Expert describes finding icon of the ‘heroic age’ of exploration

Celebrated oceanographer Leighton Rolley was a member of the team that found the remains of the Dundee-built whaler and polar exploration ship Terra Nova in 2012.

He returned to Dundee and Discovery Point to share his experiences of the successful expedition to locate the wreck.

The SS Terra Nova played a central role in the “heroic age” of exploration.

It was built as a whaling ship at the Alexander Stephen shipyard in 1888 but became associated with the Antarctic voyages of Robert Falcon Scott.

It served first as one of the relief vessels for the Discovery expedition and later as the ship that took Scott south on his ill-fated journey to the South Pole in 1910.

After its Antarctic adventures, Terra Nova returned to her work in the Newfoundland seal fisheries and was later contracted as a supply ship for Greenland bases during the Second World War.

Its 60-year career came to an end in 1943 when it sank after hitting ice in the north Atlantic and it was not until 2012 that a survey team from the Schmidt Ocean Institute located the wreck on the sea floor.

The discovery, first announced in Dundee, was world-wide news.