Antarctic Explorer’s Journal Found In Melting Ice
George Murray Levick served as a photographer, zoologist and surgeon with the North Party
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Every summer the thick Antarctic ice melts just a little bit, and the coursing water digs channels into the ice. This past summer, says Lizzie Meek with the Antarctic Heritage Trust in New Zealand, this melting ice unveiled a treasured: the lost journal of Antarctic explorer George Murray Levick.
Picked out from the ice as a clump of soaked paper, conservationists have now been able to reconstruct and digitize the lost notebook, which was carried by one of the team that set out on Robert Falcon Scott's failed Terra Nova expedition.
“Levick was a part of Scott’s 1910-1913 expedition and a member of the Northern Party,” says a release from the Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand).
The notebook contains his pencil notes detailing the date, subjects and exposure details for the photographs he took during 1911 while at Cape Adare before undergoing a harsh winter in an ice cave on Inexpressible Island.
On the Terra Nova mission, from 1910 to 1913, Scott lost his life in his bid to reach the South Pole. Levick survived, says the trust, going on to found the British Schools Exploring Society.
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