Saturday, January 23, 2010

Inside Scott's hut at Cape Evans


One of the coolest parts of our trip to Cape Evans was going inside the hut built by the 1910 Scott expedition. This is the bed where Scott slept and the only one with a mattress - the rest of the men slept on boards. They had reindeer skin sleeping bags that they used in the field although in the hut they used blankets.






Here's the table looking toward the door and the kitchen and area where the men (not officers) slept. It's all dirty inside because Shackleton's Ross Sea party stayed there in 1913 and their boat, the Aurora, was anchored to the land near the hut. The line broke and the boat floated away and they lost all of their provisions including their coal. So they managed to not only survive on seals and penguins and what the Scott party left behind but they also placed caches of food for Shackleton's party, which unfortunately never made it because their ship got caught in ice. Back to the dirtiness... the Ross Sea party burned seal blubber instead of coal, which is why everything is sort of black-ish inside the hut. They also cobbled together clothes out of whatever they could find, like these pants hanging from the bunk in this picture. Meanwhile the guys who were on the boat couldn't get back to Cape Evans and got stuck in the ice for the winter.

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