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00:00Extraordinary.
00:04Iconic.
00:06Lethal.
00:08These incredible ships have told our story for the past 400 years
00:14and defined what it means to be part of our island nation.
00:22I'm Rob Bell, and in this series I'll be exploring Britain's greatest ships.
00:30In this episode, I tell the amazing story of the Royal Research Ship Discovery,
00:36a ship that set sail on a voyage to the last uncharted continent on the planet, Antarctica.
00:43The equivalent in our age was going to the moon. There's no two ways around it.
00:47A journey that would attract the world's most famous explorers.
00:51Shackleton became just desperate. He wanted to be part of this expedition.
00:55Discovery was the first ever purpose-built scientific vessel,
00:59and she ignited a global passion for exploration.
01:14Designed to withstand the harshest conditions on the planet,
01:18the Royal Research Ship Discovery was the strongest ship ever built when she was launched.
01:27She was a ship conceived for one mission.
01:30An expedition that would capture the imagination of the world.
01:34A journey to the uncharted South Pole.
01:37Not only did this ship have to travel through the roughest seas imaginable,
01:50and traverse the thick pack ice of the Antarctic,
01:53she also had to be a base camp for expeditions,
01:56a laboratory for scientific discovery,
01:59and a home to protect her crew.
02:02Discovery's mission reignited Britain's passion for exploration,
02:08and would make two of her crew members the world's most famous explorers.
02:12Two men who, with their determination to explore Antarctica,
02:17would become bitter rivals.
02:19Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton.
02:31At the end of the 19th century,
02:32the Antarctic was the last great uncharted continent on the planet.
02:38But in the years running up to Scott's famous journey,
02:41the idea of a polar expedition was seen as an extravagant folly.
02:47The last mission to the Antarctic had taken place over 50 years earlier,
02:52and had been led entirely by the Royal Navy.
02:56Ross's 1839 expedition had been a success,
02:59but had cost the Navy hundreds of thousands of pounds,
03:02for not very much in return.
03:05British naval power was needed elsewhere,
03:08and polar expeditions were seen as dangerous, expensive and futile.
03:15But one man wouldn't take no for an answer.
03:19The head of the Royal Geographic Society, Sir Clement Markham.
03:23He was determined to see a British expedition take on Antarctica.
03:28And when Markham managed to raise money from private backers,
03:32the Navy didn't want to be left out and decided to match his funds.
03:36With funding secured, now a ship was needed.
03:41It would have to weather the harsh winter, surrounded by sheet ice.
03:46So it would need to be robust.
03:48But first and foremost, it had to be a scientific research vessel.
03:55And as the ship would be conducting incredibly detailed magnetic surveys,
03:59it created the first dilemma for the shipbuilders.
04:02If I was here on a metal hull ship, a compass would be thrown off by all the iron and steel around.
04:17In fact, the scientists on board Discovery were so worried about the effects on their magnetic equipment,
04:24that when they discovered the cushions in the saloon here had metal buttons,
04:29they ordered them all to be replaced.
04:33Not having an iron hull was a huge problem.
04:36To survive a winter in the Antarctic, the ship would have to be incredibly strong
04:41to resist the crushing pressure caused by the freezing ice.
04:46When water freezes, its volume expands by almost 10%.
04:51Now, this is a real problem if you're in a boat.
04:54Because as water freezes, it wants to expand into the space your boat is occupying.
05:00Well, here's one I froze earlier.
05:03And you can see that the freezing of the water, as it turned into ice,
05:08has actually expanded and put pressure on the hull of the ship
05:12and actually crushed that hull of the ship.
05:16Not what you want in the middle of a frozen ocean.
05:21To counter the effect of the ice, Discovery wouldn't just have to be the strongest wooden ship,
05:27but the strongest ship ever built out of any material.
05:32And over a hundred years later, it's a testament to the builders' expertise
05:37that this ship is still afloat, here on Dundee's Quayside.
05:42But in 1899, finding a company to build the ship was proving difficult.
05:47One of the main problems when you're looking to build a wooden ship in the start of the 1900s
05:51is simply that so many of the shipyards around the world had now moved on to metal,
05:57and the skills just were not there.
06:00This was not a dead industry, but it was certainly in decline.
06:06There was only one place in the whole of Great Britain that still built wooden ships.
06:11Dundee.
06:13And that's because a huge part of this city's economy back in the 19th century relied on whaling.
06:20Whales provided loads of stuff, from fuel for street lamps,
06:25support for ladies' corsets, even handles for knives and forks.
06:30You couldn't get away from it.
06:32And the best whaling grounds were out and up towards the Arctic,
06:36where ships risked being trapped in the ice.
06:39This 100-year-old industry had learnt the hard way how to build a ship
06:49that could navigate the ice flows of the Arctic.
06:52Wooden ships were tried and tested in the polar regions,
06:56and they were known to be strong enough and flexible enough
06:59to survive the extreme conditions they would face.
07:02And so if you're looking for building a ship that's going to manage to survive,
07:06hopefully being trapped into the ice, you follow the tried and tested route.
07:13But the unknown waters of the Antarctic would test even these shipbuilders.
07:19As a precaution, the hull was over two feet thick in places,
07:23making her stronger than any ship that had gone before her.
07:26One downside of this design is that you couldn't have portholes looking out,
07:33as they'd compromised the strength of the hull.
07:36So to let light and air down into the lower decks,
07:39they came up with these mushroom vents.
07:41Although the crew were quick to rename them ankle bashers.
07:44No prizes for guessing why.
07:52With the shipbuilding well underway, Markham looked for a man to lead the expedition.
07:58Markham wrote in his diary that he wanted a naval officer in the regular line.
08:04Young and a good sailor with experience of ships under sail.
08:10He must have imagination and enthusiasm.
08:14Be calm, yet quick and decisive in action.
08:19Little did he know that he'd met the man he was looking for 12 years earlier.
08:24At the age of 18, a young naval cadet, Robert Falcon Scott,
08:34had won a clipper race in the West Indies when Markham happened to be watching.
08:39There's no doubt Markham kept a very sharp eye on the young officers of the Royal Navy,
08:44and he said that Scott was on his shortlist.
08:49And as Markham was whittling down that shortlist,
08:52he bumped into Scott in London.
09:00This was the first time Scott had heard of the expedition,
09:04and two days after the chance meeting,
09:06sent a letter volunteering to command the ship.
09:15Scott was made Captain of Discovery in June 1900.
09:18For such an arduous mission ahead, he was careful to handpick every member of crew himself.
09:27All bar one.
09:29The third officer was chosen by the expedition's backers.
09:33His name was Ernest Shackleton.
09:35Shackleton had joined the Merchant Navy at the age of 16 and had progressed quickly through the ranks.
09:46Shackleton was made aware of the expedition and became just desperate.
09:51He had to be on this. He wanted to be part of this expedition.
09:53In the Merchant Navy, officers had to treat their crew with more leniency, as they could easily jump ship.
10:02But Scott, with his Royal Navy background, was more of a disciplinarian.
10:05And these two leadership styles were fundamentally at odds and destined for conflict.
10:19Captain Scott now had his crew. They were all ready to go. But the ship wasn't.
10:24And this was a big problem, as the ship had to be in Antarctica before the winter set in.
10:32The only way to avoid this would be to minimise Discovery's sea trials.
10:38A period of intense testing to find all of her problems and iron them out before going out on a long voyage.
10:45This decision would put the entire crew's lives at risk on her very first voyage.
10:58Discovery was the strongest ship ever built, with her hull of solid wood.
11:04Ideal for dealing with the ice sheets and icebergs she'd meet on her mission to Antarctica.
11:09But on the first leg of her journey, shortcuts to reach the South Pole before the Antarctic winter had put the ship in a precarious position.
11:22Not long after leaving Dundee, six feet of water had seeped into the ship's hold,
11:29coming through some badly sealed joints in the planking.
11:31With no place or time to stop, Scott and his crew were forced to carry out emergency repairs whilst at sea.
11:44Now, this involved a process called caulking.
11:48Now, to do caulking you need some of this stuff, called oakum, which is hemp, like what they use to make ropes.
11:55It's been treated. And then, using a mallet and an iron like this, you'd wedge the oakum down into the gap between the planks that needed sealing.
12:11But of course, these emergency repairs were far from ideal.
12:15And until they reached land in New Zealand, Scott and his crew would have to hope that this lasted.
12:21Incredibly, after an 11,000-mile journey through the roughest seas on the planet, the makeshift repairs had held strong.
12:32The ship limped into Littleton Harbour, where she was immediately sent to dry dock to properly seal the planks.
12:39As the ship was being worked on, Scott turned his attention to buying all the supplies they would need.
12:44Captain Scott ordered up the provisions for at least three years.
12:54And some of those included... Let's have a look here.
12:58We've got sledges, tents, furs, alcohol, aptly described as medical comforts.
13:05As well as taking on stores in New Zealand, Scott had to bring on board some new crew.
13:13Seven sailors had been dismissed for not meeting Scott's high standards.
13:19One of their replacements was a young man named Clarence Hare.
13:22He was a clerk and had no experience of life at sea, but he longed for adventure and signed up on the spot.
13:31His role was to act as Scott's personal steward, but in his spare time he struck up a friendship with the sledge dogs on board.
13:40Something that was against the direct orders of the ship's officers.
13:43These were not pets. They were working animals, here to help Scott conquer the Antarctic.
13:54Dogs have been used to pull sleds for over a thousand years, starting with natives of Alaska and Northern Canada.
14:02And today, I'm going to give it a go.
14:07Amazingly, dog sleds were still the preferred method of transport in the Antarctic,
14:11right up until the 1970s.
14:14What is it about this breed of dog, then, these huskies, that makes them so good for pulling sleds?
14:19Siberian Huskies have been doing this for the last 2,000 years, so through evolution and selective breeding,
14:24they chose the dogs that didn't need to eat too much food.
14:28They had big thick coats, so they were very efficient, they weren't losing energy,
14:33so they could keep themselves insulated.
14:35They're incredibly light on their feet.
14:37to cover a lot of distance without expending a lot of energy.
14:43These dogs are trained to pull sleds.
14:46All they want to do is run.
14:48And you can see, and you can hear, how excited they are.
14:53Now they know they're actually going to go out for a run.
14:55I think I'm good, am I?
14:59That's it.
15:00Strap in?
15:02I am definitely putting my seatbelt on here.
15:05Let's go!
15:06Oh, this is top speed down that bit there!
15:22Scott had been advised to take Siberian Huskies by Norwegian explorer Nansen,
15:28as they were the breed best suited to the extreme conditions of the Antarctic.
15:35Oh, good turn!
15:37Wow!
15:38Wow!
15:52On board Discovery, Scott had taken 23 dogs in total,
15:57which were all encouraged to breed freely on the long journey over.
16:00After three weeks in New Zealand, Discovery finally set sail for the Antarctic
16:07on the 21st of December 1901.
16:11The deck of Discovery was a hive of activity.
16:14The ship was packed with three years' worth of supplies, including live animals.
16:19Among all this madness, one man could be found quietly painting the Antarctic vista in front of him.
16:25Edward Wilson.
16:28My great uncle was Dr Edward Wilson,
16:31who was the vertebrate zoologist and artist on the Discovery expedition and the junior doctor.
16:36But his principal job was collecting specimens and painting them
16:40and preparing them for the museums back home.
16:43Various other little jobs he picked up along the way.
16:45At one point he was the wine caterer because he didn't drink,
16:48so he could be trusted to make sure everyone got a fair measure
16:50and he wasn't drinking the wine bottles on the quiet.
16:52Within two weeks, land was sighted,
16:57and Scott carefully selected a mooring to house the ship for the long cold winter,
17:02a place he aptly named Winter Quarters Bay.
17:06Scott knew that the freezing pack ice would put a huge pressure on Discovery's hull,
17:12so the plan was to moor the ship directly into the ice shelf.
17:17If he could blast out a hole in the ice using explosives,
17:22he could then moor the ship directly into the gap he'd created.
17:32As this ice was already frozen, it wouldn't expand anymore and the ship would be protected on three sides.
17:40Scott's plan worked and the ship was safely docked in its icy port.
17:47As the regular crew set about building a base of wooden huts,
17:51it was time for the scientists to get to work.
17:54Working from this custom-built onboard laboratory,
17:57the ship's biologist Thomas Hodgson discovered 500 new species,
18:04including marine animals, spiders, shrimps and shellfish.
18:08But if he wanted to dissect something larger, like a seal maybe,
18:14he'd commandeer this table here in the wardroom.
18:19Officers then would often be eating their meals where a large marine mammal had just been taken apart just hours before.
18:27The scientists all had officer rank and were treated to certain luxuries,
18:33but one perk soon turned into a poisoned chalice.
18:36The officers onboard Discovery had their own private cabins.
18:42The only downside of this was that without the extra body heat from other men around,
18:47these spaces got incredibly cold.
18:50Ice would frequently form on the walls.
18:53And Scott reported that when he was working at his desk,
18:56he had to bury his feet in a box of straw to keep them warm.
18:59Despite the extreme cold, naval etiquette was still observed.
19:08For the officers, dinner in the wardroom was quite a formal affair.
19:13They ate off specially commissioned Royal Dalton china.
19:20Using specially commissioned silver cutlery.
19:24And to Scott's surprise, apart from the odd glass of wine,
19:26there was very little alcohol consumed.
19:29And every Tuesday, they'd hold a debate.
19:32It could be a scientific subject one week, something more topical the next.
19:37All very civilised indeed.
19:39There was lots of different things that the men did to amuse themselves.
19:45They put on theatrical performances in the hut where they were dressed up.
19:50All sorts of different activities.
19:52Sports days out on the ice where they'd play all sorts of games and things
19:54and win prizes.
19:57And one of the key things was the South Polar Times.
20:00The South Polar Times was a newspaper published on board Discovery.
20:06It was edited initially by Shackleton and later by Scott.
20:10And it was a means of recording events and news on board the ship.
20:14And a way of publishing articles and giving information.
20:18A bit of entertainment for the crew.
20:19We've got some events of the month here. Where are we?
20:23July 27th. Snowball.
20:26One of the dogs gave birth to four pups.
20:29You can see how something like this would have made a massive difference
20:33to what was otherwise monotony on board.
20:35As the Antarctic summer fast approached Scott could relieve the men's boredom by getting them prepared for the ship's real mission.
20:47Exploration.
20:48Suited and booted, the men set out on the Antarctic ice.
20:55But it quickly became apparent that the crew had gravely underestimated the Antarctic conditions.
21:02Blizzards were intense and the all-white vista meant that men could get lost just 30 yards away from the ship.
21:10And on the 11th of March, the crew were confronted with the life and death stakes of polar exploration.
21:21A party was returning from a sledge mission when they were struck by a blizzard 10 miles from Discovery.
21:27The men were ordered to abandon their tents, their sledges and even their dogs to try and make a dash back to the ship.
21:36The snowfall was so heavy they could barely see two yards ahead of them.
21:42And on a descent down a steep slope, two men disappeared and were given up for dead.
21:49George Vince and Scott's own steward, Clarence Hare.
21:53It seemed as though the Antarctic had taken its first two victims.
22:00The Royal Research Ship Discovery was designed and constructed to withstand the most inhospitable environment on the planet, the Antarctic.
22:12But in March 1902, two men found themselves 10 miles from the safety of Discovery, caught in a blizzard and given up for dead.
22:24So Clarence Hare was a late addition to the expedition.
22:29He was a clerk and had no previous polar experience, no previous sailing experience.
22:35This was a man who just was excited by the chance to go.
22:39On the 11th of March, Clarence found himself separated from his mates, with no equipment to build a camp or even light a fire.
22:49He knew his chances for survival were slim.
22:53Lonely and discouraged, he sat down to die and let himself drift off to sleep in the snow.
23:00But whilst his crew had given up on him, one of his friends refused to do so.
23:11In a howling blizzard, with temperatures dropping to minus 60, Clarence lay dying.
23:16But, extraordinarily, his favourite dog, Kit, managed to find him and, by snuggling in next to him, provided just enough heat for Clarence to survive the night.
23:30In the morning, Kit licked his face until he regained consciousness and then helped guide him back to the ship, where Clarence went on to make a full recovery.
23:40His crew mate, George Vince, was never seen again.
23:45His disappearance reminded the men of the real dangers of polar exploration.
23:52But Scott had his orders and was keen to press on with Discovery's mission.
23:59He wanted to explore the Great Ice Barrier and the frozen desert beyond.
24:04For the journey, he'd need 19 dogs pulling five sleds laden with supplies and two brave men.
24:14Scott knew that one of the men joining him had to be the ship's assistant surgeon and his best friend on board, Dr Wilson.
24:23Uncle Ted knew it was the greatest honour on the ship. Everybody wanted it.
24:28But he also had mixed feelings, because they'd just discovered Emperor Penguins breeding
24:31and he really thought he ought to be out and about finding more out about those.
24:36And he thought this was going to be terribly dull in comparison with the possibility of spending time with Emperor Penguins.
24:41Wilson encouraged Scott to add another man to the expedition, his third lieutenant, Ernest Shackleton.
24:50The most famous trio in polar exploration had just been assembled, for a trek that would almost cost them their lives.
24:58On the 2nd of November 1902, the three men set off on the most ambitious polar expedition that had ever been attempted.
25:09Their aim was to get as far south in a straight line as they could on the barrier ice and reach the South Pole if possible.
25:16The expedition started well and Scott, with the help of his dogs, was making good ground.
25:24The dogs were usually full of energy and desperate to run, but after a few days the men noticed that they were weakening and struggling to pull the heavy sleds.
25:34When they examined the dogs, they found that they were bleeding from painful sores.
25:38The biggest problem for the dogs was the food that they were being fed.
25:45When Scott was planning the expedition, he took the advice of Nansen.
25:50And Nansen had recommended not only the dogs, but also the type of food they should take, a particular type of fish.
25:56Scott was taking the food from Norway and going south, which meant going through the tropics.
26:01This is thought to have spoiled the food in the whole, which meant they were actually poisoning them.
26:09As the dogs got sicker and started to die, Scott had to face some tough choices.
26:14The decision was then made that what they would do was feed the dogs who had died to the other dogs, the fitter dogs.
26:21Scott loved animals, great British trait, and he didn't like the idea of killing dogs to feed to other dogs and so on.
26:30So my great uncle, being the biologist, ended up doing most of that dirty work.
26:35And they carried on until they shot the last of the dogs, and then they had to start manhauling.
26:41Scott, Shackleton and Wilson now had to do the work of 19 dogs, pushing the men to near exhaustion.
26:48After nearly two months of marching, it was the height of the Antarctic summer, Christmas Day.
26:55For the men out on the ice, it was just another long, cold day of relentless marching.
27:01But back in the warmth and safety of Discovery, it was time to relax and feast.
27:07As you may well be able to imagine in the Antarctic, Turkey was in rather short supply.
27:13But there was one bird that the expedition found in abundance.
27:19On Christmas Day, the men of Discovery sat down to enjoy a dinner of roast penguin.
27:26They ate lots and lots of penguins and huge amounts of seals.
27:31In two years, they killed and ate over 500 seals.
27:34Now for us, that's horrible to think of, but for them, this is just the livestock they're able to get when they're down there.
27:42The seal meat is apparently very tasty and was a real delicacy for the men.
27:47It had one very important feature that would protect them from a disease called scurvy.
27:54It's caused by a lack of vitamin C in the diet and strangely enough, the Antarctic offered a remedy.
28:04Pound for pound, seal liver has almost as much vitamin C in it as an orange.
28:13The men on board Discovery were kept healthy on a diet of fresh seal meat.
28:17But for Scott, Shackleton and Wilson, it was a very different story.
28:22Away from the ship, the men would have to live on this stuff.
28:27It's called pemmican.
28:29It's made up of ground up meat and mixed with fat.
28:34Now that might not sound or look too appetizing, but it had one incredibly useful quality.
28:41At room temperature, this stuff would last for up to five years.
28:44In freezing conditions, it was good for at least 20.
28:49Perfect for a polar expedition.
28:51Now, if the men needed a really quick energy boost, they might slice a piece off and just chomp that back.
28:57But if it was meal time and they felt really fancy, they'd make it into a stew.
29:03A stew they called hoosh.
29:05It was quite a simple recipe.
29:07It had three ingredients.
29:09Pemmican.
29:11Sled biscuits.
29:12And melted down snow.
29:15Or ice.
29:17So let's give it a shot.
29:18Start to melt down my ice here.
29:21Whilst we're waiting for that ice to melt though, I'm going to break up my pemmican here.
29:26Let's get a chunk of that off.
29:31It's quite hard actually.
29:34There we go.
29:35You can see all the bits of ground up meat within the fat here.
29:41Let's chuck that in.
29:47Hope you're watching, Denia.
29:49Then our final ingredient, we get some of these sled biscuits, which is very simply flour, butter, more fat and a bit of salt.
29:57Hopefully a bit of flavour.
29:59Kind of.
30:01Let's crumble those in there as well.
30:07All right.
30:08Well that needs a bit of time on the stove there.
30:11It's actually not looking too bad.
30:15It's definitely more stew like now.
30:18I should probably try a little bit here.
30:21It's not the worst thing I've ever had.
30:32It's not the best either.
30:34It's quite bland.
30:36It does taste quite fatty.
30:39Well that was the point.
30:41It's about getting calories in.
30:43But for the men out on the polar expeditions,
30:46sometimes this would be all they'd eat for up to six months.
30:49I'm not sure I could stomach that.
30:55Due to this limited diet on their expedition south, Shackleton was suffering from the symptoms of scurvy.
31:02He was exhausted and coughing up blood.
31:05And on the 30th of December 1902, the expedition reluctantly decided to turn back.
31:11They'd travelled further south than any human in history.
31:14On the journey back, the expedition went from bad to disastrous.
31:20Wilson was now suffering from snow blindness and was forced to pull his sled blindfolded to ease his pain.
31:27Very strong sunlight.
31:29Reaching the snow and ice reflecting extremely strong intensity of radiation.
31:34It feels as though you've got sandpaper on the inside of your eyelids.
31:38Scott was faring only slightly better thanks to a simple piece of equipment.
31:43And I've been given the privilege of getting my hands on it.
31:49And just here, I have the actual pair of goggles worn by Scott on this expedition.
31:56Be very, very careful with these that were once worn by Scott.
32:04Oh, actually, look at this here.
32:06He's got his initials.
32:09RFS carved in there.
32:10You can see they're made from a single piece of wood that have been carved out with these slits cut in to be able to see out of.
32:21And not only would this have severely limited his vision, but would have offered next to no UV protection at all.
32:27I mean, looking at this now, it seems incredibly basic and rudimentary.
32:40Despite the suffering of Wilson and Shackleton, Scott couldn't afford to let the two men rest and press them as hard as he could.
32:48Scott ordered for everything that wasn't absolutely needed to be discarded.
32:57Amazingly, against all the odds, Scott, Shackleton and Wilson managed to march the 400 miles back to Discovery.
33:06But almost as soon as they returned, Scott saw he had a bigger problem.
33:12The Antarctic summer should have melted the pack ice and Discovery should have been floating on the open sea.
33:20But when he returned to the ship, he found that she was completely frozen in still.
33:25Surrounded by 20 miles of ice, it looked as though Discovery would never be freed up.
33:34To free her, Scott sent teams of men to saw through the ice.
33:40Now, I've got a thick block of ice here and a saw.
33:44So let's give that a go.
33:45And Scott's men would have been doing this all day long in freezing cold conditions.
33:59And after 12 days, they'd managed to make two parallel cuts of 450 yards.
34:07But the open sea was still 20 miles away.
34:11Scott knew that it was hopeless trying to free the ship and had to break the hard news to the crew that they'd be staying in the Antarctic for another long winter.
34:21But some men would return home on the relief ships.
34:26The most famous person to have been sent home, unfortunately, was Shackleton.
34:30Shackleton did want to stay. He wanted to continue.
34:34But it was seen as a potential detriment to his health.
34:37It was a risk that they were not willing to put up with.
34:39Scott's real motivation for sending Shackleton home has been debated by scholars for over a century.
34:48It's rumoured that Scott was furious with Shackleton when he found out that he'd hidden his scurvy symptoms before they set out on the expedition.
34:59There have been allegations that there was a real fallout between Scott and Shackleton and that that was the reason why Shackleton was returned back.
35:07There are various stories about what did or didn't happen on the ice and there's no verification because there were only three men who actually do know what happened on the ice and they're all long since dead.
35:19In the spring of 1903, Scott was keen to make the most of being stuck in the ice and planned another expedition.
35:27So the second year, expeditions get sent out to fill in the gaps on the map to see whether the bits of land that have been discovered are separate islands
35:35or whether they're all joined together in one huge probable continental mass.
35:41Scott again set off and this time came across something completely unexpected.
35:46They came across a completely ice-free area, what's now known as the Dry Valley.
35:54You might as well have been on Mars except for the thicker atmosphere.
35:57On this expedition, Scott's travelled hundreds of miles, climbed thousands of feet and collected hugely important fossils.
36:10It was the most comprehensive mapping of Antarctica that had ever taken place and provided scientific data that's still used today.
36:19And they do a journey which was the equivalent of the crossing of Greenland. It's one of the greatest polar journeys ever made and nobody's ever heard of it. It's extraordinary really.
36:30Scott finally returned to Discovery on Christmas Eve 1903 and found that once again his ship was stuck in the ice.
36:38Two relief ships arrived in January 1904, bringing Scott an ultimatum in a sealed telegram from the expedition's backers in London.
36:49Free the ship by the 25th of February or leave her behind.
36:55Scott now threw every available resource into freeing the ship, sending men with saws, pickaxes and even explosives to break up the ice.
37:05The problem there is you don't want to damage the hull, you can overdo the explosives and sea ice is rather bad stuff from this point of view.
37:15It's not like freshwater ice, it'll smash and brittle like glass.
37:19It's almost bouncy, so a good bang might look spectacular but not do much work.
37:25By the 10th of February, Discovery was still locked in the ice with the relief ships two miles away.
37:31With a heavy heart, Scott accepted that he'd have to leave his ship behind.
37:38But everything that Discovery's crew had recorded over the last two years was far too valuable just to be left in Antarctica.
37:46So Scott gave the order to start offloading all of the scientific equipment and samples.
37:51But then, at the last minute, Discovery was given a lifeline.
37:58After a month of trying to hack their way through the ice, on the morning of the 14th of February, the crew woke to find that the ice had miraculously started to crack overnight.
38:09The relief ships, Terra Nova and Morning were now able to push their way alongside Discovery.
38:20Astonishingly, after two winters, her hull had escaped the whole ordeal almost entirely without damage.
38:27It had lost some of the external sheathing of green heartwood, but otherwise, the hull of the world's strongest ship was as good as the day she was launched.
38:40Once clear of the ice, it was plain sailing home.
38:44So when Discovery returned back to Britain in 1904, Scott and the crew were greeted as heroes.
38:50There was civic receptions laid on for them, you know, hundreds of people there to greet them.
38:55They were invited up to Balmoral and they had the chance for an audience with the king.
38:59This is where Scott was finally promoted to captain.
39:02Although he was known as Captain Scott and the men called him the captain, Scott had only just been promoted to commander for the expedition.
39:09Publicly, Scott was the toast of the town.
39:15But behind closed doors, the government and scientific community were critical of his handling of the expedition
39:23and his failure to reach the South Pole.
39:26With the weight of expectation on his shoulders, Scott began to plan for a second expedition.
39:32But an old colleague was about to beat him to it.
39:38Without talking to Scott about it, Shackleton decides to launch his own expeditions.
39:42That's when it all started going very wrong.
39:45Scott did manage to beat Shackleton to the South Pole, only to find that Norwegian explorer Roald Armundsen had got there first just weeks earlier.
39:54Scott died on the return journey, just 11 miles from a food and fuel depot.
40:09It's often said that Antarctica gets into your blood and it's certainly borne out by the way Scott and Shackleton were driven to go back.
40:17With the race to the pole over, Shackleton set his sights on being the first to cross the entire continent of Antarctica, sea to sea.
40:27But disaster struck when his ship was crushed in the ice.
40:31Shackleton decided to abandon the mission to save his crew.
40:34Undeterred, he would return to Antarctica twice more, dying 10 years later en route to his fourth expedition, one which doctors had warned against.
40:51The names Scott and Shackleton have become synonymous with polar expeditions.
40:56Their achievements defined the golden age of British exploration and inspired a generation of explorers still to come.
41:07And for the rest of Discovery's crew, their legacy lies in the scientific findings of the expedition.
41:14They were able to confirm that Antarctica was a continent.
41:19They also proved that at one point Antarctica had been forested and not an ice barren wasteland that we know it now.
41:24They changed our perception of what Antarctica actually is.
41:29The RRS Discovery is a fantastically important British ship.
41:33It is a great British ship, spiring on so many levels and changed the course of the scientific history of this country.
41:41Discovery was the strongest ship ever built at the time and the first to survive two harsh polar winters.
41:48She was the base from which groundbreaking expeditions were launched and home to two of Britain's most famous heroes.
41:58But her true legacy is science.
42:02She was the first purpose-built scientific ship and her true mission was to understand, not conquer.
42:09Today, thanks to an international treaty, Antarctica can only be used for peaceful scientific purposes.
42:18And I like to think this is in no small part thanks to the way Discovery and her crew first landed there.
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