NavList:

Frank you wrote: There's a brief video about the expedition theodolite from Royal Museums Greenwich. 

What a lovely video.  One further question worth following up is; was the instrument Scott’s personal theodolite as people tend to say these days, or was it made specially for the expedition or even modified from a loan item from the Royal Geographical Society expedition stores or similar?  It’s interesting that the lady says the theodolite was found inside Captain Oates (6^th (Inniskilling) Dragoons) sleeping bag.  Oates body of course was never found, he in a weakened state, having selflessly left the tent to leave more rations for the remaining three. 

On always taking your personal sextant to sea with you: when my father took a brand-new iron ore carrier to sea from West Hartlepool in 1954 https://www.hhtandn.org/relatedimages/4235/orelia , he left his own sextant (a B Cooke & Son, Hull if I remember correctly) at home.  Presumably the ship already had two state of the art ones on board.  She and her following five sister ships would be operating out of Port Talbot, South Wales, and the sextant would be one less item to travel home with on the train.  The way he acquired his sextant says a lot about earlier times.  When he went to sea in 1929 age 15 https://www.hhtandn.org/hartlepool-ships-and-shipping/shipbuilding/200/Gray%27s%20Shipyard/ship/268/dunelmia , having never seen his own father who was lost on the Somme on 1^st July 1916, the crew were very kind to him apart from one officer who illtreated him.  Some years later during a depression he came across the same officer who’d fallen on hard times selling matches in the street.  My father bought the sextant from him for a pittance.  DaveP