BACK TO ANTARCTICA

Southland Times, Issue 18965, 12 June 1923, Page 13

BACK TO ANTARCTICA

A NEW MISSION FOR THE DISCOVERY A ship’s romance lies behind the announcement that "the Discovery is to be reconstructed for research into South Atlantic whaling” (says the Observer). The Discovery was specially built fcr the National Antarctic Expedition of 1901-4, a voyage inspired by pure desire to penetrate untrodden lands. No British expedition had sailed for the far south since the voyage of the ill-fated Erebus and Terror under Sir James Clark Ross and Capt. Crozier in 1840. The Discovery is the sixth ship of her name. At the time cf her building she inevitably challenged comparison with Colin Archer’s Fram, then lately back from her first voyage, Vansen’s wonderful drift across the frozen North Polar Basin. Such a comparison was unfair to both vessels; for the Discovery was built to penetrate pack-ice, while the Fram is a mere saucer-shaped vessel, designed to rise above rafting pressure-ice and to drift without being crushed. The Discovery is a wonderful boat in a storm; the Fram proved herself also a fine sea-boat on Amundsen’s South Pole Expedition, but she is a slow-mover. i The first Discovery was commanded by Capt. Cook; the sixth by a greater hero, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott. She left London on July 31, 1901, and reached McMurdo Sound in January, 1902. By February she was frozen in off Cape Armitage at the extreme southern end of Ross Island. The men of the Expedition lived aboard her, and the shore hut was used only occasionally. After Scott, Wilson, and Shackleton had returned from their ninety-three days’ march, on which they reached latitude 82 degrees 17’ S, 463 miles from the Pole, the Discovery was visited by the relief ship, the Morning. The ice never broke out of the Sound that summer, and the Discovery remained fast for another year. Next summer the Morning arrived again, accompanied by the Terra Nova, and bringing orders that if the Discovery could not be freed, she must be abandoned. It was a cruel order to have to obey, but just as Fate looked darkest, the ice drifted north with miraculous speed and the Discovery escaped on February 19, 1904. She was sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company, and until now has been working among sealers there and in the Falkland Islands. Capt: Scott tried to obtain her for his last expedition in 1910-12, but she could not be spared, and Scott purchased the Terra Nova instead. In September, 1916, the Discovery would have sailed to the reecue of Frank Wild and his twenty-one comrades of Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition, who were marooned for five months on Elephant Island, had not Shackleton effected their rescue in the Yelcho during August. And now once more she is to resume the work of exploration and research.