That Frozen Land

This is an account of the time David James spent as a member of Operation Tabarin at Hope Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula. He left England by sea in November, 1944, and immediately took care of the twenty-five huskies that had been bought in Labrador for the expedition. He and his twelve colleagues reached their destination on February 12th, 1945, and started to build the base from which they later explored the peninsula to the south. James was a surveyor, and with his companions Andrew Taylor, the base leader, Ivan McKenzie Lamb, a botanist, and Vic Russell, a fellow surveyor, he made an epic sledge journey of 271 miles over the sea-ice, in which they circumnavigated James Ross Island and visited the hut on Snow Hill Island which Otto Nordenskjold had used. James left Hope Bay in January, 1946, but returned in 1947 to help in the making of the film Scott of the Antarctic, about which he also wrote.