Hell With A Capital H

On 29 March 1912, as Scott and his two companions lay dying in their tent, elsewhere on the polar ice-cap six members of his ill-fated expedition were fighting for their lives. This was the so-called Northern Party, hand-picked by Scott to undertake his most significant programme of scientific research. The unsung hero of this group was Dr Murray Levick, whose attention to diet and mental and physical fitness played a major part in their survival. The doctor was a sensitive recorder and a talented photographer, it is on his previously unpublished diaries, monographs, photographs and sketches that this book is based. The six men were landed by Terra Nova in January 1911 at Cape Adare, 450 miles north of Scott's base camp at Cape Evans. They spent nearly a year there, living in a rudimentary hut, surveying and collecting specimens from the beautiful but inhospitable bay and shoreline fringed by inaccessible mountains. They were then dropped off mid-way between the two Capes to continue their work. The ship was due to pick them up on 17 February 1912. A month later she still hadn't come, and the men were forced to face the Antarctic winter in an igloo dug out of a snowdrift on Inexpressible Island'. After spending six-and-a-half months entombed in their underground ice-cave, in conditions of unimaginable physical and mental hardship, the men -suffering by now from dysentery and near-starvation -embarked on a thirty-seven day, 230-mile journey to an unknown land. They reached Cape Evans on 6 November 1912, only to learn the devastating news of the loss of their leader. With hindsight it is clear that, although it was swamped by the drama and sense of national loss after the death of Scott and his companions, this is one of the greatest survival stories to come out of the heroic age of polar exploration. Scott's Polar Party endured terrible sufferings and did not survive. That the Northern Party not only survived but, in the opinion of one observer, managed to weld themselves together as a cast-iron team, was nothing short of a miracle.