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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/robert-f-scotts-skis-return-57-years-on/story-e6frg6so-1226267667324
Robert Falcon Scott’s skis return 57 years on
BY JACK MALVERN
From:The Times
February 10, 2012 12:04PM
TWO pairs of skis belonging to Robert F. Scott of the Antarctic that went missing from his hut 57 years ago have been recovered after an amnesty on “lost” items.
The wooden skis with leather bindings are thought to have been used by the explorer himself during his fateful expedition in 1910, which ended with his death as he returned from the South Pole.
Their whereabouts have been a mystery since the end of the Second World War.
When Scott’s party moved on from the hut they left the skis behind for use by future expeditions, but they disappeared shortly after scientists established bases in Antarctica during the 1950s.
One of the souvenir hunters was an unnamed member of Operation Deep Freeze, the American military mission that set up a presence on the continent in 1955. He took the skis and other items from the hut in 1957 when the American expedition became one of the first to visit the site since Ernest Shackleton’s last Antarctic voyage in the early 1920s.
He shared some of his finds with Dave Baker, a young dog-sled driver, who used the items as props when he told people about his adventures. Captain Baker, who served in the US Navy, said that he treasured the objects, but realised that he had to return them when he heard about the conservation work being done by the Antarctic Heritage Trust.
“Since 1957 I have spoken to over 50,000 people about my experience and the skis have been a key part of that presentation,” Captain Baker said. “It is now time to return them to their rightful place.”
He also returned some smaller objects, including a bottle of cod liver oil and a tin of Fry’s pure concentrated cocoa.
Nigel Watson, executive director of the trust, said that the skis and 1300 other items would be returned to the hut in the Antarctic summer of 2012-13 after conservators based in New Zealand have had a chance to study them.
“The skis are overall in very good condition,” he told The Times. “There is some minor corrosion of metal components and one pair does not have a complete binding set.”
He believes that the skis would have been used by Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition of 1910-1912, when the British explorer was beaten in a race to the South Pole by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen.
There is evidence that the skis were also used by Shackleton’s team during his second expedition of 1914-17, when his men used Scott’s hut in Cape Evans as a base.
“Whilst one pair bear the initials of Aeneas Mackintosh, leader of Shackleton’s Trans-Antarctic Ross Sea Party, which occupied Scott’s hut at Cape Evans, the other pair is unmarked,” Mr Watson said.
“The leader, Captain Mackintosh, died crossing sea ice trying to reach the safety of Scott’s hut.”
THE TIMES
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