page_title: Dogs of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition
section_title: Voyage to Antarctica
hierarchical_section_title: Dogs of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition / Voyage to Antarctica
caption_attribution_description: English: Ginger, a sled dog of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, and her pups born on board Aurora en route to Hobart 1911
context_page_description: In common with many of the expeditions of the Heroic Age, Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition employed dog-hauled sledges as a principal means of transportation during exploration of the continent. Dog sledges could carry more weight and travel faster than man-hauled sledges; they were more reliable in the freezing temperatures than motor-sledges; and dogs had proved to be more adaptable to harsh Antarctic conditions than ponies.
  Mawson purchased fifty sledge dogs from Greenland and transported them to Antarctica on the expedition's ship SY Aurora. The trip was arduous for the dogs and by the time the expedition arrived in Antarctica on 8 January 1912 only 28 of the dogs were still alive. These were split into two groups: nineteen stayed with Mawson at the expedition's main base and the remaining nine were sent with Frank Wild to the western base. All of the original dogs at the main base were dead by the end of 1912; accidents and illness had accounted for many of them and some were killed and eaten when food ran out on Mawson's main sledging journey. At the western base two dogs survived to accompany the party home.
context_section_description: With the help of C. A. Bang and the Royal Danish Geographical Society in Copenhagen, Mawson procured fifty dogs from Greenland in July 1911. As Bang was not a dog expert, Mawson made sure Ernest Joyce, the dog handler from Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, was on hand to assist him. One of the dogs went missing in Greenland while waiting to be transported, but it was replaced and the dogs were shipped to Copenhagen. Unfortunately, Wilhelm Filchner had also ordered dogs from Greenland for his Antarctic expedition and the two sets of dogs were delivered as a single group. The Germans arrived first to collect their consignment and initially selected all the best dogs, but when Joyce arrived he insisted that they should be divided more fairly. By the time the dogs were ready to travel to England three pups had been born, swelling the number to 53, but en route to London one of the adult dogs was lost.
  On arriving in London on 17 July 1911, they were placed in quarantine at Spratts Dog Home in Surrey until Aurora, the expedition's ship, was ready to sail on 27 July. One dog and one pup died at Spratts. Travelling with the 48 remaining dogs and two pups from London were two members of the expedition, Belgrave Sutton Ninnis and Xavier Mertz, who had been appointed dog-handlers despite having no previous experience. From the start, discipline among the dogs on board Aurora was maintained by frequent "thrashings".
  Aurora went first to Cardiff arriving on 31 July and after four days set out for Cape Town on 4 August. On the day of the sailing Ninnis recorded that they had lost a pregnant bitch but the two pups were still well.  The voyage to Cape Town was hard on the dogs and, although there were frequent litters born, few of the pups survived for any time; at least 27 pups died between leaving Cardiff and arriving at Cape Town on 27 August. The adult dogs suffered too and by the time the ship docked in South Africa the two best breeders, Peggy and Hilda were having seizures. They were diagnosed as having distemper and chorea and both died on 28 September the day after the ship had put out from Cape Town.
  Five more dogs and at least four pups died between the ship leaving South Africa on 27 September and arriving in Australia on 4 November, as the fits that had affected Peggy and Hilda became more common. Though Ninnis and Mertz wanted to vary the dogs' diet they had little to feed them other than biscuit and were unable to devise a regimen that prevented or decreased the symptoms. Aurora's captain, John King Davis, had intended to get a stock of fish before leaving Cape Town as a supplement for the dogs' diet, but Mertz made no mention of this addition when he was interviewed after the dogs had arrived in Tasmania. 
  In Hobart, the dogs (accompanied by Ninnis and Mertz) were put into quarantine until the expedition was ready to depart. Mawson had intended that they start their training during their stay in Hobart, but quarantine was strict and nothing seems to have come of this plan. At the quarantine station – on a better diet, in less harsh conditions, and able to exercise – most put on weight and their condition improved, but the seizures and deaths continued. Vets and inspectors were unable to agree on a diagnosis or prescribe for the illness, and five more dogs including Hooker, one of the early pups, died during the month they spent in quarantine. On 2 December 1911, the remaining 36 dogs and two pups were loaded back aboard, and Aurora set sail first for Macquarie Island and then Antarctica. The ship arrived at Macquarie on 12 December and the dogs were let off under the care of Ninnis while the wireless relay station was established. The sealers working on the island helped secure the dogs and killed some elephant seals to feed them:
  We stretched a rope along the beach and they tied the dogs in sets of four along the rope. We got our gear out and killed a couple of elephants and flensed the blubber and flesh off to feed the dogs. We cut it off in about 80 to 100 lbs pieces and threw one piece to each four dogs. They were jus
caption: Ginger and her pups on board Aurora during the voyage to Hobart. The pups did not survive.
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