In the inter-breeding period, the birds cover huge distances. One Grey-headed albatross circumnavigated the southern hemisphere in just 46 days
- Tommy Clay
In June 1910 Dr Edward Wilson set sail from Cardiff to Antarctica on board the Terra Nova as the Chief of the Scientific Staff on the British Antarctic Expedition led by Captain Scott. On 1 November the following year a group from the Terra Nova set out from Cape Evans across the ice with the intention of reaching the South Pole. The venture ended in tragedy. The members of the British expedition perished on their return from the pole having discovered that the Norwegians had got there first.
Wilson was a talented artist as well as a doctor. He began drawing as a child and throughout his life he made meticulous sketches and watercolours of the natural world.
After his death, his final sketchbook was retrieved from the tent where he and his companions spent their last days. His watercolours were returned from the Cape Evans hut where they had been produced.
Artworks made by Wilson on both the Discovery Expedition of 1901 and the Terra Nova Expedition are testimony to the spirit of discovery and the splendour of the Antarctic.
The Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) is fortunate in holding around 1,900 of Wilson’s drawings and sketches, the majority of them given to SPRI by his wife Oriana. Nineteen of these artworks depict the albatross – several species of which Wilson shows both in close-up studies and soaring above the ocean.
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Image: Diomedea melanophrys. Discovery 1901. Black browed albatross, by Edward Adrian Wilson. (Scott Polar Research Institute)
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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