Ernest Edward Mills Joyce AM ( – 2 May 1940) was a Royal Naval seaman and explorer who participated in four Antarctic expeditions during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, in the early 20th century. He served under both Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. As a member of the Ross Sea party in Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Joyce earned an Albert Medal for his actions in bringing the stricken party to safety, after a traumatic journey on the Great Ice Barrier. He was awarded the Polar Medal with four bars, one of only two men to be so honoured, the other being his contemporary, Frank Wild.
Joyce came from a humble seafaring background and began his naval career as a boy seaman in 1891. His Antarctic experiences began 10 years later, when he joined Scott's Discovery Expedition as an Able Seaman. In 1907 Shackleton recruited Joyce to take charge of dogs and sledges on the Nimrod Expedition. Subsequently, Joyce was engaged in a similar capacity for Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition in 1911, but left the expedition before it departed for the Antarctic. In 1914 Shackleton recruited Joyce for the Ross Sea party; despite his heroics this expedition marked the end of Joyce's association with the Antarctic, and of his exploring career, although he made repeated attempts to join other expeditions.
Throughout his career Joyce was known as an abrasive personality who attracted adverse as well as positive comments. His effectiveness in the field was widely acknowledged by many of his colleagues, but other aspects of his character were less appreciated – his capacity for bearing grudges, his boastfulness and his distortions of the truth. Joyce's diaries, and the book he wrote based on them, have been condemned as self-serving and the work of a fabulist. He made no significant material gains from his expeditions, living out his post-Antarctic life in humble circumstances before dying in 1940.
Early years
Joyce's Royal Navy service record show his place and date of birth at Feltham (Felpham), Sussex, 22 December 1875.McOrist, p. 10 Kelly Tyler-Lewis, in her account of the Ross Sea party, quotes a newspaper report giving Joyce's age as 64 in 1939, indicating birth year as 1875 – although she also gives his age as 29 in 1901, suggesting an earlier birth year.Tyler-Lewis, pp. 262 and 56 Joyce's father and grandfather had both been sailors, his father probably within the coastguard service.Huxley, p. 101 After the father's early death his widow, with three children to support on her limited earnings as a seamstress, sent the young Ernest to the Lower School of Royal Hospital School at Greenwich. Here, in austere surroundings, he received a vocational education that would prepare him for a lower-deck career in the Royal Navy. After leaving the school in 1891, he joined the navy as a boy seaman, progressing over the next ten years to Ordinary Seaman and then Able Seaman.Tyler-Lewis, pp. 55–57 Joyce had blue eyes and a fair complexion, with a tattoo on his left forearm and a scar on his right cheek. He was not a tall man, only 5' 7" in height.McOrist, p. 11
In 1901 he was serving on in Cape Town where, in September, Scott's expedition ship stopped on the way to the Antarctic. Scott was short-handed, and requested volunteers; from a response of several hundreds, Joyce was one of four seamen chosen to join Discovery. He sailed south with her on 14 October 1901.Wilson, pp. 59, 401
Discovery Expedition, 1901–1904
The Discovery Expedition was Joyce's Antarctic baptism, although for the next three years he kept a relatively low profile; Scott scarcely mentions him in The Voyage of the Discovery, and Edward Wilson's diaries not at all. It seems that he took readily to Antarctic life,Fisher, p. 127 gaining experience in sledging and dog-driving techniques and other aspects of Antarctic exploration. He did not figure in the main journeys of the expedition, although towards the end he joined Arthur Pilbeam and Frank Wild in an attempt to climb Mount Erebus, ascending to some .Riffenburgh, p. 173. Joyce was at times badly affected by frostbite; on one occasion two officers, Michael Barne and George Mulock, held Joyce's frostbitten foot against the pits of their stomachs and kneaded the ankle for several hours to save it from amputation.Huxley, p. 115 However, such experiences left Joyce undaunted; the polar historian Beau Riffenburgh writes that Joyce was repeatedly drawn to the Antarctic by "a curious combination of affection and antipathy" that "impelled [him] to return again and again".Riffenburgh, p. 126
During the expedition Joyce encountered several men who would feature prominently in Antarctic polar history during the following years, including Scott, Wilson, Frank Wild, Tom Crean, William Lashly, Edgar Evans and, most significantly, Ernest Shackleton. Joyce made several sledging trips with ShackletonRiffenburgh, p. 125 and created an impression of competence and reliability. He also impressed Scott as "sober, honest, loyal and intelligent", and expedition organiser Sir Clements Markham later described him as "an honest and trustworthy man". His reward, at the conclusion of the expedition, was promotion to Petty Officer 1st Class on Scott's recommendation. However, he had been bitten by the bug of Antarctic exploration,Mills, p. 41 and ordinary naval duty no longer appealed. He left the navy in 1905 but found shore life unsatisfying and re-enlisted in 1906. When the chance came a year later to join Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, he took it immediately.
British Antarctic Expedition (Nimrod) 1907–1909
When Shackleton was selecting the crew for his Antarctic expedition in Nimrod, Joyce was one of his earliest recruits. Most accounts tell the story that Shackleton saw Joyce on a bus that was passing his expedition offices, sent someone out to fetch him, and recruited him on the spot.Fisher, p. 127 (citing the story to Hugh Robert Mill)Huntford, p. 194 To join the expedition, Joyce bought his release from the Navy; in later years he would claim that Shackleton had failed to recompense him for this, despite a promise to do so, one of several disputes over money and recognition which would strain his relations with Shackleton.Riffenburgh, p. 126Tyler-Lewis, pp. 253–258 Joyce, Shackleton and Frank Wild were the only members of the expedition with previous Antarctic experience, and on the basis of his Discovery exploits, Joyce was put in charge of the new expedition's general stores, sledges and dogs. Before departure in August 1907, he and Wild took a crash course in printing at Sir Joseph Causton's printing firm in Hampshire, as Shackleton intended to publish a book or magazine while in the Antarctic.Fisher, p. 121
Nimrod left New Zealand on 1 January 1908, and as a fuel-saving measure was towed towards the Antarctic pack ice by the tug Koonya.Riffenburgh, pp. 143–145 On 23 January, by now under her own power, she reached the Ross Ice Shelf (then known as the "Great Ice Barrier", or "Barrier"), where Shackleton planned to base his headquarters in an inlet discovered during the Discovery voyage. This proved impossible; the inlet, where Scott and Shackleton had taken balloon flights in February 1902, had greatly expanded to become an open bay, christened the "Bay of Whales".Riffenburgh, pp. 151–152 Shackleton was convinced that the ice was not secure enough as a landing ground, and could find no feasible alternative site on nearby King Edward VII Land. Before leaving for the Antarctic Shackleton had promised Scott that he would not base his expedition in or near Scott's former headquarters in McMurdo Sound. Shackleton was now forced to break this agreement, and take Nimrod to the safer waters of McMurdo Sound.Riffenburgh, pp. 110–116 The site finally chosen as a base was at Cape Royds, some north of Scott's old Discovery headquarters at Hut Point. During the extended and often difficult process of unloading the ship Joyce remained ashore, looking after the dogs and ponies, and helping to build the expedition hut.Riffenburgh, pp. 157–167 Joyce was witness to an incident during unloading, where a crate hook attached to a barrel swung across and struck one of the watching officers – Aeneas Mackintosh – on the face.McOrist, p. 8 (Mackintosh's right eye was virtually destroyed and later that day the expedition doctor operated to remove the eye.) In March Joyce assisted the party that made the first successful ascent of Mount Erebus, although he did not make the climb himself.Mills, p. 62
During the following winter Joyce, with Wild's help, printed copies of the expedition book Aurora Australis, edited by Shackleton. About 25 or 30 copies of the book were printed, sewn and bound.Mills, p. 65 Otherwise Joyce was busy preparing equipment and stores for the next season's journey to the Pole in which, in view of his experience, he fully expected to be included. However, various mishaps had reduced the number of ponies to four, so Shackleton cut the southern party to that number. One of those dropped was Joyce, on advice from expedition doctor Eric Marshall, who noted that Joyce had a liver problem and the early stages of heart disease.Riffenburgh, p. 191 Frank Wild, who along with Marshall and Jameson Adams was selected for the southern journey, wrote in his diary after the party's bid to reach the Pole had fallen short: "If we only had Joyce and Marston here instead of these two useless grub-scoffing beggars"—Marshall and Adams—"we would have done it easily".Mills, p. 96 Joyce showed no particular resentment at his exclusion; he assisted the preparatory work and accompanied the polar party on the southward march for the first seven days.Riffenburgh, p. 201 In the following months he took charge of enhancing the depots, to ensure adequate supplies for the returning southern party. He deposited a special cache of luxuries at Minna Bluff, together with life-saving food and fuel, earning Wild's spontaneous praise when the cache was discovered.Riffenburgh, pp. 216–218
Shackleton and his party returned safely from their polar journey, on Nimrod's last feasible date for sailing home. They had established a new Farthest South at 88°23S, only from the South Pole. Joyce had been ready to remain at the base with a rearguard, to wait for the party or to establish its fate if it did not return in time to catch the ship.Riffenburgh, p. 274 Nimrod finally reached London in September 1909 and was prepared, under Joyce's direction, as a floating exhibition of polar artefacts. Shackleton paid him a salary of £250 a year, , a generous amount for the time.
Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911
Joyce was not invited to join Scott's Terra Nova Expedition, although several of Shackleton's men were, including Frank Wild who declined. Instead, Joyce and Wild both signed up for Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition. In 1911 Joyce travelled to Denmark to acquire dogs for this expedition, and took them on to Tasmania. Joyce did not subsequently sail with Mawson. According to one account he was "dismissed" before the expedition left Australia,Riffenburgh, p. 303 while another suggests that Joyce was dropped when Mawson reduced his expedition from three shore parties to two.Mills, pp. 127–128 Whatever the reason, it appears that there was a falling-out; Mawson reportedly distrusted Joyce, saying that "he spent too much time in hotels", which suggests that drink was an issue.Mills, p. 128 Joyce remained in Australia, obtaining work with the Sydney Harbour Trust.Tyler-Lewis, p. 57
Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–1917
Membership of Ross Sea party