The Polar Pioneers
I’m currently reading Cherry-Garrard’s riveting account of the 1910-1913 Terra Nova expedition, The Worst Journey in the World. It’s written in the most elegant prose, with plenty of gripping detail and captures that great spirit of noble hope that characterized the whole enterprise.
From motor sledges falling through rotten ice to killer whales almost gobbling polar photographers, it reminds you that there was a great deal of incident beyond the central drama of the doomed five man pole party. Almost every member of the expedition was involved in some astonishing drama of their own. And of course the expedition was not just some desperate lunge for the Pole, but a floating university, with a huge agenda. There were almost as many scientists aboard as sailors.
I’m currently working on a poetic sequence about this, more of which later, but for now, I have cooked up a little song as an interim tribute to these gallant men.