The Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast

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1:00and well met. Wayfair, every style, every home. This is the BBC World Service calling Antarctica. Hello, I'm Keris Matthews and this time in the documentary from the BBC World Service. It's the annual edition of the Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast. It's the BBC's programme of greetings dedicated to members of the British Antarctic Survey overwintering in the frozen south. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it's midsummer but for the winterers in Antarctica the temperatures are freezing it's dark they're isolated far from home and it's a time for a midwinter celebration

1:48so over the next half hour we'll hear from Antarctica and share messages from family and friends for the intrepid few, working away at vital science and keeping three research stations open in the cold, cold snow. Hello Uncle Gerry, it's Hazel here. I just wondered if you could name one of the penguins for me because I just love penguins. So let's head south, first to King Edward Point on the island of South Georgia, where the small team await their messages. Among them is Adam Owen, who hopefully joins me on the line now. Are you there, Adam? I'm here.

2:23Cerys Matthews:Greetings from King Edward Point, South Georgia. It's incredible to know that you're there and we're able to communicate like this. Great internet in South Georgia, right? Yes, it's really good. We're very, very lucky that we've got the good internet now. It makes it so much easier, the job, to be able to get in touch with people back home. It makes it far easier seeing family and friends, but also work-wise, it's invaluable, basically, to have such good internet now. Could you describe the weather and perhaps look out of the window where you're at and describe what you can see as well? The weather today is immaculate.

3:00Cerys Matthews:Out here, look straight out base, we have the bay. So you can see all of the bay, it's very still and calm today. And then you have all the mountains in the distance, which is covered in snow at the moment. And it's just a nice, bright day. We're looking in South Georgia because we're not quite as far south. We still get a bit of the sun, but base is actually covered by the mountains. So we don't get the sun on base, unfortunately. but we can still see above and see the mountains lit up so it's yeah it's a very nice day today do you hanker to run out of the shadows into the sun or are you not yeah as as much as much as we can um i'm lucky as the tech we have to go over to the hydro station and check on that that's where we get our power from on base and we need to go around there and check and make sure everything's okay and do a little bit of maintenance and you kind of can get up into that area and catch a bit of the sunshine but also you get to go out on the boat sometimes and that's a really good way of being able to catch the sun and get away from the island and out to sea.

3:52Has the winter weather changed much over the years, Adam?

3:55Cerys Matthews:The only thing that we notice quite a lot here is we have maps for when we got our boat in and it shows you where the glaciers used to sit and we can literally take the boats into them areas now so the glaciers have receded a lot over the years. But I think, yeah, for the rest of the time you find that it's very nice over the summer period. You can actually have some kind of quite warm days but then as soon as last call and everybody leaves and you get into winter the snow comes and then it's that's it for seven months to deal with it's not really getting getting above minus degrees now you still get nice days but yeah that's that's it until probably October September October we often think of research stations as staffed by scientists but it takes a whole team to keep a place like that running you're an engineer I'm just wondering how you came to be there and what do you actually do I went traveling for a couple of years after covid just wanted to change uh from back home same job same town all my life and i just met people on my travels that were talking about antarctica and i was like there's there's research stations in antarctica you can work at i couldn't believe it so um i applied got the job and yeah my year was um bird island was the first year so it was very much chucked in at the deep end because that is a very small base there's only four people there now and you've got seven months with just your little team to endure winter.

5:14Cerys Matthews:So I've already had a good experience of a winter already, but the winter is kind of, it's about the team. If you've got a decent team, which we have here, which I had at Bird Island, it makes it so much easier. We're with you now in King Edward Point. How many people, remind us, how many people are part of the team there? At the moment, I think there's 11 people. There's a couple of the government officers are leaving. and in the summer you could be looking at 40 odd people here in the summer so it's quite a shock to the system when they all leave and then there's just obviously just the the bass team and the government officers left on base and a shout out to your hometown where are you from i'm from kendall uh the lake district so yeah um shout out to friends and family back home i'm looking forward to coming back and seeing you guys before we hear some messages especially for king edward point the team there um i just wondered because i love reading about south georgia and obviously famously whaling stations there is a whaling station near you do you ever get the chance to go adventuring and and does it still smell it doesn't smell it probably smells more when all the fur seals are around the whaling station which is kind of nice to see when you go around there and you realize the damage the whaling did to not just the whale whales but the fur seals as well so it's kind of nice to go and have a walk down there and see all the fur seals and the pups playing around in all of the all the oil tanks that have rusted away um it's actually really nice to see yeah we we kind of in the summer it gets very busy with cruise ships so there's lots of people coming in and out and visiting the whaling station visiting shackleton's grave so we kind of stay out of the way if in case we might need to get to the hydro which is kind of through grit vicken through the whaling station um but then yeah when you get the quiet days and cruise ships aren't here and now the whole area is covered in snow so lots of people like taking the skis down to that area and having a ski around and it's it's very nice like this time of year it's nice and quiet it's a good place to be to get off base i'm sure you can't wait it is time now for us to play some messages for yourselves at king edward point this is for deirdre mitchell at king edward point on south georgia hi deirdre hope you're enjoying our midwinter celebrations and you managed to get out for a wee jaunt if the weather's good look forward to seeing you at christmas lots of love mum and dad Mary Ailey April and June hello Chris my lovely man sending greetings to wish you a happy midwinter's day how marvelous that you're spending it in South Georgia and to overwinter there is now something you can tick off your to-do list hope you're having a wonderful celebration of this special day only six weeks and you'll be home and I look forward to seeing all your snowy pictures I think celebrating midwinter's day might become our new tradition anyway I'm missing you loads and I send you all my love from your wifey Nancy hello Rhi it's me again just calling in to let you know how much I miss you and how proud of you we all are you and all your wacky penguin signs I know you're doing great things over there and having a ball of a time with all your parties but I cannot wait to get you back here missing you lots and love you lots, sir.

8:19Hi, Sasha. We all miss you so much here and think about you every day. We hope you are staying warm there and keeping cheerful and finding the strength to get through the Antarctic winter. We are very proud of you and can't wait to have you back home. Love you very much. Женя and Tasha. Повертайся скорейше додому, мы тебя чекаем. Hey, Joe. Hope you're having the best time. So proud of you. Love you lots and lots. I love you, Uncle Joe. Hi, Uncle Joe. I'm so proud of you and we love and miss you so much. Hey, Joe. How are things? Hopefully you're having a fantastic time over there. Look forward to hearing about it.

8:54Hi, Joe. It's Auntie Sarah and Stephen here. We're wishing you a very happy midwinter. And we're so looking forward to seeing you when we come to the Falklands. Happy midwinter. We love ships. We love ships. We love ships. And you. Hello, Camille. It's your family from a much warmer place. Véronique, Lena, Chiara and Malou. The penguins may be cute but remember you already have three sisters. Although to be fair they probably complain less than we do. And if they start following you around we'll know you've finally found friends to listen to your science facts. Antarctica may be freezing but we are sure our love is keeping you warm.

9:39Love you! For Adam Since you've been gone the world has spun fast. Michael Carrick the saviour he's built to last. Frozen in time, Tony Mammoth returns, Sir David 100, a legend now centurion. Our kitchen island isn't the same without you. I'm down to one bottle of Merlot from two. Something must be in the air in Grifican that puts you at ease and all four brothers have finally found a new squeeze. Love from us all, we are very proud of you. Hello Emily, it's Fish here. It's Fred. It's Tom. Just letting you know that we're missing you and we're looking forward to you coming home. yeah missing you we'll watch bridesmaids when you get home and we asked donkey if he wanted to join in and he just looked at us a bit blankly because he didn't know who you were anymore yeah he said i don't know who's emily see you soon love you love you bye bye and best wishes to all the team at king edward point next we're going to head west to an even more remote lump of rock called bird island it's staffed over winter by just four humans and several thousand penguins seals albatross and other wildlife.

10:43Adam you spent the winter there two years ago is it very different from King Edward Point?

10:48Cerys Matthews:It's incredibly different yeah considering how close they are to each other the weather for a start the base is kind of open up to sea so the the wind is constantly hitting base and the island itself for some reason the sun seems to shine on South Georgia but Bird Island has its own micro climate that is just constantly grey it's very dense with wildlife even throughout the winter so here at King Edward Point now the seals have pretty much gone there's a few fur seals but there's not many in the summer it's really really busy and the penguins are kind of in different areas of the island so there's not as much wildlife here at Bird Island, it's the fur seal colony as you arrive on base, there's wandering albatross there's all the different kinds of birds penguins like you said, so it's just a very very different place and plus the isolation at Bird Island is another level, it's seven months without seeing, you maybe get one ship that would come and deliver some freshies and I think just check that you're all still sane.

11:43Cerys Matthews:But yeah, so it's a very different proposition is Bird Island, but they're both great in their own way. I love the idea. I've never heard that before. Some freshies delivering. I'm going to say that when I come back from the shops. Yeah. I've got some freshies. Adam, when it's so cold in places where you've been working and you're the only technician, are there any special problems with the plumbing? Yes, so at Bird Island, it was the coldest winter in 40 years down there, which brought a lot of problems on services so the water supply pretty much stopped to base we have water tanks that need to be filled up and we get that from the stream rain or snow melt and it was that cold consistently that we weren't getting anything so then we had to reduce base to showers every other day and think of ways of trying to create water melting snow isn't as easy as you think it's a lot of hard work and we had problems on waste pipes as well we had a waste It froze up very early and I had to empty the waste pipe.

12:43Cerys Matthews:That was my job every few days for, honestly, maybe two to three months. So I got used to smells and got very good at that. But it was a tough time at the time. But now I look back at it, I wouldn't change it for the world. It was a really proper Antarctic experience. And you can't send for a plumber. You can't go down to the local shop. You've just got to cope with what you've got. So tell us about the other extreme, entertainment. what do you do to keep yourselves amused during these times there's lots of things that we get up to there's probably at least twice a week we'll just chill out and have you know film nights and things like that lots and lots of board games I think actually midwinter week we'll probably be setting up different kind of themed bars around base and just using like different stores different offices and we'll kind of everyone takes a room and they'll make their own little bar that we can go like it's like a night out back home basically which is really cool you can go in a pimp bowl I I love it.

13:36Cerys Matthews:Yeah, yeah, that's it, yeah. And it really works. Basically, if you come up with an idea and you want to do something, you put it up on the board, and everyone's always keen to do something, especially over winter. In the summer, when everyone's here, you kind of need a break because there's just too much, there's so much activities going on. But, like, over winter, you need, like, that bit of energy. Especially when you get into midwinter, you're getting a bit tired, you're not seeing the sun as much. So, yeah, organised fun is quite nice. And traditionally, you watch the Antarctic horror film, The Thing.

14:05Cerys Matthews:Yeah, yeah. I absolutely love that part of it, yeah. It is very much the feeling, especially when I was at Bird Island, the thing, when you watch that, it really makes you think like this is exactly what it is like. So if you want a bit of an idea of Antarctic life, the thing is a good film to watch. It's not quite as bad as that. Because I guess the ice noises and things are quite spooky and it's all in twilight as well. And a few years ago, we received a chilling message from the director of the thing. Hi there, this is John Carpenter coming to you across the windswept darkness through the Antarctic night to visit you midsummer.

14:50It's beautiful here in Los Angeles. the sun is shining but it's not shining where you are it's dark and evil I hope you enjoy my movie The Thing and remember if you look around at your friends you don't know who's human and who's not I think Adam as well you try your hand at small scale horror films yourselves, any success at that?

15:22Cerys Matthews:Success might be a strong word yeah we did The Shining, it was an idea that we came up with at Bird Island it kind of, it just works there obviously for the isolation and people were going a little bit crazy anyway so we were like well this is going to be an easy film to act out so yeah it was really good fun, I enjoyed it, so yeah obviously they do the midwinter film all bit like most spaces across Antarctica get involved and you vote on that and Shining was our one. We didn't win anything, unfortunately, which we were a bit upset by. We worked really hard on it. But it's a really good thing when you get into midwinter and you're getting a bit tired, especially at Bird Island.

16:02Cerys Matthews:You just need something to do. So it's nice just to focus on that for a couple of days. So you're sharing this content with other nations who are also midwintering in Antarctica? Yes. So then you come up with your ideas. You've got 48 hours to make a film, which is really, really difficult, five minutes long. and then each I think they usually nominate a few bases to stick random things in there that you've got to put into the film which also makes it hard work but it's it's great it's a really good it's a really good tradition they've got going. Adam before we hear the messages I think you'd like to shout out to Sarah your girlfriend who's now back in Ireland to tell Sarah you miss her and love her very much that's a message from Adam to you Sarah thanks so much for joining us Adam.

16:44Cerys Matthews:Thank you very much. We're back to the four on Bird Island this winter here are your messages Happy midwinter to Jamie Latimer on Bird Island, South Georgia. Enjoy the celebration, small fans, Jim. We look forward to seeing you in 2027. Keep posting your fantastic pictures. Love from Mum, Dad, Ben and all in Plannacilty, West Cork. I hate sending love, support, warmth and cuddles from your East Yorkshire home. Enjoy your birthday in the snow for the first time ever. Who would have thought that little girl who loved Wilbur in The Rescuers would one day be living and researching albatrosses for a career?

17:26Shanti sends you a big wicker. I know Island Life is treating you well. Love all the photos and watercolours you keep sending me via WhatsApp. Take care. Love, Mum. Hey, Craig. It's Terry. It's Brian. It's Georgia. It's Tristan. We love and miss you. Hello, Craig, son. This is your dad. and I'm with your nan and Jackie. Hello, Craig. This is your nan. Hello, Craig. This is Jackie. Craig, we're just looking forward to you coming home. We'll have a nice pint. Hi, Craig. Miss you. All the best from Granddad. Hi, Craig. Lots of love. Thinking of you. Love, Mum. Hi, Craig. It's Aunty Denise. Love, I miss you loads.

18:03Can't wait to see you. Hi, Catherine. It's Mum. And Joanna here. Happy midwinter. Hope it's not too cold down there. We love seeing all the photos. We love you. sending big hugs hello catherine enjoy your midwinter celebration happy midwinter catherine me and puffin miss you so much and we love you we're so so proud of you keep doing this amazing thing you're doing don't stop sending those crazy pictures of the seals they are hilarious and amazing love you lots bye those messages for the four on bird island i'm caris matthews and This is the Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast, a special edition of the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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20:24Last year, we celebrated 70 years of these broadcasts, but the midwinter festivities go back even further than that. Archivists at the Royal Society in London have begun digitising photographs from the first Antarctic midwinter celebrations that were held during Robert Scott's Discovery Expedition between 1901 and 1904. Our editor, Richard Hollingham, went to visit Digital Resources Manager, Louisiane Furrier, deep in the Society's archives. We're looking at a volume of photographs taken by Reginald Skelton, who was on board of the first British Antarctic expedition and he was responsible for photographing the life of the expedition.

21:05Now, Antarctic winter, needless to say, is very long. And so the British Antarctic expedition, which is the first to overwinter on purpose, and I think this is a very big distinction to actually be made here. Rather than get stuck in Antarctica. Rather than get stuck. So they're prepared and as part of their preparation, they decide to celebrate midwinter. It's a way for them to break the very long months. And you can see that they've put in a lot of thoughts through those photographs. So we're looking at a set of six photographs. And these are from 1902, and these are the original black and white photographs?

21:38They are the original photographs that are developed by Skelton on his return from Antarctica. And he's tried to photograph everyone on board of the ship who is celebrating midwinter. Such a lavish celebration. Looking at the picture here, it's got Union Jacks hung from the ceiling of the ship. Decorations that look to be handmade. Is that a Merry Xmas there? So they're almost pretending that it's Christmas. Beer, a lot of beer. There's a lot of beer, actually. And what's so weird about the beer is it's the same brand as a beer today. It suddenly seems very modern, even though this is from 1902.

22:15No, exactly. they're trying to reproduce Christmas in the middle of what is their winter and so they pretend that it's Christmas and to boot they have gifts. So we have next to the photograph albums the volume by Scott of The Voyage of the Discovery and he describes how the preparations were put together, how they create all of those buntings, all of the decorations that we can see on the images and it includes a large box of presents provided by the kindly thought of Mrs. Royds, the mother of our first lieutenant. So this is from Scott's book of the expedition? Yes from his narration which is a really a bestseller so he prints that and it's really his first and account of what happens for the whole duration of the expedition and this is the entry for June 23rd.

23:00We kept our midwinter festival today as yesterday was Sunday and the ship has been enfaite. The mess deck was gaily decorated with designs in coloured papers and festooned with chains and ropes of the same material. The tables were loaded with plum puddings, mince pies and cakes, mostly of home manufacture, but nonetheless Christmassy in appearance. It seemed that there has been quite a rivalry amongst the messes with respect to the adornment and the results which have been achieved with little more than brightly coloured papers, a pair of scissors and a paste pot are really quite astonishing.

23:37On each table stands some grotesque figure, offensifle erection of ice, cunningly lighted up with candles from within and sending forth shafts of sparkling light. That's lovely. Quite a lovely celebration and just trying to light up the dark months. Now, we should say they are all men. They actually look in pretty good health. They all look pretty happy, you'd expect, in these pictures. But they were totally isolated. There was no radio. There was no means of communicating with the outside world when they were in Antarctica. That's absolutely right. So what we have on the other side of this volume is actually the few things that came out of Antarctica during the expedition.

24:20They're the reports that Scott sent to the Royal Society, which funded the expedition, and the Royal Geographical Society. And they're trying to convey what happens during the several months of the expedition. But a single report will cover three months at a time. That's the rhythm at which they're communicating with the outside world. They're completely isolated. and all of those photographs are a good way to know what was happening. We have diaries from several of the expedition members, especially Captain Cambridge, but we have very few sources to know what the daily life was like. And I think those photographs of them in Winton Celebration are a really fantastic way to just cast ourselves back to what they were trying to do, which was to break the routine of all of the scientific work that they had to also conduct on the expedition.

25:04What I love about them is they do look quite modern. They look more like snapshots. rather than pose shots. You see a lot of pose shots of Scott, for example, looking all heroic in the snow with a few dogs, maybe. But these could be taken on my phone. You know, they look like the sort of shots you might take at a birthday party or any celebration today, really. If your phone had a filter for slightly blurry. Which we can all do. Which we can all do. That's very true. And I think one of the things that you notice as well is that it's the few pictures that are taken inside the ship, in the mess, where you can actually see the men gathered.

25:38Most of the other photographs are either outdoor photographs where they're trying to capture the landscape that they're seeing, the flora, the fauna that they're encountering. But this is actually one of the few records where it's the daily life. And it is indeed the men that you don't see on the pictures as well. It's not Scott. It's not Shackleton only. It's all of the other men who are actually the heartbeat of the expedition. Do we know what they ate at that meal? Because we can see the table. We can see the spread. I can identify the beer and the brand is still around today. Do we know what they ate?

26:10We know what the officers ate. So we don't know if the men ate exactly the same, but we have a Scots on account. It says, at six, we had our dinner in the ward room with the table decorated and the display of all our plate, starting with turtle soup. We passed on to a generous helping of mutton, and from that to plum pudding, mince pies and jellies, all washed down with an excellent dry champagne. With a largely assorted dessert of crystallised fruits, almonds and raisins, nuts, etc. Came the port and liquors, which brought us into good form for the enthusiastic speeches that followed. I can quite imagine there was a lot of alcohol involved in that midwinter, looking at the spread on the table.

26:56Well, his conclusion is, with such a dinner, we agreed that life in the Antarctic regions was worse living. Louisiane Ferrier talking to Richard Hollingham in the Royal Society archives. Antarctic science is fascinating, but how important is it to the rest of the world to keep doing it through winter? A question we put to the director of the British Antarctic Survey, Professor Jane Francis. Understanding what's happening in Antarctica now is even more important, I think, because Antarctica is changing much faster than we ever thought. We always thought that this was a continent with a big block of ice on a big block of rock and that it really wasn't going to change much.

27:39But over the last few years, we have seen some changes in the Antarctic environment that has really surprised us all, particularly about the speed. what we can see is that the ocean around Antarctica is warming and that warmth in the ocean is affecting the ice shelves that fringe Antarctica and that warmth is melting the ice sheets actually from below. The problem is that those ice shelves that fringe Antarctica act as a buttress to the huge glaciers on land and they contain a huge amount of fresh water. And as those ice shells begin to break up, all this extra ice is flowing from land into the ocean, causing the sea level to rise.

28:28But also we can see that the sea ice around Antarctica is shrinking too. So Antarctica almost doubles in size every winter as the sea around Antarctica freezes and it forms a big white blanket that reflects the sunlight and keeps the ocean cold. And that is beginning to shrink. We also see these big plumes of heat that are coming across the Antarctic continent, like a very hot jet stream that's bringing incredible heat across the continent. And for a few days, the temperatures are rising by greater than about 30 degrees. So things are changing very rapidly in Antarctica. We can actually see this in our stations.

29:11The last time I was in Rothera Station, which is normally full of ice and is a very cold climate, it was actually raining because the temperature was about freezing. And now we're issuing people with Wellington boots because it's getting muddy and wet due to the rain in Antarctica. So things are changing very rapidly. Now we head further south, crossing the Antarctic Circle to the largest research station, Rothera, on Adelaide Island. and here are some messages for you. Message for George Sharp at Rothera. George, it's your dad wearing my jump leads. And I miss you loads and I haven't told anybody about your chocolate stash.