I cannot go into the Fram’s journey save to say that she had drifted as far north as 85 deg. 55’ N., only eighteen geographical miles south of Nansen’s farthest north.  But the sledge journey and the winter spent by the two men has many points in common with the experience of our own Northern Party, and often and often during the long winter of 1912 our thoughts turned with hope to Nansen’s winter, for we said if it had been done once why should it not be done again, and Campbell and his men survive.

Before Nansen started, the spirit of adventure, which has always led men into the unknown, combined with the increased interest in knowledge for its own sake to turn the thoughts of the civilized world southwards.  It was becoming plain that a continent of the extent and climate which this polar land probably possessed might have an overwhelming influence upon the weather conditions of the whole Southern Hemisphere.  The importance of magnetism was only rivalled by the mystery in which the whole subject was shrouded:  and the region which surrounded the Southern Magnetic Pole of the earth offered a promising field of experiment and observation.  The past history, through the ages, of this land was of obvious importance to the geological story of the earth, whilst the survey of land formations and ice action in the Antarctic was more useful perhaps to the physiographer than that of any other country in the world, seeing that he found here in daily and even hourly operation the conditions which he knew had existed in the ice ages of the past over the whole world, but which he could only infer from vestigial remains.  The biological importance of the Antarctic might be of the first magnitude in view of the significance which attaches to the life of the sea in the evolutionary problem.

And it was with these objects and ideals that Scott’s first expedition, known officially as the British Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1904, but more familiarly as ‘The Discovery Expedition,’ from the name of the ship which carried it, was organized by the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society, backed by the active support of the British Government.  The executive officers and crew were Royal Navy almost without exception, whilst the scientific purposes of the expedition were served in addition by five scientists.  These latter were not naval officers.

The Discovery left New Zealand on Christmas Eve 1901, and entered the belt of pack ice which always has to be penetrated in order to reach the comparatively open sea beyond, when just past the Antarctic Circle.  But a little more than four days saw her through, in which she was lucky, as we now know.  Scott landed at Cape Adare and then coasted down the western coast of Victoria Land just as Ross had done sixty years before.  As he voyaged south he began to look for safe winter quarters for the ship, and when he pushed into McMurdo Sound on January 21, 1902, it seemed that here he might find both a sheltered bay into which the ship could be frozen, and a road to the southland beyond.