Edward Wilson's handwritten account of the 1911 Antarctic journey up for sale

Explorer's tale of polar trek undertaken in temperatures of -60F to be sold at Bonhams

Even in a forbidding landscape where human endeavour has been tested to the limit, it was one of the most insane adventures ever undertaken: 67 miles and back in the Antarctic winter through relentless winds, appalling blizzards and numbing temperatures for the sole purpose of gathering Emperor penguin eggs from their remote breeding grounds.

Nearly 100 years later, the three men who made the journey from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier are still seen as Antarctic exploration heroes. But few would now view what has become known as "the worst journey in the world" as worth it.

Next month, Bonhams is to auction one of the most significant items of memorabilia from the Edwardian era of Antarctic exploration to come on the market for 20 years: Edward Wilson's 40-page handwritten account of the 1911 journey.

Wilson, known as Uncle Bill by companions, was part of Captain Robert Scott's team. A naturalist, physician and painter, Wilson was with Scott at the south pole in 1912, only to find Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it. When the frozen corpses of the British explorers were found in November, Scott's arm was around Wilson.



The two main obstacles were the darkness and the weather. Because they were travelling in the depth of the Antarctic winter the men often could not see where they were going. And then they were battling wind, blizzards and temperatures, which on one bad day, fell to -60C (-77F).








The Cambridge transcript also lack Wilson's sketches. There are also pencilled annotations by Scott himself.


Baddeley hailed Wilson and his team "the last of the great explorers". He added: "They were totally revered at the time and when they died there was huge national mourning. It was rather like the death of Diana. They were superheroes."

It was, in many ways, a terribly British expedition: it was ill-equipped and produced a terribly British ending. When Cherry-Garrard arrived at the Natural History Museum with three prized penguin eggs he was allegedly met by a custodian who said: "Who are you? What do you want? This ain't an egg shop." When he got someone to take the eggs, Cherry-Garrard was then forced to wait hours for a receipt.

The trip to Cape Crozier was also an opportunity to experiment with rations ahead of the south pole journey.

Tuesday July 11.11 We have been discussing our respective rations, they have been somewhat revised as follows: – On July 6th Cherry felt the need for more food and would have chosen fat, either butter or pemmican, had he not been experimenting on a large biscuit allowance. So he increased his biscuits to 12 a day and found that it did away to some extent with his desire for more food and fat. But he occasionally had heartburn and has certainly felt the cold more than Bowers and I have, and has had more frostbite in hands, feet and face than we have.

I have altogether failed to eat anything approaching my allowance of 8oz of butter a day. The most I have managed has been about 2 or 3oz.

Bowers has also found it impossible to eat his extra allowance of pemmican for lunch.

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