13 November 2012
Discovery Hut
The history of this part of the world is pretty recent
compared to most places, but quite interesting.
In the McMurdo area there are several historic huts remaining from the
historic era of Antarctic exploration.
These huts are now maintained by the Antarctic Historic trust and there
is an ongoing effort to archive the contents- in fact for some of the huts
artifacts are now being returned by people who had taken souvenirs in the
1950’s before the huts were protected.
You can find a more complete list of Antarctic huts and
ruins at http://www.polarheritage.com/index.cfm/anthutlist.
The hut that is closest to McMurdo station is called
Discovery Hut. Captain Robert Falcon
Scott built it for the British Antarctic expedition of 1901-1904. It is the smallest of the three huts. Captain Scott decided that the members of the
party would live aboard the ship after it was frozen in for it’s two-year stay
and the hut was primarily used as a science observation hut, storehouse, a work
room and even a theater. This was partly because the hut was difficult
to keep warm with the limited amount of available coal and there had been some
difficulty in digging into the permafrost for a foundation. The hut was used by a number of other groups
over the next decade.
Originally there were a number of smaller huts used as
research labs for magnetic and seismographic work. One of the most interesting parts left in
the Discovery Hut is the pit that had been used by Louis Bernacchi and
Reginald Skelton for the pendulum apparatus used for gravity measurements. This was constructed in November 1902 when the
seismograph was moved to the main hut.
For more details and some great old photographs please check
the Antarctic Historic trust website
http://www.nzaht.org/AHT/HutPointP1/
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