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British Antarctic Expedition, 1907-1909
Details
British Antarctic Expedition, 1907-1909
A basaltic rock fragment (approx 1kg.) from Mt. Erebus, packed in cotton wool in a plywood (venesta board) box
PROVENANCE:
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922), and thence by descent.
The Australian geologist Professor Edgeworth David led the first ascent of Mount Erebus in March 1908, shortly after the shore party had landed at Cape Royds. Geological specimens were collected on the ascent and descent and numbered amongst the variety of rocks included in 'Exhibit 46' of the Nimrod exhibition in London in 1909: 'Lava from a parasitic cone on Erebus...erratics at Cape Royds...including Olivine Basalts...etc.' (exhibition catalogue p.12).
After the ascent, the geologists 'Professor [David] and Priestley were out early and late, with their collecting bags and geological hammers, finding on every successive trip they made within a radius of three or four miles of the winter quarters new and interesting geological specimens, the examination of which would give them plenty of work in the winter months. Scattered around Cape Royds were large numbers of granite boulders of every size and colour, deposited there by the great receding ice sheet that once filled McMurdo Sound and covered the lower slopes of Erebus. The geologists were full of delight that circumstances should have placed our winter quarters at a spot so fruitful for their labours.' (E.H. Shackleton, The Heart of the Antarctic, London, 1909, I, pp.202-3)
The venesta board box was presumably made up for this specimen in the hut at Cape Royds in the winter of 1908.
We are grateful to Peter Tandy of the Department of Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum, London, for his help with the cataloguing of this lot.
A basaltic rock fragment (approx 1kg.) from Mt. Erebus, packed in cotton wool in a plywood (venesta board) box
PROVENANCE:
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922), and thence by descent.
The Australian geologist Professor Edgeworth David led the first ascent of Mount Erebus in March 1908, shortly after the shore party had landed at Cape Royds. Geological specimens were collected on the ascent and descent and numbered amongst the variety of rocks included in 'Exhibit 46' of the Nimrod exhibition in London in 1909: 'Lava from a parasitic cone on Erebus...erratics at Cape Royds...including Olivine Basalts...etc.' (exhibition catalogue p.12).
After the ascent, the geologists 'Professor [David] and Priestley were out early and late, with their collecting bags and geological hammers, finding on every successive trip they made within a radius of three or four miles of the winter quarters new and interesting geological specimens, the examination of which would give them plenty of work in the winter months. Scattered around Cape Royds were large numbers of granite boulders of every size and colour, deposited there by the great receding ice sheet that once filled McMurdo Sound and covered the lower slopes of Erebus. The geologists were full of delight that circumstances should have placed our winter quarters at a spot so fruitful for their labours.' (E.H. Shackleton, The Heart of the Antarctic, London, 1909, I, pp.202-3)
The venesta board box was presumably made up for this specimen in the hut at Cape Royds in the winter of 1908.
We are grateful to Peter Tandy of the Department of Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum, London, for his help with the cataloguing of this lot.
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