Cornish connections to Polar exploration revealed by National Maritime Museum Cornwall

When National Maritime Museum Cornwall’s On Thin Ice exhibition opened in April 2011 the dedicated team at the museum sent out an appeal to the Cornish community for anyone with any polar connections to come forward. 

To their astonishment the response was huge and staff have now put together a cabinet of items and photos that reveal Cornwall’s many surprising connections to polar exploration.

The new display includes tins of food eaten by polar explorers that were packed by a company in Launceston , a Polar Medal awarded to a Falmouth-born man and photos from Cornish based company Fugro Seacore who took part in a drilling expedition in the Arctic in 2004.

The NMMCs assistant curator Jenny Wittamore said telling the stories of Cornish people was at the heart of what the museum did.

“A range of people with both modern day stories and stories from the golden age of polar exploration contacted the museum. They included a man whose father-in-law was engineer on Shackleton’s Endurance and we were even contacted by a lady whose grandfather made Scott’s boots.”

Making up a large proportion of the new display are items from John Francis, a Falmouth-born man who has an Antarctic island named after him. Francis was part of a team that surveyed the Antarctic in the 1940s.

Thanks to the generosity of his daughter Ann, the museum is able to show the public John’s knitted woollen jumpers, mittens, his American military issue Parka, his personal diaries and his Polar Medal.
 
Ann said: “It is only through reading my father’s diaries in their entirety that the enormity of their significance can be appreciated.

“What emerges most dramatically is the unstated; the unremitting extremes of climate, the dangers and disappointments met in the field by the team of men and dogs working tirelessly on their particular exploratory missions.”

Throughout the summer the NMMC will be holding daily activities for children relating to polar exploration as well as numerous other nautical themes.  Princess Anne has also recently visited the museum to show her support for one of Cornwall’s leading attractions.

• On Thin Ice runs until October 9. For more details and related events follow the venue details below.

• Culture24 is working with Museums Cornwall to promote Cornish museums and their collections. Find out more at www.culture24.org.uk/cornwall