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Pathé's Animated Gazette: The Ship 'Terra Nova' (1910)
 

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Main image of Pathé's Animated Gazette: The Ship 'Terra Nova' (1910)
 
Cardiff: The Ship 'Terra Nova' Leaving Harbour Towards the South Pole
35mm, black and white, silent, 54 feet
 
Production CompanyPathé Frères Cinema

Large crowds are gathered to see Captain Scott's Terra Nova at Cardiff's Bute Docks as the ship moves away from the quay on her voyage to Antarctica.

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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

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GALLERY / SCRIPTS / AUDIO
SEE ALSO
Great White Silence, The (1924)
Pathé's Animated Gazette: Memorial Service to the Antarctic Heroes (1913)
Topical Budget 95-1: The Terra Nova Returns Home (1913)
A Year in Film: 1910
Shipbuilding on Film - The Early Years