On January 17th 1912, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition made it to the South Pole, assuming amongst themselves in the build up to their arrival to be the first manned expedition to make the trip successfully. However, once there they quickly realised that a Norwegian team, led by Roald Amundsen, had beaten them to it and that all of their efforts had missed the mark by a very narrow margin. Sadly, in the return journey to their Antarctic hit all five of the party died.
To mark the Centenary of the ultimately doomed Terra Nova team, and to provide an insight into the inner workings of the expedition, The Natural History Museum hosted the Scott’s Last Expedition exhibition in the winter of 2012. The series of displays, imagery and objects from the party looked at the achievements of the group, the real life story of Scott’s ill fates expedition, and the people that made up the Terra Nova team.
Looking at the scientific work conducted by the Terra Nova expedition during their time out in Antarctica, the exhibition was a good opportunity to see the positives that came out of the tragedy. It also featured a reconstruction of the hut that was home to the team for the many long, cold months, before they perished on their final attempt to reach the pole.
The exhibition opened originally in the Australian Maritime Museum in Sydney on the 17th June 2011 and went on to make its debut at The Natural History Museum in January 2012 for its run throughout the end of winter and into spring. This was then followed by a return to the south in November 2012 at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The Terra Nova expedition was actually Scott’s second trip down to the South Pole, following up on the 1901-1904 Discovery Expedition. However, the second of the two trips was struck by a series of setbacks right from the very start, including spending 20 days with their ship, the Terra Nova, stuck in pack ice. As the setback pushed the team deeper into the Antarctic winter and extending their expedition, so they were overcome by exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold on the return leg of their trek to the pole.
