What They Did Not Carry

Just a week or so back, I wrote a post about the Shackleton Expedition of 1914-1917 in a post entitled The Things They Carried.

Now it has just been announced that 22 photographs entombed in ice and left behind in Antarctica over 100 years ago, have been discovered.

It seems British explorer Robert Falcon Scott built a support cabin in Antarctica for his doomed 1910-1911 expedition, and that same support cabin was used by Ernest Shackleton's men during their also-doomed 1914-1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition which included an offshoot expedition to the Ross Sea.

Some of Shackleton's men in the off-shoot expedition were left stranded on Ross Island when their ship, the steam yacht Aurora, blew out to sea while trapped in an ice pack.

The Aurora stayed trapped in the ice from May 1915 until February 12, 1916, when it broke out and made its way back to New Zealand.

The men left on Ross Island were eventually rescued by the Aurora and Shackleton (now back from his own rescue from the Endurance) on January 10, 1917.  Seven of the 10 men that had been left on the Ross Island in May of 1915 were still alive.

The 22 ice-entombed photos are not the only thing to have come out of Antarctic ice. 

In 2010, five crates of Mackinlay's whisky and two crates of brandy were discovered beneath Shackleton's 1908 base camp at Cape Royds. One of the whisky crates was thawed in New Zealand, and three of the 11 whisky bottles were sent to the parent whiskey company where master blenders at Mackinlay's analyzed the contents of the bottles and created an exact replica.  A bottle of the replica stuff can be yours for only $165.
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