HERBERT GEORGE PONTING (1871-1935)

Details
HERBERT GEORGE PONTING (1871-1935)

Terra Nova at the Ice-foot, 16 January 1911.

Blue grey-toned carbon print, 17¾ x 12¾in., signed H.G.Ponting in pencil on recto, titled, dated and inscribed Terra Nova Captain Falcon Scott - edge of Antarctic Ice Barrier, 1903 [sic.] in ink in a later hand on paper label on verso.

LITERATURE:
H.G. PONTING, The Great White South, London 1921, illustrated opp. p.72 ('The Terra Nova was wonderfully picturesque as she lay berthed alongside the ice; she was a type of nowadays seldom met with on the seas, and her square rigged masts and rugged hull, mirroed in the water, lent great effect to my pictures ... One day a small iceberg bore towards her, scraping along the ice-foot until its further progress was arrested not a hundred yards away. This berg was all a-hanging icicles, from the warmth of the sun, and it was composed with the ship to add a treasured page to my now rapidly growing album (H.G. Ponting, op. cit., p. 72)).

The Terra Nova, originally a Dundee whaler, had first visited the Antarctic as one of the relief vessels sent by Sir Clements Markham to help Scott's beleaguered expedition aboard the Discovery. She transported Scott's second expedition to the Antarctic, arriving at Cape Ross in early January 1911. After landing the shore parties and supplies and carrying out some exploration she sailed for New Zealand. She returned to Cape Ross in February 1912 with the survivors of the expedition to New Zealand on 1 April 1912.

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