A SOMBRE FEAST
GETTY IMAGES
Six explorers – WW Archer, Thomas Williamson, Thomas Crean, FJ Hooper, Patrick Keohane and Dmitriy Girev (left to right) – hold a Midwinter Day feast at the Cape Evans base camp in British Antarctica, June 1912. The mood would have been anything but celebratory: their leader, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, had set off from the camp the previous year in the hopes of being the first man to reach the South Pole, but failed to return.
In November, a search party would finally locate the bodies of Scott and two companions frozen in their tents; although the men successfully made it to their destination, they had perished on the trek back to Cape Evans. Tragically, Scott had also failed in his record attempt, with Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen beating him to the South Pole by just five weeks.