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| The Terra Nova carried Captain Scott and his party on their ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic |
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The wreck
of the ship that carried Captain Robert Scott on his doomed expedition to the
Antarctic a century ago has been discovered off Greenland.
The SS
Terra Nova was found by a team from a US research company.
Scott and
his party set off from Cardiff aboard the Terra Nova in 1910 with the aim of
becoming the first expedition to reach the South Pole.
The ship
had a life after the polar trek, sinking off Greenland's south coast in 1943.
It had been
on a journey to deliver supplies to base stations in the Arctic when it was
damaged by ice. The Terra Nova's crew was saved by the US Coast Guard cutter
Southwind.
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| The 57m length of the ship matched that of the ill-fated Terra Nova |
On arriving
at the geographical South Pole in January 1912, Scott and his party discovered
they had been beaten to it by a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen.
The polar
team led by Scott died on their return journey from the pole; their bodies were
found by a search party eight months later.
A crew from
the Schmidt Ocean Institute discovered the Terra Nova whilst testing
echo-sounding equipment aboard its flagship vessel - the R/V Falkor.
One of the
scientists noticed an unidentified feature during sonar mapping of the sea bed.
Team
members then noted that the 57m length of the feature matched the reported
length of the Terra Nova.
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| A camera package called Shrimp was sent down to film the wreck |
Technicians
dropped a camera package called Shrimp to just above the presumed wreck to film
it.
Camera tows
across the top of the target showed the remains of a wooden wreck laying on the
seabed.
Footage
from an underwater camera also identified a funnel lying next to the ship.
Taken
together, the features of the wreck closely matched historical photos of the
Terra Nova, leading to the identification.
Brian
Kelly, an education officer from the Discovery Point museum in Dundee, where
the ship was built, told the Daily Record newspaper: "The Terra Nova has
such a story.
"She
went through a lot in her lengthy history and really was the pinnacle of
Scottish wooden shipbuilding.
"It is
incredible that one of the most famous ships in history has been found 100
years after the race for the pole and in the year commemorating the
event."
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| Sonar mapping revealed an unidentified feature on the seafloor |
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