Terra Nova (ship)

Terra Nova

The Terra Nova in the ice

Ship data Ship type Wooden barque ; one chimney, three masts Shipyard Alexander Stephen & Sons Ltd. Dundee , Scotland Launch 1884 Whereabouts Sunk off Greenland on September 13, 1943

Ship dimensions and crew length 57 m ( Lüa ) width 9.6 m Draft Max. 5.8 m displacement 744  t   crew 65 men

Machine system machine Steam engine Machine performance 100 kilowatts propeller a screw

The Terra Nova ( Latin for New World / Earth ) was a British whaler and expedition ship, best known for its service in the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910 under the direction of Robert Falcon Scott . It was built in 1884 for the Dundee whale and seal fleet and was used for ten years seal hunting in the Labrador Sea before being used for expeditions.

It had its first use in the context of polar expeditions with the evacuation of the Jackson- Harmsworth Arctic expedition from 1894 to 1897.

In 1903 she sailed with the former whaler Morning to Antarctica to help rescue the Discovery Expedition under Robert Falcon Scott from McMurdo Sound . An approximately 64 km long and often ice-free bay in Viktorialand between Cape Washington and the Drygalski Glacier was subsequently named Terra Nova Bay . Mount Terra Nova volcano is also named after the ship.

In 1905 the Fiala-Ziegler expedition in distress brought them back from Franz-Josef-Land .

In 1909 it was acquired by Bowring Brothers Ltd. acquired for the Terra Nova expedition . She was reinforced from bow to stern with over two meters of oak wood to protect against ice pressure and left England in June 1910 under the command of Captain Robert Falcon Scott . During the three-year expedition, she undertook supply and research trips in the summer, but did not overwinter in Antarctica, but in Lyttelton in New Zealand .

After returning from the Antarctic, the Terra Nova was bought back by her previous owners in 1913 and resumed seal hunting off Newfoundland . Its end came on September 13, 1943, when it sank off Greenland . The crew was rescued by a United States Coast Guard cutter . The wreck of the ship was discovered in July 2012 by a team from the Schmidt Ocean Institute on the research vessel Falkor .

Web links

Commons : Terra Nova  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• The Royal Geographical Society's website with images of the Terra Nova

Individual evidence

1. ^ Polar expedition vessel SS Terra Nova discovered , Schmidt Ocean Institute, August 13, 2012.
2. ↑ Scott's wrecked ship Terra Nova found off Greenland , BBC News , August 16, 2012.