Scott's last expedition

I finally made it to Scott's last expedition, the Antarctica exhibition at London's Natural History Museum. It closes on 2 September but I'll recommend it anyway. The exhibition features a wide range of personal items, photographs and some of the 40,000 scientific specimens brought back by Scott's team, as well as videos and a life-sized representation of the Cape Evans hut.

It's an impressive collection and certainly sheds light on the often overlooked scientific aspect of the Terra Nova expedition. Perhaps a little more effort could have gone into making the hut feel like the real thing but at least it showed just how cramped the base was.

Plenty of polar exploration books were on sale but Roland Huntford's titles appeared to be missing. All a bit odd, particularly as the introduction to the exhibition acknowledges the various revisions of Scott's character - and the aim to look at the expedition from all angles. Good to see though that by far the best seller (at least in terms of books left  on the shelves) was Apsley Cherry-Garrard's, The Worst Journey in the World.

The journey in question was of course the quest to secure an unhatched Emperor penguin, something that had to made in the middle of the winter. Cherry-Garrard recounts in the book reaction of the Natural History Museum when he turned up in 1913 to deliver the three eggs he had brought back from the Antarctic:

However,  as reported in the Manchester Guardian, the  museum didn't entirely agree with this version of events:

Manchester Guardian, 12 December 1922

December 14 1911: Roald Amundsen reaches the south pole

On 14 December 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team became the first people to reach the South Pole. The Guardian and Observer reported it - but not until three months later. Read the articles on the From the archive blog.

Silken flag at the South Pole

So it's 99 years this week since man finally made it to the South Pole. At 3pm on December 14 1911, Roald Amundsen and his team deduced that they had reached their destination and, as the Norwegian explorer later wrote, "gathered round the colours, a beautiful silken flag. All hands took hold of it, and, planting it on the spot, gave the vast plateau on which the Pole is situated the name of the King Haakon VII Plateau."

Of course news of the success didn't emerge until the beginning of March the following year. Countless articles and books have been written about the journey but I rather like Amudsen's initial matter of fact account. The following piece appeared in the Observer on March 10 1912.

Race for the South Pole

This year marks the centenary of the beginning of the race for the South Pole. On June 1 1910, the Terra Nova, Captain Robert Falcon Scott's ship, sailed out of Cardiff for the Antarctic, while a few weeks later Roald Amundsen's team left the Norwegian port of Flekkero aboard the Fram, also bound for the south.

The British expedition was supposed to be a scientific mission with getting to the pole as just one of its objectives. Things changed though when, on arriving in Melbourne on October 12, Scott received a curt telegram stating: "Beg to inform you Fram proceeding Antarctic – Amundsen." The ensuing polar marathon has been written about many times and expect yet more books to appear over the following months.

The latest to join groaning Antarctic Exploration bookshelves is Roland Huntford's The Race for the South Pole which tells the story through the expedition diaries of Scott and Amundsen. The entries are laid out so that the two men “finally confront each other across the printed page.” This is a first as the Norwegian's diaries have never appeared in English before (translated by Huntford), while all the cuts made by Scott's family and literary executors to Scott's published words have been restored. Also appearing for the first time is the diary of Olav Bjaaland, the cross-country champion who played a significant part in Amundsen's successful team.

As a polar historian and ski-expert, Huntford adds valuable commentary to the entries. The introduction sets out clearly the build up to the race, comparing the preparation that each team made during the winter months before setting out for the pole. There may be a little too much detail for some but reading about cooking stoves, skis, or the peculiarities of fur in a polar environment, brings the story alive.

The Race to the Pole is very much a companion volume to Huntford's 1979 book, Scott and Amundsen, an account which still divides polar historians. Was Scott, compared to Amundsen's ultra professional skiing team, an unprepared amateur whose achievement was to “perpetuate the romantic myth of the explorer as martyr" Or was Huntford's revisionist history just a prejudiced rant against a great, and brave, British explorer who simply got unlucky with the weather? This is discussed, along with the the rehabilitation of Scott's reputation by way of books such as Ranulph Fiennes's Captain Scott, in a recent Guardian article.

And so the story continues. The latest news is that descendants of Scott are planning to embark on a journey of commemoration and are offering the chance for one lucky person to go along with them. See here for details (but don't bother applying if you're over 30).

The Longest Winter

The events surrounding the 1910-12 expeditions to the South Pole have been written about so many times that it is hard to believe that there is anything new to say about the travails of Scott and Amundsen. It was a surprise then to come across The Longest Winter: Scott's other Heroes by Meredith Hooper, a a tale that has never been fully told.

While most of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's 59-strong team was dedicated to getting their leader and four others to the Pole, six members set out in February 1911 on a separate expedition several hundred miles north of the main Ross Island base camp. Under the leadership of Lieutenant Victor Campbell, the purpose was zoological and magnetic research. The Longest Winter tells the tale of how this Eastern, or Northern Party as it became known, after a partially successful year at Cape Adare, was picked up by Terra Nova, the expedition ship, and deposited further down the coast for further exploration. However, five weeks later, severe ice conditions meant that the ship couldn't collect them and so they were forced to spend the winter in an ice cave measuring 9ft by 12ft. Rations were low and seal and penguin became the main source of food. Come the Spring, and with no sign of a rescue party, the team then had to make a 230-mile walk back to the main base.

The first section of the book covers the team's year in a prefabricated hut. It's interesting to hear about life, (and often boredom), in a remote research outpost but the story really comes to life with the telling of the men's unexpected stay in the ice cave. Drawing on the diaries of the team - three officers and three 'men' - some still smelling of the seal blubber fires on which they depended for survival, Hooper reveals the daily grind and feeling of desperation they felt in what was dubbed Inexpressible Island (above).

Life revolved around trying to have enough to eat. The seal was served in the form of a 'hoosh', a stew which they found tastier when stirred in the blood-soaked ice. This was cooked over fires of burning seal blubber, which also served as fuel for improvised lamps made out of Oxo tins. The walls of the cave were soon blackened by the smoke and the acrid fumes choked the men. 'That igloo with its black and blubber beastliness' was how Apsley Cherry-Garrard later described it, after hearing accounts of the place.

While the diet of mainly seal and penguin kept the mean alive, the salt-water ice, combined with a lack of carbohydrate led to all of the team suffering from chronic diahorrea (often after long periods of constipation.) The radical change in their appearance can be seen in these photographs. In the first, taken at the Cape Adare hut, the men look like they're posing for a Boden winter catalogue.

A year later, and making the most of a lull in the wind to get out of the cave, the team, in their blubber soiled clothes resemble a particularly disgruntled Scandinavian heavy metal band.

Why this group of six very hungry men cooped up in a tiny ice cave for six months didn't end up fighting each other can be explained in part by the fact that Campbell maintained the strict naval discipline that had carried them through their year in the hut. All abided (if sometimes reluctantly) to this. That said, living in such close proximity to each other did lead to some of the strict class and social barriers breaking down. Certain matters though remained sacrosanct. It would take an expert in Edwardian etiquette to explain why exactly, even during a period when all the team were suffering extreme stomach problems, they needed one latrine for officers and one for the men - each side by side. At times the account feels almost Monty Pythonesque.

However, The Longest Winter recounts a story that should certainly be up there in the pantheon of tales of endurance. A good piece about the expedition appeared in the New York Times on February 15 1913 (a version of which was reproduced in the Manchester Guardian on the same day).

From Pole to pixel

Captain Scott's last three diaries have been launched online by the British Library. Using Turning the Pages software, the three-dimensional animation allows the viewer to mimic the action of turning each page on the screen. Passages can be magnified and there is also commentary about Scott's attempt to be the first to get tothe South Pole. A sample page from the BL's Virtual books collection (click to enlarge):

Meanwhile, images from the expedition can seen at the Getty Images Gallery, in London. Ponting - The Journey South, is an exhibition of pictures taken by Herbert Ponting who spent 14 months at Cape Evans from 1911-1912 and produced over 1000 images.

Scott of the Antarctweet

The diary entries of the Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott are published on Twitter today, nearly 100 years after they were originally composed. Daily postings will be made by Cambridge University's Scott Polar Institute, which holds many of the doomed explorer's manuscripts, to mark the centenary of his final journey.

The first entry, dated November 26 1910, tells how his team boards their ship in New Zealand. The final one will be on March 29 1912, the day he and his comrades died.

Ernest Shackleton's whisky on (Antarctic) ice

Two crates of Scotch whisky dumped in the Antarctic by polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton are to be recovered after a century buried in the ice.

The rare Old brand of McKinlay and Co whisky was left by Shackleton when he was forced to abandon his expedition to the South Pole in 1909. The crates were discovered under the Cape Royds hut used by the team, in 2006. Now, distiller Whyte & Mackay has asked explorers from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust to retrieve the the precious liquid – either the actual bottles or a syringe full – so that they can recreate the unique flavour.

Shackleton's 'Farthest South' expedition came to within 97 nautical miles (about 112 statute miles) of the South Pole on January 9 1909 but was forced to turn back due to a lack of food.

The picture of three of the four-man expedition (Shackleton, Frank Wild, Eric Marshall and Jameson Adams), appeared in the Manchester Guardian on November 4 1909.

Skiing to the south pole

The Scottish newspapers report that a disabled adventurer who broke broke her back in a climbing accident hopes to become the first person to reach the south pole using arm power alone.

Karen Darke, 38, was paralysed from the neck down after falling from cliffs near Aberdeen, severing her spinal cord and breaking her neck and arms. She now hopes to scoop a world record by reaching the geographic South Pole on a sit-ski. Since her accident, when she was just 21, Karen, who is based in Inverness, has pursued an ambitious programme adventures, one of the most dramatic being an ascent of El Capitan in California's Yosemite valley.

Naturally, Those Who Dared features tales of adventure from the polar regions including several from the Norwegian ski-pioneers, Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen. During the years 1888-89, Nansen made the first crossing of the Greenland Icecap, an audacious trip he described as a "ski tour". Four years later he turned his attention to the north pole, his ingenious idea being to literally go with the floe - the theory was that the transpolar drift, a stream of ice, flowed across the pole from Siberia to Canada. Thus, Nansen rammed his ship, the Fram, into the ice and waited to be carried right to the pole. When it became obvious that he was going to bypass it, he abandoned his ship and made a dash for the pole, getting closer than anyone before.

Nansen was in many ways the father of modern polar exploration who "demythologized the polar environment, " according to polar historian and former Observer journalist, Roland Huntford (see, Two Planks and a Passion). He proved the value of skis as an economical way of travelling and the value of using dogs, as well as developing specialist equipment such as a lightweight stove.

Roald Amundsen, a protege of Nansen, included Olav Bjaaland, a champion skier, in the five-man team that was the first to reach the south pole in 1911. According to Huntford “They saw themselves not as explorers but as skiers. Nor did they feel particularly heroic. They had simply sped 740 miles and won the longest ski race in the world."