The Expedition
The Terra Nova expedition as
it became known was a far reaching and ambitious programme of scientific
research and discovery that is best known for the ultimately fatal attempt
to reach the south pole by Scott, Bowers, Evans, Oates and Wilson.
The Terra Nova (Latin for Newfoundland)
had worked the arctic and sub-arctic seas proving her worth for many years
before she was called upon for expedition work.
She was purchased for the British National
Antarctic Expedition in 1910 for £12,000 a second choice after Captain Scott
was unable to obtain the Discovery built especially for his earlier
1901-1904 Antarctic Expedition and now owned by and working for the Hudson
Bay Company. The Terra Nova however was a bargain particularly compared
to the £50,000 that the Discovery had cost ten years earlier.
The Terra Nova was well suited to this work
being reinforced from bow to stern with seven feet of oak to protect her
against the Arctic ice. Scott said of her.. "a wonderfully fine ice ship....
As she bumped the floes with mighty shocks, crushing and grinding a way
through some, twisting and turning to avoid others, she seemed like a living
thing fighting a great fight."
She was however 25 years old by 1910 and
had a tendency to take on water above and below the waterline. Time spent
at the bilge pumps was a constant necessity for the crew throughout the
voyage. Leakage through the supposedly caulked main deck during rain or
rough weather continually dripped on those below, the worst position in
this regard being for those under the stables.
The final port of call for the Terra Nova
before setting off for Antarctica was Lyttleton in New Zealand. Here she
was placed in dry dock to find a leak that kept the crew and bilge pumps
in almost constant motion since leaving Britain. Once afloat again, amongst
other stores, 19 Manchurian ponies a token dog pack of 33 animals and three
expensive motor sledges were loaded aboard.
She was dangerously overloaded when she sailed
for Antarctica and indeed came close to being lost in a storm at latitude
52° South. Great seas washed again and again across the ship's deck loosening
sacks of coal and crates of petrol for the tractors. The crew repeatedly
waded across the deck to retrieve and make fast the moving cargo that was
battering around causing more damage as it did so. Many sacks of coal were
simply thrown overboard.
One of the dogs (Osman) was washed overboard
only to have the next wave wash him back again, another poor animal was
not so lucky.
The water washing across the decks found
its way into the engine room and coal bunkers, the fires were put out in
the engine room and coal dust was washed into the bilges. Here it mixed
with oil from an earlier spill and formed a thick slurry that clogged the
bilge pumps. Access to the bilge pump intake was through the main hold,
but had the hatch been opened in the storm, the ship would surely have sunk
through the water taken on. While all hands bailed, the engineers pierced
two bulkheads, one wooden, one iron, to reach the bilge intakes.
Bowers entered the hold and diving through
water and muck, managed to clear the valves, those on deck at the pump handles
cheering when the outflow pipe spewed forth the bilge contents once again.
This expedition of the Terra Nova is notable
also for the fact that it is so well documented due to the presence on board
of two men:
Apsley Cherry-Garrard. A friend of
the expeditions Zoologist Wilson who had paid £1000 by contribution to join.
"Cherry" as he was known was a young recent graduate, and at 24 the expeditions
youngest member not really qualified for anything - though he became an
invaluable expedition member. His book
Herbert Ponting. The
expedition camera man and photographer. Ponting was a highly skilled and
accomplished photographer and artist, some of his pictures and his film
are still regarded as classics today.
The Terra Nova entered
the pack on December the 9th 1910, progress was slow as the ice was heavy,
much valuable coal was consumed en route forcing passage through it. From
Cherry-Garrards book:
"The Terra Nova proved a wonderfully
fine ice ship. Bower's middle watch especially became famous for the way
in which he put the ship at the ice, and more than once Scott was alarmed
by the great shock and collisions which were the result ............ But
Bowers never hurt the ship, and she gallantly responded to all calls made
on her".
Scott himself put it:
The ship behaved splendidly
- no other ship, not even the Discovery, would have come through so well.
Certainly the Nimrod would never have reached the south water had she been
caught in such pack".
Eventually the Terra Nova
reached McMurdo Sound but couldn't get as far south as the Discovery
had due the heaviness of the pack ice. She stopped near a place re-named
Cape Evans (formerly the "skuarry" after the birds that nested there) to
unload and establish camp. Even here she had to be unloaded over a mile
off shore and all the supplies dragged across the ice. It was during this
unloading that one of the motor sledges broke through the ice and sank,
lost to the expedition forever.
In early February the Terra
Nova steamed into the Bay of Whales on a last exploratory mission before
returning to New Zealand for the winter. Here she met two dog teams of Amundsen
's expedition who were out for the day unloading cargo from the Fram. Three
from the Terra Nova went to the Norwegians camp , Framheim for breakfast
and later in the day, the Norwegians lunched aboard the Terra Nova.
After dropping supplies off back at Cape Evans and unloading two ponies
(that had to swim ashore) the Terra Nova left for New Zealand.
The next time the Terra Nova
sailed into McMurdo Sound in 1912 to re-supply the expedition, Scott and
four others would be away on their attempt at reaching the South Pole.
In 1913 when she arrived to
bring the explorers back, the landfall was traumatic in a way that had never
been anticipated. The wardroom table on Terra Nova was set for a
celebration reunion dinner.
The ship was spotted from the
shore and the usual maritime greeting "Are you all well" went out, the shouted
response delivered the dreadful information.
Two days later Cape Evans had
been abandoned and all were on board and heading back to New Zealand.
More about Robert Falcon Scott
and this expedition
Historical photographs on this page by permission
of National Library of Australia
