📍Stoke Damerel, Plymouth PL3, UK
1868 – 1881“I was born in June 1868 at Outlands, a small country house set in gardens at Stoke Damerel, on the edge of Devonport, then just outside Plymouth. My parents called me Con, and I was the third of six children. My father, John, ran a small Plymouth brewery that his father and uncle had bought with prize money from the Napoleonic Wars, and he was also a magistrate. Poor health had kept him out of the services, but almost every other man in the family had served: my grandfather and four uncles were in the army or navy. Outlands was a comfortable, happy home, with a garden, animals, brothers and sisters, and the masts of the warships in the Hamoaze not far away. I was a dreamy, rather lazy small boy, and my father gave me the nickname Old Mooney for my daydreaming. I was taught at home and then at a day school in Stoke Damerel, before going away to Stubbington House in Hampshire, a school that prepared boys for the Royal Navy. It was always understood that I would follow my uncles into the services. At thirteen I joined the training ship Britannia at Dartmouth as a naval cadet. Years later, when my father's business failed and the family left Outlands, I took on the support of my mother and sisters. I went on to lead the Discovery and Terra Nova expeditions to Antarctica and reached the South Pole in January 1912. Plymouth remembers me with a memorial on Mount Wise, overlooking the waters I knew as a boy.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today