Museum purchases Antarctic diaries
Canterbury Museum has spent
$278,000 buying two Antarctic diaries, one describing the discovery of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ‘‘yellow and transparent’’ frozen body.
The museum bought the diaries, written by Scott’s Norwegian skiing instructor Tryggve Gran, at an auction in London last week for £150,000 (NZ$278,000) from Christie’s Valuable Books and Manuscripts.
One diary, written in Norwegian, is an account of Scott’s final expedition from November 1911 to February 1912.
The second, in Gran’s imperfect English, covers the period until the expedition returned to Lyttelton in February 1913.
It describes Gran’s horror at finding the frozen bodies of Scott, Edward Wilson and Henry ‘‘Birdie’’ Bowers on November 12,
1912, more than seven months after they perished while returning from the South Pole.
‘‘The frost had made the skin yellow & transparent & I’ve never seen anything worse in my life,’’ Gran wrote.
‘‘I will never forget it so long as I live – a horrible nightmare could not have shown more horror than this.’’
Gran had been employed by Scott to teach the other expedition members to ski.
He was one of 11 people who set out to find the polar party – Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Lawrence ‘‘Titus’’ Oates and Edgar Evans – after they failed to return from their journey to the South Pole.
Scott’s group set out in October 1911 to become the first people to reach the South Pole.
They made it to the pole on January 17, 1912, but discovered Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them by 34 days. They were plagued by severe weather on their return journey, which slowed their progress and caused their food and fuel to run out.
The last entry in Scott’s own journal, which Gran read after discovering the bodies, is dated March 29, 1912.
Canterbury Museum acquired two other diaries belonging to Gran, as well as four of his medals, in 2017.
The newly-acquired diaries were written while the expedition took place, so were subject to less editing than the others.
Canterbury Museum director Anthony Wright said the diaries would boost the museum’s Antarctic collection.
‘‘History doesn’t get much more immediate than this.
‘‘They’re an extraordinary first-hand account of some of the most significant events in Antarctic history, written as those events unfolded,’’ Wright said.
Funding for the purchase came from the Adson Trust, formed in 2010 after a posthumous donation to the museum from Arthur Henry Harrison, of Blenheim. Harrison left his entire estate, including $10 million and several Marlborough properties, to Canterbury Museum before he died in a house fire in 2009.
A museum spokeswoman said they hoped to put the diaries on display eventually but it was not guaranteed.
‘‘We have 2.3 million items and less than 1 per cent can be displayed at one time.’’
The museum plans to scan and digitise the English-language diary after the diaries arrive from London in the new year.
The digital version will be available to view on the museum’s website.