A new exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London opens on 20th January to commemorate the greatest 2nd place in History... Captain Scott arriving a month late to the South Pole.
It is 100 years ago today that Roald Amundsen's team beat the brits and reached the vicinity of the South Pole, a first for humanity. Amundsen and his four companions; Oscar Wisting, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel and Olav Bjaaland spent the next 3 days confirming the Pole's position before pitching a tent called 'Polheim' to mark the spot. While Amundsen's team raised the Norweigan flag, the British expedition was still ascending the Beardmore Glacier more than 500 km away (you can witness the epic scale of that glacier in Frozen Planet ep 1).
It would not be until 18 January 1912, 33 days later, that Scott would find at Polheim a list of the 5 Norweigans who had beaten him in the race to the Pole. Amundsen and his team returned safely to their base, and later learned
that Scott and his four companions had died on their return journey.
Scott’s Last Expedition is a new exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London. It reunites for the first time real artefacts
used by Scott and his team together with scientific specimens collected
on the 1910–1913 expedition. Visitors can also walk around a life-size
stylised representation of Scott’s base-camp hut that still survives in
Antarctica.
Scott's Last Expedition opens at the Museum on 20 January 2012
Read more about the exhibition: NHM website
The story of the photographs and where they've been for the past 100 years: BBC news
The new book The Lost Photos of Captain Scott
Read more about some of the individual images: Guardian website.
Read more about the exhibition: NHM website
The story of the photographs and where they've been for the past 100 years: BBC news
The new book The Lost Photos of Captain Scott
Read more about some of the individual images: Guardian website.
Captain Scott (centre) and Terra Nova expedition team, 13 April 1911. (© H Ponting photograph, Pennell collection, Canterbury Museum NZ, 1975.289.28)
The hut at Cape Evans, showing the large number of
stores stacked outside, including dozens of sledges leaning, boxes of Fry's cocoa and a bath tub. (Photo: Little, Brown Book Group)
Photograph taken by Captain Scott of the Terra Nova team with their
ponies. The "sledgeometer" on the final sledge is clicking the mileage as it goes. Many of the
men in this image would return, but not all. None of the ponies would:
within a few days they would be shot (© Richard Kossow)
Dr Edward Wilson, the chief of the scientific staff, sketches the
mountain ranges and tributary glaciers of the Beardmore Glacier, 13
December 1911. Photographed by Captain Scott. (© Richard Kossow.)
Camping on the Beardmore Glacier. Photographed by Captain Scott. (© Richard Kossow)
