In the early race to explore Antarctica, the Discovery Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton, and Edward Wilson would end up traveling 960 miles / 1540 km in the early 1900s – but those miles were also traversed with delicate glass plates that would record the historic expedition in photographs.
August 06 marks 125 years since the Discovery Expedition left British shores, bound for Antarctica. The Discovery Expedition wasn’t behind the first-ever photos of Antarctica (that credit goes to the 1897-1899 Belgian Antarctic Expedition), but the ship was laden with more photographic equipment than any other Antarctic expedition before it.
The mission, which reached the Arctic Circle in January 1902 and continued until 1904, would result in more than 1,000 early photographs from the southernmost continent.
While ten of the crew members took photos during the British National Antarctic Expedition, chief engineer Reginald Skelton served as the team’s official photographer. Skelton worked with field cameras – large folding bellows cameras that recorded photos using specially coated glass plates.
During the team’s farthest expedition south between November 1902 and February 1903, third lieutenant Ernest Shakelton documented the three-man trek carrying a smaller camera and a few glass plates. The photographs capture a slice of the isolation that the three explorers must have felt traveling 960 miles / 1540 km largely on foot and by skis.
In one photograph, Shakelton even managed to capture a self-portrait of all three explorers by rigging a rope to the camera.
The multi-year expedition was also responsible for the first aerial photographs of Antarctica when the crew used a tethered balloon to send a single person up 800 feet
.By the time the journey ended in 1904, the Discovery Expedition was responsible for more than 1,000 early images of Arctic exploration.
Not all of the glass plates survived the expedition. Dr. Reginald Koettlitz experimented with early color photography by taking three separate photos using red, green, and blue filters and overlaying the three together, but the images are believed to be lost to history.
You may also like
Love history? Learn why color photography is all thanks to the potato.
