Andrew Taylor. Two Years below the Horn: Operation Tabarin, Field Science, and Antarctic Sovereignty, 1944-1946. Edited by Daniel Heidt and P. Whitney Lackenbauer. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017. Illustrations, maps. 496 pp. $37.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-88755-791-0.
Reviewed by Andrew Avery (University of Kansas)
Published on H-Environment (July, 2020)
Commissioned by Daniella McCahey (Texas Tech University)
Two Years below the Horn offers readers a compelling glimpse into a lesser-known chapter of Antarctic history and the Second World War. Andrew Taylor (1907-93), an Edinburgh-born and Canadian-educated engineer, served in the Antarctic as part of Operation Tabarin, a British-government mission to reassert control and defend sovereign claims against incursions by Argentina and Chile. Taylor wrote the bulk of Two Years below the Horn shortly after completing his tenure in the Antarctic but failed to find a publisher for the manuscript. Enter editors Daniel Heidt and P. Whitney Lackenbauer. They came across Taylor’s rough manuscript in the author’s papers at the University of Manitoba. Through diligent and creative editing, Heidt and Lackenbauer have helped give Taylor, and his comrades, an overdue moment in the sun, as it were.
In 1942, Argentinian naval ships landed shore parties at several locations on the Antarctic Peninsula that Britain claimed as sovereign through the Letters Patent of 1908. Upon discovering evidence of the intrusion, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the Colonial and Foreign Offices to coordinate the operation. It is into this geopolitical context that Taylor abruptly begins his work. Originally stationed in Surrey as a surveyor attached to Canadian Army Headquarters, he replied to a Royal Navy circular asking for surveyors with cold weather work experience. In September 1943, Taylor was seconded to Naval Party 475, so beginning Taylor’s careening course southward.
Taylor proceeds chronologically, beginning with preparations for Tabarin in September 1943. Following a hectic sojourn all the way back to Manitoba, he returned in time for their (delayed) departure for Antarctica. The party called at the Falkland Islands in January 1944 and began constructing a base at Port Lockroy, situated on the northwest coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, then called Graham’s Land. For the next two years, Taylor and his comrades assembled prefabricated huts, surveyed the landscape, and tried to make a home at the bottom of the globe. Taylor is a keen chronicler of life in these bases. Readers who have read any of the greatest hits of Antarctic writing, Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s Worst Journey in the World (originally published in 1922), or the scholarly work of Carolyn Strange, will find excellent examples of homosocial domesticity here. In recent years, historians and social scientists have focused more on the “field station” as a unique political and scientific space. The bases of Operation Tabarin are field stations worthy of further scrutiny, and Taylor chronicles the excitement and, just as often, the boredom of Antarctic life. Taylor’s descriptions of technical processes, such as sledging, surveying, polar rationing, and training of sled dogs, are an education in their own right. In the end, Two Years below the Horn is a nice blend of travel memoir, field manual, and history that have come to define good writing, scholarly or otherwise, about the Antarctic.
Heidt and Lackenbauer have brought Taylor’s unique work to life through painstaking research. They chronicle the author’s life and career following Tabarin, making extensive use of Taylor’s correspondence. For decades, Taylor remained bitter about the lack of publicity that Tabarin received upon returning home in 1946. The British and Canadian governments remained sparse with their praise and recognition for most of Taylor’s life, though he did receive a Polar Medal in 1955. The publication of Two Years below the Horn not only brings Taylor’s engrossing and detailed account of Tabarin to light but also offers an important addition to primary sources about the Antarctic. Taylor’s viewpoint contrasts with other accounts of the time period, Vivian Fuch’s Of Ice and Men (1982), for instance. The text is complemented by many excellent black-and-white photographs from several archival sources. It is a good resource for researchers of science and technology and readers with interests in polar history or the history of exploration.
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Citation:
Andrew Avery. Review of Taylor, Andrew, Two Years below the Horn: Operation Tabarin, Field Science, and Antarctic Sovereignty, 1944-1946.
H-Environment, H-Net Reviews.
July, 2020.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54412
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