Biography

Henry R. Bowers was born on July 29, 1883 in Greenock, Scotland, UK. He died on March 29, 1912 in Antarctica.

Distinctive beak-like nose

Henry Robertson 'Birdie' Bowers was one of Robert Falcon Scott's polar party on the ill-fated 'Terra Nova' expedition of 1910-1913, all of whom died during their return from the South Pole.

The Bowers Hills in Antarctica, later renamed the Bowers Mountains, were named in his honor.

On 1 November 1911, the long trek to the South Pole began. Scott had not originally planned to include Bowers in his polar party. He had been a member of the sledge team led by Scott's second-in-command, Lieutenant Edward Ratcliffe 'Teddy' Evans and the last support party to accompany Scott and his team southward, but on 4 January 1912, just as Evans party was about to turn back, Bowers was assigned to the polar party. Only a few days earlier, he had ordered Evans's men to depot their skis, so that Bowers had to travel on foot to the pole while the others were still on skis. In addition, adding a fifth man to the party meant squeezing another person into a tent made for four, and having to split up rations that were packed in units for four men. On 16 January 1912, as Scott's party neared the Pole, it was Bowers who first spotted a black flag left at a camp made by Roald Amundsen's polar party over a month previously. They knew then that they had been beaten in the race to be first to the South Pole. On 18 January, they arrived and saw inside a tent a dated note informed them that Amundsen had reached the Pole on 14 December 1911, beating Scott's party by 35 days. During the return journey, they first made good progress, but P.O. Edgar Evans died on 17 February, Temperatures fell sharply, the dog relief team failed to show up at the prearranged meeting point on 1 March, and Lawrence E.G. Oates's foot became frostbitten and gangrenous, slowing the party down; in a vain attempt to save his companions, he deliberately walked out of their tent to his death on 16 March. Scott, Bowers, and Edward Adrian Wilson continued on for three more days, progressing 20 miles (32 km) more, but were stopped 11 miles (18 km) short of the next food depot by a blizzard on 20 March. The blizzard continued for days, longer than they had fuel and food for. Too weak, cold and hungry to continue, they died in their tent on or soon after 29 March-Scott's last diary entry-148 miles (238 km) from their base camp. Their bodies were found by a search party the following spring on 12 November 1912. The search party collapsed the tent over them, thus burying them where they lay under a snow cairn topped by a cross made from a pair of skis. Among the items they found and took back with them were the Kodak film rolls with the photographs at the South Pole and geological specimens which later proved the Gondwana theory.

It was Bowers who eventually took the sights to fix the exact location of the geographic South Pole for the Polar party. It was also Bowers who was in charge of the expedition's remaining camera and took most of the famous photographs at the South Pole and at Amundsen's tent.