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RUDE AWAKENING by Andy Irvine (1991)

This British Celtic-folk musician has included two noteworthy songs about actual Antarctic events on his CD.  The title track, Rude Awakening, recounts the disappearance and deaths of Captain Aeneas MacIntosh and Victor Hayward in 1915 on the sea ice of McMurdo Sound.  They were part of the Ross Sea party of Shackleton's Endurance Expedition, responsible for laying supplies across the Ross Ice Shelf for the Endurance party following their planned trek across Antarctica.  According to the song liner notes: “With the comforts of the base hut nearly in view, a gale blew up and blew them out into the open sea on an ever diminishing piece of ice - with fatal consequences.”   Irvine sings, “Well the game was lost half way across/ A furious gale set the ice in motion/ And for this old pro it’s the end of the show/ And this is no way to go out on the ocean/ If you act in haste you’ll repent at leisure/ History will say he should have known better/ Outward bound on a final trip/ And I have a sinking feeling that I’m on a sinking ship.” The second Antarctic song is entitled Douglas Mawson, “whose epic and tragic Antarctic journey has been referred to as probably the greatest story of lone survival in Polar exploration.  A man of incredible determination and strength of character, he weighed 210 lbs. of muscle and bone at the outset of his journey which had become 112 lbs. of skin and bone on his return.” During the 1911-13 Australasian Antarctic Expedition, Mawson lost his two sledging companions, Belgrave Ninnis and Xavier Mertz, his dog teams, tent and most of his supplies while far from home base.  His return from near-death is a classic story of survival. As Irvine tells the tale, “the soles of my feet became detached/ Teeth, nails, muscles are all gone/ Down icy pits I fell through space/ ‘Til brought up by my harness trace/ Give up, there’s no point in going on/ Three weeks I staggered on across the ice/ Then a cairn of snow by sheer chance I struck/ A letter there told the tale of searching men that very day/ Even now, I can't believe my luck/ My pulse was racing as I saw the men/ My journey at an end, no more to do/ My skeleton was easily raised/ And gently on the sledge was laid/ My God, they cried, which one of them are you?”  Green Linnet Records, Inc. CLCD 1114; www.greenlinnet.com

 

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