|
On the 1st July 1910 Captain Robert Falcon Scott and the British Antarctic
Expedition left Bute Docks, Cardiff, for the last great unexplored continent on
Earth. Their ship, the Terra Nova, originally a whaler built in Dundee, had been
refitted and coaled at Cardiff for her long voyage south. There was huge
excitement at the event, since the announcement of the American Robert Peary's claim to have
reached the North Pole in the previous year left only one polar prize left to
claim.
Both of the leading British polar explorers, Scott and Ernest Shackleton, had
been on fund raising and lecture tours in 1909, so that awareness of the
departure of Britain's biggest and most ambitious expedition yet was high.
Shackleton had returned home in June 1909 having reached 88° 23' S - the
furthest point South visited by any human being - and expectations were high for
the British team to conquer the South Pole. It was not yet known that the
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was also on his way to Antarctica. It was not
until that September that the expedition to the South Pole became a race.
Bryony Dixon
|
Complete item (0:55)
