Stoves, lights, fur-lined boots and clothes, bedding and dog harnesses all lie where the explorers left them. A corridor is still piled with cuts of seal blubber, which would have been used for cooking, heating and in lanterns. Dishes stand neatly stacked on shelves, cups hang from a row of hooks. Scott’s worktable has an open book, a copy of the London Illustrated News and a stuffed Emperor penguin on it. Scientific equipment fills a workbench, and the darkroom of the expedition photographer still has its chemicals and plates. There is even the rusting frame of a bicycle and some hockey sticks – after all, these men needed some way of passing their time.
The hut must then have been a crowded, noisy and smelly place with two dozen men clustered round the table, trying to keep their bodies strong and their spirits up. It is bereft of living beings now, but there is life here all the same. One only has to look at the clothes, the maps, the lamps and the tins of sweet fruit stacked in hope for a return that never came, to feel the power of the human spirit.
Robert Falcon Scott in the Cape Evans Hut, October 1911.
Shackleton’s hut
Scott’s is not the only preserved hut in the Antarctic. Ernest Shackleton’s 1907–1909 Nimrod expedition fell short in its attempt on the pole, but made a successful first ascent of Mount Erebus, Antarctica’s second highest volcano. Their hut on Cape Royds, 12 km (7.5 miles) from Scott’s on Cape Evans, stands in a similar state of preservation.
Portraits of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra still hang on the walls inside, and the shelves are stacked with 5,000 personal items belonging to the nine men who wintered here in 1908. Some of the 450 tins of baked beans and 540 lb of golden syrup that they brought as supplies are still stacked on the shelves.
These Antarctic huts continue to offer up surprises. In 2010, a team found two crates of brandy and three crates of whisky buried under the Nimrod hut floor. Shackleton had originally taken 300 bottles of Mackinlay’s finest malt whisky – although a teetotaller himself, he thought his men might appreciate a warming dram in the endless Antarctic night.
The legends live on
The science started by Scott’s expedition is continuing even today. The readings logged by the early 20th century instruments are now being compared to current values, to help us understand the effects of climate change on Antarctica.
The buildings were given a little loving renovation in 2010. Despite the brutal environment in which they stand, they will live on a little longer as shrines to the men of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and their incredible achievements.
DATE ABANDONED: 1914–1963
TYPE OF PLACE: Defensive cordon
LOCATION: Netherlands
REASON: Technological redundancy
INHABITANTS: Several thousand soldiers
CURRENT STATUS: UNESCO World Heritage Site
DOZENS OF FORTS AND KILOMETRES OF MOATS CREATED AN IMPREGNABLE BARRIER OF WATER AND CONCRETE AROUND AMSTERDAM. IT WOULD BE UNDONE AND ITS WALLS DESERTED NOT BY THE POUNDING OF HEAVY ARTILLERY, BUT BY THE INVENTION OF FLIGHT.
State of the military art
The Stelling van Amsterdam was the most advanced military structure of its type in the world – 135 km (84 miles) of forts, batteries and moats completely encircling the city in a defensive barrier. Nearly half a century in the making, the colossal defensive system was staffed by thousands of soldiers. Yet it would be abandoned by almost all of them, almost overnight – not because an enemy had somehow overcome its concrete walls and bristling artillery, but because inventions in a field of combat far from here made all its brilliance count for nothing.
War on the doorstep
In the late nineteenth century there were three constantly clashing superpowers triangulated around the Netherlands: France, Germany and the United Kingdom. This was a time of Empire when the reward for control of the sea was nothing less than world dominion. The Netherlands was an exposed place to be.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1 saw the introduction of new, more powerful artillery. The Dutch Ministry of War rightly judged that their existing defences would be vulnerable against these modern weapons. In 1874 a bold new concept was approved: a defensive belt of fortifications around Amsterdam.
The initial concept was to create a defensive moat 10–15 km (6–9 miles) out from the city centre, turning Amsterdam’s low-lying coastal position into a defensive boon. In the event of enemy attack, sluices would be opened to inundate wide areas of flat farmland with water. The flooding would be no more than 30 cm (12 inches) deep – too shallow for enemy boats to cross; deep enough to hinder men on foot.
The obvious weak points would be the roads, railways, and dykes that ran through the inundations; raised from the land, these would still be usable even after flooding. So forts would be built where these routes crossed the waterline, to be armed with powerful artillery ready to shell the approaching foe.
A circular tower fort, still surrounded by its moat, by the River Vecht.
The fort island of IJmuiden on the North Sea Canal was adapted to form part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. This 2,685 km (1,670 mile) long defensive system was built by the Germans along Europe’s Atlantic coast to prevent an Allied invasion.
The first setback
The first design became obsolete while still on the drawing board. Another innovation in warfare – the high explosive grenade – meant that the forts would have to be built of concrete rather than masonry. The Dutch were inexperienced in using concrete and had to undertake years of research and development.
Construction itself was a vast undertaking. As well as forty-six fortifications, there were numerous smaller batteries, depots and barracks, as well as a huge network of sluices, dykes, canals and artificial islands to be constructed. When flooded, the inundations were designed to be 3–5 km (1.9–3 miles) wide. The project took almost forty years to complete, from 1881 to 1920.
Completion and redundancy
No sooner was this mammoth construction project complete than it was rendered instantly obsolete by two military innovations – the aeroplane and the tank. Planes could simply fly over the forts to drop bombs on the city itself. Tanks could roll through the inundations and were unlikely to be deterred by the artillery in the forts.
Soldiers manned the Stelling during both World Wars, but its ingenuity was never tested in combat. However, it was methodically maintained and kept in service until 1963, when it was decommissioned. Now abandoned as a military resource, its structures are an interesting insight into the Europe of 150 years ago. They also showcase the Dutch genius for hydraulic engineering.
A city wall of water and guns
The Stelling is a fascinating place to explore. Many of the forts are open to visitors, and some have been preserved exactly as they were when