Two Cantabrians are part of the Inspiring Explorers programme which will be returning a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo to Scott’s Discovery hut in Antarctica.
The classic adventure novel was read by the 1911 expedition team at Ross Island and still has the party’s fingerprints clearly visible on the pages.
Written by French author Alexandre Dumas in 1844 and sees a wrongly imprisoned young sailor seek revenge on those who betrayed him.
A conservation technician at Canterbury Museum, Louise Piggin, 26, is on a team of eight New Zealanders and Australians heading to Antarctica on Tuesday.
She will be joined by Jake Bailey, 27, who grabbed headlines around the world in 2015 when he gave a rousing end of school speech after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of stage four blood cancer.
The head boy of Christchurch Boys’ High School at the time, Bailey went into remission.
On a month-long tour organised by the Antarctic Heritage Trust, they will visit the huts of Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton on Ross Island and repatriate the book.
Said Piggin: “It’s really cool. They would have just been reading it in the hut, and they would have had really dirty hands covered in soot and seal blubber. They left the marks just from reading it over and over again.”
Piggin works at the museum archive in Hornby cataloguing, researching and preserving the collection before the museum’s renovation is scheduled for completion in 2029.
“The privilege of visiting one of the most remote places on earth, let alone being able to walk in the footsteps of the early Antarctic explorers, is an incredibly unique opportunity to connect with that history,” he said.
Members of the Inspiring Explorers team have been working on conserving the Count of Monte Cristo with Piggin helping to reattach some loose pages ahead of the Antarctic trip.
“We need to keep the book nice and safe and make sure it doesn’t fall apart while we’re transporting it to the hut,” she said.
“I work with lots of different items usually, but not usually ones from such remote areas which have been through harsh conditions. So it’s pretty special.”
“I don’t quite know how I will feel, but it is a once in a lifetime experience.”
Through returning the book, Piggin looks forward to carrying out some in-the-field work as she completes her masters in museum studies.
The trip aligns with her passions for historical conservation and the outdoors.
“I love history and looking at how you can tell stories through artifacts, but then I’m also super into hiking and exploration. It’s sort of like my worlds colliding.”
Piggin is one of the three young conservationists selected for the trip while others in the team will make a podcast about the experience for the heritage trust.
“It’s going to be really special stepping into those historic huts.
“They are completely preserved how they were when the explorers left,” said Piggin.
Robert Falcon Scott writing in his journal in his expedition hut. Photo: Getty Images
Doomed expedition beaten to the Pole
Before setting out on a fatal expedition to the South Pole in 1911, Robert Falcon Scott and his team would spend freezing nights huddled around a hut’s stove fire.
Waiting for clearer weather, the men would thumb through the pages of The Count of Monte Cristo in an attempt to stave off boredom.
Scott, along with Sir Ernest Shackleton were part of the ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration from 1900 to 1922 and led expeditions of scientific discovery in the continent.
From 1901 to 1904, Scott led the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since the voyage of James Ross 60 years earlier.
But Scott was determined to reach the South Pole first and embarked on another expedition in 1910.
His voyage arrived at Ross Island in January 1911 after resupplying in Dunedin.
The mission to reach the South Pole succeeded on January 17, 1912, but to Scott’s anguish, he found Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten him five weeks prior.
On the return journey, a planned meeting with supporting dog teams from the base camp failed, despite Scott’s written instructions.
Only 20km from the next supply depot, Scott and his companions died from starvation and frostbite.
When the party’s bodies were discovered, they had in their possession the first Antarctic fossils, confirming the continent had drifted south away from warmer climates.
