For one year MacDowall was the leader of this expedition and base at Halley Bay in the Weddell Sea, one of Britain’s contributions to IGY. It is quite a prosaic account, with little drama, but notable for its citations to the base newspaper, the Halley Comet.
p. 107: Dec. 1, 1957: I spent the day writing the annual seismological report. I did some more writing on the 2nd, this time for the Christmas edition of the Halley Comet. I wrote on the subject of the Halley Bay Ice-shelf.
p. 110: In the evening [Christmas eve] we all gathered together for a Christmas drink and were handed a copy of the Halley Comet. It was the third issue of those stalwart editors, Jim Burton and David Cansfield. The editorial recognized that we were all thinking of the relief ship, Totten, fighting its way through the ice towards us with mail from loved ones and the first proper letters for a year.
p. 140: The Halley Comet Heralds Easter. The Easter issue of the Halley Comet was 12 pages long, the longest to date and one with a most attractive cover…. The contents included poems by Malcolm Edwards and Bert Brooker, an article by Ben Ellis on Deception Island, and the one I wrote on optical phenomenon. In the editorial we gave our congratulations to Bunny Fuchs for his knighthood ….
p. 144, 181: mentions use of Holerith cards for recording meteorological data.
p. 150, Sunday, May 4, 1958: After the service which I led at 11:15 a.m., I put out the weekly ration of year-old newspapers. As usual, there were quite a few of us who were very pleased to see them. The donor could not have anticipated the great pleasure they gave. [P. 158 has another distribution of old newspapers.]
p. 167: Midwinter’s Day: Preparations for Midwinter’s Day were moving ahead. The editors of the Halley Comet were receiving the last entries for the pin-up competition to select the six most favoured ladies out of a field of 46 glamour girls. [Since there was no limitation on number of votes, there were 1000 votes from the 25 or so men present.]
p. 220: Sunday, October 29: After the morning religious service, I put out the daily newspapers for 4 November 1957. The Times for that day contained the report of my appointment as Leader.