Hartley Travers Ferrar's skis from the Discovery expedition

Ferrar came straight to the expedition from his Tripods at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and was the geologist on Discovery, his Field Results later published in the first volume of the expedition's Scientific Results in 1905. Born in Dublin and brought up in South Africa, he returned to England to go to school at Oundle before going up to Cambridge. After the expedition he settled in New Zealand, having served in Egypt and later with the NZ expeditionary forces in Palestine.

Scott had purchased skis for the expedition in Norway, but hardly any of his men had experience of their use. They trialled the skis first on the ice in the Ross Sea in January 1902: 'we tied the ship to the largest piece of floe-ice we could find, and although this only measure 100 yards across, it proved sufficient for our purpose, which was to make our first attempt to use the Norwegian snow shoes or ski. With very few exceptions we had none of us used ski before, and consequently our first trial caused vast amusement.' (R.F. Scott, The Voyage of the 'Discovery', London 1907, I, p.92) While some of the men learnt to ski, they were not used to great advantage on the expedition, Scott later remarking: 'Bit by bit, however, the inevitable truth came to light: it was found that in spite of all appearance to the contrary, a party on foot invariably beat a party on ski.'