Antiques Roadshow: 40 Years of Great Finds. Paul Atterbury

GREAT ANTARCTIC EXPLORER

      Robert Falcon Scott joined the Royal Navy in 1881, aged thirteen, and pursued a conventional, if unremarkable, naval career which was somewhat overshadowed by family and financial difficulties. In 1899, a chance meeting with Clements Markham, President of the Royal Geographical Society, resulted in Scott’s appointment as leader of the British National Antarctic Expedition, better known as the Discovery expedition, after the name of the ship commanded by Scott. This sailed in August 1901, finally returning to Britain in 1904, after a challenging voyage during which great discoveries were made, although the expedition did not actually reach the South Pole. One major legacy of the voyage was the enduring rivalry between Scott and Shackleton, a member of the Discovery team. Back in Britain, Scott made the most of the expedition’s achievements and the boost it had given to his career. In 1910 he was given command of the second British Antarctic Expedition, generally known as the Terra Nova expedition, again after the ship. After various setbacks, Scott and his chosen team finally set off for the South Pole in November 1911, in the full knowledge that the Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, was already ahead in the race to the Pole. The outcome is well known. When Scott reached the Pole on 17 January 1912, he found that Amundsen had beaten him by five weeks. He wrote in his diary: ‘The worst has happened. All the day dreams must go. Great God, this is an awful place.’ During the long return journey from the Pole, Scott and his four companions died in March 1912, just eleven miles from a stores depot that would have saved them. Their bodies and all the records were finally recovered in November 1912.

      PICTURED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

      Also discovered was their camera, and with it what came to be one of the most famous of all exploration images. As Hugh Bett, the Roadshow’s book specialist, said when he found the photographs at Bolton in 1997: ‘This is the most famous of all images, found undeveloped in the tent with the bodies. It was taken by Birdie Bowers, seated front left, and you can see by his hand the string he pulled to release the camera’s shutter.’ This extraordinary and evocative photograph shows the five members of the team at the South Pole and, although not composed by Herbert Ponting, it is always included among the many expedition photographs taken by him. As the expedition’s official photographer, Ponting took over 1,700 glass plate negatives, including some early colour images. He also used an early movie camera to capture sequences of life in the Antarctic camps. After the expedition’s disastrous end, Ponting’s photographs became a kind of memorial to Scott and his team, and were widely published. On his return to England, there was an exhibition of the photographs, and portfolios of some of the best images were published.