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Captain Scott's Marvel
Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers realised his life’s ambition when he was selected for Captain Scott’s Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic, yet he also met his death on the journey. Born to a sea-faring father and adventurous mother on the Firth of Clyde, Bowers’ boyhood obsession with travel and adventure took him round the world several times and his life appears, with hindsight, to have been a ceaseless preparation for his ultimate, Antarctic challenge. Although just 5ft 4in, he was a bundle of energy; knowledgeable, indefatigable and the ultimate team player. In Scott’s words, he was ‘a marvel’. This new biography, drawing on Bowers’ letters, journals and previously neglected material, sheds new light on Bowers and tells the full story of the hardy naval officer who could always lift his companions’ spirits.
20th November, 2024 in Natural World, Society & Culture
Author Anne Strathie is a writer and researcher, whose three biographies of members of Robert Scott’s 1910-13 Terra Nova Antarctic expedition are published by The History Press. Her new book, A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects: From Cook’s Circumnavigations to the Aviat…
13th April, 2022 in History, Maritime, Natural World
The ‘Heroic Age’ of Polar Exploration extended from the late 19th century until World War I, a period of about 20 years. In the North Polar region, as in the South, the ultimate goal was the pole itself. However, because the North Pole was a hypothetical location in the mids…
14th January, 2022 in History, Natural World
By mid-January 1912, Dr Edward Wilson, Captain Robert Scott, Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers, Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates and Edgar ‘Taff’ Evans were approaching their destination. On 16 January, as they lunched, they discussed the possibility of reaching the South Pole the following day – but…
16th December, 2020 in Biography & Memoir, History, Natural World
By late December, Captain Robert Scott’s expedition ship, the Terra Nova, had been on the Southern Ocean for almost a month. After a sea-sickness-inducing passage through the Roaring Forties and a ferocious storm in the Furious Fifties, photographer Herbert Ponting and his compan…
15th March, 2017 in Biography & Memoir, History
‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ Most people will know that these simple words, so famous and so often repeated over the past decades, were uttered by Captain Lawrence Oates who, according to legend, gallantly gave his life to help save his comrades in an Antarctic…
1st November, 2016 in Military
On 5 May 1916 four Royal Naval Division officers met up at London’s Charing Cross station, from where they were waved off on the cross-Channel train by a small group which included the Prime Minister’s wife, Margot Asquith. The four men, who had met in 1915, had shared difficult…
16th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, History, Natural World
In early January 1912 Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers – to his delighted surprise – was chosen by Captain Robert Scott as a member of the five-man party which would attempt to reach the South Pole. Birdie (born in Greenock, near Glasgow, in 1883) wrote home that he was proud to represent S…
15th December, 2015 in History, Maritime
On 18 April 2015 two apparently unrelated stands of history came together in an auction in Wiltshire. Amongst the lots in an auction of items related to Titanic is a lot consisting of fifty-two negatives taken by Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers during the last months of Captain Scott’…
