Antarctic Explorers’ Logbook Found at MetService

“Priceless” artefacts linked to Antarctic explorers Ernest Shackleton and Captain Robert Falcon Scott have been unearthed in a surprise discovery within a dark storage room of New Zealand’s meteorological service, Eva Corlett reports for The Guardian.

MetService staff came across a set of logbooks from some of the most famous Antarctic expeditions while preparing to move buildings in Wellington.

The 1916-17 logbook from the famed sailing vessel Aurora records the conditions during the rescue mission to save members of Shackleton’s 1914-16 Trans-Antarctic Expedition from Ross Island in Antarctica, Corlett writes.

Kevin Alder, MetService manager for meteorological data services, was handed the documents by a colleague and asked if they were something worth holding on to.

“No one had any idea that they even existed. I mean, it’s long forgotten, they’ve probably been sitting on the same shelf for 50 years,” Alder said.

Original article by Eva Corlett, The Guardian, November 24, 2021.