John Blower

#OnThisDay in 1912, the bodies of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Dr. Edward Wilson, and Lieutenant Henry Bowers were found in their final resting places inside their tent, within their sleeping bags, just 11 miles from 'One Ton Depot' and a large cache of food and supplies. It was over seven months since their death and Scott's final diary entry on 29 March. Scott wrote "...Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker of course, and the end cannot be far." An 11-man search party had set off from Cape Evans to find the missing men on 29 October 1912. One of these men, Tryggve Gran, a young Norwegian explorer detailed the discovery of the frozen Polar Party in his journal. Upon the discovery of the men's bodies, the search party collapsed the tent and built a snow cairn to memorialise the grave. The cairn has since been buried in snow and ice. When the search party returned to their base camp in McMurdo Sound, a cross was erected on Observation Hill in memory of the five men that lost their lives. Scott, Bowers and Wilson, Petty Officer Edgar Evans who had perished earlier following physical and head injuries, and Captain Lawrence Oates, who famously left the men in the tent and walked to his death. 📸 Cairn Over Bodies of Scott, Bowers and Wilson. Ponting © Antarctica New Zealand Pictorial Collection. #inspire #explore #discover #Antarctica #SouthPole #RobertFalconScott