One of the last letters written by Captain Robert Falcon Scott from his final camp in Antarctica was purchased by the Scott Polar Research Institute. Its purchase enables this letter to be reunited with the others written from the tent on the Great Ice Barrier, already in the Institute’s care, and with the photographs, sledging journals and personal diaries of Scott and his team, which form the most comprehensive record of the expedition held anywhere.
To Vice Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman, K.C.V.O, K.C.B.
My Dear Sir Francis
I fear we have shipped up; a close shave; I am writing a few letters which I hope will be delivered some day. I want to thank you for the friendship you gave me of late years, and to tell you how extraordinarily pleasant I found it to serve under you. I want to tell you that I was not too old for this job. It was the younger men that went under first... After all we are setting a good example to our countrymen, if not by getting into a tight place, by facing it like men when we were there. We could have come through had we neglected the sick.
Good-bye and good-bye to dear Lady Bridgeman
Yours ever
R. Scott
Excuse writing – it is -40, and has been for nigh a month