My Adventures: Royal Terror Theatre

About a week ago, I attended a training session to become an official Historic Hut Tour Guide. I passed. Last night, I led my first tour out to Discovery Hut on Hut Point, just 0.52 miles from my dorm! I brushed up (a bit) on my history of the hut for the tour, and found out some interesting facts!

- The design for the hut was an Australian Outback design that was popular because it could remain cool in the sweltering Outback temperatures.

- The hut was not intended to be living quarters. It was a storage facility, science laboratory, and theater. In fact, Scott's 1901-1904 National Antarctic Expedition referred to the hut as the Royal Terror Theater. The men would put on plays to entertain themselves inside the hut!

- The hut remained in use through Shackleton's 1914-1917 Trans-Antarctic Expedition, until Shackleton arrived on January 10, 1917 to rescue those who were stranded there. The backstory to this is long, but the essence is that members of Shackleton's team had arrived at Ross Island to lay resupply stations for Shackleton, who was planning to have crossed the continent of Antarctica on land, starting from the other side. However, Shackleton never even set foot on the continent. His ship, the Endurance, was destroyed by sea ice, stranding all 28 men on board. [...long heroic story...] Once Shackleton and the crew of Endurance were safe, Shackleton returned to Ross Island to rescue the men who were stranded there.

There's so much more to the history! It's rich, fascinating, and absolutely astonishing. It is a quieting experience to walk through the historic huts and think about those who inhabited them in the past. It's been nearly 109 years since Robert Falcon Scott erected Discovery Hut and many brave souls have found refuge there in harsh times. And at the same time, it's only been 109 years since Scott first wintered on Ross Island. In light of human history, it's a privilege for me to be part of such early exploration of Antarctica.