The psychology of over-wintering

Christmas as an emotional and nutritional event

Given the social and environmental challenges that a polar winter presented especially to men from lower latitudes, a midwinter celebration assisted in their adaption to local circumstances. Christmas was anticipated by all, both as a festival of food and fun and as a psychological turning point in winter, when the official calendar of the expedition sanctioned a period of relaxation and fellowship, and everyone could look forward to the spring season. We suggest that this midwinter turning point provided some of the key emotional and nutritional resources that allowed men to cope with the stresses of an isolated and confined period of relative darkness. For example, after his first Christmas in the Arctic in 1829, John Ross wrote: ‘happy days have a moral value with us’ (Ross Reference Ross1835: 232). That Christmas provided a boost can also be seen on the Terra Nova expedition when Raymond Priestley and five colleagues spent the austral winter of 1912 confined to a tiny ice cave. Their midwinter meal was pathetic compared to the feast of the previous year, yet the biscuits, chocolate, sugar, and cigars shared out, and the sing-song, gave the men a significant boost and, as Priestley put it, ‘the glow it left behind lasted. . .for a week or more’ (PriestleyReference Priestley1915: 310).

By all accounts, Christmas was an emotional event on naval expeditions, a time set apart that was characterised by sentimental thoughts of home and elaborate camaraderie between officers and men (Harper Reference Harper1983). Belcher justified including accounts of Christmas in his official narrative by pointing out that because they have so little sun, Arctic explorers should be allowed ‘all the brightness that warm hearts and innocent amusements can afford’. Sailors keep, Belcher argued, ‘their feelings deep as the element they swim on, and no disguise’ (1855, I: 193). This suggests that men on polar discovery service possessed a store of emotional capital that required careful management during Christmas time.

This management was mostly self-generated as men drew on past experiences to recreate a festive atmosphere at a distance from home. For an officer on Assistance in the Arctic the celebration of Christmas conjured up visions of a special Christmas dinner, a Yule-log of hospitality, nostalgia for Christmases past, laughter and socialising, and the telling of ‘jolly stories about ghosts and robbers’ around the fireside (Anon. 1852: 142–143). In terms of the history of Christmas celebrations, then, Christmases during nineteenth-century polar expeditions occurred at a time when distinctive iconography and visualisations based around familial bonds became dominant in Britain (Armstrong Reference Armstrong2010). The key difference between Christmas at home and Christmas at the poles was that the latter took place in a homosocial environment. While positive emotions and gift-giving were typical components of Christmases at home, in the Arctic the cultivation of positive emotions were important from a leadership perspective because they could increase morale and camaraderie among men of different ages and backgrounds. As men on polar service were detached from their homes, families, and social networks, there was a necessity to simulate familial and heterosocial situations (Johnson and Suedfeld Reference Johnson and Suedfeld1996).

Christmas dinner in the Arctic

Looking back at accounts of Christmas celebrations, the diaries of explorers are full of details about the food and drink served on Christmas Eve (for Scandinavians) and Christmas Day (for Americans and British), focusing especially on the quality of the meat dishes and sweet desserts. Poems and elaborate menus would be composed to celebrate these foods that were seen, by British explorers, as authentic pieces of ‘Old England’. Indeed, Robert McClure suggested that sailors have 52 Sundays ‘“one just like another – and only one festival, Christmas, when Jack must have roast beef and plum pudding”’ (quoted in Miertsching Reference Miertsching and Neatby1967: 14). Given the polar environmental conditions, with limited hunting capabilities or opportunities, it is no surprise that food was always on men's minds. At Christmas time food served as emotional and nutritional sustenance: the special foods of Christmas were particularly desired because of their relational connection to home, but they were also important sources of vitamins and calories during a time of limited mobility and fresh food. This finding is demonstrated by looking closely at the details and rituals of the Christmas celebration.

On the large British Arctic expeditions of the nineteenth century divine service was given on the morning of Christmas Day. Most expeditions did not take a clergyman with them and so the commanding officer led prayers and read a sermon, typically praising the crew for their fortitude thus far and encouraging them to new exertions the following year. Although an agnostic, Scott read divine service on Sundays during his Antarctic expeditions, as was routine on naval vessels.

As officers and men dined separately during the period under review, a ritual then followed in which the men would invite the officers to inspect their messes below deck. This was an opportunity for the crew to display the decorations, banners, and chandeliers they had made for the festive event. For example, Albert Hastings Markham and the other officers on Alert at Christmas 1875 were led by a drum and fife band below deck to the tune of ‘Roast beef of old England’ where they saw the men's quarters ‘tastefully decorated with flags, coloured tinsel paper, and artificial flowers’ (Markham Reference Markham1880: 195). Some years earlier, Leopold Francis McClintock commended his crew for their tables laid out ‘like the counters in a confectioner's shop, with apple and gooseberry tarts, plum and sponge-cakes in pyramids, beside various other unknown puffs, cakes, and loaves of all shapes and sizes’ (McClintock Reference McClintock1859: 80).

Following this presentation, the commanding officer on naval expeditions would then make a point of commending the men on their sobriety and good fellowship, before departing for his own dinner with the officers (under a guarantee of discipline). Edward Belcher, a figure disliked by both men and officers, recorded his sense of loneliness and discomfort during these social situations. Indeed, he was perceptive enough to realise that after leaving his crew to celebrate their Christmas dinner of 1852 he was ‘possibly not missed’ (Belcher Reference Belcher1855, I: 192). The Moravian missionary Johann Miertsching, locked himself away on Christmas Day because of the drunken antics of the sailors onboard Investigator in 1850 (Miertsching Reference Miertsching and Neatby1967).

Officers on large British naval Arctic expeditions usually dined in the gun-room around 3pm, while the crew dined in the lower deck at mess tables around midday. For officers and crew, the pattern of dining was generally similar, with speeches preceding, and toasts accompanying, the meal, followed by anthems, songs, and dancing. Christmas dinner was usually made up of preserved vegetables, beef that had been kept frozen in the rigging, and local game, if any were available (typically musk-ox, polar bear, or caribou). Plum-puddings and mince-pies were also essential components of the traditional English Christmas at the time and the inclusion of these foods in the polar Christmas celebration acted, in the words of one officer, as ‘powerful stimulants to memory’ (Anon. 1852: 137), reminders that the men were connected through special food to their loved ones back home.

Other menus could be extensive and salacious, to be recalled with longing in times of need, when emotional capital needed topping up. For Christmas 1881 the men of Adolphus Greely's Lady Franklin Bay expedition enjoyed a feast of mock-turtle soup, salmon, fricasseed guillemot, spiced musk-ox tongue, crab-salad, roast beef, eider-ducks, tenderloins of musk-ox, potatoes, asparagus, green corn, green peas, cocoanut-pie, jelly-cake, plum-pudding with wine-sauce, several kinds of ice-cream, grapes, cherries, pineapples, dates, figs, nuts, candies, coffee, chocolate. Eggnog was served to the crew in moderate quantities, and an extra allowance of rum was given. Cigars were also issued from an ‘army lady who knew the weakness of the rank and file for the consoling weed’ (Greely Reference Greely1886, I: 175). The power of these feasts was that they endured in the memory long after the plates were cleared, encouraging men to make poor rations more palatable by drawing on a past of plenty.

We suggest that Fridtjof Nansen's journals contain some of the most delicious descriptions of polar Christmas dinners ever written. On Christmas Eve 1893, onboard Fram in the Arctic Ocean, Nansen listed a menu which included oxtail soup, fish-pudding with potatoes and butter, roast reindeer, French beans, cranberry jam, cloudberries with cream, cake and marzipan. Coffee, dried fruits, and a selection of cakes followed. Reading Elisha Kent Kane's account of scurvy, snow-blindness, and other polar miseries the next day, Nansen confessed to feeling ‘almost ashamed of the life we lead, with none of those darkly painted sufferings of the long winter night which are indispensable to a properly exciting Arctic expedition’ (Nansen Reference Nansen1897, I: 313).

Solid, well-stocked, and comfortable, Nansen's Fram symbolised a new way of doing things in the polar winter. With everyone dining together in the saloon, and all food eaten in common, a democratic spirit pervaded which placed Nansen's style of exploration in contrast with the larger, and more hierarchical, expeditions of the past. Christmas food therefore appealed to more than just appetites: this special dinner mobilised camaraderie, patriotism and national feeling, releasing positive emotional forces among the crew at a time when all looked forward to the end of winter. We might compare such scenes with Christmases spent in outer space. On the International Space Station, for instance, crew usually get Christmas Day off (and/or other days depending on the Russian Orthodox Julian calendar) when they can enjoy freeze-dried traditional Christmas foods and, as of 2015, make freshly brewed coffee from the Lavazza ‘ISSpresso’ machine.

Nansen's sense of guilt touches on the pervasive link in Victorian culture between the idea of a bountiful Christmas feast and the awareness of ongoing starvation and want. Scrooge's vision of plenty in Charles Dickens's A Christmas carol (1843) (‘turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings’), so central to our current idealisation of Christmas, was conjured up in the context of hunger and fear of famine (Dickens Reference Dickens1858: 47; Moore Reference Moore2008).

This bipolar situation held true on polar expeditions also. The Arctic naval commander Richard Collinson noted it was no surprise that there was such anticipation for Christmas food, since the Arctic climate seemed to demand ‘nearly double even that good allowance of animal food he is accustomed to at home’ (Collinson Reference Collinson1889: 396). Indeed, while any deviation from daily rations was welcomed, expeditioners especially craved fresh meat during winter. This need is not surprising if we survey examples of daily rations on some Arctic expeditions (see Appendix). These examples show how expedition members during the early period were typically issued with under one pound of meat per day, much of it salted. By the late 1870s it was considered essential for men to have at least two pounds of meat daily, of which some should be fresh preserved meat (Anon. 1877). Although later expeditions such as the Greely expedition (1881–1884) greatly increased daily provisions, scurvy was an ever-present danger and starvation was a distinct possibility in times of hardship because of a mismatch between energy expenditure and calorie intake. Indeed Raymond Priestly, a member of Scott's Terra Nova expedition, noted: ‘It is not the winter cold but malnutrition and starvation that are the greatest enemies of explorers’ (Anthony Reference Anthony2012: 44). In contrast to the Arctic naval expeditions of the nineteenth century, which typically numbered scores of men, Antarctic expeditions of the early twentieth century generally had no more than thirty members on shore, and so the onset of scurvy in just a few men could put the whole expedition in jeopardy.

The lack of appropriate food at Christmas time could cause hungry crews to fantasise about feasts and delicacies. Pemmican was generally disliked on travelling parties for being bland and monotonous. Belcher reported that those who refused to take it were only induced to do so by large amounts of onion powder and cayenne pepper (Belcher Reference Belcher1855, II: 287). Living off pemmican, George Back's exploring group cheated themselves ‘into as much mirth at the fancied sayings and doings of our friends at home, as if we had partaken of the roast beef and plum pudding’ (Back Reference Back1836: 219). Kane's expedition also engaged in a culinary fantasy at Christmas time in 1854:

Double rations on Christmas Day, along with whatever special rations were issued, offered some much-needed nutritional variety for men and officers, accustomed to preserved meats. For instance, the men of John Ross's Victory expedition (1829–1833) were issued with extra rations on Christmas Day 1830 of four pounds of ox-cheek soup, three and a half pounds of flour, one pound of raisins, six pounds of carrots, and a glass of grog (Huish Reference Huish1835). For their Christmas preparations in 1875, the men of Alert were given a free hand in the pantry to make puddings from the ships’ stores of flour, raisins, sugar, and preserved fruits (Markham Reference Markham1880). The novelty of the Christmas meal for most crew would have been the addition of dried fruits to their diet. This, along with an allowance of fresh meat instead of salted meat, was recognised by several expedition members from the mid-nineteenth century as being crucial in the prevention of scurvy (for example Anon. 1854).

In most British narratives, plum-pudding emerges as a particular favourite among officers and men, both for its taste and for its extra-culinary meaning. By the early nineteenth century plum-pudding had become central to the idea of the English Christmas. Indeed, plum-puddings were sometimes issued to naval and military personnel on discovery and military service, as during the Christmas of 1855 when they were sent to the front during the Crimean War. ‘In fine we cannot but feel that reinforcements such as these’, wrote Punch ‘will materially strengthen our chances of success, and while improving more than anything the condition of our troops, will certainly enable them to carry on the war to the knife – and fork’ (Anon. 1855: 27). Other culinary morale-boosters could be even more extravagant: Collinson presented Captain Henry Kellett of Resolute with a complete preserved Christmas dinner from the exclusive London department store Fortnum and Mason (Collinson Reference Collinson1889). Again, the link between nutritional surplus and the reinforcement of emotional capital is clear from the sources.

Christmas dinner in Antarctica

The Belgica expedition (Belgian Antarctic expedition, 1897–1899), led by Adrien de Gerlache was the first to over-winter in Antarctica, and therefore it was also the first to hint at the psychological problems which life on the white continent could cause. Imprisoned in the ice of the Bellinghausen Sea for almost a year, the crew of Belgica struggled with a monotonous diet of flavourless canned food (‘embalmed beef’) which led to what the ship's surgeon, Frederick A. Cook, termed ‘polar anaemia’ (Cook Reference Cook1900: 232, 303; Guly Reference Guly2012). During the dark months of the Antarctic midwinter (May–July) the crew began experiencing gloomy thoughts, paranoia, and even heard uncanny screams that Roald Amundsen, first mate on the expedition, could not explain (Amundsen Reference Amundsen and Kløver2009). In this context, the Christmas celebrations in 1898 were described as ‘sterile’: ‘At home’, Cook wrote, ‘there may be snow and wind, but there is at hand the companionship of warm friends, the cheer of a bright fire, the charm of flowers and pretty things; but what have we in place of this accustomed holiday gayety?’ (Cook Reference Cook1900: 385). Cook gave a particularly bleak description of a depressing Christmas dinner during which the crew had to force enthusiasm and ‘the doubt of our future was pictured on every face’ (Cook Reference Cook1900: 386) (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

‘The midsummer Christmas dinner’ (Cook Reference Cook1899–1900: 13)

Many explorers drew lessons from the Belgica experience, in which boredom, monotony, and scurvy caused significant mental and physical strains among the crew. In the planning of subsequent expeditions, considerable time and effort was expended on planning rations and devising new combinations of food that would provide enough energy for men sledging and working in extremely cold conditions. Later expeditions also invented the tradition of midwinter's day celebrations to improve morale and emotional outlook.

Unlike Arctic expeditions, in Antarctica Christmas Day fell during the sledging season and so recreating the rituals and meals of the festival in tents was extremely challenging. In the absence of significant food stores, the Christmas meal was usually only extra rations with some small symbolic additions that had been carefully saved up. To take one example, careful nutritional planning was a major element in the progress of Scott's Discovery expedition (1901–1904), but just two months into his dash for the South Pole with Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson, signs of scurvy were already evident. Therefore it is no surprise that the polar party looked forward to the double rations of Christmas Day 1902 with ‘childish delight’ (Scott Reference Scott1907, II: 46). The increased isolation, discomfort, and malnutrition experienced by man-haulers meant that extra Christmas rations represented a ‘delightful break in the otherwise uninterrupted spell of semi-starvation’ for Scott and his men, and they feasted on pemmican, biscuit, seal-liver, boiling cocoa, and large spoonfuls of jam which ‘left a sense of comfort which we had not experienced for weeks’ (Scott Reference Scott1907, II: 47).

While Scott, Shackleton, and Wilson slept well that night (‘with no dreams, no tightening of the belt’, the party were forced to turn back on 30 December due to weakness associated with scurvy. Shackleton's gesture, however, stands out as one of the most touching incidents in polar history and an example of how the particular Christmas tradition of plum-pudding could mean so much to explorers in the field, both in nutritional and psychological-emotional terms.

Christmas was much easier to celebrate onboard the expedition ship. For his South Pole expedition (1910–1912), Amundsen mentioned how many games, musical instruments, and other objects of interest he brought onboard Fram, the same ship that had provided Nansen's North Pole expedition crew with a snug home for some three years. Before leaving Norway, Fram took on around 500 Christmas presents from loved ones and well-wishers, a sign that for Amundsen and his colleagues Christmas was a very important festive occasion. In Norway it was traditional for Christmas dinner to take place on Christmas Eve, and the cook on the Fram, Adolf Lindström, baked piles of cakes and special breads in preparation for Christmas.

On Christmas Eve 1910, Fram was a few weeks from reaching Antarctica and Amundsen took advantage of calm waters by cutting the engine and ordering the ship to be cleaned, washed, and decorated. ‘Our cosy cabins had a fairy like appearance in the subdued light of the many-coloured lamps, and we were all in the Christmas humour at once’ (Amundsen Reference Amundsen and Chater1912, I: 159–60). Amundsen assembled the crew and they sang ‘Glade Jul’ around a table which ‘groaned beneath Lindström's masterpieces in the culinary art’.

As we know from the polar diaries of British and American explorers, emotions always bubbled under the surface on these festive occasions, as the men were given an opportunity to express their melancholy. The singing of sentimental songs was an important venting emotional activity for polar explorers, activating their sense of attachment to their friends and families back home. Amundsen describes how

Gift-giving was another ritual which expressed a binding connection between the explorers and the national community back home. From his northwest passage expedition of 1903–1906, Amundsen knew well the value of Christmas presents in promoting social bonds and he acknowledged gifts sent by groups like the ‘Ladies’ Committees in Horten and Fredrikstad, and the telephone employeés of Christiania’ (Amundsen Reference Amundsen and Chater1912, I: 161). The celebration of Christmas usually involved managing the balance between gaiety and melancholy, but Amundsen's description of a festive dinner onboard Fram, followed by a mighty tower cake and coffee, suggest that for the Norwegians Christmas 1910 was a time of plenty and merry fellowship.

Christmas Eve 1911 was a very different event for the Norwegians, as Amundsen and his four colleagues, fresh from the conquest of the South Pole ahead of Scott's party, made their way back to their Framheim base. In contrast to the previous year, preparations for Christmas Eve were extremely limited, and for their meal the Norwegians made a bag of pulverised biscuit, served with a sausage of dried milk, and a dish of porridge: ‘I doubt whether anyone at home enjoyed his Christmas dinner so much as we did that morning in the tent. One of Bjaaland's cigars to follow brought a festival spirit over the whole camp’ (Amundsen Reference Amundsen and Chater1912, I: 140–141).

Unaware that Amundsen's party had beaten them to the South Pole, Scott and his party enjoyed a Christmas feast in 1911, having a four course meal of pemmican with slices of horse meat, flavoured with onion and curry powder, arrowroot, cocoa and sweetened biscuit hoosh, plum-pudding, cocoa and raisins, and a dessert of caramels and ginger. ‘After the feast’, Scott wrote, ‘it was difficult to move. Wilson and I couldn't finish our share of plum-pudding. We have all slept splendidly and feel thoroughly warm – such is the effect of full feeding’ (Scott Reference Scott1914, I: 521). Just over three months later, the dejected surviving party of Scott, Henry Bowers, and Edward Wilson died in a tent just 18 kilometres short of the food cache at One Ton Depot.

Alcohol

Alcohol-related indiscipline could be a problem during Christmas, although commanders going all the way back to Jens Munk (who over-wintered at the mouth of the Churchill River in 1619) were eager to report good behaviour despite an increased drink allowance (Gosch Reference Gosch1897, II). As Christmas was a time when men looked forward to extra grog, medical officers were instructed to keep an eye out for any concealment of limping or other scorbutic symptoms, as those afflicted with scurvy were forbidden from drinking alcohol and issued with lime juice and extra pickles instead (Back Reference Back1838).

Tensions between officers and men could become serious during winter, particularly if the commander insisted on combating scurvy through exercise and abstinence. Christmas dinner could easily become a scene of discord if the crew felt they were not being treated fairly, as on Christmas Day 1833 when the men of Ross's Victory expedition (sponsored by the gin magnate Felix Booth) had to make do with lime juice to drink. Although Ross recorded in his journal that ‘there was nothing to drink but snow water’ (Ross Reference Ross1835: 687), a critical expedition member later revealed that this situation referred

Shipboard brewing was a constant, if unauthorised, practice, and Kane (Reference Kane1854) noted how his fellows made a beer fermented from raisins, dried peaches, barley, and sugar. In order to ‘keep the people quiet and sober’ (Lyon Reference Lyon1824: 97) farces and a phantasmagoria were shown on Christmas Eve 1821 on Parry's second northwest passage expedition, but the abnormal consumption of alcoholic drinks on Christmas Day could leave commanders and crew feeling worse for wear on the following day. Although Parry's men were sent on a run and then ‘danced sober’ on Boxing Day in 1821, in 1822 he noted that Christmas Day did not pass ‘without producing some injurious effects upon the health of the men, several serious cases of disordered bowels occurring immediately afterwards, in spite of every precaution’ (Parry Reference Parry1824: 385). On Investigator for Christmas 1851 Johann Miertsching was appalled to witness a ‘festival of gluttony and wine-bibbing’, noting that even Captain Robert McClure ‘took part in the sports of this boisterous crew’ (MiertschingReference Miertsching and Neatby1967: 157). Incidents of alcohol-related indiscipline were less likely to occur on the smaller Antarctic expeditions made up of picked men and scientists, all under close scrutiny from their colleagues.

Thoughts of home

Christmas was one of several festivals during the expedition calendar in which men were expected to tidy up, wash, shave, and present themselves well. It was also a period in which expression of emotions and sentiment were considered normative, although Nansen believed that the excessive joking and laughing he observed disguised people's innermost thoughts (Nansen Reference Nansen1897, I: 302–303).

Once they had feasted on Christmas dinner, officers and men on polar expeditions raised their glasses in toasts to the head of state, followed by assorted VIPs (many commanders involved in the Franklin searches made a point of drinking to the health of Sophia Cracroft and Jane Franklin), and then to wives and sweethearts. It was at this point that the crew and officers could become emotional in a social environment that permitted maudlin and loving reflections.

Festive songs like ‘An Arctic Christmas song’, written in 1850 by George F. McDougall, second master on Resolute, expressed a relational network connecting Britain and the Arctic. Indeed our survey of accounts of polar Christmases shows that thinking of loving thoughts ‘flying’ back and forth between the Arctic and home was a typical metaphor on Christmas Day (for example Sverdrup 1904, I). It was clear that by the time of the Franklin searches in the late 1840s and 1850s, the power of the emotional forces unleashed at Christmas time came from a realisation that the relationship between the men in the Arctic and their loved ones back home was never one-way, especially during the festive period (for example Anon. 1852). Men on Arctic and Antarctic expeditions knew that their travels received widespread coverage in the press, but they also knew that loved ones were thinking of them, and especially so at Christmas time (Liverpool Mercury 26 December 1881). For McClintock the purpose of the special food of Christmas was to support ‘the delusion which all seemed desirous of imposing upon themselves – that they were in a land of plenty – in fact, all but at home!’ (McClintock Reference McClintock1859: 217).

Literate officers were quite capable of describing their emotional states and Christmas melancholy in their diaries and journals. McDougall on Resolute in search of John Franklin pitied those who could not imagine

Some officers sought solitude amid the Christmas revelry, like Belcher, who retired to his cabin in the early hours after Christmas Day ‘to dream of home’ (Belcher Reference Belcher1855, I: 193). On Christmas Eve 1903 at Gjoa Haven during his northwest passage expedition, Amundsen wandered around the ship to take in the Aurora Borealis, recording how

These feelings of homesickness could become a source of stress if an expedition over-wintered a second time. Belcher noted how the novelty of Christmas on the ice had worn off for his crew by their second winter: where men became happy through the happiness of others, ‘now, many feel the disappointment of being hemmed in here’ (Belcher Reference Belcher1855, II: 80). After their fourth Christmas in the Arctic the men on Ross's Victory expedition turned to their imaginations to ‘[carry] them to their homes and friends, and to those who were dear to them in their native land’ (Huish Reference Huish1835: 606). Elisha Kent Kane described how his crew drank to absent friends with ‘ferocious zest’, but

Songs, games, and merry-making

Dancing, drinking, and singing were central components of Euro-American Christmas celebrations among naval, whaling, and fur trading expeditions in the Arctic during the nineteenth century. John Franklin's celebration of Christmas at Great Bear Lake in 1825 was notable for its grouping together of voyageurs, Englishmen, Scots, Inuit, Chipewyans, Dog-rib, Cree, and Hare Indians who ‘mingled together in perfect harmony. The amusements were varied by English, Gaelic, and French songs’ (Franklin 1828: 66–67).

Just as shipboard publications and theatrical entertainments harnessed the creative energies of the crew, composition and communal sing-songs helped men to relax and cope with stress on long expeditions (Fig. 3). ‘The poets amongst the men’, noted one expedition member, ‘composed songs, in which their own hardships were made the subject of many a hearty laugh’ (McClure 1857: 265). Usually fiddles and Jew's harps were readily available on ships, but during the festive season sailors could make music from anything: Greely records how the night watch on Christmas Day was enlivened by a concert from ‘a well-managed calthumpian [sic] band, in which the tinware of the expedition played an important part’ (Greely Reference Greely1886, I: 177). This theme of coping with the winter blues through communal music can be seen in a poem composed by the expedition chaplain, William Pullen, which was placed in front of each officer of Alert on Christmas Day in 1875

Fig. 3.

‘Musical entertainment in the saloon’ (Nansen Reference Nansen1897, II: facing 30)

Aside from music and song, excessive noise-making was also an important part of traditional Euro-American Christmases in the nineteenth century (Davis Reference Davis1982). On large naval Arctic expeditions, festive rituals of noise-making operated as forms of social bonding between crew and commander at a time when tensions could potentially arise. McClintock knew that midnight had passed on New Year's Eve when a small band (two flutes and an accordion) struck up a tune at his door.

Naval personnel on discovery service replicated traditions from home as much as possible. On 5 November Guy Fawkes night ceremonies were upheld by British crews in the Arctic, with the burning of an effigy an opportunity for music and boisterous celebration. Officers observing this tradition were aware of its ritualistic content, and therefore pondered how it might appear to an indigenous observer, not used to so-called ‘uncivilised’ English behaviour (Nares, Reference Nares1878, I: 190; McDougall Reference McDougall1857: 156). During the English Christmas, the election of saturnalian fellows like the Lord of Misrule and the Boy Bishop inverted the master-servant relationship, and things were no different during a polar Christmas when social intercourse between officers and men was generally more unrestricted than usual. A diary record from one of Parry's officers notes how the commander was disturbed on Christmas Day by the two Boatswain's Mates, with powdered heads and brooms, who

Parry's programme of winter activities was designed to promote harmony and health on a ship that had gone from being a place of work to a place of habitation. It is significant therefore that the theatrical entertainments he patronised were allowed to become occasions when the crew laughed at and made jokes at the expense of the officers. Parry himself took the lead by attending a masquerade onboard Fury in November 1824 disguised as a one-legged Chelsea pensioner fiddler. Halse, purser of Hecla, appeared at his side as his spouse ‘Sukey’, playing a tambourine, while Captain Hoppner came as ‘a lady of rank, elegantly and fashionably dressed’ and Crozier as ‘a black footman in rich livery’ (Swithinbank and Raverner 1964: 18). Customs of symbolic inversion at Christmas had the potential to ease tensions between officers and men and promote communal camaraderie, although such boisterous ceremonies were not always welcomed.

At midnight on Christmas Eve 1852, Edward Belcher was disturbed at his cabin door by a festive deputation who sang him a ‘Christmas Ode’:

The charivari-like rituals continued on Christmas Day when Belcher was, reluctantly, borne over the ice to a neighbouring ship by a pageant of the ‘State Sledge, driven by the Queen's coachman, in full uniform (beadle of the parish)’. Although not to his taste, Belcher ‘knew too well the chords of Jack's humours to fail in the gratification’ and so played along until he boarded the Assistance when, ‘in less time than Harlequin's wand could effect it’, he changed into his ‘proper self’ and inspected the crew's preparations for Christmas dinner (Belcher Reference Belcher1855, I: 190–191). Belcher was clearly uncomfortable on entering what we might call the ‘play space’ of the ship and he shut down the social drama being enacted at the earliest opportunity. Examples like these demonstrate how Christmas could expose antagonistic meanings and interpretations among individuals depending on their social identities and position in the hierarchy of the ship.

Special balls and dances were also held during the Christmas festival, sometimes with a significant amount of logistical and physical investment. In ‘Christmas in the frozen regions’ (1850) McCormick looked back to the Christmas festivities of 1841 when the expedition ships Erebus and Terror crossed the Antarctic Circle. The ships were anchored to a massive ice-floe where a ‘crystal ball-room’ was carved out of the ice to celebrate New Year's Eve. McCormick described how this dance space (known as the ‘Antarctic Hotel’) was entered by a crystal staircase and featured two elevated ice-chairs for Captain James Clark Ross (Erebus) and Captain Francis Crozier (Terror). A refreshment room and table was carved out of the ice to serve drinks, or ‘Antarctic ices’, to the crews. The ringing of 16 bells at midnight (8 for the Old Year and 8 for the New Year) broke the ‘deathlike silence of the solitude reigned around’, and the dancing and revelry of the men lasted long into the night. While some threw snow-balls at each other and blew horns, others ‘full of rude mirth, seizing the pigs in the sty by the ears, pinched them until the hapless grunters united their cries in concert with the horns’ (McCormick Reference McCormick1850: 254). Near the gangway of Terror a female figure in a sitting posture named ‘Haidee’ was created out of snow, her head ornamented with a profusion of ringlets, while near Erebus the bust of a male figure was formed.

Christmas celebrations were equally boisterous elsewhere. During Christmas 1881, the men of the Greely expedition, many of whom had actually served on the American frontier, gave a representation of an Indian council and ‘war dance’. Another crew-member dressed as an ‘Eskimo belle’, a double inversion ‘which afforded amusement for the party, but particularly so to the Eskimo’ (Greely Reference Greely1886, I: 175–176). For Christmas 1854, Kane's crew performed ‘The “Blue Devils”’, a very popular comedy featuring a 6-foot Irishman playing ‘Annette’, ‘and I might defy human being to hear her, while balanced on the heel of her boot, exclaim, in rich masculine brogue, “Och, feather!” without roaring’ (Kane Reference Kane1854: 269).

Cross-dressing was a typical practice during the festive season on polar expeditions, although the extremely cold temperatures on the ice, or even below deck, meant that dressing as a woman was ‘no joke in petticoats’ (McDougall Reference McDougall1857: 162). By the mid-nineteenth century, harlequinades and pantomimes were established features of the Christmas festivities in England, providing a safe expression of discontent or protest (Connelly Reference Connelly1999: 59–60). Just as in metropolitan theatres, cross-dressing on polar discovery service could provoke hilarity among the crew, but the practice generally enacted a symbolic drama.

For instance, on New Year's Eve in 1899 the men of Otto Sverdrup's Arctic expedition were entertained by a colleague dressed as an old woman, representing the old year:

Tableaux vivants were another popular form of entertainment, and the men of Jeanette satirised their fondness for alcohol during their New Years Day performance in 1880: ‘“Sailors mourning over a dead marine” (two sailors mute with grief over an empty brandy-bottle). . .“Taking an observation” (man drinking out of uplifted bottle)’ (De Long 1884, I: 208).

Dancing was a typical practice among the crew during polar Christmases, with quadrilles, waltzes, and country dances performed below deck or on the ice long into the night. Alert, for example, had a piano which fed the men's insatiable desire to dance: ‘So long as he can obtain music and a partner to dance with, without regard to sex, he will continue to fling his legs about with great vigour until compelled by heat and exhaustion to desist!’ (Markham Reference Markham1880: 194). Aldrich, the piano player, was hounded for his abilities and was unable to get a moments rest all night. Onboard Terra Nova in Antarctica in 1910 Apsley Cherry-Garrard noted that everyone had to contribute a song or two on Christmas Day with Herbert Ponting's banjo songs and Lawrence Titus Oates's ‘The Vly on the Tu-urmuts’ proving popular (Cherry-Garrard Reference Cherry–Garrard1922, I: 76).

Commanders generally enforced an exercise regime among crew and officers during the winter, but for Christmas special outdoor games were played. In 1852 the crew of Enterprise in the Arctic made a billiard table on blocks of snow, complete with cushions and wooden balls, while the crew of Assistance played skittles during the Christmas festivities of 1853 (Collinson Reference Collinson1889: 249; Belcher Reference Belcher1855, II: 84). Some years earlier, George Back found it difficult to deal with his men's ‘perverseness and sluggishness’ on Boxing Day and finally forced the crew and officers to play football on the ice (Back Reference Back1838: 172).

Although no longer popular today, snap-dragon was a traditional English Christmas game played indoors on polar expeditions (Franklin 1828; Anon. 1852). The game was played by heating some brandy in a dish with raisins; when the spirit was set alight, the contestants would compete to pluck out raisins and eat them as quickly as they could without getting burnt. Prohibitions against card-playing and gambling on the large British naval expeditions were also relaxed during the Christmas celebrations.

Presents and gift-giving

By the time of the British Arctic expedition (1875–1876), crew members had begun to receive ‘Christmas boxes’ from well-wishers and loved ones containing knick-knacks and sometimes ‘amusing little articles suitable either for decorating a table of a Christmas-tree’. Another act of kindness much appreciated by both officers and men were the letters sent by a young lady, a relative of one of the officers, to each individual on board, ‘containing a beautiful Christmas card. To make it appear as if they had been actually delivered through the post, a second-hand postage stamp had been affixed to each envelope’ (Markham Reference Markham1880: 194).

A notable feature of the smaller and more selective polar expeditions in the mid to late nineteenth century was gift-giving among the men. Kane was given gifts by the men under his command and he in return ‘prescribed from the medical stores two bottles of Cognac to protect the mess from indigestion’ (Kane Reference Kane1854: 270). When Greely distributed some gifts among his crew he noted how some of the men ‘who had lived lives marked by neglect and indifference on the part of the world, were touched even to tears, although they strove man-like to conceal them’ (Greely Reference Greely1886, I: 174). For Amundsen's Christmas Eve in the Arctic in 1903, the distribution of presents was ‘undoubtedly the most important function of the evening’ (Amundsen Reference Amundsen1908, I: 128). On the smaller Norwegian Arctic expeditions and the Antarctic expeditions, men typically exchanged gifts of children's toys and novelty items. On Sverdrup's expedition things like drums, trumpets, sneezing-powder, and scratching-powder were exchanged ‘for men who felt like children!’ (Sverdrup 1904, I: 82). Gift-giving reinforced friendships and perhaps repaired tense relationships, but the sources indicate that they were fundamentally all about fun.

For example, on Amundsen's northwest passage expedition a trick was played on the cook, Lindström, who always seemed to receive useless watch-stands as Christmas gifts:

The exchange of gifts created a new mood of fun and hilarity, revealing a ludic space in place of a work space. On the Terra Nova expedition in Antarctica Titus Oates received three presents of a sponge, whistle, and pop-gun:

These kinds of examples demonstrate that moods like cheerfulness were not simply background noise, but were part of a broader and essential requirement for emotional intelligence in a polar context, for a willingness to share and elicit positive or negative feelings in a supportive social environment.

One idea for future research would be to look at the general decrease in personnel numbers on polar expeditions, the increase in scientific experts attached to expeditions, and what effects this had on interpersonal relations and emotional intelligence. We speculate that on the larger British Arctic expeditions, sometimes made up of two ships, sustainable subgroups of friends could develop based on shared service (for example Royal Marines, officers, ice-masters) or identity. Rivalries might have been structured in a manner conducive to raising morale like, for instance, the competition between sledging parties or table decorators during Christmas. On Arctic ships under naval discipline there was constant work to do and leisure time was regulated. This meant that social isolation was simply not possible for most crew members and there was less chance for people to be ‘alone together’. By contrast, on Antarctic expeditions there were smaller social networks to engage with and therefore more interpersonal skills needed to manage interacting constantly with the same few colleagues during a long winter. A comment by Cook on the depressing consequences of having a small number of people on the Belgica expedition supports this hypothesis (Cook Reference Cook1900: 385).