Final newspaper of Captain Scott’s doomed expedition reproduced

The last volume of the expedition newspaper, South Polar Times, written by the men waiting for news of Captain Scott's return from the South Pole in the Antarctic winter of 1912, has just been published in a limited edition by the Scott Polar Research Institute. The journal was written and produced during Scott's 1910-13 Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica, during the winter of 1912, when those remaining at the base camp at Cape Evans knew that Scott and his Pole party must have perished somewhere south. The contributors to the original volume would have been aware that Scott and his companions stood no chance of survival. Although there are attempts at humour and the text is enlivened with quirky illustrations, the loss of Scott and the other four members of the Polar Party overshadows this issue, put together to maintain morale during the long Polar night. In 1959, former Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Frank Debenham, who had been the expedition's geologist, said: "It is noticeable that there is no reference whatever to the fate or the personnel of the Pole Party or even of the Northern Party though the preparations for the search next sledging season was the main pre-occupation of all hands." The volume is filled with humorous tales, verses on food and man-hauling, records of the weather and an article entitled Universitas Antarctica on the men's scientific interests. This new volume includes a full colour facsimile of the illustrated typescript of South Polar Times, volume IV, dated Midwinter Day 1912.