R. F. Scott's diary sent out to you by the day!


What is all this?

The Terra Nova Expedition was R.F. Scott’s second and final expedition to Antarctica. The expedition was a continuation of Scott’s previous trip to Antarctica (1901-1904), with scientific and geographical aims. The expedition is famous for its aim of being the first to reach the South Pole, that they were second to the Pole (beaten by Roald Amundsen by about a month), and that the polar party died on their way back, just a few miles from a food depot.

Scott kept a diary for both of his Antarctic expeditions, which would have been intended to be reference material for the later published expedition overview upon return. For obvious reasons, this didn’t happen in the usual way with his journals covering The Terra Nova Expedition (1910-1913).1

What is this substack doing?

This substack will send out a newsletter each day that there’s a relevant entry from Scott’s diary. This ventures a bit from the intent of the original diary, but is interesting both as a type of character study, as well as a way of seeing how an expedition like this, which is so built up into a singular moment of tragedy, occurs in the actual day-to-day.

Some of these are a bit dry though I’ll admit, so to add a little more liveliness, as well as to further contextualise them, I’m going to supplement some of Scott’s own entries with extracts from Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World, as well as others’ diaries at times.

Scott has entries for most days, so those will be the main thrust, but these supplementals should bulk up certain events, paint more of a picture of ‘Antarctic Life’, provide you with yet another email on days you might not have gotten one - or only gotten as short one - and at times attempt to get across what events were going on concurrently.

So now you’ll get to live through all that Antarctic adventure, as well as Antarctic monotony, in ‘real’ time!!

Scott’s Diary starts on the 25th of November, so between then and now, I’m going to break up and send out the introduction and first two chapters of The Worst Journey in the World, to provide context and give a bit more info to the beginning of the Terra Nova’s journey, before Scott came aboard.

[Scott’s diary emails will run from late Nov. 2022 - Mar. 2024, but the TWJITW intro will start on 12th July 2022, and you’ll get an email every Tuesday and Thursday. Several of the diaries, as well as TWJITW will continue past Scott’s death date, though I’ll decide what’s happening with those closer to the time].

Thanks for reading all this preamble! Let’s get into all this frostbite now, hey


Qs:

Q: When’s it start?
A: Scott’s Terra Nova diaries start in late November 1910, but TWJITW starts in and around June of 1911, and I think it’s best to get some context, and introductions in from that. Most people who subscribe to this will probably already be familiar with a lot of this, but just in case. Also, TWJITW is a just really good book. So, emails will start, sporadically, from the [ 12th of July 2022], which should get us up to date with the expedition as a whole, before we start into Scott’s own account from the 25th of November.

Q: When’s it end?
A: This whole thing will last, (this go round!) from July 2022, til 2024.

Scott’s last entry is March 29th 1912, so this is when Scott’s entries will (obviously) end - though his letters written around this time will follow.

You will be getting emails for three years, (including this year).

Q: There’s a lot going on. Can I get an overview of what’s happening when??
A: The expedition leaves England in June 1910, Cherry’s account starts here, but we will start to follow that from July 2022. This should both introduce our players, and our setting, as well as get everyone caught up as needed.

Scott’s diary begins on the 25th of November 1910, and you should start to receive consistent updates from Scott from that point —25th Nov. 2022 for us— onwards, until March 1912 (March 2024).

To supplement Scott’s updates, every-so-often there will be separate emails detailing or contextualising further aspects that he touched on, things that he didn’t go into too much detail with, or others’ diaries if there’s splits to the main party — most of these will come from TWJITW, and the frequency will vary based on relevance, as well as how much Scott has to say.

So, for instance, late June into very early August of 1911 has the famous ‘Worst Journey In The World’, trip to Cape Crozier, so over this period (here: late June through early August 2023) you should receive emails detailing both Scott/Cape Evans’ happenings, as well as those of the party gone to Cape Crozier.

[This also becomes relevant when parties start to be sent back to Cape Evans during the trek to the Pole, as well as after the deaths of the polar party; where we will switch mostly to following TWJITW until the ‘end’ of the expedition in late 1912 (2024)].

Q: Can I join late?
A:
Of course! Hopefully all the logistics above haven’t scared you off. All previous entries will be archived here, amongst other places.
Note about the archive! It’s in reverse chronological order at the moment, and some entries are a little out of sync, so sorry about that.

Q: Other ways to read these? It seems like they’re going to be very long emails.
A:
You can find ‘Scott’s Last Expedition: Volume I’, (which is all his diaries), free to read online on Gutenberg, though the SPRI website (which did a similar project to this one!), as well as buy a physical copy. For TWJITW, you can also find it on Gutenberg! (Vol. I & Vol. 2), and archive.org, as well as all over the place free (genuinely legally!) online, and various editions physically.

A lot of the books/accounts I’m drawing from you can otherwise find online with minimal googling, or get in contact and I’ll set you up :)

Q: Is any, or much, of this edited?
A:
Where possible, I’m going to clip out the more outdated language (e.g. slurs, though unfortunately an awareness/understanding of the time period is necessary anyway), as well as clarify some abbreviations/technical terms. When quoting from TWJITW, I’m going to insert the dates of Scott diary entries when Cherry quotes them, instead of having a repeat of entries, I’m also going to cite approx. page numbers for TWJITW.

I’ll indicate all of this through [Square Brackets].

Anything else, get in contact!

Leave a comment

1

I’m not going to be using the original publication, which was edited to remove certain less kind comments (though this is the version that you’ll find linked above, and in general, most readily) - but rather the 2008 Oxford edition - if only to ‘preserve’ the idea of this being a diary in the making, and closer to as originally written, rather than purely a published piece. Anyway, his reputation gets tossed into the bog every couple of years by someone, comments he himself wrote about his crew over a century ago can only hurt so much now. There’s fundamentally very little difference between the two versions, unless you’re nitpicky, like I am.

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its polar exploration yk