Antarctic adventure: In search of Captain Scott on a long voyage to the frozen South

By Roderick Gilchrist
Updated: 14:37 EST, 3 April 2011

We had been at sea for five days, battered incessantly by 40ft waves, when The Orion's engines cut out and we were left at the mercy of the most dangerous ocean in the world. Our stabilisers, and every technical advantage over the schooners of old, were useless as we listed in latitudes where killer whales hunt.

I had clung to the rail in my cabin when the bow of The Orion plunged down into watery valleys between monster waves, lifting the stern so high out of the sea that the propeller spun in free air.

Wing men: A voyage to Antarctica means a chance to see penguins in their natural environment

We were deep in the Antarctic Ocean, thousands of miles from land. The engines stopped - and my heart nearly stopped with them.

At that moment, I thought of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, whose ship, The Terra Nova, almost sank on its way to the South Pole. Sledge dogs were washed overboard and Scott's exhibition nearly went with them. That was a century ago, when the hearts and minds of the British people were transfixed by Scott's tragedy at the most desolate place on earth.

The South Pole claimed his life, as well as four members of his expedition, after they had raced to be first to the bottom of the world, only to discover the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, had got there first. Scott's sacrifice raised him to the status of inspirational icon for all those young men about to give their lives in World War I. Some anniversaries pass unremarked, but Scott's heroic journey is to be remembered with a fanfare of commemorations.

The most emotional will be a memorial service - attended by the descendants and relatives of Scott and the men who died with him - at the campsite in the polar wastes where the explorer perished on March 29, 1912.

It will be held in January next year during the Antarctic summer, when the hostile climate loosens its icy grip. Before this, two Army teams will recreate the race to the Pole, while here in Britain a number of commemorative events are being planned.

The International Scott Centenary expedition has launched a competition offering a member of the public the opportunity to join a trek to the site of Scott's final camp.

Next month, the British Film Institute will screen The Great White Silence, a film shot by the expedition's ' camera artist' Herbert Ponting, which can be seen at cinemas around the country.

But, best of all, anyone can follow in Scott's footsteps if you're prepared to sail nearly 4,000 nautical miles through the Southern Ocean to the hut from where he set out, never to return.

There were 88 of us on board The Orion, an expedition cruiser catering for the growing market in adventure holidays. We'd come from all over the world: school teachers, businessmen, lovers of history - all hungry for a pioneering experience.

We sailed from Tasmania and, unlike Scott in the Terra Nova, where live animals were strapped to the heaving deck, we enjoyed plush cabins, a boutique, sauna, beauty parlour, lectures on the wildlife of Antarctica, films about the courageous men who charted the continent, and five-star meals.

Scott was blown about for around 30 days on his passage south. The Orion steamed it in nine, breaking the voyage for us to splash ashore at Macquarie Island.

Up close: Antarctic sight-seeing often requires passage through treacherous ice

One hundred thousand tuxedoed, braying 'little Charlie Chaplins' waddling self-importantly about greeted us unafraid; comical chaps so tame they took my finger gently in their beak when I stood still.

More cautiously, I approached four-ton elephant seals, lying in grey, snorting piles on top of each other, sleepy eyes viewing me with disdain.

Albatrosses, with their 13ft wing spans, competed for air space with skuas, waiting to swoop on vulnerable penguin chicks. I felt the presence of David Attenborough. The next day, we saw our first iceberg and were astonished by these blinding white, frozen-ice cathedrals, some as big as Hyde Park, the swell crashing about their mysterious blue caverns.

Sometimes, we clipped a small berg and the shudder vibrated throughout the ship. We crashed on, orca whales dead ahead bursting through the white caps.

That was the night the ghostly Ross Ice Shelf reared up on our starboard bow: a 500-mile barrier of solid ice, massive white cliffs 200ft high.

This was not safe Antarctica, experienced by most visitors to the continent who never travel further than the Antarctic Peninsula, only 36 hours' sailing from the tip of South America on big US cruise ships.

There is no denying the Peninsula looks good in the brochures. The narrow Lemaire Channel is so scenic it has been dubbed the Kodak Gap. But it is not an adventure. And it is not the course the heroic explorers took.

The Peninsula, hunting ground of the old whalers, is thousands of miles away from Scott's hut, across a continent as big as Europe.

At most, only a few thousand have sailed the seas we were in. Just getting here felt risky. This sensation, and the panorama, induced frissons of excitement. There is no denying this is a long voyage - 21 days at sea. There is a weather window of only eight weeks when passage is possible and it is not a budget holiday. But for those who have wearied of lying on a beach, it offers excitement and pride in achievement.

On our ninth day, I woke to a cobalt-blue sky. The engines had stopped again.

But now we'd anchored safely at Cape Evans, just 800 miles from the Pole. Scott's hut sits on a gravel beach on the skirts of the volcanic Mount Erebus, looking out to snowy peaks of the Transantarctic Mountains.

In the desolate, filmic grandeur of this landscape, the hut looked lonely and sad.

Just after breakfast, we were called to the Zodiac dinghies, bundled up in thermals, tugged on wellington boots and were suddenly through the sea doors and on our way to the Pantheon of Antarctic exploration. It was dark when we first entered. The smell of seal blubber assailed me before I could see anything. Through the gloom, a page from history emerged.

Dominating the centre of the hut was the long table at which Scott sat for his 43rd birthday dinner, captured in a Ponting photo.

The shelves were lined with gold tins of Tate & Lyle syrup, bottles of Lea & Perrins sauce and Huntley and Palmers biscuits piled on a blue saucer.

A horse's harness was slung across the bunk where Oates - 'I'm just going outside and may be some time' - slept. Scientific instruments, a copy of the Illustrated London News, even an emperor penguin awaiting dissection, lay where they were left.

We moved about in silence. Behind the officer's quarters, I found Scott's den. His sealskin blanket lies on his bunk and a sepia photo of his wife is pinned to the wall. Outside, the stables had hay in feed boxes, and in the end stall a macabre discovery: the bleached bones of a sledge dog.

There was an overpowering atmosphere of tragedy in this frozen incarnation of Edwardian England, described by David Attenborough as 'a time warp without parallel'.

Heroic, doomed: Captain Scott's 1912 expedition to the South Pole (left to right Oates, Bowers, Scott, Wilson, Evans. Picture was taken by Bowers)

And it's worth remembering more people have stood on the summit of Everest than entered Scott's hut.

Antarctica was to surprise us with a final sensation. A few miles from Scott's hut is Ernest Shackleton's expedition base.

We landed here, but within minutes were ordered back to the Zodiacs. The sea had hardened into ice, blocking the dinghies' escape. As the temperature fell to minus 20C, we were trapped.

After two hours, we escaped when the Filipino bosuns laid planks across the ice floes for us to hop over water channels to open sea.

We had experienced the treacherous nature of this wilderness. We asked for adventure. Antarctica delivered it.

Travel Facts

Audley Travel (01993 838 820, www.audleytravel.com), offers cruises to Antarctica.

Prices to join the Orion Expedition Scott and Shackleton's Centenary Antarctica voyage, with return flights from London, start from £13,900pp.