Glacier Gallery

Camp Under The Wild Range, 20 December 1911, (1913). Artist: Robert Falcon Scott

Camp Under The Wild Range, 20 December 1911, (1913). Three pyramid tents camped near Beardmore Glacier and Mount Wild: two figures can be seen sketching on the sledge. Apsley Cherry-Garrard is drawing the view towards Mount Buckley and Edward Wilson is making detailed sketches and notes of the geological features. The final expedition of British Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) left London on 1 June 1910 bound for the South Pole. The Terra Nova Expedition, officially the British Antarctic Expedition (1910-1913), included a geologist, a zoologist, a surgeon, a photographer, an engineer, a ski expert, a meteorologist and a physicist among others. Scott wished to continue the scientific work that he had begun when leading the Discovery Expedition to the Antarctic in 1901-04. He also wanted to be the first to reach the geographic South Pole. Scott, accompanied by Dr Edward Wilson, Captain Lawrence Oates, Lieutenant Henry Bowers and Petty Officer Edgar Evans, reached the Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that the Norwegian expedition under Amundsen had beaten them to their objective by a month. Delayed by blizzards, and running out of supplies, Scott and the remainder of his team died at the end of March. Their bodies and diaries were found eight months later. From Scott's Last Expedition, Volume I. [Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1913]

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Purgatory, 1872. Creator: Frederick William Quartley

Purgatory, 1872. Cliffs on the Atlantic coast of Rhode Island, USA: precipitous rocks, with the deep and sharp-lined fissure... The opening in the cliff extends one hundred and sixty feet, and is fifty feet deep at the outer edge. It is from eight to fourteen feet wide at the top, and from two to twenty at the bottom. It was once supposed that the water at the base was unfathomable; but at low tide it is actually not more than ten feet in depth. It was formerly the prevailing theory that this fissure was occasioned by a sudden upheaving of the rock; but, after careful examination, Professor Silliman came to the opinion that it was probably formed by the gradual eating away of the softer portions of the stone at a very early period'. From "Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes...with Illustrations on Steel and Wood by Eminent American Artists" Vol. I, edited by William Cullen Bryant. [D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1872]

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The Depot Party Amongst Crevasses, c1908, (1909). Artist: George Marston

The Depot Party Amongst Crevasses, c1908, (1909). Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) made three expeditions to the Antarctic. During the second expedition, 1907-1909, he and three companions established a new record, Farthest South latitude at 88°S, only 97 geographical miles (112 statute miles, or 180 km) from the South Pole, the largest advance to the pole in exploration history. Members of his team also climbed Mount Erebus, the most active volcano in the Antarctic. Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII for these achievements. He died during his third and last oceanographic and sub-antarctic expedition, aged 47. Illustration after an original painting by George Marston (1882-1940) the expedition artist, from The Heart of the Antarctic, Vol. I, by E. H. Shackleton, C.V.O. [William Heinemann, London, 1909]

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