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Quest crew’s cross unveiled in Dundee


Monday 14 October 2024

The wooden cross that was erected in South Georgia in May 1922 by the men of the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition has gone on permanent display at Discovery Point, Dundee. The cross topped the cairn built as a memorial to their late leader Ernest Shackleton, at Hope Point, the entrance to King Edward Cove and Grytviken Harbour.  In 2018, after nearly a century of exposure to the elements, the cross was taken down for conservation. Now in a collaboration between the South Georgia Heritage Trust, the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and the Dundee Heritage Trust, the Hope Cross has been brought to Dundee and placed on permanent display at Discovery Point, a few yards from RRS Discovery on which Shackleton sailed to the Antarctic with Scott.

Jan Chojecki and The Hon. Alexandra Shackleton after the unveiling

Descendants of Quest crew members participated in a re-dedication ceremony. Jan Chojecki, grandson of John Quiller Rowett read two verses from Shackleton’s poem L’Envoi (written in the style of Kipling’s eponymous verse), which appeared in the South Polar Times of 1902-3 under the nom-de-plume “Nemo”. The same had been read by Shackleton’s great grandson Patrick Bergel at the Westminster Abbey service marking the 150th anniversary of Shackleton’s birth, in February this year.

L’ENVOI
Slowly, though touched with glamour, the winter night went by,
and we longed to see the sunlight sweep up in the Northern sky.
Still we wait in this icy fastness till the good Sun sets us free
when no longer the tumbling billow is chained to a frozen sea.
Then shall our hardened bows dip gladly once more to the foam
of the Southward driving roller as the good ship strives for home.

Brothers, we then shall be parted in a world that is greater far
than this weird and wondrous region shut in with an icy bar.
We shall read then in other pages words fashioned with easier pen,
each day with a list of changes in a world of busy men.
But though we wander in English meadows ‘mid the scent of English flowers,
our hearts will still be faithful to this Southern land of ours.

Jan Chojecki with relatives of Quest crewmen, representing families of Christopher Naisbitt, Roddy Carr, George Vibert Douglas and Scout Norman Mooney

The photographic backdrop to the Hope Cross display is taken from an autochrome (colour) photograph taken by George Hubert Wilkins at Hope Point on the day the cairn memorial was completed. This and 29 other autochromes made by Wilkins during the Quest expedition are contained in the Rowett-Chojecki Collection. They have been carefully conserved by leading photographic curator Nicholas Burnett. They represent the only substantial collection of colour photographs from that era of polar exploration. The autochromes have been digitally captured in high definition and restored by Georges Charlier of Salto-Ulbeek and soon will be available in two different sizes of premium quality prints on cotton paper. There will also be a collectable publication containing all of these amazing and unusual images and their story as part of the Shackleton, as well as details of their conservation and restoration.  For further news on the Quest autochromes please sign up here: https://questchronicle.org.uk/sign-up/