OVER 100 YEARS have passed since Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition in which the British explorer raced in vain against Norway’s Roald Amundsen to become the first to reach the South Pole.

Scott did make it to the South Pole on 18 January 1912 – one month after Amundsen - but the Terra Nova expedition ended in disaster, with Scott and the other four members of his team dying on their return journey from the South Pole.

A search party discovered three of the bodies eight months later, along with photographs and diaries documenting the end of the expedition.

Irishman Tom Crean was part of the last support party for Scott’s polar team on Terra Nova. His solo 56-kilometre trek along the Ross Ice Shelf to seek help and save the life of teammate Teddy Evans earned him the Albert Medal (and was later recreated in that Guinness ad).

Crean later accompanied Co Kildare-born explorer Ernest Shackleton on his failed attempt to cross the Antarctic and was a central part of the dramatic rescue of the Endurance’s crew after their ship had become lodged and destroyed in the polar ice in 1915.

The gallery of images of the Terra Nova expedition shown below includes several which had been considered lost for decades. They had been printed by members of Scott’s team while in the Antarctic and depict the first part of Scott’s journey to the South Pole. They have been made available to TheJournal.ie courtesy of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge.

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