More Southern Scholarly Pursuits at Sea

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As we gazed out at the early morning sky, a ribbon of white had settled on the horizon, separating the dark sea from the low hanging grayish clouds above. The ceiling was quite low and consistent as it stretched both north and south. I enjoyed my Southwestern Omelet, with added sausage and hashed brown patties, while Sharon had, you guessed it, the American breakfast. There were four lectures scheduled for today, two more historic reviews of characters that participated in the Great Age of Discovery in Antarctica, one on waste management at the American stations in Antarctica, and one on birds (terns to be specific).





The first lecture was Wilson on Wilson, Dr. David Wilson talking about his explorer great uncle Dr. Edward Wilson. Edward Wilson had started out as a great friend of Shackleton on their first expedition in Scott’s first expedition in Antarctica; but, they had a falling out over the reasons that they were doing what they did. While Shackleton was all about making fame and fortune for himself, Wilson saw Antarctica as a learning experience and opportunity to improve humanity. It was this effort to enhance human understanding and appreciation of nature that drove Wilson, a philosophy that endured his whole life and stayed with him until the end, when he perished along with Scott just short of the McMurdo camp. It’s estimated that if he and Scott and his party had travelled just 100 more yards each day on their return from the South Pole that they would have made it back alive. But temperatures dropped to 40 degrees below; and, that plus their lowered spirits when one of their comrades succumbed to frostbite. Edward Wilson is known to have quite a sense of humor. When the expedition had been trapped in the pack ice, and provisions were running low, one of their party, a seaman named Oates, had his eye on the medicinal brandy. He was told that you’d have to be really sick to get any of that. He then began making inquiries regarding the sorts of illnesses might warrant some brandy. He decided to feign an epileptic fit in front of Wilson, who seemed very sympathetic and then instructed someone to grab a fistful of snow and stuff it down Oates’ back.

Sharon and I both decided to skip the bird lecture… Sorry but terns just don’t hold the same appeal or interest for us as penguins. I decided to continue my comeback quest at the blackjack tables. Have I mentioned how lonely and bored these dealers seem to be? Nobody will play with them. When I sat down the only person around was the pit boss. The tables had been open for one hour now, and they didn’t have a single dealer in the pit. They had to call and wake one up. She arrived very quickly so perhaps she was just on break. She shuffled quickly, and we were soon playing. There was good back and forth action, with neither of us winning more than a couple hands in a row. This typical play is what I prefer and I can usually do quite well when this happens, as long as things stay consistent. It can come down to winning the double downs and splits. Then I won seven hands in a row, and I was a little disappointed that the streak didn’t continue. It would have been extraordinary to win ten or more hands in a row, three times in one cruise. After losing one hand, I followed that with an eight-hand winning streak. That’s when I decided I’d better quit because I didn’t want to hang around for things to even out; besides, I was up $100.



For lunch I had the fried calamari, followed by their chicken and spinach soup. The soup again was mostly chicken broth with a small amount of spinach and shredded chicken. I had the coconut crusted breaded tilapia, while Sharon enjoyed an excellent steak sandwich. We both had the Coffee Bombe for dessert, coffee ice cream covered with a hard dark chocolate shell. It was pretty darn good. We had a leisurely meal, which in the past would normally finish in time to get to Team Trivia, but today lunch ran over by fifteen minutes. It’s not like we expected to win anyway.



Sharon decided to hit the slots before our next lecture. Her $20 had dwindled down to just one or two spins left; but, she kept hitting three unmatched bars and getting credits to play five more times. She has hit the big time and is play three credits a spin at 25 cents each. Then a remarkable thing happened. She won on four consecutive spins, two of them matching single bars, and suddenly she was in the black again. She played a few more spins and quit even, cashing in and getting the credit on her room card.



David Bresnahan’s lecture was on the History of Waste in the US Antarctic Program. In the mid-twentieth century there was a great record of handling waste in Antarctica, by any country. The US had already recognized the problem, before Green Peace photos became widely circulated and alerted the world to a very real problem. The Antarctic Treaty addressed this issue, and David was proud to note that US efforts now exceed those required by treaty. Today 65% of all waste at US facilities in Antarctica gets recycled. He compared this to the typical 20% estimate for US households, and the question was asked, what we could do to improve? Inhabitants at these facilities are required to attend a remedial waste management program detailing what is of them to ensure that the US waste management program is successful. David told of one incident where several very senior and prominent scientists had come to Antarctica to run some experiments. They chose not to attend the introductory waste management seminar required of all newcomers. When they went to their laboratory the next morning they found the doors padlocked, with a note to see David (who was the manager of that facility). Waste is separated into 12 different types (e.g. paper, glass, plastic, aluminum, etc. ). Most waste is returned in the cargo supply ships that return to Ventura County in California, at Port Hueneme. Only solid human waste can remain in Antarctica, after it is diluted and ground up, it is released to the ocean. The environmental impact of this is about one-twentieth that produced by the local seal population.



The final lecture of the day was on the legacy of Captain Scott. We were asked to compare the explorers of Captain Scott’s day to those of today. Imagine when there is a Mission to Mars. These men will go there, but they will know what to expect. They will have maps, they will know what the surface is composed of, and they will know what temperatures and weather to expect. Consider what Captain Scott did to expand human knowledge of the South Pole. They gathered data to locate the magnetic South Pole. They collected wildlife specimens. On their first expedition, they were under no order to reach the South Pole; still, when they became stuck in the ice and were forced to remain a second season they explored some of the interior of Antarctica, confirmed that Antarctica was a continent sized landmass, discovered the polar plateau, reached 82-degrees South and discovered the breeding grounds of the emperor penguins. On a later trip three of those emperor penguin eggs were retrieved and returned to England for study. They were trying to prove Darwin’s theory of evolution, believing that birds were descended from dinosaurs, and the popular theory of the day was that in the emperor penguin egg the embryo would evolve through all its ancestral stages and by observing some of these stages this theory could be proved. In this case of course, the theory had no merit.



Captain Scott was involved at the forefront of many things in his career. Fortunately for him, the Navy changed from a “Good Old Boy With Family Connections and Money Club” to a meritocracy where he was finally allowed to excel and advance. He wrote the first report for the navy on the merits of aircraft in support of the navy; never mind that his report focused on the use of balloons. The penguin skins that he procured doing naturalist studies of the Antarctica were able to help prove the massive effect of DDT on the world’s bird populations by providing the means to compare to the high levels that were occurring in the mid-twentieth century. Steps of course were taken to affect a worldwide ban on DDT. There were other technology spinoffs as well, such as the early tractor sleds that tried to tame the Antarctic terrain, and although those early sleds were not very successful, they became the basic platform for tanks in WWI, and with improvements became a key method for hauling cargo over land in Antarctica. One of the early problems with these machines was the surprising mistaken belief that a cooling system would not be needed for the engine.



Dr. Wilson concluded his lecture by a brief synapsis of a book on the Adele Penguins. The author, a naturalist on one of those expeditions with his great uncle, was so disturbed by what he had observed that his book was first issued with just eleven chapters. The twelfth chapter, he felt was too controversial for the early twentieth century emerging from the Victorian era. He felt that secrecy was so important that he wrote the twelfth chapter in Greek, but in a way that even if you could read Greek you would need to be an American to understand what he was writing. The chapter of course dealt with the sexual habits of the Adele penguins. And as Dr. Wilson summed it up for us, “Anything Goes!”



After having missed Team Trivia, we weren’t about to miss the $80,000 Jackpot bingo. Sharon is getting a bit antsy wondering why it’s been so long since she’s won at bingo. On our first cruise she won three times, and once on the second… but it’s been a long dry spell since then. We didn’t do well in the first game and someone got a very fast bingo. We’ve noticed that a lot of players seem to be winning more than once during the session, and today was no different.



For our formal dinner I ordered the jumbo shrimp with extra cocktail sauce, and Sharon ordered me the spinach goat cheese pastry. I got the four jumbo shrimp, and they were serving it with the cocktail sauce on the side, rather than in the parfait dish with the shrimp. The last time I had this dish, the shrimp was served in this same parfait glass dish, but the cocktail sauce came in it on a bed of lettuce and it was difficult to get enough sauce on the shrimp to suit me. The HAL cocktail sauce is very good, having a decent horseradish kick… not the best I’ve had but much better than the norm. The server, and we had the pleasure of again being served by The Iceman, said the extra sauce was on the way. It was a little slow in coming, but it did come as I was finishing the third shrimp, and I had just run out of cocktail sauce, so I didn’t miss a beat with the fourth and final shrimp. That’s when I switched plates with Sharon to eat the pastry appetizer she had ordered for me. One of our table guests seeing this, said that this dish, the same as she was just finishing, was wonderful. The tablemate across from me was curious as to what it was, and soon decided she wanted to get one as well. Iceman joked with her a bit about cancelling her previous order, but finally she made it clear that she wanted to add to her order. My second dish, okay really my third, was the pumpkin soup, which I enjoyed. Then I did something I don’t think I’ve done on a HAL cruise, I ordered the gourmet vegetarian entrée for dinner, the Indian vegetable Masala, and it was wonderful. Hard as it is to imagine, I think it is my favorite dinner so far in the Rotterdam Dining Room. It has a bit of a spicy side to it with chili and curry, but it’s an easy two thumbs up from me. I’ll be looking for other Indian or Indonesian dishes in the future. Sharon had the perfectly grilled right chicken breast, as Iceman pointed out; the lady opposite her had the perfectly cooked left chicken breast. Sharon and I both loved the chocolate cappuccino soufflé (to which we added a single shared scoop of vanilla ice cream). The soufflé was served, already parted and some creamy cappuccino already poured into the steamy interior.



Tonight’s show was a two-parter, featuring first the comedy of David Deeble whom we hadn’t seen yet on the Veendam and music of accomplished violinist/fiddler Dave Levesque that we had seen before. I wonder if violinist/fiddler is much the same as FLUTE-ist or FLOUT-ist… the only difference is salary. Have you noticed that there seem to be an awful lot of David’s on this cruise? We enjoyed the combined show



After the show we headed for the casino, Sharon to the slots, and me to the barren pit with my lonely blackjack dealer. Play started as things had begun in the morning with some nice even back and forth, and I briefly considered quitting when I was up about $50… but I played on. I thought maybe I’d made a mistake when I lost three hands in a row; but, then I won a hand and the next hand doubled-down. I won some more hands and saw that I needed just $5 to be up $100. I cut my bet, to $5, won, and decided to quit. Meanwhile Sharon was still playing slots, I thought she had gone back to the room when I quit, but when I go. Sharon was making a small deposit to the house, hopefully for a later withdrawal. We retired for the evening with the ship rolling gently from side to side, looking out at the setting sun. Sharon says something about the sun should be on the other side of the ship, and I say but we’re going north. Exactly she says, what’s the sun doing over there? I think about this a bit and point at our headboard. The ship is going this way, pointing towards the headboard, and she realizes from the orientation of the room she’d gotten disoriented. It was nothing like the marketing guy that we both used to work with thirty some years ago out in California. On a trip to the east coast, they were driving near the ocean, and had to determine which way south was. Ted observed, “That’s easy. You just go to the beach and turn left.” Only that rule doesn’t quite work the same in New Jersey as it does in California.

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