IN the cold of the Antarctic by lonely McMurdo Sound stands a wooden cross commemorating the death of a Blandford seaman and explorer.

And thousands of miles away in the Dorset town where he was born, a brass tablet in his memory is fixed to a church wall erected by his shipmates and friends.

The man who died tragically in the bleak Antarctic was George Vince, who was born in an old gardener’s cottage, now pulled down, that stood in the grounds of Cedars near Badger Crossroads.

The tablet on the wall of Blandford Parish Church tells us sparse details about the man.

It reads: “Erected by his shipmates, schoolfellows and friends, to the memory of George Vince ABRN, of the exploring ship Discovery.

“A member of the expedition to the Antarctic regions under captain Robert F Scott RN.

“Born at Blandford Sep 20 1880. Died by a fall over an icecliff into the sea at Ross Island March 11 1902.

“The only one of the ship’s company who lost his life.”

The start of the 20th century has been called the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration where explorers raced to be the first to reach the South Pole.

Able Seaman Vince sailed with Captain Robert Scott’s 1901-1904 Discovery Expedition. He never returned.

George Vince became the first man to lose his life in McMurdo Sound after he was with a party of nine men caught out in a blizzard during an excursion from their ship, Discovery.

Instead of staying put and awaiting the end of the storm, they endeavoured to try to battle their way back to the ship.

George Vince was wearing fur-souled boots with little grip.

He wandered onto a snow slope and slipped, tumbling over the cliffs into the freezing sea.

His body was never recovered and news of his death did not reach his family until the following year.

Today the area where he slipped is apparently known as the Danger Slopes.

The poignant memorial known as Vince’s Cross, erected by the Discovery’s crew still stands, tended to this day by the near-by New Zealand and American bases in the McMurdo Sound.

Scott and his team eventually returned to Britain and, after another expedition led by Ernest Shackleton attempted, unsuccessfully, to reach the Pole, he had another crack at getting there.

With a party of five he finally got there in 1912.

However he arrived to find that he had been beaten to it by a Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen.

Scott and his four comrades all perished from exhaustion, starvation and the extreme conditions.

George Vince: a profile

• George Thomas Martin Vince was born on September 25 1880 in a gardener’s cottage in the grounds of a house called Cedars in Blandford, that stood in Park Road.

• He was the son of George and Elizabeth Vince who had moved to Blandford from Hampshire, opening a fishmonger’s in West Street.

• His elder sister died in infancy.

• In 1891 George joined the Archbishop Wake School as a Bluecoat boy – benefiting from a bequest from the Blandford man who became Archbishop of Canterbury provided education for 12 boys from the town.

• Blandford Museum has a picture of the school pupils, including the Bluecoat boys I, taken in 1892.

• He signed up with the Royal Navy for 12 years in 1895, first serving with HMS Boscawen training ship in Portland.

• On admission to the Navy he stood 5ft 4½in, with hazel eyes, brown hair, a fresh complexion and a scar on the back of his head.

• He also served on JHMS Inflexible, Majestic, Trafalgar, Excellent, Vernon, Duke of Wellington (twice), Rodney, Anson, and Beagle.

• He joined RSS Discovery from HMS Beagle in South Africa, giving his address as 83 Salisbury Street, Blandford.

• In the 1901 Census – his 59-year-old fishmonger father, George Vince (born in Froxfield Green, Hants) was listed as a widower, and resident of the workhouse in Salisbury Road, Blandford. He was labelled, by then, as “imbecile”.

• Posthumously, George Vince, who was unmarried, was awarded the Queen’s South Africa Medal and the King’s Polar Medal.