Golden age of exploration

JO CLARKE LOOKS BACK TO WHEN SCOTT SET OUT TO CONQUER ANTARCTICA

- JO CLARKE

AT this time of the year as the weather gets colder, I often feature an item or object linked to Antarctica. Plymouth will forever be connected with this ice-covered continent thanks to Robert Falcon Scott, otherwise known as Scott of the Antarctic, who was born and spent his early life here.

At the beginning of the 1900s, Antarctic exploration was in a similar place to the early days of space exploration. Antarctica was a distant, largely unknown and unmapped place.

Exploration of it was at the limit of what could be achieved logistically, physically and technologically. Those who were drawn to it had to endure some of the harshest conditions known to man.