Robert Falcon Scott

Captain Robert Falcon Scott RN (June 6, 1868 - March 29, 1912) was a British Naval officer and Antarctic explorer. Having narrowly failed to be the first to reach the South Pole, beaten by Roald Amundsen and his party, Scott and his party died on the Ross Ice Shelf whilst trying to return to the safety of their base. Scott has become the most famous hero of the "heroic age" of Antarctic exploration.

The debate

Huntford was by no means the first to compare Scott's and Amundsen's expeditions. Apsley Cherry-Garrard's "The Worst Journey in the World", published in 1922 (and widely viewed as one of the greatest travel books ever written), made the direct comparison and gave Amundsen due credit for getting the major decisions right - taking a small team, his mastery of dog driving, and the skiing expertise of his men, for example - and for bringing his party home safely. However, Cherry-Garrard remained loyal to Scott in all personal respects. The revisionists are distinguished by the level of personal criticism of Scott's character, while ignoring the benefits of hindsight and Scott's bad luck.

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Revisionists have argued that Scott was over-promoted when he was given command of the Discovery expedition, as he was a relatively junior torpedo officer with no Arctic experience. As evidence of this, they point out that he got the Discovery frozen into ice so firmly that it was nearly lost. But it is the style of land travel which attracts the sternest attacks.

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Scott's insistence on first using Siberian ponies and then man-hauling his goods to the Pole, instead of making full use of sled dogs is the single most obvious difference between the two expeditions. Scott did use dogs, but only as far as the Beardmore Glacier, whereas Amundsen, a more experienced dog-driver, took them all the way to the Pole. Perhaps this unwillingness to take dogs further was because of Scott's admitted abhorrence of killing dogs and then feeding them to others. Fiennes' biography suggests that Scott simply used the method which worked best for him, as man-haul had in the Discovery expedition. However, Scott's own diary makes it clear that he believed the heavy manual labour of sledge-hauling was morally superior to the use of dogs, and this prejudices him towards the more inefficient method. His mind was not closed to alternatives, though; he made the first serious attempt to use motorised tractors, correctly recognising that this would be the future of ice travel.

Related Topics:
Sled dog - Beardmore Glacier

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Critics have also pointed out the English did not learn from the indigenous peoples of the Arctic - the undoubted experts at cold climate survival - as Amundsen had done. That criticism would be more precisely levelled at the Royal Navy rather than Scott himself who never visited the Arctic. He took his advice from his forerunners and superiors in the Navy who had not learnt as much as others such as Amundsen in Norway and Robert Peary in the United States from the native Inuit. But, looking at photos of Scott's team in their canvas outer clothing, you can almost feel the cold. The fact that Scott nearly reached safety suggests that any single factor could have made all the difference; perhaps they would have survived had they been equipped with Inuit-style fur clothing, or had a better diet, or learned better ski technique, or travelled lighter. It is worth noting that Ernest Shackleton, travelling the identical route with virtually identical equipment and transportation, had to turn back short of the pole in order to survive. Scott gambled that he could succeed where Shackleton had not, based solely on his belief in himself as being a better and more fit leader. It was a gamble he lost, as the flaw was in the technology used by the two expeditions rather than in the personal qualities of the leaders.

Related Topics:
Robert Peary - Inuit - Ernest Shackleton

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Although the revisionists have made criticisms of Scott, the main reason for his failure was extraordinarily bad weather. It is now known that the route up the west side of the Ross Ice Shelf that Scott used is subject to worse weather than Admundsen's easterly route. Furthermore Scott endured weather conditions that may occur only once in a century, on average 20° colder with blizzards for long periods. The low temperatures they encountered on the Ross Ice Barrier meant that their sledge would not slide easily over the snow in the familiar way. Their task can be better compared to pulling a full bathtub across the Sahara. Scott and his meteorologist, Simpson, had estimated that the temperatures would be high enough to allow the sledge to slide more easily. Another effect of the temperature was the lack of fuel. They had left fuel at depots along the route but much had leaked out because the solder in the cans crystallised at the low temperatures.

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Man-hauling sledges requires a daily intake of over 5000 calories and in those days the importance of a very high fat diet was not understood, except perhaps by the Inuit. Scott took large quantities of dried meat (pemmican) which was not high in fat. The massive loss of body weight caused by the physical effort reduced the insulation from their own fat and made them more susceptible to cold. Although the precise cause of Scott's death is the subject of much debate, it is likely that starvation, exhaustion, extreme cold, and scurvy (a dietary deficiency disease) all contributed to the death of Scott and his men.

Related Topics:
Pemmican - Scurvy

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Scott also made a great virtue of his dedication to science. While Amundsen set out only to reach the Pole and get back alive, Scott's entire expedition was primarily scientific. Even as they were dying, Scott and Wilson stopped to pick up geological samples, of which they were hauling over 30 lb (14 kg) when they died. Although the dual motivation necessarily compromised the already wafer-thin safety margins of the trek, the science was important. Among the samples found with Scott was a lump of coal from the Trans-Antarctic mountain range, which proved that the continent must have had a warm climate in the distant past. This discovery was of major geological importance and added to the weight of evidence which eventually resulted in the modern theory of plate tectonics. The dying men also kept meteorological records until near the end. The difference of focus between the two expeditions highlights the very different approaches and judgements made by their respective leaders.

Related Topics:
Trans-Antarctic mountain - Plate tectonics

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