The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition
On my recent trip to beautiful, blustery Dundee, I made a new entry in My Big List of Polar Expeditions to Become More Than a Little Obsessed With in the form of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (SNAE) 1902-04.
I knew the bare-bones details of its existence already - that it set sail from Scotland, for example, contemporary to and largely overshadowed by the Discovery Expedition. And that it yielded this iconic image of a Piper and a Penguin:
But the more I looked at the artefacts on display, the more my interest was piqued and I'm finding already that there's so much more to this Expedition than I could have imagined!
Lead by William Speirs Bruce and sailing from Troon, the SNAE has been described as "by far the most cost-effective and carefully planned scientific expedition of the Heroic Age."
They brought back around 1,100 natural specimens, 212 of which were previously unknown to science. They discovered new land to the east of the Weddell Sea. And they set up the first manned meteorological station in Antarctica that's still in use today.
But by far the most interesting aspect of the SNAE to me so far is pettiness and prejudice that lies at the heart of why it's so often forgotten.
Speirs Bruce, already a Polar veteran, actually applied to join the Discovery Expedition but received a decidedly lukewarm reception from the Royal Geographical Society and then-president Sir Clements Markham. Indifference then turned to outright enmity when, after hearing little from them for over a year, Speirs Bruce proposed his own expedition to work alongside the Discovery.
Markham himself dismissed the SNAE as "mischievous rivalry," and they were largely ignored and denigrated on their return. No member of the SNAE received an RGS Polar Medal like those of the Discovery, despite being just as deserving, and it's been proposed that nationalism and prejudice were at least in part to blame -
"Some of the aversion of the London geographical establishment may have arisen from Bruce's overt Scottish nationalism... he said: "While Science was the talisman of the Expedition, Scotland was emblazoned on its flag; and it may be that, in endeavouring to serve humanity by adding another link to the golden chain of science, we have also shown that the nationality of Scotland is a power that must be reckoned with."
As happens so often, it seems to have been a case of not just wanting to make new discoveries and consolidate knowledge and power, but wanting the "right" sort of people to do so to the exclusion of all "others".
