Tuesday, 17 May 1910

Scott

Gran joined the Terra Nova at the West India Docks. "Men tore about like busy ants," he wrote later, "Sailors were crawling over rigging and spars." Belowdecks, he added, "chaos also reigned." [1]

First mate Victor Campbell was already aboard. Campbell, an Old Etonian who had retired from a naval career at twenty-seven to live part of the year on a salmon river near Sandefjord in Norway, knew Gran from when they had met skiing at a Norwegian mountain hotel. Campbell's knowledge of ski was one of the reasons he had volunteered for Scott's expedition; he was to lead the party that was to explore King Edward VII Land. "He had a very nasty temper," Gran recalled, "& the nickname 'the wicked mate' was a right one. But he was a very good sailor." [2]


Notes:

[1] Tryggve Gran, Slik var Det, pp.75-76, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.280.
[2] Tryggve Gran, personal communication with Roland Huntford, quoted by Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.281.