The Expedition
The ship "Discovery"
was built especially for Scott's expedition in 1901 to reach the South
Pole, a wooden sailing ship with auxiliary engines.
The Discovery was itself modeled on the
design of a whale ship also called Discovery (ex Bloodhound) that had been
on an Arctic expedition in the 1870's. The great arctic explorer Nansen
had recommended that the ship be a duplicated design of the Fram.
The Ship Committee of the expedition however decided that a conventional
whaling hull would be more appropriate as the ship would have to cross the
ominous Southern Seas to get to Antarctica.
Finding a yard to build the Discovery
was not easy as wooden hulls of that size had become rarities by 1900 when
the building of the ship was put out to tender. She was almost built in
Norway but it was decided that a ship for a British expedition should be
built in Britain.
The ship had a massively built wooden
hull that was designed to withstand being frozen into the ice. The propeller and rudder
could be hoisted out of the way to prevent ice
damage. Iron shod bows were severely raked so that when ramming the ice
they would ride up over the margin and crush the ice with deadweight. She was
also at the time the first ship ever built in Britain specifically for a
scientific expedition and cost £50,000 of the total budget of £92,000 for the
expedition.
She left the Dundee shipyard where she was built on July 31st 1901 sailing south to Antarctica.
Undoubtedly strong, the Discovery was flawed in
many ways during her building. Once she reached New Zealand she was put
into dry dock (there was no time for in Britain before her departure). The
ship's carpenter signed a damning report with such details as numerous
empty bolt holes and improperly clenched bolts being uncovered. Six feet
of seawater had seeped into the hold since leaving Britain. Many harsh
exchanges ensued between the Dundee shipyard and the Royal Geographical
Society headquarters in London - the organizers of the expedition.
Like other ships designed for ice, before and since, the
Discovery rolled terribly at sea. The flat shallow hull with no
protuberances that works so well in ice provides minimal stability in
normal and particularly in heavy seas.
Scott was unimpressed with the ship initially in the
English Channel pronouncing her sluggish, short-masted and under-canvassed.
By the time she had reached the roaring forties, these same characteristics
had become virtues. She could sail through the worst gales with a
considerable amount of canvas aloft in winds that would have stripped the sails
from more conventional ships.
Amongst the crew on this
expedition was Ernest Shackleton
engaged as third lieutenant in charge of holds, stores, provisions and deep sea
water analysis.
On reaching Antarctica and after some initial explorations along the coast,
the Discovery
made its way to McMurdo sound where winter quarters were to be established. She
was frozen in for the winter in the protected waters of the sound in 1902 and
remained there over the next nearly two years until February 1904. A supply ship
the Morning, came to bring supplies in the meantime.
As well as an extensive scientific programme, one
aim of the expedition was to attempt to reach the South Pole. A party of Scott,
Shackleton and Wilson reached 82°17'S on December 31st 1902 at which point,
they turned back due to the effects of scurvy and a lack of food. They had
however traveled 300 miles farther south than
anyone before them and were only 480 statute miles from the Pole. It took them
just over another month before they reached their base, as Scott put it "We
are as near spent as three persons can be". They had been gone for
ninety-three days and had covered 960 statute miles.
The "Morning" returned in 1904
this time accompanied by another ship the "Terra Nova". The
government in England had decided that the Antarctic party might be having too
good a time of it! - relieved once a year by a hugely expensive
The
Voyage of the Discovery:
Scott's First Antarctic Expedition
