In what appears to be one of the most exciting discoveries in recent memory, a team from the Antarctic Heritage Trust has unearthed a pack of unprocessed film negatives dating back to almost a hundred years.
The pack of film negatives containing a total of 22 exposed films was found inside a large block of ice found in an old British supply hut. The supply hut was set up during the days of the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott's failed Antarctic mission in the early 1900s. The hut was perhaps built somewhere between 1910 and 1913 and is one of the few remaining artifacts of the doomed mission. While Scott and his team were undoubtedly responsible for building the shack, the team who found the negatives believes that a different team left behind the said items.
After Scott's death, a team led by Sir Ernest Shackleton was stranded on the island where the supply hut was built. The stranded party was part of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The Antarctic Heritage Trust believes that it was Shackleton's party who left behind the exposed negatives.
"It's an exciting find and we are delighted to see them exposed after a century," said Antarctic Heritage Trust Executive Director Nigel Watson in a CNN interview.
The negatives were carefully retrieved through a laborous process. Afterwards, the items were slowly cleaned and sent to New Zealand Micrographic Services for scanning and processing. The images revealed scenes from what is believed to be Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic expedition. A number of people could also be seen on the photos including Alexander Stevens, the primary scientist on Shackleton's team. Considering that the negatives have been frozen solid for almost one hundred years, the results were still viewable.
