Officers & Crew, Terra Nova, Scott's birthday dinner

Photograph, framed black and white, showing the crew and officers of ‘Terra Nova’ at dinner. Identified as ‘Midwinter Day Dinner’ in Ponting’s own account but actually taken on Scott’s 43rd birthday, dated 6th June 1911. The hut was decorated with sledging flags, portraits of the King and Queen and the table was overlaid with a patriotic Union Jack. Great care was taken with the meal with the best food and the best china and cutlery. In his diary that night Scott wrote with delight that they ‘…sat down to a sumptuous spread - Clissold’s (the cook) especially excellent seal soup, roast mutton and red currant jelly, fruit salad, asparagus and chocolate – for drink we had cider cup, a mystery not yet fathomed, some sherry and a liqueur’. Photograph taken by H.G. Ponting (expedition’s official camera artist), people present (from left to right) Lawerence Oates, Cecil Meares (in charge of the dogs), Apsley Cherry-Garrard (assistant zoologist), T. GriffithTaylor (Geoogist), Edward D.Nelson (Bioloigist), Edward R.G.R.Evans (Navigator and Second in command), Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Edward Adrian Wilson (chief of scientific staff and biologist), George Simpson (meteorologist), Henry Robertson Bowers (lieutenant),Tryggve Gran (ski expert) (standing), Charles S Wright (physicist) and Frank Debenham (geologist).