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Captain Larsen’s rescue boat, The Antarctic, sank in the ice off Antarctica in 1902. His crew of 21 built a hut to live in until they were themselves rescued a year later. They were forced to eat penguins to stay alive and made their way through a diet of 3,000 of them until picked up by the Argentine navy in 1903.
Curator’s notes
The amazing thing about Antarctica is that it retains all the evidence of earlier explorers; the huts, the empty tins, the sense of human habitation. It’s frozen evidence. And Dr Paul Willis tells a great yarn of high adventure and near disaster, all in the name of science. The story is very effectively brought to life by the combination of archival photos and stock footage, and actuality footage of Willis on the actual location, personalising the material in a warm and accessible manner.
