Museum acquires artifacts of tragic polar expedition by theodolite

Museum officials recently acquired the artifacts from a descendant of the late Charles Wright, the Toronto man who found the bodies of Scott and his comrades after they perished on their return from the Pole a century ago.
One of the instruments, a theodolite, is the navigation tool that helped Wright plot a route across the icy expanses of Antarctica to eventually locate the dead bodies of Scott and his companions frozen inside their snow-shrouded tent.
The other is a roughly crafted sundial given to Wright as a memento on the Beardmore Glacier by the expedition’s chief scientist, Edward Wilson, in December 1911. “Uncle Bill” Wilson was among those who died with Scott, pinned for days at their last camp by a ferocious storm.
The artifacts were originally among a treasure trove of Wright’s Antarctic memorabilia, most of which was sold piecemeal last Sept. 22 in London, England, by the Christie’s auction house.
But the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board refused to let the theodolite and sundial out of the country, citing the “significance of their association with the Scott expedition and with a Canadian scientist recognized in his own right.”
The federal body is a watchdog that keeps important cultural artifacts in Canada.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum then made a successful offer to Adrian Raeside, Wright’s grandson, and the two relics of Antarctica’s golden age of exploration will soon go on public display in Ottawa.
The review board also refused Christie’s an export permit for Wright’s box camera, and it was purchased in Canada last fall for $21,600 by an unidentified buyer believed to reside in British Columbia.
Wright’s medals and decorations, also restricted to Canada, were sold for more than $96,000 to a mystery bidder.
Science museum officials said they cannot disclose what they paid for the theodolite and sundial, under rules that protect the seller’s privacy.
Raeside, a well-established editorial cartoonist living in Whistler, B.C., recently wrote a book about his grandfather after visiting some of the Antarctic locales of Scott’s expedition. He is also working on a film.
Scott’s adventure in the south is one of the best-loved tales of exploration, even though he died on the return journey from the Pole and was beaten to the prize by upstart Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen more than a month earlier. The British team found Amundsen’s tent at the Pole with letters awaiting them inside.
But the full story of Scott’s death march might never have been told had Wright not spotted a speck of dark material slightly off the trail of the search party. Inspecting it, he found a snow-covered tent with the frozen bodies of Scott and two other men. Also inside were Scott’s now-famous diaries that told the horrid tale — diaries that have never been out of print since.
That contrasts sharply with another famous polar expedition that also ended in tragedy. Sir John Franklin died in Canada’s Arctic in 1847 after his two ships failed to find a northwest passage through the thick Arctic ice.
Dozens of rescue ships were dispatched to locate him, but none ever did and the full story of his demise remains a mystery even today. Franklin’s grave has never been found.
The science museum plans to display the Wright objects in the next few weeks as part of its current Franklin exhibition, “Echoes in the Ice: History, Mystery, and Frozen Corpses,” which ends March 20.
The theodolite is a telescope-like instrument made of brass and platinum, its dials and eyepiece covered with soft Chamois leather to protect fingers and eyes in the bitter Antarctic cold. One of six built in 1910 for Scott’s expedition by T. Cooke and Sons Ltd., an English manufacturer based in York, the precision device was assigned to Wright for his fieldwork as a glaciologist and navigator.
The rough sundial was crafted at Scott’s base hut by motor engineer Bernard Day, likely using plywood from a packing case. Designed specifically for use in high latitudes, it is accurate to within about 15 minutes but was not for most science work, which relied on much more precise chronometers.
Senior museum official Randall Brooks says the two objects are a highlight of his career, ranking alongside artifacts belonging to Canadian Nobel-prize winning scientists John Polanyi and Gerhard Herzberg.
“The sundial is quite unusual and was designed specifically for use at high latitudes where the sun rotates around the sky during the summer without setting,” said Brooks, vice-president of collection and research. “I’ve never seen one like it.”
The remainder of Wright’s Antarctic possessions appear now to be scattered around the globe. Daughter Pat Wright sold her father’s diaries to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, England, for 12,000 pounds in 1988. And some of the material from last September’s Christie’s auction — including photographs and a pair of skis — was sent as far afield as New Zealand.
Scott was a heroic figure for decades after his death, inspiring a feature film, a symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams and a spate of memoirs. His standing has diminished since the 1980s, though, as polar historians began to question his preparations and stiff leadership style.
Wright, who died 1975 in retirement on Salt Spring Island, B.C., spent the rest of a brilliant scientific career in Britain helping to develop early radio and radar. Reticent all his life about his south-polar experiences, his diaries and memoirs reveal a deep resentment that Scott had not properly provisioned his hard-working field parties.
Wright, knighted in 1946, believed trail rations were far too small, and half-starved men pulling heavy sledges readily succumbed to the cold and bad weather.