Discovery was built for Captain Scott's first Antarctic expedition of 1901-4 and was launched one hundred years ago, in 1901, at Dundee. She had a long and intriguing career before her final voyage back there in 1986, and this book tells the story of that chequered history.
Despite a number of expeditions to the Southern Ocean during the 1800s, at the close of that century the continent of Antarctica remained a mystery. To remedy this the Royal Geographical Society proposed a National Antarctic Expedition and a purpose-built vessel, the Discovery, was specially designed. Based on a whaleship, she was massively built to withstand ice, and was equipped with a hoisting propeller and rudder. She set sail from Cowes on 6 August 1901, under the command of Captain Scott, and entered the Ross Sea in January. The southern sledging expedition, of Scott, Shackleton and Wilson, reached within 500 miles of the South Pole.
In 1905, a year after her return to Europe, she was purchased by the Hudson's Bay Company and worked as a simple cargo carrier between London and their trading posts in the Canadian Arctic; she traded under charter throughout the First World War; was later sent to rescue Shackleton's men, marooned on Elephant Island; while in 1925 she became the first Royal Research Ship, and investigated the environment of the great whales in the Southern Ocean; in 1929-31 she was used by Sir Douglas Mawson to survey what became Australian Antarctic territory. Moored on the Thames Embankment, she survived the London Blitz and then returned to Dundee in 1986 where she is afloat today.