A Canadian-led team found Terra Nova’s original rudder, propeller, two masts, as well as its wheel and assorted debris.Supplied
Navigation equipment used during Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic has been discovered at the wreck of the ship he sailed on by a Canadian-led team.
British explorer Scott set out to be the first to reach the South Pole on the 1910-1913 expedition. But Norwegian Roald Amundsen beat him to that accolade by just over month, and Scott died in 1912 in perilous conditions on the return trek. His ship Terra Nova went on to serve for decades as a Newfoundland sealing vessel before sinking in waters off Greenland.
An expedition led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society on Sunday traversed to the wreck of Captain Scott’s last ship, Terra Nova, maneuvering in a submersible inside the ship’s hull, which has split in two.
The Canadian-led team found Terra Nova’s original rudder, propeller, two masts, as well as its wheel and assorted debris including ceramic mugs abandoned by its crew when she sank in 1943.
John Geiger, the society’s CEO, dove to the Terra Nova wreck on Sunday and Monday in the same three-person submersible used to capture the first images of the sunken luxury ocean liner Titanic in 1986.
At 170 metres below the surface, Mr. Geiger said he could clearly see the wheelhouse of the ship, her wheel, as well as her rudder and propeller on the sea bed.
British explorer Robert Falcon Scott set out on the Terra Nova in 1910 to reach the South Pole. He and his four-man team died in freezing conditions on the return journey.Supplied
“There’s a lot of detail there that we need to investigate, study, compare with historic photography of the vessel,” he said.
Mr. Geiger’s planned second dive on Sunday had to be hastily aborted after a 120 foot iceberg loomed into view and began approaching the site of the wreck of Terra Nova.
“We had a full first dive, but we were forced to cancel the second dive because the iceberg came within a mile and then it worked its way actually to the point where it was right over the wreck,” he said.
Terra Nova transported Scott to Antarctica for his doomed expedition where, after reaching the pole, he and his four-man team died in freezing conditions on the trek back.
The ship’s career as a polar expeditionary vessel ended in 1913 and she was sold to her former owners Bowring Brothers, a Newfoundland-based company, for sealing operations. During the Second World War she was chartered as a supply ship to bases in Greenland. The wooden sail-and steam-powered vessel sank in 1943 after being severely damaged by sea ice.
In an interview from the expeditionary vessel Atlantis, Mr. Geiger said the team would spend several days surveying the vessel. The aim is to create a 3-D twin of the wreck for study and viewing by the public, including Canadian school children and students.
An early version of 3D model of Quest created by Canadian company Voyis. The Quest was Sir Ernest Shackleton’s final ship that sank in 1962 in the Labrador Sea.Supplied
The Terra Nova dives mark the second phase of an expedition, two years in the planning, to create digital replicas of the last ships of famed polar explorers Sir Ernest Shackleton and Captain Scott. The venture has cost millions of dollars in private donations and corporate sponsorship, including from Meta. The tech giant also provided high-tech glasses to capture additional images of the wrecks from within the submersible, Alvin.
The expedition, carried out with the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), last week filmed the wreck of Quest, Shackleton’s final ship that sank in 1962 in the Labrador Sea. The wreck was found to have become a haven for fish and other sea life, despite being partially covered in stray trawlers’ nets.
John Geiger, CEO of Royal Canadian Geographical Society, in the Alvin submersible.martin hartley/Supplied
Mr. Geiger said images of Terra Nova were easier to obtain, and because the deck had collapsed and the hull had split, Benen Elshakhs, pilot of the 20-ton submersible, was able to manoeuvre into the sunken vessel.
“The submersible was able to fly, if you will, directly into the hull,” he said. “And so it was a very, very powerful experience to feel like you were actually inside Scott’s ship.”
David Mearns, a seasoned shipwreck hunter and the expedition’s co-chief scientific officer, stayed up all night on Sunday to view live images being gleaned from the wreck by a remote operated underwater vehicle.
He told the Globe and Mail that he had identified several parts of the ship that would have been on the original vessel, built in 1884 in Dundee, Scotland, when Scott sailed on her.
Among them was a binnacle, a waist-high protective case housing the ship’s compass, as well as a taffrail log, a 19th century instrument used for navigation.
Taffrail logs, used on ships until the mid-20th century, are small copper devices shaped like propellers towed through the water at the stern of the ship to measure speed.
“It was just sitting there on a piece of wood,” Mr. Mearns said.
Mr. Mearns said the ship had been built with a very strong wood sheathing with metal at the bow and stern to protect it from ice. He said “the sides of the ship look in fantastic condition, almost like it sailed yesterday.”
“There’s a different story for the interior of the ship on Terra Nova,” he said. “The decks are completely collapsed. So what that creates is a shell of a hull with all the other innards basically collapsed in on itself at the bottom of this shell, and it’s almost like we have two halves of the ship.”
The Terra Nova in an undated archive photograph in Antarctica.Royal Canadian Geographical Soci/Reuters
He said the four bladed propeller, and the rudder, which is about three to four metres high, have survived well.
“The rudder is sticking out high up in the seabed, probably four meters high at least,” he said.
But a survey of the port and starboard side of the ship shows “very severe damage at the stern through impact with ice.”
Before Terra Nova sank the crew were rescued and she is recorded to have been deliberately fired on so she did not become a navigational obstacle.
But Mr. Mearns said their survey found the shells hit above the waterline and were unlikely to have sunk the vessel. The shellfire he surmised was “more like target practice.”