The Terra Nova Expedition
"Excuse the writing – it's been minus 40."
Last week, scientists have made an amazing discovery: 107 years after it sank, at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, they found The Endurance - the lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Shackleton joined British naval commander and explorer Robert Falcon Scott on a perilous journey to the South Pole in 1901. The journey, however, did not go well for Shackleton, who became critically ill and had to return home. In 1907 he made another attempt - and failed again. His dream of becoming the first person to step foot on the South Pole was shattered in 1911 when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the planet's most southerly point. This setback, however, did not deter him from moving on: on August 1, 1914, he embarked on the Endurance for his third trip to the South Pole. This expedition's outcome was also far from what Shackleton had planned for: the Endurance was crushed by ice, and he and his crew - 28 men in total - drifted for months on sheets of ice until they arrived at Elephant Island. Astonishingly, all of them survived the ordeal.
If you’re as curious and surprised as I was when I first heard this story, I highly recommend this book. It’s probably one of the best books every written - except for the dogs part, which I skip every time I read or watch something about these expeditions.
The photograph below, colorized for my book The Colour of Time, isn’t about Shackleton or the Endurance, but it’s from another great adventure - a moment now frozen in time (ha-ha-ha I’m really sorry).
It shows geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor and meteorologist Charles Wright in the entrance to an ice grotto during Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic, on January 5, 1911. His ship, the ‘Terra Nova’, is in the background.
Terra Nova Expedition
The Terra Nova set sail from Cardiff on June 15, 1910, collecting supplies along the route. In January 1911, the ship landed at Ross Island. Scott built his hut near Cape Evans.
They finally reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, but not without a very frustrating and unpleasant surprise: they were not the first. The party of explorers led by Roald Amundsen had preceded them by 34 days.
Despite the disappointment, Scott’s team carried out with one of their main objectives, conducting research into the environment of the South Pole.
However, with weather conditions far worse than they predicted and were prepared for, the Terra Nova expedition had a tragic end. Scott's party of five died on the return journey from the pole. Their journals, photographs, personal belongings and bodies were found by a search party eight months later.
Since I recommended a book on Shackleton’s expedition, here’s one on Scott’s: “The Journals”.
Final letter
The letter below was written by Scott to his former commander, Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman, from inside his final Antarctic camp in March 1912 - just before his death.
My Dear Sir Francis,
I fear we have shipped up – a close shave. I am writing a few letters which I hope will be delivered some day. I want to thank you for the friendship you gave me of late years, and to tell you how extraordinarily pleasant I found it to serve under you. I want to tell you that I was not too old for this job. It was the younger men that went under first. Finally I want you to secure a competence for my widow and boy. I leave them very ill provided for, but feel that the country ought not to neglect them. After all we are setting a good example to our countrymen, if not by getting into a tight place, by facing it like men when we were there. We could have come through had we neglected the sick.
Good-bye and good-bye to dear Lady Bridgeman
Yours ever
R. Scott
Excuse writing – it is -40, and has been for nigh a month.
Have you ever seen the image of the man removing his own appendix (I think it was his appendix) while stationed in the Antarctic? These expeditions are so brutal and the people on them maybe tougher than any on earth.