In 1956 the University Library of Aberdeen acquired a journal written by one George Kerr, surgeon aboard the Aberdeen whaling ship Christian, during a voyage to the whale fisheries in the Greenland Sea, west and north-west of Spitsbergen. The voyage, which was in 1791, took them as far north as lat. 81° N. The journal is seventy-nine pages long, on quarto-sized paper, and written in brown ink in a good, clear hand. A number of whalers' log books exist, recording winds and tides and noting extraordinary events, there are also published memoirs covering several voyages or giving a picture of whaling in general—like William Scoresby's book which includes an exciting narrative of the voyage of the Esk, under his command, to Spitsbergen waters, and of her preservation under most difficult circumstances. Kerr's journal is a spirited day-to-day account of an eventful though profitless voyage—the ship returning “clean” with no catch.

The early exploration of east Greenland between lats. 70° N. and 82° N. was the work of several nations, and Danish, Swedish, German and British expeditions all played their parts in it. In the last three decades, however, although other groups have made valuable contributions, the expeditions under the leadership of Lauge Koch have been of paramount importance by virtue of the large numbers of scientists involved, the range of the studies, and, in particular, the continuity of effort. This continuity has enabled an unusual degree of foresight and planning to be applied to the operations. Even in these more favoured circumstances, however, “greater results might possibly have been obtained if the means had been ensured beforehand, so that the work could have been planned for a longer period of years at a time”. It has been the policy to concentrate on geological survey as the basic scientific inquiry in this uninhabited, almost virgin, territory. This emphasis on geology has, in turn, stressed the need for detailed geographical information, and stimulated topographical survey to produce an adequate coverage of medium-scale maps for a large part of the region. Other fields have not been overlooked, and biologists—studying the fauna and flora of both land and sea—meteorologists, glaciologists, hydrographers, and archaeologists have been included in the parties.

In 1954 the Geophysics Research Directorate of the Air Force Cambridge Research Center (AFCRC), at the request of Northeast Air Command, United States Air Force, organized a study of the physical properties, growth, and bearing capacity of sea ice. The object of the study was to gain information about the conditions under which various aircraft and vehicles could operate on sea ice, for supply and rescue purposes. The Navy Hydrographic Office (NHO) and the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE) of the Army Corps of Engineers also took part in the project. The spheres of interest of each organization were as follows: AFCRC, the application of geophysical and crystallographic methods to the study of sea ice; NHO, the details of the relations between meteorological conditions and the growth rate and general physical properties of sea ice; and SIPRE, the variation of the strength of sea ice as determined by small-scale field tests, and the application of this information toward an analysis of the bearing capacity of sea ice.

Recent advances in rock magnetism have established the value of measuring the direction of the remanent magnetism of many kinds of rock. Provided certain conditions are satisfied, individual measurements relate to magnetic pole positions and sufficient measurements give a mean position which may indicate the geographical pole. Thus from determinations of a number of samples of rock from a geological formation, with suitable corrections, the latitude and geographical orientation of the rock at the time when it assumed its magnetic field may be postulated. This restricts and, in due course, may define palaeogeographical reconstructions and so serve to identify movements of the crust in relation to each other and to the poles. Results so far obtained show that averaged pole positions from successive rocks, ranging through many hundreds of millions of years in the same relatively undisturbed areas, lie on curves extending through many tens of degrees of arc. Moreover, similar curves, uniting near the present poles today but diverging considerably when traced backwards in time, derive from different continents, suggesting that both relative continental movements and polar wandering must be taken seriously. From the pattern of pole positions from dated rocks it may be possible to correlate rocks of unknown age (e.g. unfossiliferous and Pre-Cambrian rocks), and solve some petrogenetic problems.

The meat of young shags, seals and penguins makes excellent eating but, in the natural state, it is rather too highly flavoured to be palatable. It should therefore be washed thoroughly and hung in the fresh air for a few days, or in the case of shags for a couple of weeks, before cooking. It is further improved by blanching; this consists of putting the meat in cold water, bringing the water to the boil, then removing the meat and washing it.

Remove all blubber before cooking. Always use beef suet in cooking these meats.