STORY OF CAPTAIN SCOTTS VESSEL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 104, 4 May 1937, Page 10

STORY OF CAPTAIN SCOTTS VESSEL

The Discovery’s Famous Maiden Voyage in Which She Spent Two Winters Frozen in Antarctic Ice. Her Future As Sea Scouts’ Ship

A FEW WEEKS AGO it was announced x that Captain Scott’s old ship, the Discovery, had been acquired by the Scouts’ Association for a nominal sum and was to be moored in the Thames, probably off Temple Gardens, as a living memorial to the Antarctic explorer. The vessel will be used as a training ship for Sea Scouts and a hostel for overseas scouts visiting London. During her 36 years of life, says the Port of London Authority monthly publication the Discovery has had many adventures; she has been frozen fast in ihe ice of the Antarctic and ploughed her way through the floes of the north. The history of this staunch little ship deserves to be remembered for its own sake as well .is for that of the gallant men who sailed m her.

About the beginning of the century the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society made an appeal for funds to equip an expedition to the Antarctic, and finally, largely thanks to the untiring efforts of Sir Clements Markham, the keel of a research ship was laid by the Dundee Shipbuilding Company in March, 1900. *The hull of this ship was built entirely of wood, the frames neing Ilin, thick and made of solid oak. The inside lining had a thickness of 4in. and outside were two layers of 6in. and sin. respectively. The frames were placed very close together so that there is virtually a solid wall of oak 26in. thick for most of the length of the vessel. The Discovery was, of course, specially built for the Polar expedition —incidentally she was the first British ship to be built for research purposes—and the enormous strength of her bows was necessary to withstand the pressure of the ice which would crumple up an iron hull like so much paper. She was barquentine rigged and had an auxiliary engine. Captain Scott’s cabin was next to the boiler room and he writes in his diary: “This position was by no means a catch, for in the tropics, when steam was up it had the doubtful benefit of the heat given off by the boilers, whereas in the Polar winter, when we had no steam, the engine room naturally became the coldest place in the ship and the after cabin suffered accordingly.” When the Scouts take possession this cabin will probably be kept as a kind of museum contain

•••K oaiiit'ica ui x uiai grar sucu as a sieuge. skis and an explorer’s outfit. Scott’s Discovery was not the first vesseel to carry this name but it had a worthy family tree. The first Discovery was an East Indian.an of only 55 tons which sailed in IGO- in search of the North West Passage. Altogether this little ship made five more voyages in Arctic regions; in 1610, under Henry Hudson, the Hudson Bay v. as discovered, and in 1615, with Baffin on board, the first passage was made through the strait now known after him. Another Dis • overy sailed under Cook on his third voyage in 1776. Vancouver’s ship Discovery, built on the Thames in 1780, afterwards became a convict hulk and was finally broken up at Deptford in 1831. The present Discovery’.immediate predecessor was the former whaler Bloodhound, built al Dundee in 1873. and used for the Government Arctic expedition in 1574. Scott’s Discovery was launched ••n the Dee in 1901 and in June of the same year she arrived at East India Dock to take in stores for the expedition. After several busy weeks she left the Thames for New

Zealand where Captain Scott made his final preparations. The ship was loaded with every ounce of coal and provisions she could carry, and a deckload of 23 dogs and 45 sheep completed the list. A straight passage was made through the Ross JSea, but during the following -winter the Discovery became ice-bound; however, her stout oak frames did their job well and held firm. (Sir Ernest Shackleton’s vessel, the Endurance, was smashed up by the pressure of the ice in 1915.) In January 1903 the Morning was sent out from Lyttelton with stores, but was unable to get near the Dis covery on account of the ice. Scott, returning exhausted from a long expedition Into the unknown land of ice, did not at first, realise that the pack showed no* signs of breaking up. Attempts to blast and saw a passage through the 16 miles of ice many feet deep proved ineffectual and finally it was decided to transfer the stores from the Morning, and the expedition made their preparations for spending a second winter in the Antarctic.

This article docs not purport to deal with the history of the expedition, but must confine itself to the adventures of the ship which formed the base for numerous expeditions into the interior. Meanwhile, in England conviction was gradually growing that the Discovery -would never be free again, and two relief ships, the Terra Nova, in which Scott made his last fatal expedition in 1910, and the Morning, were sCnt out from New Zealand with orders that Scott was to abandon the Discovery and return with his crew on the relief ships if the Discovery showed no signs of breaking free. After weeks of anxiety on board, for the whole crew thought it would be little less than a catastrophe to have to abandon their ship, the ice sheet began to sway, and a fortnight later the floes broke up and a huge cheer went up as the two relief ships raced through. Dynamite w r as laid to blast away the last of the ice, a narrow crevice became a broad streak of black water, and the Discovery floated again after two long winters. But her troubles were not yet over. A terrible storm blew up and steam was only raised just in time to stop the combined forces of sea, wind and current battering the vessel Io pieces against the ice. Shattering blows brought her thudding dewn onto the bottom and splintered the rudder-head so that the

spare one had to be shipped. At last the tough little ship fought her way through and arrived at Lyttelton where two months were spent re conditioning before returning home where -she arrived on September 9th. 1904.

In January, 1905, the Discovery was bought by the Hudson Bay Company to trade between London and Canada in place of the Stork which had been detained by ice, and she left London in June, 1906, for Janies Bay following the route of her old seventeenth century namesake. During the following years the Discovery traded regularly between the West India Docks and Janies Bay, often fighting her way through heavy pack ice. The first two years of the war she spent under charter to the French Government bringing provisions over from Canada, yet curiously enough it was an event in no way connected with the turmoil in Europe which brought the Discovery back to southern waters once more. Twenty-two members of the Shackleton expedition which left for. the Antarctic in 1914 had been stranded on Elephant Island, and after three unsuccessful attempts had been made bv Sir Ernest Shackleton to reach these men, the Govern ment decided to dispatch a wooden ship to the rescue, and in view of the magnificent record of the Discovery it was decided that the owners should be approached. The French Government released her from charter and the Hudson Bay Company placed her at the free disposal of the Admiralty. The Discovery was fitted out at Devonport and left Plymouth on the night of August 10th., 1916, for Port Stanley where she was to collect Shackleton on the way. In the meantime, Shackleton’s own fourth attempt to break through was successful, and the Discovery was handed back to the Hudson Bay Company in December, 1916. ]n the following year she traded between Montreal and St. Johns’ Newfoundland, and in 1918 left Halifax for Liverpool. Owing to the pressing demand for tonnage just after the war she was diverted to European waters and in 1920 arrived in the Thames from Constantinople. After lying up for two years she was sold by the Hudson Bay Company to the Crown Agents for the Colonics, and in 1923, after being reconditioned, she sailed on a three years’ voyage under Lt. J. R. Stenhouse for the purpose of obtaining scientific data

i»ii luu migratory uamiH vx wnaicn and making oceanographical and meteorological surveys. On August J, 1929, now showing Port Stanley as her new port of registration, the Discovery left South West India Dock on what was to be her last voyage. After calling at Capetown to take on board Sir Douglas Mawson, the leader of the expedition, she sailed for the Kerguelen Islands on a joint mission for the British, Australian and New Zealand Governments. During the winter months the Discovery lay in MelLcurne while the scientific survey work and the marking of whales was carried out in the summer. On August 1, 1931, two years to the day after she left London, the Discovery nosed her way up the Thames and for the last five years she has been lying up in the East India Dock, thus by a strange coincidence coming to rest in the same dock from which she started on her memorable maiden voyage.