The Voyage of the Discovery, Volume I: Scott's First Antarctic Expedition, 1901-1904

A truly superb historical account, "Voyage" thoroughly maps all aspects of Scott's voyage, from choosing sled dogs to setting up meteorological equipment, to holing up in a three-man sleeping bag in a snowstorm. Scott is a careful writer, often listing alternatives to his decisions for outfitting an arctic vessel, and then describing why he prefers his own. In fact, this book would prove a valuable manual for the novice polar explorer of the era--Scott is unafraid to recount his failures, and the lessons learned from them, as well as his triumphs. The book is supplemented with Scott's actual diary entries, which reveal him to be a shrewd but compassionate captain, who took his share of the labor and regrets the necessity of harvesting show more native animals for science and food. An ample assortment of photographs and drawings illustrate the book, even offering an astonishingly clear image of the ship's cats! A few things may raise the hair of a modern reader--the minstrel show and frequent use of the N-word being one of them--but this further fleshes out the painstakingly clear account Scott has created--one which often seems more like a porthole into another time. show less