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BOWERS, HENRY R. (“BIRDIE”). (1883-1912). Scottish explorer who perished with Scott on their return from the South Pole. ADS. (“H. R. Bowers”). 3½pp. Small folio. On board the Loch Torridon, November 3, 1901-June 29, 1902. Bower’s handwritten log of the Loch Torridon’s journey from London to Adelaide, Australia, recording date, time, sun’s bearing, ships head, latitude, longitude, and heeling.

Bowers went to sea at an early age, apprenticing with the British Merchant Navy. He first served aboard the Worcester and, in 1899, chose an apprenticeship aboard the four-masted iron barque, Loch Torridon, on which he sailed around the world five times. The journeys to Adelaide, on Australia’s south coast, so near the Antarctic, fuelled Bowers’ interest in the polar regions. His successful apprenticeship earned him increased responsibilities and the recognition of his superiors. On his third voyage, which began in November 1901, Bowers recorded, “The Captain gave me charge of the Meteorological Log, and read me out a letter of thanks from the meteorological Office for the observations we had sent in from last voyage (I had taken them every 4 hours and am to continue to do so). He gave me all the Charts of the South Atlantic, South Indian and South Pacific Oceans they had presented. I expect they will be very useful; one likes these things anyhow,” (‘Birdie’ Bowers of the Antarctic, Seaver). Our log is from that same voyage but tracks various coordinates of the ship’s location, rather than weather conditions. 

Bowers joined the Royal Indian Marine Service in 1905 and served in the Persian Gulf, Ceylon and Burma. However, his desire for polar travel was heightened by Captain Robert F. Scott’s account, The Voyage of Discovery, published in 1905. Sir Clements Markham, a former president of the Royal Geographical Society and champion of the Discoveryexpedition, met Bowers when he was a merchant marine and recommended him highly to Scott. The commendation was so effusive, in fact, that Scott invited Bowers to join the expedition, overlooking Bower’s arctic inexperience. Scott, “regretted [the] choice upon first seeing the short, stout young man with a big nose. ‘Well, we’re landed with him now, and must make the best of it,’ said Scott,” (“Captain Robert Falcon Scott,” The New South Polar Times). It was not long before Bowers had so impressed Scott with his personality and work ethic that Scott eventually regarded him as “the hardest traveler that ever undertook a Polar journey as well as one of the most undaunted,” (ibid.). Scott hoped to improve on his historic Discovery expedition, which had already added much to polar research, by reaching the South Pole. His interest was spurred on by Shackleton’s 1907-09 Nimrod expedition, which built upon the Discovery’s work and suggested the very real possibility of reaching the pole. The Terra Nova set off from Cardiff, Wales, on July 15, 1910, without Scott, who was fund-raising in England. He rejoined the ship in South Africa and proceeded to Melbourne, Australia. There, Scott was shocked to learn via telegram from the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, (who was thought to be en route to the Arctic), that he had changed course and was also heading south to the Antarctic. “Scott’s reaction was muted, but the team shared his prickly sense of proprietorial right to the pole,” (Antarctica: Great Stories from the Frozen Continent, Allen, et. al.). The Terra Nova proceeded to Lyttelton Harbour, New Zealand, where it loaded supplies, ponies and dogs before moving on to Port Chalmers. There, “‘we filled up with what coal we could squeeze into our already overloaded ship’, said [Scott’s second in command Teddy] Evans, ‘and finally left for the Great Unknown on November 29, 1910,’” (Antarctica: Great Stories from the Frozen Continent, Allen, et. al.). Three days out from Port Chalmers, the Terra Nova encountered a ferocious storm and lost ten tons of coal and several of the animals that had been stowed on deck, thus beginning a string of bad luck that would plague the entire expedition. Unable to reach Cape Crozier where they hoped to winter, they landed at Cape Evans six weeks behind schedule. After laying a series of supply depots, the geological and zoological expeditions began. Shortly thereafter, Scott revealed his complex plan for reaching the South Pole, involving a series of teams that he set into motion in October 1911. At the Upper Glacier Depot in January 1912, “at the last moment… Scott asked Bowers to join his polar party… it was a dubious plan that left Evan’s party undermanned and Scott’s with an extra body to feed and accommodate that had not been planned for,” (ibid.). The party marched south, knowing full well that Amundsen might attain the pole before them. On January 17^th, their worst fears were confirmed when they reached the pole to find a tent and the Norwegian flag flying, with a letter by Amundsen noting his arrival five weeks earlier. “It was a depressed little party that faced up to the 1290-kilometre (800-mile) trek back to Cape Evans,” (ibid.). Exhaustion, injuries, scurvy, frostbite, and gangrene took their toll and by March the party was reduced to three – Scott, Wilson and Bowers, with Evans and Oates having perished earlier. “The weather had become impenetrable. No further progress could be made and by 22 March their fuel was exhausted. But the whirling drift did not relent… The frozen bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers were found eight months later by a search party… a memorial cross was erected by the Terra Nova party before they returned to New Zealand with their heavy news. On the cross was carved the final line of Tennyson’s Ulysses: ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,’” (ibid.).

Folded with some nominal foxing and wear. In very good condition. Autographs of Bowers, who died at 28, are extremely rare.

Item #17159

Price: $4,750