Robert Falcon Scott Markham's first choice as leader but, having decided on him, the older man's support remained constant. There were committee battles over the scope of Scott's responsibilities, with the Royal Society pressing to put a scientist in charge of the expedition's programme while Scott merely commanded the ship. Eventually, however, Markham's view prevailed; Scott was given overall command, and was promoted to the rank of commander before "Discovery" sailed for the Antarctic on 6 August 1901. King Edward VII, who showed a keen interest in the expedition, visited the Discovery the day before the ship left British shores in August 1901,
The Adventure of the Gloria Scott would place the case in 1880. "The Gloria Scott" was an episode of the animated series "Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century", in which the titular prison ship was a spacecraft en route to the Moon. The 1954 "Sherlock Holmes" series loosely adapted the story for its episode "The Case of the Blind Man's Bluff", changing the name of the ship to the "Gloria North". It retains elements from the story, such as a respectable character with a tattoo he has tried to erase but which Holmes observes anyway (in the episode, the tattoo was the initials "G.N." for "Gloria