With Scott: The Silver Lining

by Griffith Taylor

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Genres: Adventure, Nonfiction, Biography

516 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1916

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Grif" Taylor was the leader of the "Western Party" of Captain Robert Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition. Taylor's party was unique of all the expedition's off-shoots in that they suffered no serious mishaps: Nobody died (Southern party), they were not stranded without adequate food clothing or shelter through the Antarctic winter (Northern Party), and they did not have to endure sledging for six weeks in temperatures around -70 degrees F (Cape Crozier party). As a result, Taylor's book is not the harrowing tale of survival that the other expedition narratives are.
Taylor's has a breezy style and great knack for description. His description of the day-to-day life on the expedition is as good as any other. You really get a sense of what it was like for these men while they were down there, and you also get a great sense for the different personalities of everyone.
Taylor spent much of his life in Australia. Brits at the time could be much more proper and stuffy than those who grew up in "the colonies." Taylor is much more laid back than most of his colleagues, at least in his writing style. He uses exclamation points more often than any writer I've ever read. He is a geologist, so it can be pretty dry too. But time and again he makes it seem that everything he's writing about is all a great joke, and he and you (the reader) are in on it. I'll end my review with an example. Taylor is describing some Antarctic insects they discovered:

"They would be frozen stiff in a thin film of ice until one turned the stone into the sun. Then the ice would melt, and they would move sluggishly about until the sun left them, when their damp habitation froze again! I cannot imagine a finer example of hibernation, for it
looked as if they pursued an active life only when a beneficent
explorer let in a little sunlight on them!"

[Igenlode Wordsmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a classic case of a book that I should have finished far more quickly if I had had an actual print copy rather than a scanned PDF that could only be read at the computer!
An entertainingly sardonic account of the adventures and misadventures of a geologist in the Antarctic; Griff had the good fortune to conclude his part of the researches successfully and then return home, whilst the flavour of the narrative can be gauged by his conclusion to opt for coal-trimming in the hold as opposed to halyard-hauling on deck, on the grounds that the former exercise was "more scientific" as "touching the departments of statistics and applied mathematics as well as geology"!

[Allegra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a bunch of rowdy, dirty boys