Penguin Cocktails and Hogget

Guests gather for the centennial dinner in honour of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Antartica  expedition in 1911.The venue is the Naval Point Club in Lyttelton, adorned by brightly coloured pennants, just as in Scott's hut in Antarctica 100 years earlier.

A diary entry from 1911 reads: ‘In preparation for the evening our Union Jacks and sledge flags were hung about the large table, which itself was laid with glass and a plentiful supply of champagne bottles instead of the customary mugs and enamel lime juice jugs. At seven o’clock we sat down to an extravagant bill of fare as compared with our usual simple diet.’

The Terra Nova team dinner, June 1911 (Courtesy Scott Polar Research Institute)

At the Naval Point Club seal soup is not on the menu, as it was for the 24 young men who made up the Terra Nova team but the blue cocktail with frosted glass and floating penguin is certainly inviting.

Centenary dinner programme and menue

Spectrum’s Deborah Nation joins sea captains, helicopter pilots, engineers, musicians, film makers and tourists who make up the diners that toast the Queen, and ‘Courageous Captain Scott and his Terra Nova team’. Descendants of Scott’s expedition and other Antarctic adventurers share stories over their roast meal. A phone call to Scott base, where similar midwinter festivities are underway, is relayed over the loud speaker.