CAPTAIN George Murray Levick, who lived near Budleigh Salterton, until his death in 1956, is to be remembered with a special exhibition next year.

The exhibition at Budleigh Salterton's Fairlynch Museum coincides with the centenary of Captain Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition of which Levick was a member.

Levick's daring tales of surviving in a snow cave for seven months have already caught the imagination of historians and students of what is dubbed the 'Heroic age of Antarctic exploration'.

Levick was one of two doctors chosen to go with Scott on the expedition in 1910.

The other was Dr Edward Wilson who, along with Devon-born Scott and the rest of his party, perished after reaching the South Pole in 1912.

Levick's group was sent to Cape Adare in the Ross Sea area of the Antarctic. The party was due to be picked up by the expedition's ship, the Terra Nova, but she was unable to break through the ice.

Robert Headland, of the Cambridge-based Scott Polar Research Institute, said: "They were running very low on food because they had expected to be picked up. There was nothing they could do but stay put until the weather improved.

"Capt Levick and the others built themselves a snow cave, dug into a snow drift, to survive in the terrible conditions.

"They were keen to keep what supplies, mainly biscuits, they could in case they had to walk out, so they tried to live off the land.

"That meant they had to eat penguins, seals and fish — and the only fish they could catch was when they gutted the seals and emptied the stomach contents. By now in a desperate way, the party finally decided to strike out for the expedition's Ross Island base several hundred miles away.

"After a gruelling journey in howling winds and temperatures of minus 27 they finally made it back to the base — on the day that news came through that Scott and his men were dead."

The Fairlynch Museum would be delighted to hear from anyone with memorabilia or anecdotes relating to the great man. For more details, contact the museum on 01395 222378.