Early Antarctic Photos Discovered in Ice

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A collection of old photographs, found undeveloped inside an abandoned hut in Antarctica for nearly 100 years, has been processed, revealing images from a failed 1915 Antarctic expedition during which a team of explorers became stranded in the harsh polar landscape after their ship blew out to sea.

The 22 film negatives were clumped together in a small box that was preserved in ice.

Members of the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, who had traveled to Antarctica's Ross Island to preserve and rebuild an early 20th-century explorer's hut, discovered the cellulose nitrate negatives and were able to develop the images.

Initial media reports indicated that even though they had been buried in ice for 98 years, the newly-discovered negatives were relatively well preserved. The images show Ross Island as it was a century ago and include an image of the expedition's main scientist, Alexander Stevens.

The hut where the lost photos were discovered belonged to an earlier explorer, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who arrived in the South Pole in 1912. He had established a series of supply depots throughout Antarctica, but eventually perished with his team from a combination of extreme cold and starvation, Liberty Voice reported.

Another team of explorers years later used the hut for shelter after their ship, the Aurora, became unhinged and floated out to sea.

Their team, known as the Ross Sea Party, originally set out from New Zealand to explore Antarctica and establish equipment stations, and stayed in the region from 1914 to 1917. The reclaimed photos were taken during that time.

As part of its Ross Sea Heritage Restoration Project, New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust processed the negatives.

"It's the first example that I'm aware of, of undeveloped negatives from a century ago from the Antarctic heroic era," Nigel Watson, the Trust's executive director, told Peta Pixel. "There's a paucity of images from that expedition."

Watson told CNN the photos were "an exciting find" and that the team was "delighted to see them exposed after a century."

Watson, executive director of the Antarctic Heritage Trust, told CNN that the photos were "an exciting find" and that the team was "delighted to see them exposed after a century."

The Antarctic Heritage Trust also made the news about fours years ago when a team found five crates of Mackinlay's whisky and two crates of brandy frozen beneath a 1908 base at Cape Royds.

One of the crates was later thawed out, revealing 11 whisky bottles ---three of which were sent to Mackinlay's, where a master distiller analyzed the whisky and created an exact replica, which now sells for $165 a bottle.

The images are available for viewing online, at the organization's official website,https://www.nzaht.org/AHT/antarctic-photos/.