b. 22/12/1875 Feltham, Sussex. d. 02/05/1940 Westminster, London.
DATE OF AM ACTION: 09/10/1915 to 20/03/1916 Antarctica.
Ernest E M Joyce AM
Joyce’s Naval Service Record show his place and date of birth at Feltham, Sussex, 22 December 1875. Joyce’s father and grandfather had both been sailors, his father probably within the coastguard service. 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 Greenwich Royal Hospital School for Navy Orphans 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. 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.
British Naval Archive Records at Portsmouth – No: 160823 – provide full details on Joyce’s early naval service. This commenced in May 1891 as a Boy Second Class on the St. Vincent, and over the following ten years he served on a number of ships; the Boscawen, Alexandra, Victory 1, Duke of Wellington, etc. In 1891 he was serving on HMS Gibraltar in Cape Town where, in September, Scott’s expedition ship Discovery 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.
Joyce left the Navy to join the British Antarctic Expedition 1907-09 (Nimrod), led by Ernest Henry Shackleton, and was placed in charge of dogs, sledges and general stores, as well as the zoological collection. Originally, Joyce was meant to go on the South Pole journey but because of six out of the ten ponies had died, the South Pole team had to be reduced by two. Instead, from September 1908 onwards, he took part in the sledging programme to lay depots southward for the party attempting to reach the South Pole. Joyce was also one of the main contributors to Aurora Australis, the first book published in the Antarctic.
Joyce’s life thereafter became dedicated in many ways to Antarctic exploration. He selected the dogs in Denmark for the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 1911-14 (Aurora), led by Douglas Mawson.
While working for the Sydney Harbour Trust in Australia, he was enlisted for the Ross Sea Party of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914-17 (Aurora), organised by Ernest Henry Shackleton to meet the Weddell Sea Party. Joyce became second-in-command of the Ross Sea shore party with the responsibility of laying depots across the Ross Ice Shelf towards the Beardmore Glacier, providing all that was needed for Shackleton and the trans-polar party. Despite a lack of food and equipment, the party successfully completed this task, although their efforts cost three lives.
Joyce married Beatrice Curtlett from Christchurch, New Zealand after his Ross Sea adventures. He published his diaries in 1929 in a book called ‘The South Polar Trail’. Afterwards, he slowly pulled back from public life, becoming a hotel porter in London. He died on 2 May 1940, aged 65.
AM CITATION:
The KING has been pleased to award the Albert Medal in recognition of the gallant conduct of Mr. Ernest Edward Mills Joyce, exPetty Officer, R.N., Mr. William Rayment Richards. Mr. Victor George Hayward (deceased) and Petty Officer Harry Ernest Wild, R.N. (deceased) in saving and endeavouring to save life while serving as members of the Ross Sea Party of the Shackleton TransAntarctic Expedition of 1914-17. The Expedition had for its object the crossing of the Antarctic Continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, via the South Pole, a distance of about seventeen hundred miles. Sufficient supplies for the journey could not be carried, and it was therefore necessary to establish a chain of depots on the Ross Sea side as far southwards as possible. With this end in view the ship ” Aurora ” was sent to McMurdo Sound at the southern extremity of the Ross Sea and, as it was intended that the vessel should winter there, a portion only of the stores and equipment was disembarkekd. McMurdo Sound was reached in January, 1915, but during a blizzard in May, the ” Aurora ” was blown out to sea and was unable to return, and the nine members of the Expedition who were on shore were left stranded. They recognised that failure to establish the depots would undoubtedly result in the loss of the main body and resolved, in spite of their grave shortage of equipment to carry out the allotted programme. For this purpose a party under the command of Sub-Lieutenant A. L. Mackintosh, B.N.R., and consisting of the Reverend A. P. Spencer-Smith, Messrs. Joyce, Richards, Hayward and Wild and three other members who assisted for a part of the outward journey left Hut Point, Ross Island, on October 9th, They took with them two sledges and four dogs, and 162 days elapsed before the surviving members of the party were back at Hut Point, the total distance covered being approximately 950 miles. Mr. Spencer-Smith had to be dragged on a sledge for 42 days, mainly by hand labour, the distance covered being over 350 miles. When more than 100 miles remained to be covered the collapse of Lieutenant Mackintosh imposed an additional burden on the active members of the party who were all suffering from scurvy and snow blindness and were so enfeebled by their labours that at times they were unable to cover more than 2 or 3 miles in 15 hours. Mr. Spencer-Smith died when only 19 miles remained to be covered, but Lieutenant Mackintosh was brought in safely to the base.
BURIAL LOCATION: UNKNOWN.
LOCATION OF MEDAL: UNKNOWN.
