BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION (1910-1913) - GEORGE P. ABBOTT (1887-1923)A WOLSEY KNITTED WOOL BALACLAVA

Petty Officer George Abbott was the senior seaman in Scott's Northern Party, responsible for many of the manual tasks. He emerges from his own, and other accounts, as a cheerful, practical and adaptable worker - in many ways typical of the spirit of Scott's last expedition. During the Northern Party's bitter winter in the ice cave at Inexpressible Island, however, it was perhaps Abbott who suffered the most: a slippery pocket knife, used in the desperate butchering of a seal in the depths of the winter when supplies were running out, deprived him of the use of three fingers in his right hand. The psychological toll was even greater, and he suffered a breakdown after his return to Cape Evans.