This great and very informative book about the era of dog sledging in Antarctica was not written by journalists or by historians, but by two (or, in fact, even more) of those men, who were an essential part of it: by experienced dog drivers. One of them, Kevin Walton, did his field work at the very beginning of the described era (1945–1948), while the other, Rick Atkinson, first went to Antarctica in the mid 1970s. He still returns every year for several months running the well known post office, museum and ‘shopping-mall’ at Port Lockroy for the British Antarctic Heritage Trust. The book benefits very much from their first hand experience, giving the reader an ‘inside glimpse’ of Antarctic exploration.
But even though dogs are of course the main topic of the book, the title already implies that men and their stories and adventures will be an important part of it. So this book in fact is more than ‘just’ a book for dog lovers, but it is very informative concerning the history and conditions under which the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) operated during the first 50 years.
In nineteen chapters the reader is informed about such basics as the strange continent of Antarctica itself, the work of BAS, the nature of the huskies, their behaviour and food as well as the methods of dog driving. Other chapters refer to the first expeditions with dogs in Antarctica and the introduction of Canadian dogs for travel purposes on the British bases at the end of World War II. In most chapters the authors give us a short and distinct introduction about the topic, followed by many of personal statements and extracts from dog drivers’ diaries from the very early days to the last days of that era, covering all the geographic parts of the peninsula. It is the achievement of the authors and is one of the most valuable points of the book, that they collected all those writings and selected the most interesting ones, otherwise not accessible to the greater public. Amongst the many contributors we find such illustrious names as Geoff Renner, Dave Fletcher, Wally Herbert and even Sir Vivian Fuchs.
In the main chapter we can read much about the adventurous travels done with the different dog teams throughout the 50 years they were used for the exploration of the Antarctic peninsula. With those stories the reader secures very close insights into how life, work and travelling was performed in those by far more primitive ways of exploration than those adopted nowadays. We learn about gales which kept the men in their tents for days and about sea ice which opened suddenly under homeward bound travellers, granting them just the time to loose their dogs before the men were precipitated into the water.
The book continues by discussing the breeding programme, medical care and the changes that took place in travel by using more and more improved mechanical vehicles such as motor toboggans and skidoos. So since the mid 60s the number of dogs was slowly decreasing until there were just two teams left, when the Antarctic Treaty organisation decided in 1991 to remove all dogs from the continent by April 1994. But for most of the men involved in the work with the dogs, this was not an improvement. Especially in the hard and isolated conditions of the long Antarctic winter, no machine, however perfect, would ever be able to replace the devoted friendship of a dog!
Finally we follow the traces of those few dogs, which were not ‘put down’ after their hard working lives, but got an ‘honorary retirement’ in Wales or the Scottish Highlands. The last of the Antarctic dogs were brought ‘back’ to Canada in February 1994.
An appendix lists the total of numbers of imported, exported and Antarctic born dogs as well as their deaths on field journeys. Other figures show us the total mileages of travel done by dog teams (336.500!), their average performances (3.000) and the record breaking distances covered by the two dogs ‘Mac’ and ‘Bryn’ (14.440).
It is hard to think of anything related to British Antarctic sledgedogs, which is not covered and explained by the authors.
An astonishing group of 135 beautiful colour plates illustrate the pages throughout the book. With some of them dating back as far as 1946, they are a great source material for the everyday life and travel routine in those years, showing not only dogs, but as well the men, sledges, tents and other equipment in the wild of the great Antarctic landscape. So we can see for example the abandoned Stonington base still connected to the mainland by a natural glacier ramp in the early 1970s.
Even though the book is great and certainly a ‘must-have’ for anyone interested in recent polar exploration, it is also a reviewer's duty to mention the weak points of it. Lucky enough, there is actually only one: the maps on the pages 31 and 38. In a book dealing with the geographic achievements of BAS, one should expect to find the correct latitude of the Antarctic Circle! The dates for the occupation periods of the bases are in some cases wrongly placed and therefore confusing. They should correspond better to the dates mentioned in the following chapters. The map on page 31 wishes to show ‘the landing points for early expeditions which included dogs’. But even though page 28 shows the famous picture of Lawrence Oates with the ponies and Siberian huskies onboard the Terra Nova in 1911, this expedition is for no good reason completely missing from the map. It is also surprising that Shackleton's Endurance expedition took place until 1918. But even the last men from the Ross Sea Party were already rescued by 1917. And Shackleton was intending to land dogs somewhere on the eastern shores of the Antarctic peninsula, as the map suggests.
As the book was written by Antarctic dog drivers it is no wonder, that you can sense their non-agreement with the official ‘dogs out’ policy throughout the book. With this opinion they have the full support of the ecologically aware Prince of Wales, who states in his foreword that hopefully ‘a wiser generation may allow their return at some time . . .’
