Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, R.N., prepares to make a scientific measurement on his 1911-1912 Antarctic expedition. *
Photo: Corbis * 1912: A search party discovers the bodies of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott and two others in his Antarctic expedition, eight months after they perished on the Ross Ice Shelf on the return leg from the South Pole.
The bodies of Scott, his old friend Dr. Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers lay three abreast inside their tent, which was nearly buried in a snowdrift. The search party, led by Lt.-Surgeon Edward Atkinson, recovered Scott's diary and other documents, performed a burial service, then collapsed the tent over the bodies and built a snow cairn to mark the grave.
It wasn't supposed to end like that.
From his earliest days as a Royal Navy midshipman, Scott seemed destined for greatness. Despite being a small, sickly and coddled child, Scott took to the rigors of navy life, attracting the attention of his superiors and rising quickly through the ranks. Nevertheless, he was already looking for ways to expand his horizons when Sir Clements Markham started filling his head with the idea of polar exploration.
Scott got his first taste as a member of the Discovery expedition of 1901-04, where he served as naval commander. It was during this expedition, which focused primarily on advancing scientific knowledge of the Antarctic, that Scott became acquainted with Ernest Shackleton, the man he would come to consider his chief rival to claim the pole.
It was a difficult expedition, and some of the problems -- the dogs, for example, performed poorly -- would color Scott's decisions when he began putting together his own expedition to reach the South Pole.
In the end, a number of factors contributed to the ultimate failure of Scott's expedition, but his muddled transport situation -- he chose to rely on ponies and three unproven motor sledges to move men and supplies -- may have been the fatal one. The sledges were difficult to maintain and quickly broke down, while the ponies -- although Siberian-bred -- were not up to the killing Antarctic cold.
Scott brought dogs, but reluctantly. He remembered the teams from the Discovery expedition, so was disinclined to rely on them. Their presence, therefore, accomplished little besides compounding the feeding problem.
In any case, Scott's five-man polar party reached the South Pole on Jan. 18, 1912. What should have been a moment of supreme triumph was instead a crushing disappointment with the discovery that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten him by five weeks.
Amundsen, who had informed Scott only very late that he, too, was making for the pole, used rugged Greenland dogs exclusively as he advanced from the Bay of Whales to 90 degrees South.
All five men in Scott's polar party died on the ice returning from the pole. In addition to those found in the tent, Capt. L.E.G. Oates and Petty Officer Edgar Evans had died en route. Their bodies were never found.
The loss of the Scott party was a national tragedy in Britain, one swiftly turned into a glorious failure to stand alongside the charge of the Light Brigade. Scott's final entries in his diary -- the last dated March 29, 1912 -- certainly embraced the idea of turning defeat into victory. (He also blamed the disastrous end on bad weather and bad luck, rather than bad planning.)
All in all, 1912 was a tough year for British know-how. Scott's technology certainly failed him, and his death preceded the sinking of the Titanic by only two weeks.
(Source: Southpole.com)
