The first banjo in Antarctica

The BIB editor writes:

The BIB has already made a couple of mentions (16 Dec. 2010, 4 Mar. 2015) of the 5-string banjo that went with Dr Leonard Duncan Albert Hussey (1891-1964) on Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition. Special thanks to Alec Somerville for this link to 'Leonard Hussey's banjo: brain food', a splendid article by Dale Jacobsen, with two photos of the instrument itself, an English-made Windsor zither-banjo. Dr Hussey (also pictured in the article) donated the banjo and its leather case in 1959 to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, south of the Thames and east of central London. Other articles on the banjo are cited in Hussey's Wikipedia biography.

The Hussey banjo, like zither-banjos generally, has a slotted head with standard three-a-side guitar geared tuners (my first banjo, a Clifford Essex of about the same vintage, had friction pegs like a violin) and a fifth string that passes through a tunnel from the tuner to the fifth fret (like my second banjo, a Jedson 6006 'Symphonic' of about thirty years later). The commemorative 'Shackleton' banjo made by the Great British Banjo Company from c.2010 also had a slotted head, with four geared tuners, but in other respects was a regular open-back banjo with a fifth-string peg at the usual place.

Update 28 Feb.: Alec reports that credit is due to Wilson Salter, banjo-player of Ontario, Canada, for drawing his attention to Dale Jacobsen's article.

The zither-banjo design made for a robust instrument that could stand up to hard conditions. Such a banjo might have been in Rudyard Kipling's mind when he wrote his 1894 poem 'The song of the Banjo', which sets the instrument in many demanding environments. Don't be put off the poem by Karen Linn's comments in That half-barbaric twang (1994) - there's more in it than she suggests.

© Richard Hawkins