Return to Antarctica : The Amazing Adventure of Sir Charles Wright on Robert Scott's Journey to the South Pole

Return to Antarctica marks the 100th anniversary of the Scott Expedition to the South Pole. By 1910, the South Pole had gripped the imagination as one of the final frontiers to be explored, and British naval officer Robert Scott was obsessed that an Englishman specifically himself should be its conqueror. Despite being under funded and under equipped, Scott gathered together an electric group of naval personnel and scientists and sailed south in the ex sealing vessel Terra Nova. Also abroad the Terra Nova was a Canadian, Charles Seymour "Silas" Wright. Wright was studying physics at Cambridge University when he heard Scott was looking for physicist to join the expedition to the Pole. Initially turned down by Scott, Wright walked from Cambridge to London to apply in person, where Scott changed his mind, appointing Wright the expedition s official physicist and glaciologist. (Who else but a Canadian would know about glaciers?) Halfway through the rough passage to the Antarctic, Scott got word that rival explorer, Norwegian Roald Amundsen, was also making a run for the Pole and was close on their heels. What started out as a stroll to the South Pole became a race between two very determined and different men. Picked to accompany Scott on the 900 mile journey. Wright made it to within 283 miles of the Pole before being turned back. Scott and a four man party reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912, only to discover that they had lost the race to Amundsen. Bitterly disappointed, Scott and his companions returned to the coast, but were caught in a fierce Antarctic blizzard that raged for days. Too weak to pull their sleds and out of food and fuel, they froze to death only eleven miles from a cache of supplies. The next spring Wright navigated for the search party that went back to look for the remains of Scott and his party and it was the sharp eye Wright who spotted the mound of snow covering the tent and the frozen bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers. Return to Antarctica will transport the reader to the very time and place of Scott expedition through the eyes of Charles Wright, whose diaries and notes were handed down to his grandson, Adrian Raeside. In the Antarctic summer of 2008 2009, Raeside travelled to Antarctica to retrace his grandfather s footsteps and to gain perspective on an adventure of a century ago that challenged men s courage, strength and sanity. Raeside s story telling, supported by revelations from previously unpublished accounts, drawing and photographs, does admirable justice to the legacy of the men who literally followed Robert Scott to the end of the Earth.