National Museum marks Scott’s South Pole centenary

11th January 2012

The National Museum Cardiff is marking the centenary of Captain Scott’s arrival at the South Pole with a four-month exhibition.

Supported by the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust, Captain Scott: South for Science, opens from Saturday 14th January to Sunday 13th May.

Scott and his party arrived at the South Pole on 17th January 2012, only to discover that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it by a month.

The expedition is best remembered for the tragedy which befell Scott and his four companions on the return journey but this new exhibition shows that there was much more to Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910-13 British Antarctic Expedition than an attempt on the South Pole.

Teams of scientists explored this last great frontier, bringing back new knowledge of the continent's rocks, weather and wildlife.

Parties of geologists surveyed and mapped unknown lands, biologists studied and collected penguins, eggs and seals, and dredged the sea floor, and meteorologists recorded the weather and atmospheric conditions, while physicists researched the formation of ice and the movement of glaciers.

In this new exhibition, visitors can see a selection of specimens collected during the expedition as well as some of the iconic images of Antarctic exploration through the watercolours of Edward Wilson (1872-1912) and the photographs of Herbert Ponting (1870-1935).

Among the specimens on display from the Museum’s own collections will be the Welsh flag flown on Scott’s expedition ship, the Terra Nova, and the ship’s figurehead.

These will be supplemented with specimens lent by the Scott Polar Research Institute, the British Antarctic Survey, and the Natural History Museum. Poignantly, these include some of the rock samples collected by Scott on his way back from the South Pole and discovered with their frozen bodies in November 1912.

Find further details on the exhibition here.

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