Antarctic diary records horror at finding Captain Scott's body

On November 12, 1912, British explorer Robert Scott's diary and body were found in Antarctica. From the article:

"Antarctic diary records horror at finding Captain Scott's body

Norwegian Tryggve Gran’s 1912 journal – sold for £150,000 – reveals ‘horrible nightmare’ of finding the bodies of the polar explorer and his companions

Wed 12 Dec 2018 08.11 EST

Last modified on Thu 13 Dec 2018 11.15 EST

The haunting sledging journals of Tryggve Gran, in which the young Norwegian explorer details his discovery of the frozen body of Captain Scott in the Antarctic, have sold for £150,000.

Gran was part of the 11-man search party that set off from Cape Evans to find the missing Scott and his team on 29 October 1912. Scott had begun a second Antarctic expedition in June 1910, starting for the South Pole in October 1911 and making it on 17 January 1912, only to find they had been beaten to their goal by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who arrived a month earlier.

Running out of food and fuel on their return journey, which was plagued by terrible weather, Edgar Evans died on 17 February. A month later, Lawrence Oates, suffering from frostbite, left the tent with the immortal line: “I am just going outside and may be some time.” This left EA Wilson, HR Bowers and Scott, confined to their tent by a blizzard, 11 miles from their destination. Scott wrote his last diary entry on 29 March 1912: “We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.”

Gran’s journal records how he and his team found the bodies of Scott – who he refers to as “The Owner” – and his companions on 12 November 1912. “It has happened – we have found what we sought – horrible, ugly fate – Only 11 miles from One Ton Depot – The Owner, Wilson & Birdie. All gastsly [sic]. I will never forget it so long I live – a horrible nightmare could not have shown more horror than this,” he writes in English. The tent, writes Gran, is “snowcovered til up above the door”, with Scott “in the middle, half out of his bagg [sic]”.

“The frost had made the skin yellow & transparent & I’ve never seen anything worse in my life. The Owner seems to have struggled hard in the moment of death, while the two others seem to have gone off in a kind of sleep,” he recorded, adding that Scott had written in his diary: “There is no more hope and so God look after our people.”

Gran would use his own skis to build a cross above the cairn he and his fellows built for the Terra Nova party, and took Scott’s skis for the return journey, writing: “I am using the Owner’s ski[s] – they must finish the journey – and they will.”

Sophie Hopkins, a specialist in manuscripts and archives at Christie’s, described the diary entry as “extraordinarily immediate and terribly moving”.

“He’s describing one of the most famous scenes in British history, and it really does bring you there, right into the tent … Clearly it affected all of the men who found them very greatly,” she said.

“We buried them this morning – a solemn undertaking. Strange to sea [sic] 11 men bareheaded whilst the wind blew,” wrote Gran, in material that was not included in his memoir, The Norwegian With Scott. “I must say our Expedition is not given much luck […] some sleep will do good after such a day as this. The sun shines lovely over this place of death.”

A few days later, he would write: “When I saw those three poor souls the other day … I envied them. They died having done something great. How hard must not death be [sic] having done nothing.”

Gran won the Polar medal for his explorations in Antarctica, going on to become the first man to pilot a heavier-than-air plane across the North Sea in 1914. He’d later join the Royal Flying Corps under the assumed name Teddy Grant, disguised as a Canadian, in order to get around Norway’s neutrality and fight in the first world war. Gran died in 1980, aged 91.

The journals were put up for sale by his son, Herman. Hopkins said: “His father was such an extraordinary man, who had achieved more before the age of 30 than most of us could hope for in a lifetime.”

The two diaries – the first covers 7 November 1911 to 25 February 1912 – contain material that has never been published. “Very often these are his more intimate personal thoughts, and the reason for keeping them unpublished seems a little sweet,” said Hopkins. “Often it’s when he’s worrying about the welfare of the ponies or is sad because they’ve had to kill two of the dogs. Very often we have the image of these polar explorers as grizzled, hardened men who felt no pain or emotions, but Tryggve Gran was only in his early 20s when he was chosen to be the ski expert on the Terra Nova expedition.”

But one crucial detail never revealed outside the diary was Gran’s sorrow over Amundsen beating Scott to the Pole. “There’s the conflict he feels as a Norwegian,” said Hopkins. “Clearly Scott is a man he admires greatly and did have this very strong bond with, so some of the material which wasn’t included [in The Norwegian With Scott] deals with these rather difficult feelings thrown up by Amundsen beating Scott.”"