Terra Nova (Scott)

[john sefton]

Built originally for the Dundee whaling and sealing fleet.

Barque / 1 funnel, 3 masts / L,B,D 187' x 31.4' x 19' - 57m x 9.6m x 5.8m / 744 tons / Hull: wooden / Compliment: 65 / Engine: 140 nhp, 1 screw / Built: Alexander Stephan & Sons Ltd. Dundee, Scotland, 1884.

Expeditions

Relief ship for Jackson-Harmsworth Arctic expedition 1894 - 1897

1903, sailing with fellow Dundee whaler "Morning" to relieve and help free the Discovery from McMurdo Sound.

British National Antarctic Expedition 1910-1913

The Terra Nova expedition, as it became known, was a far reaching and ambitious programme of scientific research and discovery that is best known for the ultimately fatal attempt to reach the south pole by Scott, Bowers, Evans, Oates and Wilson.

The Terra Nova (Latin for Newfoundland) had worked the arctic and sub-arctic seas proving her worth for many years before she was called upon for expedition work.

She was purchased for the British National Antarctic Expedition in 1910 for £12,000 a second choice after Captain Scott was unable to obtain the Discovery built especially for his earlier 1901-1904 Antarctic Expedition and now owned by and working for the Hudson Bay Company. The Terra Nova however was a bargain particularly compared to the £50,000 that the Discovery had cost ten years earlier.

The Terra Nova was well suited to this work being reinforced from bow to stern with seven feet of oak to protect her against the Arctic ice. Scott said of her.. "a wonderfully fine ice ship.... As she bumped the floes with mighty shocks, crushing and grinding a way through some, twisting and turning to avoid others, she seemed like a living thing fighting a great fight."

She was however 25 years old by 1910 and had a tendency to take on water above and below the waterline. Time spent at the bilge pumps was a constant necessity for the crew throughout the voyage. Leakage through the supposedly caulked main deck during rain or rough weather continually dripped on those below, the worst position in this regard being for those under the stables.

The final port of call for the Terra Nova before setting off for Antarctica was Lyttleton in New Zealand. Here she was placed in dry dock to find a leak that kept the crew and bilge pumps in almost constant motion since leaving Britain. Once afloat again, amongst other stores, 19 Manchurian ponies a token dog pack of 33 animals and three expensive motor sledges were loaded aboard.

She was dangerously overloaded when she sailed for Antarctica and indeed came close to being lost in a storm at latitude 52° South. Great seas washed again and again across the ship's deck loosening sacks of coal and crates of petrol for the tractors. The crew repeatedly waded across the deck to retrieve and make fast the moving cargo that was battering around causing more damage as it did so. Many sacks of coal were simply thrown overboard.

One of the dogs (Osman) was washed overboard only to have the next wave wash him back again, another poor animal was not so lucky.

The water washing across the decks found its way into the engine room and coal bunkers, the fires were put out in the engine room and coal dust was washed into the bilges. Here it mixed with oil from an earlier spill and formed a thick slurry that clogged the bilge pumps. Access to the bilge pump intake was through the main hold, but had the hatch been opened in the storm, the ship would surely have sunk through the water taken on. While all hands bailed, the engineers pierced two bulkheads, one wooden, one iron, to reach the bilge intakes.

Bowers entered the hold and diving through water and muck, managed to clear the valves, those on deck at the pump handles cheering when the outflow pipe spewed forth the bilge contents once again.

This expedition of the Terra Nova is notable also for the fact that it is so well documented due to the presence on board of two men:

Apsley Cherry-Garrard. A friend of the expeditions Zoologist Wilson who had paid £1000 by contribution to join. "Cherry" as he was known was a young recent graduate, and at 24 the expeditions youngest member not really qualified for anything - though he became an invaluable expedition member. His book

Herbert Ponting. The expedition camera man and photographer. Ponting was a highly skilled and accomplished photographer and artist, some of his pictures and his film are still regarded as classics today.

The Terra Nova entered the pack on December the 9th 1910, progress was slow as the ice was heavy, much valuable coal was consumed en route forcing passage through it. From Cherry-Garrards book:

"The Terra Nova proved a wonderfully fine ice ship. Bower's middle watch especially became famous for the way in which he put the ship at the ice, and more than once Scott was alarmed by the great shock and collisions which were the result ............ But Bowers never hurt the ship, and she gallantly responded to all calls made on her".

Scott himself put it:

The ship behaved splendidly - no other ship, not even the Discovery, would have come through so well. Certainly the Nimrod would never have reached the south water had she been caught in such pack".

Eventually the Terra Nova reached McMurdo Sound but couldn't get as far south as the Discovery had due the heaviness of the pack ice. She stopped near a place re-named Cape Evans (formerly the "skuarry" after the birds that nested there) to unload and establish camp. Even here she had to be unloaded over a mile off shore and all the supplies dragged across the ice. It was during this unloading that one of the motor sledges broke through the ice and sank, lost to the expedition forever.

In early February the Terra Nova steamed into the Bay of Whales on a last exploratory mission before returning to New Zealand for the winter. Here she met two dog teams of Amundsen 's expedition who were out for the day unloading cargo from the Fram. Three from the Terra Nova went to the Norwegians camp , Framheim for breakfast and later in the day, the Norwegians lunched aboard the Terra Nova. After dropping supplies off back at Cape Evans and unloading two ponies (that had to swim ashore) the Terra Nova left for New Zealand.

The next time the Terra Nova sailed into McMurdo Sound in 1912 to re-supply the expedition, Scott and four others would be away on their attempt at reaching the South Pole.

In 1913 when she arrived to bring the explorers back, the landfall was traumatic in a way that had never been anticipated. The wardroom table on Terra Nova was set for a celebration reunion dinner.

The ship was spotted from the shore and the usual maritime greeting "Are you all well" went out, the shouted response delivered the dreadful information.

Two days later Cape Evans had been abandoned and all were on board and heading back to New Zealand.

On her return from the Antarctic in 1913, the Terra Nova was re-purchased by her former owners, Messrs. C. T. Bowring and Company to return to work in the Newfoundland seal fishery.

She met her end on September 13th 1943 when she sprang a leak and foundered off Greenland, the crew all being saved by the coastguard.

http://www.coolantarctica.com

Aust Ant SG44, Hungary SG3787, Ross Dep SG35, Turks & Caicos SG1076.

[aukepalmhof]

The unique exhibition miniature sheet depicts Scott’s vessel, the TERRA NOVA, in Lyttelton Harbour and incorporates two 2011 Ross Dependency stamps commemorating Scott’s historic expedition.
The exhibition souvenir cover features the Scott statue that toppled off its plinth in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake, but remounting is planned. Also printed on the cover are New Zealand ‘Penny Dominion’ and ‘Edward VII’ ½d stamps. Scott was appointed Post Master for the expedition and supplies of both stamps were overprinted ‘Victoria Land’ for use by expedition members.
New Zealand 2012
New Zealand Post

$1.90 - Robert Scott
Robert Scott announced his venture to the South Pole in 1909 and in 1910 the British Antarctic Expedition left London on the Terra Nova for New Zealand. After a perilous leg from New Zealand to Antarctica, Scott and his crew reached Ross Island in January 1911, where they erected their hut at Cape Evans.

Ross Dependency 2011 sg?, scott?
Bulgaria 2019 o.65 Euro sgMS?, scott?
British Antarctic Territory 2019 £1.75, sg?, scott? More on this stamp issue is given on: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16989&p=20162#p20162

http://stamps.nzpost.co.nz/ross-depende ... /race-pole

[aukepalmhof]

When Britian first sent ‘Torpedo’ Lieutenant Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his ship Discovery south to Antarctica, the box camera had been invented and was as vital a part of any expedition as a pith helmet or an ice axe. That was in 1901 – the twentieth century – yet Antartica was still unexplored.
Nobody even knew if it was a continet or merely a mass of floating ice. In 1910, Scott’s Terra Nova expedition was sent to penetrate this vast and hostile region, to devise the best method of travel there and with a band of top-rate scientists under his control, to gain knowledge in the cause of science. He chose the best scientists from all over the Commonwealth as well as the best professional photographer-cum cinematographer, Herbert Ponting, whose reputation was already firmly established in London after an exciting life in remote lands about which he lectured with magic lantern slides. His images confirm Ponting as one of the truly great photographers of the twentieth century, especially considering the extremely demanding conditions under which he had to work in Antarctica. In the 1970s, I worked as a photographer and cinematographer in Antarctica and even then, with vastly improved camera, lenses, films and ancillary gear, I still found even the simplest photographic activity extremely demanding in the ultra-low temperatures. In the 1970s, a characterassasinating biography of Scott and a nine-hour equally distorted television programme based on that book attacked the explorer and his acheivements. His posthumous record was besmirched and, in 2002, I decided to set the record straight and reassert historical reality in place of the groundless myths successfully propagted by the book and the film. I am delighted that my resulting book Captain Scott is now followed by this stamp issue to remind us all of the stark reality of the conditions faced by Scott and his men, the very first human beings to penetrate and learn about Antarctica. Although Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, towed there by dog power, Scott was the first to arrive by pure man power. The US scentific station at the South Pole is called the Scott Amundsen South Pole Station in recognition of two great but very different achievements. The greatest of French polar explorers, Dr. Jean Charcot, wrote in Le Matin: “Scott has conquered the Pole. The public, ill-informed, will say he reached his goal only second: but those who know – Amundsen and Shackleton among them – will say that it was Scott who opened the road to the Pole and mapped out the route, shedding a reflective glow upon his country.” He added: “Scott did not turn aside from his scentific programme…It is quite another thing with Amundsen. He is not a scientist. He is being sent only on setting up a record. If one wishes to pronounce the one greater than the other, the preference must go to him who surrounds his expedition result with the greatest number of discoveries and scientifc observation.” One of Amundsen’s great Pole team members, Helmer Hanssen, said: “It is no disparagement of Amundsen and the rest of us when I say that Scott’s achievement far exceeded ours… Just imagine what it meant for Scott and the others to drag their sleds themselves with all their equipment to the Pole. We started with fifty-two dogs and came back with eleven and many of these wore themselves out on the journey. What shall we say of Scott and his comrades, who were their own dogs? Anyone with any experience will take off his hat to Scott’s achievement. I do not believe men ever have shown such endurance at any time, nor do I believe there will ever be men to equal it.”This stamp issue is a fitting tribute, not only to a story of great heroism and courage, but also to Herbert Ponting, an artist of the highest quality.
Source: Isle of Man Post.
The MS depict on the £1.50 the TERRA NOVA.
Isle of Man 2012 £1.50 sgMS?, scott?
Sierra Leone 2015 Le6000 sg?, scott?

[aukepalmhof]

Watercraft Philately Vol. 64.04 page 54 in the New Issues gives that the ENDURANCE is depict, but New Zealand Post gives she is the TERRA NOVA and comparing this with photos of the ship the last one is depict.

New Zealand Post has teamed up with the Antarctic Heritage Trust and artist Sean Garwood to produce some stunning stamps. They feature Sean’s paintings and celebrate the historic huts of Antarctica and the incredible men who built them.
Issue information
Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton have had their names and their achievements forever immortalised in history. The heroic feats of both of these men helped to pave the way for future exploration and study of the icy continent in the Geographic South Pole. The huts left behind from their various explorations have now been taken into the care of the Antarctic Heritage Trust. A plan was made to restore and conserve the individual huts, each one needed weatherproofing and repairs of some sort. Terra Nova being the largest of the three huts took seven years to be fully repaired, and all of its 11,000 artefacts conserved.
Ongoing funding has been set up to ensure the prolonged protection and preservation of these incredible reminders of historic exploration achievements.

Miniature Sheet
In the top right hand corner of the miniature sheet, Captain Robert Scott’s ship from the 1910 expedition the TERRA NOVA can be seen battling its way through the turbulent Southern Ocean. The ship came very close to being lost when the crew encountered a ferocious storm. The already overloaded ship was struggling greatly with handling and buoyancy. The 25 year old ship had a tendency to take on water, a situation made much worse by the momentous waves crashing across the deck. Cargo was being washed overboard or battered around the deck, one of the dogs, Osman, became somewhat of a legend after being washed overboard by one wave and then dropped back on deck again by the next.

https://stamps.nzpost.co.nz/ross-depend ... toric-huts
Ross Dependency 2017 Miniature Sheet $13.50 sgMS?, scott? (In top margin of stamp)