Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 27, 2008



The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (SNAE), 1902–04, was organized and led by William Speirs Bruce, a natural scientist and former medical student from the University of Edinburgh. Bruce had spent most of the 1890s engaged on expeditions to the Antarctic and Arctic regions, and by 1899 was Britain's most experienced polar scientist. In March of that year, he applied to join the National Antarctic expedition (later known as Captain Scott's Discovery Expedition). However, his proposal to extend that expedition's field of work into the Weddell Sea quadrant, using a second ship, was dismissed as "mischievous rivalry" by Royal Geographical Society (RGS) president Sir Clements Markham. The SNAE, therefore, went ahead as an independent, privately financed venture.

Although overshadowed in prestige terms by the Discovery Expedition, the SNAE completed a full programme of exploration and scientific work. Its achievements included the establishment of the first permanent meteorological station in Antarctic territory, and the discovery of new land to the east of the Weddell Sea. Its large collection of biological and geological specimens, together with those from Bruce's earlier travels, led to the establishment of the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory in 1906. The expedition has been described as "by far the most cost-effective and carefully planned scientific expedition of the Heroic Age", although its homecoming in July 1904, in contrast to the reception afforded two months later to the returning Discovery, was muted. Bruce received no formal honour or recognition from the British Government, and the expedition's members were denied the prestigious Polar Medal despite vigorous lobbying.