Aurora and the Otago Museum: the boundary between Antarctic science and seamanship

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition famously did not succeed in traversing the Antarctic continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. It was, nevertheless, an enterprise that engaged the interest of New Zealanders and the rest of the British Empire even as World War I was being fought. When one of the expedition ships, Aurora, broke from her moorings soon after arrival in McMurdo Sound and drifted trapped in pack ice for months, the construction of a temporary jury rudder while still at sea enabled her crew to make their way to Port Chalmers, Dunedin for more extensive repairs in 1916. This paper discusses interactions between the Otago Museum staff and the crew of Aurora while she was in port, the offer of the replaced jury rudder to the museum, and reflects on the concerns and interests that might have contributed to the offer and its rejection.

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