the first seven days. ^[29] In the ensuing months, he made further support journeys, increasing the depoted supplies to ensure the southern party's eventual safe return. This included a cache of luxury foods taken to Minna Bluff.^[30]

Shackleton and his party returned safely, on the Nimrod's last feasible date for sailing home. They had established a new Farthest South at 88°23'S, only 97 geographical miles (115 statute miles, 190 km) from the South Pole. Joyce had been ready to remain with a rearguard to wait for the party, or to establish its fate.^[31] The Nimrod finally reached London in September 1909, and was prepared, under Joyce's direction, as a floating exhibition of polar artefacts. Shackleton paid him a salary of £250 a year for this (2008 equivalent £12,000), a generous amount for the time.^[32] Thereafter Joyce, in the absence of regular paid employment, looked for another expedition.

[edit] Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911

Main article: Australasian Antarctic Expedition

Joyce was not invited to join Captain Scott's Terra Nova Expedition, although several of Shackleton's men were, including Frank Wild who declined. Joyce and Wild both signed up for Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Joyce travelled to Denmark to acquire dogs for this expedition, and took them on to Tasmania. According to Riffenburgh he was then "dismissed" by Mawson before the expedition left Australia.^[33] However, this is not conclusive; other accounts simply say that Mawson and Joyce "fell out and parted ways",^[9] and in another version^[34] Joyce was dropped when Mawson reduced his expedition from three shore parties to two. Mawson reportedly distrusted Joyce, saying that "he spent too much time in hotels",^[34] which implies that drink was behind the problem. Whatever the circumstances Joyce did not sail, but he chose to remain in Australia, obtaining work with the Sydney Harbour Trust.^[9]

[edit] Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914-17

Main articles: Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition and Ross Sea party

Members of the Ross Sea Party, photographed in Australia before departure. Joyce is extreme left, back row.

Joyce, still in Australia, was approached by Shackleton in February 1914 with outline plans for the Trans-Antarctic Expedition, and a place for Joyce in the supporting Ross Sea party. Should the plan change to a one-ship format, Joyce would join the Weddell Sea party.^[35] Joyce would later state, without verification, that he was offered a place on the main transcontinental party.^[36] Joyce also misrepresented, in his book,^[37] the nature of his appointment to the Ross Sea party, concealing the detail specifying that he would be working under an officer.^[36] Joyce's persistent unsupported claims that he had sole responsibility for equipment, sledges and dogs would lead to later conflicts.

The task of the Ross Sea party, under the command of another Nimrod veteran, Aeneas Mackintosh, was to proceed to McMurdo Sound, then lay a series of supply depots across the Ross Ice Shelf. Shackleton had written: "I had not anticipated that the work would present any great difficulties".^[38] However, the party, rather hurriedly assembled,^[39] was inexperienced for this work, with only Joyce and Mackintosh having previous Antarctic knowledge.

[edit] Major setbacks

The Aurora's departure from Australia was delayed, through a series of organisational and financial setbacks,^[40] and it did not arrive in McMurdo Sound until 16 January 1915 – very late in the season for depot-laying work. Mackintosh nevertheless insisted that sledging work should begin without delay, with a view to laying down depots at 79° and 80°S.^[41] Joyce opposed this; more time, he maintained, should be set aside to acclimatise and train men and dogs.^[42] However, he was over-ruled by Mackintosh, who still believed that Shackleton's trans-continental journey might take place in that first season.^[43]

Aurora, in New Zealand after the drift

Mackintosh further vexed Joyce by deciding to lead this depot-laying party himself, unmoved by Joyce’s unsupported claim to have sole charge of sledges and dogs. ^[44] The journey began on 24 January, in an atmosphere of muddle; the initial attempt of Joyce’s three-man party to sledge on the Barrier^[45] was thwarted by the condition of the ice, and Mackintosh’s party got lost on the sea ice between Cape Evans and Hut Point. Joyce gloated over this evidence of the captain’s inexperience.^[46] The various parties eventually reached the 79° (Bluff)^[47] location on 9 February, Joyce’s party having had by far the easier journey. ^[48] Another sharp dispute then arose, over Mackintosh’s plan to take the dogs on to the 80° mark.^[46] Joyce strongly opposed this. Several dogs had already died and Joyce felt that the remainder should be preserved. Again he was overruled. The parties marched forward, and on 20 February reached the required latitude and deposited their stores.^{[46] [49]}

The men and dogs were worn out. On the return journey, in appalling Barrier weather all the dogs perished, as Joyce had warned, and the party returned to Hut Point on 24 March exhausted and severely frostbitten.^[50] Worse was to follow when, after being held up for 10 weeks at Hut Point by the condition of the sea, the party finally got back to Cape Evans in June. They then learned that Aurora, with most of the shore party's stores and equipment still aboard, had been torn from its moorings in a gale, and blown far out to sea with no prospect of swift return.^[51] Fortunately, the sledging rations for the depots had been landed before the ship’s involuntary departure.^[46] The shore party’s own food, fuel, clothing and equipment, however, would largely have to be improvised, from stores left over from Scott's Terra Nova expedition, from seal meat, and from blubber.^[46]. Joyce proved to be a “master scavenger”, ^[52] unearthing from Scott’s abandoned stores, among other treasures, a large canvas tent from which he fashioned roughly tailored clothing. He also set about stitching 500  calico bags, to hold the sledging rations.^[53]

[edit] The Depot-laying journey

The party set out on 1 September 1915. With only five dogs fit for work,^[54] their task would mostly be one of man-hauling.^[55] The men were under-trained and half-fit, in primitive clothing and with mainly improvised equipment.^[56] Before the march south – a return distance of 800 miles (1,330 km) – could begin, approximately 3,800 lb (1,700 kg) of stores had to be taken to the base depot at Minna Bluff.^[56] This phase lasted until 28 December, with another outbreak of sharp disagreements between Joyce and Mackintosh, particularly over the use of the dogs.^[57] Weaker members of the party – Arnold Spencer-Smith and Mackintosh himself – were already showing signs of physical breakdown^[58] as the second phase of the task, the long march to south to the Beardmore, began.

Mackintosh and Spencer-Smith being drawn on the sledge by Joyce and Ernest Wild

The party was reduced to six when one group of three was forced to turn back because of an equipment failure.^[59] The rest trekked southward, increasingly afflicted by frostbite, snow-blindness and, eventually, scurvy. Spencer-Smith collapsed, and thereafter had to be carried on the sledge.^[60] Mackintosh, barely able to walk, fought on, but by the time the final depot was laid at the Beardmore Glacier, 83°30'S, he was almost incapable. Eventually he would join Spencer-Smith on the sledge. Joyce had been effectively the leader since the party had left the Bluff depot on the southward march; he was indisputably leader now.^[61] The homeward journey north became an extended nightmare, which eventually cost the life of Spencer-Smith and took the others to the limits of their endurance.^[62] Mackintosh had suffered a further physical and mental collapse, and was left in the tent while Joyce, himself suffering from severe snow-blindness,^[63] led the rest to the safety of Hut Point. He and Ernest Wild then returned for Mackintosh, and the five survivors were all back at Hut Point on 18 March 1916.^[63]

[edit] Rescue

Within a relatively short time at Hut Point the five survivors, now on a diet of fresh seal meat, recovered their strength.^[64] By mid-April they were well enough to consider when they should travel the last 15 miles (25 km) across the frozen sea to the base at Cape Evans. Joyce tested the sea-ice on 18 April and found it firm, but the following day a blizzard from the south swept all the ice away.^[65] The ambience at Hut Point was gloomy, and the unrelieved diet of seal was depressing. This seemed particularly to affect Mackintosh, and on 8 May, against urgent pleadings from Joyce, Richard W Richards and Ernest Wild, he decided to risk the ice and walk to Cape Evans.^[66] Victor Hayward, the fifth member of the group, volunteered to accompany him. Joyce, who had expended much energy in bringing Mackintosh and Hayward to the relative safety of Hut Point, recorded in his diary: "I fail to understand how these people are so anxious to risk their lives again".^[67] Shortly after their departure a blizzard descended, and the two were never seen again, having most probably fallen through the ice.^[66]

Members of the Ross Sea party after rescue. Joyce is fourth from the right, with matted hair.

Joyce and the others learned this only when they were finally able to reach Cape Evans in July. Although suffering from acute snow-blindness, Joyce immediately set about organising searches for traces of the missing men. During the subsequent months parties were sent to search the coasts and the islands in McMurdo Sound, but to no avail.^[68] Joyce also organised journeys to recover geological samples left on the Barrier, and to visit the grave of Spencer-Smith, where a large cross was erected.^[69] In the absence of the ship the remaining survivors, seven in all, lived quietly, until on 10 January 1917 the refitted Aurora arrived, with Shackleton aboard, to take them home.^[70] They learned then that their depot-laying efforts had been futile, Shackleton's ship having been crushed by the Weddell Sea Ice nearly two years previously.

[edit] Later life

[edit] Post-expedition career

After his return to New Zealand Joyce was hospitalised as a result of his snow-blindness, and according to his own account had to wear dark glasses for a further 18 months.^[71] During this period he married Beatrice Curtlett from Christchurch.^[72] He was now probably unfit for further polar work, although he attempted, unsuccessfully, to rejoin the Navy in 1918.^[73] In 1920, after a period of work in Australia, he signed up for a new Antarctic expedition to be led by John Cope of the Ross Sea Party, but this venture proved abortive.^[73] He continued to maintain his claims to financial compensation from Shackleton, which caused a breach between them^[74] and he was not invited to join Shackleton's Quest expedition which departed in 1921. He applied to join the British Everest expedition of 1921-22 but was rejected.^[73] He was in the public eye again in 1923 when he was awarded the Albert Medal for his life-saving efforts on the ice in 1916. Richards received the same award; Hayward, and also Ernest Wild who had died of typhoid during naval service in the Mediterranean in 1918, were likewise decorated.^[73] In 1929 Joyce published a contentious edited version of his diaries under the title The South Polar Trail,^[75] in which he boosted his own role, downplayed the contributions of others, and incorporated fictitious colourful details.^[73] Thereafter he indulged in various abortive schemes for further expeditions and wrote numerous articles and stories based on his exploits, eventually settling into a quiet life as a hotel porter in London. He died from natural causes, aged 65, in 1940. ^[73] The claim (by Bickel) that Joyce lived into his eighties, beyond the date of the first Antarctica crossing by Fuchs and his party, is not supported by any other sources).^[76] Joyce is commemorated in Antarctica by Mount Joyce at 75°36′S, 160°38′E.

[edit] Joyce the fabulist

Joyce's versions of events recorded in his published diaries are unreliable, and sometimes outright invention. Specific examples of this "fabulism" include his self-designation as "Captain" after the Ross Sea expedition; his invented claim to have seen Scott's death tent on the Barrier; the misrepresentation of his instructions from Shackleton regarding his sledging role, which clearly make him responsible to an officer rather than giving him independence in the field; his claim to have been offered a place on the trans-continental party when Shackleton had made it clear he did not want him; his habit, late in life, of writing anonymously to the press praising "the famous Polar Explorer Ernest Mills Joyce"^[73]. This self-promotion neither surprised nor upset his former comrades. "It is what I would have expected", said Richards. "He was bombastic [...] but true-hearted and a staunch friend".^[77] Alexander Stevens, the party's chief scientist, concurred. They knew that Joyce, for all his swaggering style, had the will and determination to "drag men back from certain death".^[73] Lord Shackleton, the explorer's son, named Joyce (with Mackintosh and Richards) as "one of those who emerge from the (Ross Sea party) story as heroes".^[78]

[edit] See also

• History of Antarctica

[edit] Notes and References

[edit] Sources

• Bickel, Lennard: Shackleton's Forgotten Men Random House, London, 2000 ISBN 0 7126 6807 1
• Fisher, M and J: Shackleton (biography) James Barrie Books, London, 1957
• Huxley, Elspeth: Scott of the Antarctic Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1977 ISBN 0 29777433 6
• Huntford, Roland: Shackleton (biography) Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1985 ISBN 0 340 25007 0
• Riffenburgh, Beau: Nimrod Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2004 ISBN 0 7475 7253 4
• Scott, Robert Falcon:The Voyage of the Discovery Smith, Elder & Co, London, 1905
• Shackleton, Ernest: South Century Ltd edition, ed. Peter King, London, 1991 ISBN 0 7126 3927 6
• Tyler-Lewis, Kelly: The Lost Men Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2007 ISBN 978 0 7475 7972 4
• Wilson, Edward: Diary of the Discovery Expedition Blandford Press, London, 1975 ISBN 0 7137 0431 4
• SY Aurora and the Ross Sea Party. Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914-17. Retrieved on 2008-04-04.

[edit] External links

• http://www.coolantarctica.com (History and Ships of the Antarctic)