Talk:Discovery Expedition

Suddenly fractured?

The account that the ice "suddenly fractured" to free the Discovery seems to be in contradiction with the the book "The Rescue of Captian Scott" by Don Aldridge (1999)(Tuckwell Press) which give the account of how the ships Terra Nova and Morning worked for six weeks under McKay and Colbeck to make a channel to the Discovery and free the Discovery from the ice-- sawing and blasting all the way. There was no "sudden fracture" -- a claim which originated from Scott to cover up his own complete non-participation in the rescue. While I do not have the expertise to adjudicate, Aldridge makes good points to me, and I think this article should at least mention some of this controversy or refute it if anyone feels it can be refuted. 154.20.101.195 19:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)W. Unruh

• Michael Smith's biography of Tom Crean states that the men worked for 12 days in a futile attempt to free the ship (they only carved a 150-yard channel). The two rescue ships arrived, and the men started moving scientific equipment off the Discovery in preparation for abandoning her. Then the ice suddenly began to break up, and some explosives were used to finally free Discovery. Since the rescue ships were 2 miles away (7 foot thick ice between them and Discovery) I find it more plausible that the ice broke up suddenly, which seems to be not an uncommon occurrence in the Ross Sea. I edited the paragraph and added citation.Zatoichi26 (talk) 16:01, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Need to expand/revise/rewrite

I think that the article at present lacks the detail and care in presentation which a subject rated "high" importance warrants. There needs to be an account of the expedition's origins, organisation and aims; the personnel list needs expanding beyond the present half-dozen names - one of whom wasn't on the expedition; the sections dealing with the 2 years in the Antarctic are sketchy and incomplete, making no mention of scientific work, and lacking a summary of the expedition's achievements. There also needs to be a concluding section considering the consequences of this expedition for future polar exploration. I am preparing appropriate revisions and new material to address these points.Brianboulton (talk) 17:58, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Revisions and rewrites completedBrianboulton (talk) 17:58, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

GA nomination withdrawn

I have withdrawn the GA nomination dated 1 February 2008. The article has been developed considerably since then and I think it is ready for peer review. This will also assist the GA nominations backlog Brianboulton (talk) 17:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

• In "Personnel" I corrected the means by which Crean joined the expedition; this account is backed up by a copy of a handwritten letter by Scott to the Royal Geographical Society which is reprinted in Michael Smith's book which I cited. Also I added the deaths of Bonner and Vince to the top of the Consequences section; I think the deaths of these men should be foremost of discussion of consequences. Other than that I did not read the entire article but what I did read seems very good. Zatoichi26 (talk) 16:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for correcting the information regarding Crean. As to Bonner & Vince, these are, I believe, incidents in the expedition rather than consequences from it. Vince's death is already in the narrative but I have added your bit about his memorial cross. I have now incorporated the Bonner details into the narrative (incidentally, his accident was quite definitely in Lyttleton Harbour) and have restored my "Consequences" section. I have kept your Smith references - Smith's book is now listed in the Sources. I see you have also done a bit of work in the "Second relief" section. I've had to tweak this a bit to get the right chronology - the difficulty is that different source books sometimes give differing details of the same event. Anyway, thank you for your continuing interest in these articles. Brianboulton (talk) 14:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Amendments after FAC comments archive

These are responses to the comments of Ealdgyth, posted before the archive.

• Forerunners: I have reworded second sentence of first para, also second sentenne of second para. I've accepted "summer of 1841-42" and, in the third para, have now written "at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries" which is close to what you suggested. I have incorporated your suggested wording for the last para of the section, with only a minor amendment.
• Royal Navy, Markham and Scott:I've rewritten the first paragraph of the section, and added a citation to the (slightly amended) last sentence of the section.
• Personnel: Reworded second sentence of first para. Added citation re Wilson at end of second para - though I've altered the sentence - and a footnote re Joyce at the end of the third para.
• Finance: Bird's and Bovril are food manufacturers, of baking powders and meat extract respectively. I have included these details in the text.

Very cool. So they had free meat substitute and baking powder to go with their mustard (grins). I just find the little details to be interesting in articles like this. Thanks for indulging me! Ealdgyth | Talk 23:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Ship: I don't want to overload the text with long explanations about the flags flown by British vessels, so I've linked White Ensign and Blue Ensign to their wiki articles and added a bit about the White Ensign being reserved for Royal Navy ships, which Discovery wasn't. That should deal with it.

That works very well. I generally hate having to click through to another article just to grasp the context of what is being written about. Saying that the White Ensign was reserved for Navy vessels keeps someone from having to do that just to understand the sentence. Thanks! Ealdgyth | Talk 23:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Objectives: I agree with your rewording for the opening, and have added the citations you requested.
• First Year:I've added some details of the balloon flights, put citations into the "winter" paragraph, de-capitalised "southern journey" (there's no special reason to capitalise, except to emphasise that it was the southern journey of the expedition) and reworded and cited the sentence dealing with sledging rations.

Very cool! THanks! Once again, my curiosity at work...Ealdgyth | Talk 23:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Arrival of relief ship: I've put in the citations requested, though I personally doubt the necessity of specific citations for such routine parts of the narrative as these. There are nearly 100 citations in the whole article.

Yeah, they were marginal requests, but better to be safe than sorry. When in doubt, cite it is my motto. Ealdgyth | Talk 23:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Second year in the ice: Citation added as requested.
• Aftermath: Citations added to 1st and 2nd paras. I have deleted the last sentence of this section as I find this hard to cite, and it is not important.
• Some consequences: I've altered the opinionated sentence concening Wild and Joyce, and added an explanatory footnote. I've also done some rewriting in the second and third paragraphs, but an very anxious that the meaning and the effect of these paras should not be diluted. They are most important. I hope I have satisfactorily explained Shackleton's horses.I have also added a citation to the last sentence of the article.

For someone who hasn't read up much on the Antarctic expeditions (just what I acquired on my recent cruise down there) the changes make a world of difference in understanding what excatly the results of this expedition on what came later were. Very much clearer to me, at least. Mike'll probably disagree... (grins) Ealdgyth | Talk 23:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Sources:I have altered the "pb" to paperback. As far as I know it isn't a requirement to included the place of publication of the books - doesn't happen in any of the reading lists I've been looking at lately.

Paperback could probably be cut out, it was just there and I figured it needed to be made explicit that it meant paperback. Ealdgyth | Talk 23:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Images: I'm a bit ignorant on Commons issues. The Discoveryboat image appears in several articles apart from mine, and does not appear to have copyright issues, but I'm confused by what you say. I'm even more confused by what you say about the Scott statue - the picture is free but the object in the picture isn't? I need more advice about how to proceed here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianboulton (talk • contribs) 22:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Can't understand why this came out as unsigned. I'm sure I signed it Brianboulton (talk) 22:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

As for the image of the statue. Artwork is copyrighted, for varying terms depending on the country where the work is created. Taking a picture of a copyrighted work is what is known as a derivative work, and different rules on whether or not that derivative work can be copyrighted exist, once again varying by country. What I was trying to explain is that if the statue in the picture is still under copyright (i.e. hasn't entered the public domain yet) it may or may not be acceptable to take a picture of that statue and release it under the Commons license. If it isn't legal to do that, then the photographer who took the picture and uploaded it to Commons doesn't have the right to release it, and the sculptor might be able to come and make trouble for the photographer and/or Wikipedia, if the sculptor's rights are being infringed by the picture. It's all very complicated, and your best bet is to either ditch the picture or ask someone knowledge about this sort of thing over on Commons or here (I suggest User:Durova). I know enough for my photography business (in the United States) to just stay away from anything sculpted in the 20th century, honestly. And it appears the picture is taken somewhere else (New Zealand?) so all I can say is that the picture needs to be investigated based on the country the statue is in, which I have no clue on. Did that explanation make sense? Ealdgyth | Talk 23:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

As far as FAC, after Mike's copyedit, I should have no issues supporting. It was a very slight oppose and you've addressed the big parts of it above. (The horses thing was the biggest, it just made no sense at all to me) The rest is stylistic stuff where we can agree to differ. So consider this a conditional support, assuming that Mike doesn't think the article is unsalvagable. (I highly highly doubt that, by the way, it's a great piece of research) Ealdgyth | Talk 23:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

In the light of the above I have ditched the statue picture and replaced it with a simple portrait photo of Scott. Brianboulton (talk) 16:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Map copyright

I have put a note on the copyright and usage status of the map in the talk page for the map. It is based on the Antarctic Digital Database, which is copyright data. Free use is permitted for non-commercial use, but must carry an acknowledgment of the source (as the map on the NOAA web-site does). As it is based on copyright data, it cannot be subject to Creative Commons licensing either. --APRCooper (talk) 11:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC) (Manager of the ADD)

Heroic Age

What is this? There's no link, so I haven't a clue! 86.133.215.114 (talk) 11:47, 1 May 2008 (UTC)