Amazon.com Review
By 1900, the great Victorian explorers had opened up vast areas of the Globe. As one of the world's few remaining uncharted tracts, Antarctica fired contemporaries' imaginations. To lead its Antarctic expedition of 1901, the Royal Geographical Society of London chose Robert Scott, a naval officer who was to die a decade later attempting to reach the South Pole.
T. H. Baughman, Chair of History at Benedictine College, makes it clear that, in the 19th-century tradition, adventure rather than science was the overriding motivation for the 1901 expedition. With academic thoroughness he follows the venture's funding, the construction of a custom-built ship, and the vessel's slow journey south. For two years its crew explored new latitudes, enduring with basic equipment some of the most extreme weather on earth. Scurvy was a problem, clothing was primitive, and candles were insufficient for the long Antarctic winters. The enterprise was typical of the qualities that won the British Empire, a combination of amateurish blundering and stiff-upper-lip determination. Filled with human drama, the book offers a fascinating picture of Victorian social mores, the class distinctions between officers and men highlighted with telling (often food-related) vignettes. Besides its geographical discoveries, the expedition was important in providing experience for several of the later Antarctic explorers, including Shackleton and Scott himself. Since the discovery of extraordinary photographs taken on Shackleton's ill-fated expedition (see
Caroline Alexander's The Endurance), interest in early polar exploration has surged.
Pilgrims On The Ice is a major addition to the field.
--John Stevenson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"T. H. Baughman has produced a well-researched account of ... Captain Scott's first Antarctice expedition ... with as much information as anyone could want. He deals perceptively with polar exploration as an organic entity, showing how Discovery grew out of 19th century Arctic cock-ups in which the hapless sailors either died or ate their shoes or both and led directly to Scott's luninous death in 1912." The Times "Baughman offers this long-needed, detailed assessment of Scott's first Antarctic venture... This is essential reading: vivid, exciting--even well-read Antarctic aficionados will hasten to turn the pages to learn how Scott manages to free his ship from the ice and take it home in one piece, even though they knew the answer from their youth." Choice "By far the most authoritative analysis of Scott's Discovery expedition ever written. Baughman's scholarship is brilliant... The book is a landmark." - Michael Rosove, author of Let Heroes Speak: Early Antarctic Exploration "An important contribution to a significant aspect of Antarctic exploration ... Baughman's treatment includes numerous new and previously unpublished aspects of [these] personalities." John Splettstoesser, International Organization of Antarctic Tour Operators "A major contribution to the history of Antarctic exploration and discovery." Colin Bull, coeditor of Silas: The Antarctic Diaries and Memoir of Charles S. Wright
