| Description | Series of 51 annotated prints, illustrating the voyage of the Terra Nova to free the ice-bound Discovery from Winter Harbour, August 1903 - February 1904.
The series begins with the Terra Nova 'cast adrift' in Gibraltar Bay by the cruiser, HMS Minerva which had towed her there from Portland. From there, she was taken through the Mediterranean, Suez Canal and Red Sea by HMS Vindictive and escorted south from Aden (Yemen) by HMS Fox. The voyage began in earnest in Hobart on the 5th December 1903, as the S.Y. Morning and Terra Nova 'moved away from the wharf ... to start the second Discovery Relief Expedition, and thousands of the people of Tasmania came down to wish us success.'
The photographs chart her trip into Antarctica, as the crew catch their first glimpses of icebergs and views of Franklyn Island and 'Majestic Erebus', the '13,000 foot, snow-clad, native volcano [that] seemed to watch like a grim sentinel ... the struggle of man against nature, which was being enacted so near it.' They include scenes of the Discovery lying frozen in Winter Harbour, the efforts of the crews to blast a route through the pack-ice to clear an exit route, her eventual exit into open water on 16th February 1904, and 'farewell' photographs of the snowy landscape that they left behind.
Photographs such as 'A halt for lime juice' and 'Rest of the weary' show groups of crew-members enjoying a brief respite from their work to share a drink of lime juice and a smoke of the 'friendly pipe.' Other images show people working, their temporary camps, the local wildlife and scenery (islands, mountains, icebergs, etc.), and the three boats, Terra Nova, Discovery and Morning at various stages of their journeys. |