̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Naomi Boneham

Last letter of Captain Scott finally revealed in full - 101 years on

sjr81 — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:01:01 +0000

Written by Scott from his final Antarctic camp at the very end of his life in March 1912, the letter to Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman speaks poignantly of Scott’s anxiety for his family and his hope that he and companions have set a good example. ̽��ֱ��acquisition of this letter is of considerable importance for the United Kingdom’s polar heritage.

It is being revealed to the public 101 years to the day since Captain Scott’s final diary entry (March 29, 1912).

Though previously quoted in part, its full contents have remained unknown to the wider public until today, having passed into private hands following delivery to Bridgeman

It will now take its place at SPRI alongside the other ‘last letters’ written to his widow Kathleen Scott, Mrs Oriana Wilson, Mrs Emily Bowers, Sir Reginald Smith and George Egerton. ̽��ֱ��only other last letter in private hands, written to Edgar Speyer, was sold last year at auction for £165,000.

Scott is known to have written to his friend, the author JM Barrie, but the whereabouts of this letter are completely unknown.

SPRI Archivist, Naomi Boneham said: “It seems very fitting that we should be able to announce this major acquisition exactly one hundred and one years after Scott’s final diary entry. We intend to put the letter on public display in the Polar Museum as soon as it has been conserved.”

Admiral Sir Francis Charles Bridgeman Bridgeman GCB, GCVO (7 December 1848 – 17 February 1929) was a Royal Navy officer. As a Captain he commanded a battleship and then an armoured cruiser and then, after serving as second-in-command of three different fleets, he twice undertook tours as Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet with a stint as Second Sea Lord in between those tours. He became First Sea Lord in November 1911. He had been Scott's Commanding Officer.

Thanks to donations from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the John R Murray Trust, the Friends of the National Libraries and Dr Richard Dehmel, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has been able to make the purchase for the sum of £78,816. ̽��ֱ��letter was sold by Lord and Lady Graham, descendants of Sir Francis Bridgeman.

̽��ֱ��Institute was delighted to be offered the opportunity to acquire Scott’s letter to Bridgeman, along with associated correspondence, as the majority of the surviving letters are already held in the collections of the Scott Polar Research Institute and are publicly accessible via its Polar Museum. They are among the museum’s greatest treasures.

SPRI’s Librarian & Keeper of Collections, Heather Lane, said: “Without the generous support of these organisations and individuals we would not have been able to secure this important manuscript. It is extraordinary to think that the letter will now be reunited with the others written by Scott in the Antarctic over 100 years ago.”

̽��ֱ��final letters written in March 1912 from the Antarctic to family and friends by Captain Scott and his companions, Dr Edward Wilson, Captain Lawrence Oates and Lt. Henry Robertson Bowers, are of major significance to the national heritage. No letters are known to survive from P.O. Edgar Evans, the fifth member of the Polar Party. In the case of Scott, this letter clearly expresses his feelings as he lay dying and is a testament to the qualities of endurance which propelled Scott to the status of a national hero.

We know much about the expedition from Scott’s personal journal, which was bequeathed to the nation and is held by the British Library, which kindly lent the final volume for a temporary exhibition at the Polar Museum in 2012 to mark the centenary of Scott’s achievement of the South Pole. As the extract below illustrates, the Bridgeman letter is an important addition to the story as it conveys Scott’s feelings at the very end of his life. It has never been reproduced in full in any of the editions of Scott’s writings.

Its purchase enables this letter to be reunited with the others written from the tent on the Great Ice Barrier, already in the Institute’s care, and with the photographs, sledging journals and personal diaries of Scott and his team, which form the most comprehensive record of the expedition held anywhere.

SPRI is the oldest international centre for polar research and is world-renowned for research and reference in a variety of fields relating to the environment, history, science and social science of the polar regions. ̽��ֱ��Institute was founded in Cambridge, as a memorial Scott and his four companions, who died returning from the South Pole in 1912. As well as research programmes, the Institute provides access to its library, archives and museum for the general public and has a strong educational outreach programme on the Arctic and Antarctic, ice and environmental change. It houses the largest public collection of historic archives, photographs and artefacts from polar expeditions in the United Kingdom.

Text of the letter:

To Sir Francis Bridgeman

My Dear Sir Francis
I fear we have shipped up – a close shave. I am writing a few letters which I hope will be delivered some day. I want to thank you for the friendship you gave me of late years, and to tell you how extraordinarily pleasant I found it to serve under you. I want to tell you that I was not too old for this job. It was the younger men that went under first. Finally I want you to secure a competence for my widow and boy. I leave them very ill provided for, but feel that the country ought not to neglect them. After all we are setting a good example to our countrymen, if not by getting into a tight place, by facing it like men when we were there. We could have come through had we neglected the sick.

Good-bye and good-bye to dear Lady Bridgeman

Yours ever

R. Scott

Excuse writing – it is -40, and has been for nigh a month

A letter written by the dying Captain Scott - one of only two remaining in private hands - can be revealed in full for the first time after being acquired by the Scott Polar Research Institute at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

I want to tell you that I was not too old for this job. It was the younger men that went under first.

Captain Scott

Scott Polar Research Institute

Captain Scott writing in his Antarctic hut, before the expedition that cost him his life

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‘These rough notes and our dead bodies…’

ns480 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:01:06 +0000

These rough notes: Capt. Scott’s last expedition (7th December – 5th May) will put on show papers from the British Antarctic Expedition 1910–13 held in the Polar Museum’s archive collection, much of which has never been on public display before.

̽��ֱ��exhibition tells the full story of the fateful Terra Nova expedition, not just through the famous journals and letters of Scott, Bowers, Evans, Oates and Wilson, who perished on their way back from the Pole, but through other members of the ship’s crew and shore party.

It not only highlights the ‘Worst Journey in the World’ – the winter journey to collect eggs from the Emperor penguin colony at Cape Crozier – but also the largely forgotten ‘Northern Party’ – six men stranded for 21 months when the ship could not reach them through the heavy pack ice and forced to shelter from the brutal Antarctic winter in a cave dug into the snow.

Curator Kay Smith said: “This really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these manuscripts exhibited together. Some of them are so fragile and valuable that they probably won’t go on display again for another hundred years. This is a wonderful occasion to have much more of our handwritten material on show.

“There are so many elements to the Terra Nova story and we’re bringing back to life some of the forgotten voices. We’re not just talking about the ‘race to the pole’ here, we’re talking about an entire crew of men, each telling their own story in their own way – and perhaps a different story from those you’re already familiar with.”

Archivist Naomi Boneham said: “It’s a chance to bring together many different voices from the expedition - from the ship’s company to the officers and scientists. These papers are never normally on display; the only way of seeing these documents until now has been to undertake a research project. By doing this we are able to let people see how the men viewed their experiences and how they recorded them.

“For the first sledge journey carried out in the Antarctic winter we have the shaky handwriting of Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who had to abandon his diary as the conditions were so bad. We also have Birdie Bowers retelling the story in a letter to his mother and Dr Wilson’s official report, right through to Cherry’s celebrated account, ‘ ̽��ֱ��Worst Journey in the World’ where his manuscript draft differs from what finally went into print.

“We know the story – we know how it ends – but they didn’t, so from the storms that beset the ship through to the party in the hut and on to the march to the South Pole we can go with them on their journey.”

Among items on display is the very rarely seen second journal of Henry Robertson (Birdie) Bowers who accompanied Scott to the Pole and died alongside him on the return journey. This fragile volume has been repaired especially for the exhibition and the full text will be published for the first time, along with Bowers’ letters home, in a limited edition in mid-December.

Keeper of Collections, Heather Lane said, “What has really struck me is how powerful much of the writing is. ̽��ֱ��manuscripts provide such a vivid record of the daily life of the expedition. I hope that people who come along will gain a very clear picture of the range of scientific and mapping work which Scott’s men were able to achieve, quite apart from the journey to the Pole.”

Other previously unseen items include also a miniature sledge made by Edward Evans, the sketchbook of Edward Wilson (Chief of the Scientific Staff) – including his drawings of Amundsen’s tent, and a newspaper, produced by members of the trapped northern party who had – rather improbably – taken a typewriter along with them. ̽��ֱ��hand-produced newspaper, which contains humorous articles, poems and sketches, is evocatively blackened by the soot from their blubber stove – the trapped men’s main means of survival as they sat out the worst of the winter before travelling the 230 miles on foot back to Cape Evans.

Perhaps one of the most valuable exhibits on display is the journal of Captain Scott, on loan from the British Library by permission of the Scott family. It is reunited for the first time with his heart-breaking final letters to his widow.

̽��ֱ��title of the exhibition comes directly from Captain Scott’s message to the public written at the end of his journal, just prior to his death. Dated March 29, 1912, it reads: “Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for."

Although much of the display focuses on the written words of the Terra Nova crew, there will also be some fascinating and unusual exhibits on display alongside the letters, manuscripts, illustrated newspapers, posters and pamphlets.

They include some of the Christmas decorations made by members of the 33-strong shore party, as well as medals, sledge flags and matchboxes belonging to crew members. Some of Wilson’s watercolours will also be on display as well as a penguin-shaped menu made for those spending Midwinter Day at Cape Evans.

Expedition members featured in the exhibition include: Captain Scott, Dr Wilson, Lieutenant Bowers, Captain Oates, Petty Officer Edgar Evans, Apsley Cherry-Garrard (author of the Worst Journey in the World), Lieutenant Edward Evans (second in command of the expedition), Victor Campbell (leader of the Northern Party), Thomas Griffith Taylor (Geologist), Charles Wright (Physicist), William Lashly (Chief Stoker), Thomas Williamson (Petty Officer), Patrick Keohane (Petty Officer), Frank Browning (Petty Officer).

These rough notes: Captain Scott’s last expedition runs from 7 December 2011 – 5 May 2012. Visit http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/exhibitions/ for further information.

̽��ֱ��story of the Terra Nova expedition, explored through the letters, diaries and photographs of its members, is to be told during a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Polar Museum.

We’re not just talking about the ‘race to the pole’ here, we’re talking about an entire crew of men, each telling their own story in their own way.

Kay Smith

Scott Polar Research institute, Cambridge.

Scott writing in his hut during the fateful Terra Nova expedition.

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