Author(s): Meredith Hooper

History

Their tents were torn, their food was nearly finished, and the ship had failed to pick them up as planned. Gale-force winds blew, bitter with the cold of approaching winter. Stranded and desperate, the six men of the Northern Party faced disaster. Searching out a snow drift, they burrowed inside. Lieutenant Victor Campbell drew a line across the floor in the gloom to establish naval order: three officers on one side, the three seamen on the other. A birthday was celebrated with a carefully hoarded biscuit and they sang hymns every Sunday, so what kept these men going? Circumstances forced them closer together, their roles blurred and a shared sense of reality emerged. This mutual suffering made them indivisible and somehow they made it through the longest winter. To the south, the men waiting at headquarters knew that the Polar Party must be dead and hoped that another six men would not be added to the death toll. Working from expedition diaries, journals, and letters written by expedition members, Meredith Hooper tells the intensely human story of Scott's other expedition.