He returned once more with the "Terra Nova" expedition, Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. He served as boatswain aboard the "Terra Nova" and although he volunteered for the search party that was to look for Scott's party he was turned down as he was a family man. By the time of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914, the 48-year-old Cheetham was the crew member with most experience of the Antarctic, having spent almost six years in the seas around the continent