36 CHALLENGER 



from the freezing, numbing winds was very welcome. The 

 settlement of Nain itself consisted of a number of well-built 

 white wooden huts clustering along the shore near the neat little 

 church and the Hudson Bay Store, while to the north were a 

 number of ruder wooden huts stretching towards the spruce 

 woods on the lower slopes of the rocky hills. The hospital was 

 one of the more imposing buildings, having two storeys and 

 dormer windows in the roof. 



The winter party consisted of Lieutenant-Commander Baker 

 in charge, with Dennis Deane as his assistant surveyor, a cheerful 

 and amusing person; then there was 'Doc' Bingham, who was 

 a Surgeon Lieutenant Commander; and the ratings consisted of 

 Petty Officer Stevenson, Leading Seaman Hampson, Able Seamen 

 Marshall and Marlowe, and, lastly, Officer's Steward Holgate, all 

 of whom had volunteered for this winter in the north but of 

 whom only Bingham had experience of dog team driving, the 

 use of snowshoes and of living under arctic conditions. There was 

 much to be learnt, and the party were soon making their first 

 floundering steps on snowshoes, while they tried out the winter 

 clothing, the windproofs and the sealskin boots and the sleeping 

 bags. 



At the same time there was hunting to be done, for hunting 

 is a necessity of life for all who live in the far north ; seals must 

 be killed for the feeding of the dogs, which had by now been 

 acquired and which lay in the snow around the base camp awaiting 

 the first trial sledging journeys. As the ice forms in the bays in 

 the early stages of freezing over and is broken up by the wind it is 

 driven in towards the beach, these blocks forming a jumble of 

 oddly shaped ice boulders, known as 'billycaters', and it is by 

 crawling through the cover afforded by these that one can some- 

 times come within rifle range of the seals lying on the seaward 

 edge of the ice. 



o 



Henry Voisey, one of the local settlers, was taken on as camp 

 servant. He was a good man with dogs and had his own team, 

 and he knew the country well. 



Baker at once decided that he should be ready at any time to 

 send out a party capable of living unsupported for at least seven 

 days, so a number of 'camp boxes' were made up and kept in 



