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Prologue

Exploration !

The magic word that dominated my early life and filled my mind with visions of the first primitive, rough-hewn boats, then galleys, followed by boats with coarse sails, graceful sailing-ships with wind-filled canvas, steamships throbbing with speed, and grim, grey warships relentless in their messiness of unsinkable armoury.

It was not, however, the ships that captured my youthful imagination. It was the distant lands they were bound for.

I wanted to see immeasurable stretches of ocean swirling in unsounded deeps. I yearned to peer into limitless gulfs of space, to gaze across thousands of miles of silent, frozen vastness constituting the Unknown – desolate immensity shrouded in eternal night.

I wanted to contact the Antarctic.

Francis Davies

Francis Davies Leading Shipwright RN

the Journals of Francis Davies

Francis Davies with his wife Ethel

The Royal Yacht Squadron White burgee from Terra Nova was mounted in a purpose built oak frame and presented to the Plympton St Maurice Masonic Lodge by Francis Davies. It was auctioned at Christie's in 1999. It is now in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.