Sight for sore eyes
Frozen asset... a relic of the heroic age of polar exploration has surfaced at a Yorkshire auction house after more than a century. John Vincent reports.
His name is relegated to a footnote beneath those of great British polar explorers such as James Cook, John Franklin, John Ross, Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton. Yet Thomas Soulsby Williamson played his part in two of the most famous Antarctic expeditions in the golden age of British exploration, under Captain Scott on Discovery (1901-04) and later on Terra Nova, which ended in the death of Scott and his four-man team after reaching the South Pole in January, 1912 only to discover they had been beaten to it by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen.
Williamson was with the search party that found the bodies of Scott, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers in their tent on November 12, 1912, just 11 miles from safety. Edgar Evans had already fallen to his death and Lawrence Oates, stricken with gangrene and frostbite, had walked out into a blizzard to die with the famous last words: “I am just going outside and may be some time.”
Williamson, born in Sunderland in 1877, ran away to sea aged 13 and was serving on HMS Pactolus when he joined Discovery as an able seaman. He was chosen for the Terra Nova expedition, again led by Scott, and was among those who landed at Cape Evans in 1911. Returning to New Zealand in Terra Nova, he rejoined the main party in February, 1912.
He rejoined the Royal Navy, serving in destroyers during the First World War, and was severely wounded when his ship was blown up by a mine. Williamson – described by Scott merely as “a well-built, tall, strong man, and an excellent working hand” – was working in Portsmouth Dockyard when he died in January, 1940.
Now the forgotten man of polar exploration has had a belated moment in the limelight with the sale at Morphets of Harrogate of his Inuit-style wooden snow goggles with cross-shaped eye slits. After just 60 seconds of bidding, the goggles fetched a premium-inclusive £11,163, against an estimate of £2,000-£3,000.
Another polar souvenir, a Dunn Bennett dinner plate bearing the British Antarctic Expedition Terra Nova crest in blue, went for £2,585.
Back to the Discovery expedition of 1901-04, when Scott’s team gathered valuable information about Antarctic wildlife, provided the longest continuous record of meteorological observations, charted previously unknown coastline, mapped mountain ranges and made an attempt to be the first ever humans to reach the South Pole.
In travelling further south than anyone ever, Scott, Wilson and Shackleton endured terrible hardships and were forced to turn back before achieving their goal. They returned home as heroes, with Shackleton’s rival, Scott, more determined than ever to be first to reach the South Pole.