A notebook from the final, ill-fated expedition led by celebrated British explorer Robert F. Scott was discovered sheathed in ice near a hut in Antarctica, the Antarctic Heritage Trust of New Zealand is reporting.
The notebook was the property of expedition member George Murray Levick, who acted as surgeon, photographer and zoologists on the 1910-1913 Terra Nova expedition that claimed the life of Scott and four other expedition members when bad weather trapped them after they had successfully reached the South Pole.
Levick was in the expedition's Northern Party supporting Scott's trek to the pole, and the notebook contains his pencil notes detailing the date, subjects and exposure details for photographs he made during 1911 around Cape Adare.
The six-man Northern Party spent the summer of 1911-1912 at Cape Adare making scientific observations, then survived the winter of 1912 inside a snow cave after pack ice prevented an expedition ship from retrieving them.
They survived by hunting the local wildlife including seals and penguins.
Conservation specialists found Levick's notebook outside the expedition's 1911 base hut, as runoff from summer snow melt exposed it for the first time in more than a century.
"It's an exciting find. The notebook is a missing part of the official expedition record," said Nigel Watson, Antarctic Heritage Trust's Executive Director. "After spending seven years conserving Scott's last expedition building and collection, we are delighted to still be finding new artifacts."
Although Levick's writing and notes remain legible, the notebook's binding had dissolved during its 100 years encased in ice, so preservationists made digital copies of all of its pages before sewing the notebook back together.
The carefully restored notebook has been returned to Antarctica to Scott's Cape Evans base where the Antarctic Heritage Trust maintains 11,000 artifacts from the expedition.
The famous explorer, often known by the sobriquet "Scott of the Antarctic," accompanied by four fellow expedition members, reached the South Pole on Jan. 17, 1912, after a trek of more than two months, only to discover that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them to the goal.
Attempting to return to the expedition's base camp, Scott and the other four men died of exposure and starvation, the victims of a blizzard and dwindling food supplies.
Levick died in 1956.
