‘South Polar Times' copies for auction

Press, 8 September 1984, Page 5

‘South Polar Times' copies for auction

NZPA staff correspondent London Three volumes of the "South Polar Times” containing exact reproductions of the journals produced in the Antarctic by members of two Scott expeditions will to be auctioned in London. Estimated to be worth up to £lOOO (about $NZ2656) they are included in Sotheby’s important sale of travel books, atlases, and maps described as a collection of the rarest in the world. The first volume, which has five issues published for April to August, 1902, is prefaced by Captain Robert Falcon Scott. He wrote, “The owner of these volumes will possess an exact reproduction of the original ‘South Polar Times’ during the winter of 1902 (or 121 days of darkness), pro-

duced as they were for the sole edification of our small company of explorers in the Discovery then held fast in the Antarctic ice.

'.‘They were to provide instruction as well as amusement; our scientific experts were to write luminously on their special subjects. On April 23 (1902) when the Sun disappeared for the first time below our horizon, the first number of the journal was laid on the ward-room table by its smiling editor (E. H. Shackleton, second lieutenant).” Referring to the work of Dr Edward Wilson which illustrates all of the volumes, Scott wrote, “His charming sketches recall the spirit and beauty of our polar scenes as no words can do.”

The second volume, edited by Louis Bernacchi, physicist in charge of mag-

netic observations, has three more issues which were published during the 1903 winter when the Discovery was still ice-bound.

Both were printed as limited editions of 250 copies in 1907 by Smith Elder Company, London, which had already published Scott’s “The Voyage of the Discovery” in 1905. The third volume by the same company was printed in a limited edition of 350 copies in 1914 to contain exact reproductions of the “South Polar Times” during the first winter of Scott’s second expedition, 1910-13. This volume is notable for a poem, “The Barrier Silence,” by Edward Wilson, which was included in the issue published after he set out southwards with Scott, Oates, Bowers, and Evans on November 1, 1911, never to return.