Scott, Robert Falcon

Scott, Robert Falcon (1868–1912), British naval officer and Antarctic explorer, a native of Devonport and the descendant of three generations of sailors. In 1899 he met the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society who recommended he lead the National Antarctic Expedition. The chief objective of this was the scientific exploration of Victoria Land, in the New Zealand sector of Antarctica, first discovered by Sir James Clark Ross (1800–62), and the 484-ton polar vessel Discovery, later used for the Discovery Investigations, was equipped for this task. Scott was promoted commander and the expedition sailed in August 1901, and after discovering King Edward VII Land, wintered at Hut point on Ross Island. During the two summer seasons of 1902–3 and 1903–4, several valuable sledging journeys were made. On one of these Scott, accompanied by Dr E. A. Wilson and Ernest Shackleton, reached a southern latitude of 82° 16′ 33" on 30 December 1902, the most southerly point ever reached up to that time.

On his return to naval duties in England Scott was promoted captain and in September 1908 married the sculptress Kathleen Bruce. He then served as naval assistant to the Second Sea Lord before he led a second expedition to continue the scientific work of the earlier one, with the added objective of reaching the South Pole. In June 1910 he sailed in the wooden 749-ton three-masted barque Terra Nova which had been built in 1884 as the biggest whaling ship afloat. On his arrival in New Zealand he heard that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen was also planning to reach the South Pole, and while establishing his winter quarters at Cape Evan and laying supply depots he sent a northern party to Cape Adare in the Terra Nova. Then on 1 November 1911 he set out for the South Pole, and though his motorized transport failed him he reached the foot of the Beardmore Glacier using dogs and ponies. From then on he relied entirely on manhauling.

On 4 January 1912 the last supporting party set up ‘One Ton Depot’ and left for base and Scott, accompanied by Dr E. A. Wilson, Captain L. E. G. Oates, Lieutenant H. R. Bowers, and Petty Officer Edgar Evans, pressed on across the Antarctic plateau to the pole which they reached on 18 January 1912, only to find that Amundsen had already been there. The return journey of over 1,280 kilometres (800 mls.) was marked by a series of disasters, a combination of deteriorating weather, inadequate diet, and shortage of fuel. On 17 February Evans died after a severe fall. On 17 March Oates, badly frost-bitten in the feet, and reluctant to be a hindrance to the others, walked out of the tent to his death in a blizzard. A week later another blizzard caught the remainder of the party only 7.6 kilometres (11 mls.) from ‘One Ton Depot’ and safety. Scott's body, with those of Wilson and Bowers, was found in their tent by a search party eight months later. Alongside them were their diaries, personal papers, and unique geological specimens.

Scott has been portrayed as incompetent, and he certainly did make mistakes, errors he freely admitted to in his diaries. However, in the 1980s a network of automated weather stations was installed, for aircraft safety, in an area which covered Scott's path from the pole. An American Antarctic scientist working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has analysed the meteorological data accumulated by the network and has concluded (see S. Solomon , The Coldest March (2001)
) that it was exceptional weather, some 20 °F colder than normal, which was largely responsible for the tragedy. One of the contributing factors was that the extreme cold would have turned the snow to a consistency that made it incredibly hard for the sledges, on which Scott and his party carried their supplies, to run properly.

Bibliography

Huntford, R. , The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole (1999).
Huxley, E. , Scott of the Antarctic (1990).
Savours, A. , The Voyages of Discovery (2001).