Episode 3: The Doomed Terra Nova Antarctic Expedition of Robert Falcon Scott

Come gather around the campfire and hear about the freezing race to the South Pole.
The Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration was in full swing, and British explorer Robert Falcon Scott led two voyages to the largely unexplored continent of Antarctica with the Royal Geographical Society. His first expedition was called the Discovery, but it was his second expedition, the Terra Nova, that would become infamous for its achievement, its intense competition with the Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen, and its tragic end. It sparked decades of historical debate, multiple books, and a feature film Scott of the Antarctic. One of his crew members might also have been murdered. It's a mess. 

**Includes sensitive content (CW: animal abuse, death). Listener discretion is advised.**

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Transcript

Episode 3: The Doomed Arctic Expedition of Robert Scott

Intro

 It was the middle of the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration. Explorer Robert Scott stumbled through the endless landscape of ice and snow. He had walked twenty miles with frost-bitten toes. The temperature had now reached -40 degrees. His supplies had run out. His companion, Oates, told him “I am just going outside and may be some time” and stepped out into the blizzard. 

Robert’s Background

 Robert Falcon Scott (which is a fantastic middle name) was born on  June 6th, 1868 in England. He was the middle child in a family of six, to his father, John Edward,  a brewer and magistrate, and his mother Hannah Scott. His grandfather and four uncles were in the army or navy, and the family wasted no time in shoving Robert and his brother into the armed service. Scott studied for only four years at a normal day school before being sent to what was known as a “cram school” which trains students to pass a specific exam. Picture a college library during finals week, but every week is finals week here. Scott passed the naval entrance exam at age 13 and joined a training ship, the HMS Britannia, as a cadet. 

 In 1883, when he was 18, he finished 7th in his class of 26 and graduated from the Britannia. He was stationed in South Africa, and then St. Kitts, and it was there that he met Clements Markham, the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society. Markham watched a bright and energetic Scott win the morning’s ship race, and eyed him as a potential recruit for the Societies expeditions.

 Scott quickly climbed the ranks of the Navy, becoming a sub-lieutenant in 1888 and a lieutenant in 1889. He completed a two-year torpedo training course. In 1889 and 1890, Scott disappeared from naval records for several months, but the reason for this has never been confirmed. In 1893, he accidentally ran his torpedo boat aground, but this was considered a mild mistake. 

 In 1894, Scott received a message from his family. His father had sold the brewery and made poor investments, and they were now bankrupt. John Scott died three years later at age 66 from heart disease while Robert was still away with the navy. His mother and his two unmarried sisters were now completely dependent on Robert and his brother Archie. Unfortunately, right before this tragedy, Archie had traded his high-paying army job for a chance in the colonies. In 1898, the Scott family received another blow when Archie died from typhoid fever. The fate of his surviving family members now rested entirely on Robert Scott. 

 He needed a promotion. And fast. But promotions for officers in the Royal Navy were few and cut-throat. But opportunity found its way to Scott in an unlikely place: when he was at home on leave in 1899. He once again ran into Clements Markham, now a knight and the president of the Geographical Society. Scott was ambitious, and this was his chance to be a leader, a chance to prove himself, a chance to better support his family. A few days after the two men ran into each other, Robert Scott showed up on Markham’s doorstep and volunteered to lead the society’s Arctic expedition. 

The Discovery Expedition

 The expedition was a collaboration between the Royal Navy and the Geographical Society, and a team of fifty men was collected for the journey. There was conflict within the committee overseeing the expedition about who was to lead the trip. The Geographical Society wanted a scientist in charge, but Markham backed Scott, and he won. Scott was given the rank of Commander and King Edward VII (look at my Roman numeral reading knowledge coming in handy) came to the ship the day before it left. King Edward made Scott a member of the Royal Victorian Order before the ship even left the harbor. So there was really no pressure at all on this expedition. They ventured out on August 6th, 1901. 

 One man, Charles Bonner, died before they even arrived, as he fell from the top of the ship’s mast while they waved goodbye to the shore of New Zealand, which wasn’t what I’d call a great omen.

 There was a slight problem with this team. Almost none of them had the slightest idea what the Arctic was like, or how to prepare for it. They had no training on equipment. They brought skis, but they couldn’t figure out how to use them well. They brought a team of thirteen dogs, but the dogs were actually too good at their jobs and they traveled so fast that the group had to load the sleds up so they would be slowed down. The explorers planned to feed the dogs dried fish, but they did not do well on this diet and all of the dogs died and (gross alert) were eaten. The men had to haul the sleds themselves.

 The team also made the questionable decision to leave their tent during a blizzard, and one of them, George Vince, slipped over an icy precipice into the sea to his death, while his companions watched and barely avoided the same fate. Sorry, George.

 The goals of the expedition were both for scientific purposes and general exploration of the area. Scott and two other explorers, Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson ventured out towards the South Pole, and they made it within 530 miles, which sounds like a lot when I remember running the mile in high school, but is actually pretty close in antarctic terms. On their return, Shackleton collapsed and had to leave the expedition early. 

On year two of the expedition, the team started to get a better handle on the Antarctic living. Scott discovered the Polar Plateau, also known as the Antarctic Plateau, which is exactly what it sounds like: a vast stretch of ice 620 miles across, which may not have looked like much but was still a pretty cool (no pun intended) achievement. Shackleton would later be the first explorer to cross part of it when he returned to the in 1909 during the Nimrod expedition, although he would again have to turn back from actually reaching the South Pole.

The expedition did collect some significant biological, geographical, and zoological information, although not as much meteorological and magnetic information as hoped. 

When the Discovery expedition ended in 1903, the ship got stuck in ice, and it took two other ships and explosives to free it but when they returned home, Scott was greeted as a hero in Britain. He gave lectures, attended fancy parties, received honors, and wrote an account of the journey titled: The Voyage of the Discovery. He met with the Prince and Queen of Portugal, Prince Heinrich of Prussia, and visited King Edward at his castle in Scotland, and he returned to the Navy in a higher position. 

In 1907, he met accomplished sculptor and socialite Kathleen Bruce at a private high-society luncheon, where I’m imagining a menu of cucumber sandwiches and tiny scones. The two cliqued, but it wasn’t completely smooth sailing for this navy commander. Kathleen was also being courted by author Gilbert Cannan. But Kathleen chose Scott, and it was probably a good choice considering Cannan was having an affair with the wife of J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan. Cannan later married her, then cheated on her, divorced her, then had a mental breakdown. So yeah, Kathleen probably actually got the better deal being married to an arctic explorer who was gone half the time in Navy service. They married in 1908 and had one son Peter Markham Scott born the next year, who was named after Clemmens Markham who had sent Scott on his expedition. Peter would later go on to found the World Wildlife Fund, a conservation organization which still operates today, and which I personally held a bake sale for it in high school, so I know what I’m talking about. My Halloween chocolate bark recipe is a bestseller.

But during Scott’s time of domestic bliss, there was trouble brewing between him and Ernest Shakleton. Scott was planning to return to Antarctica when Shakleton announced that he was planning on returning to their base and trying again to reach the South Pole. The third man who had been on their first try, zoologist Edward Wilson, defended Scott’s claim to the area. 

Scott was also angered by the publication of a map of their first journey during the Discovery expedition that implied Scott and Shakleton commanded the trip together, although the map-maker apologized and Scott eventually rolled it back and apologized back, writing: "I tried to be impartial in giving credit to my companions who one and all laboured honestly and well as I have endeavoured to record....I understand now of course that you had no personal knowledge of the wording and I must express regret that I failed to realise your identity when I first wrote."

Shackleton eventually sucked it up and agreed to stay away from their area, but he would be forced to break this promise when he couldn’t find another place to set up. He was criticized by British arctic folks at the time, although some historians also criticized Scott for being a little too territorial about it.  I mean, I know it’s basically a British past-time to claim stuff that doesn’t really belong to them, but when they’re both British… oh boy. 

The Terra Nova Expedition 

 Something about that negative forty-degree, crevice-filled, icy expanse of practically nothing really called out to Robert Scott. He formed a second expedition to return to the antarctic: he had been so close last time. This time he would reach the South pole, no matter what. 

 In 1909, Scott heard that his frenemy Ernest Shakleton had just managed to miss his goal of reaching the pole on their expedition unfortunately named Nimrod. This added a little flavor of revenge to Scott’s motivation sandwich, and it’s one best served cold. 

 This expedition was not for money or rank like the first had been. He took half-pay from the Navy to be placed on leave to go. This expedition would be much more infamous than the first and it would also be named after its ship: The Terra Nova, which translates to “New Land”. The Geographical Society hoped that the main goal of the expedition would be scientific research, but they weren’t in charge this time. Robert Scott was. And his mission was clear, as he wrote it was "to reach the South Pole and to secure for the British Empire the honour of this achievement” The sun didn’t set on the British Empire, and soon not even the icy plains of Antarctica would be safe from their conquest. Markham would later recount that Scott had been “bitten by the Pole mania", which is not, in fact, an obsession with me or other Polish people. 

 8,000 men applied for the trip, and sixty-five were chosen. That’s a lower acceptance rate than Harvard, and this trip didn’t even come with a nice twin xl bed and shared microwave mini-fridge combo.  Seven of them had previously been on the Discovery expedition, and five had gone with Shakleton. 

Second-in-command Lt. Edward Evans abandoned his own expedition plans to merge with Scott’s. The British Royal Navy supplied many of the personnel again. Army Captain Lawrence Oates, who had the incredible nickname of Titus, even though it makes me think of the villain from Megamind, joined the expedition as well, bringing along the modern-day equivalent of over 100,000 pounds of his independent wealth. A nice Jay Gatsby-like friend to have, and everything worked out fine for Gatsby, right? 

They also brought two Russian men, Dimitri Gerov the dog driver, and Anton Omelchenko, the groom. Edward Wilson, another alum from the Discovery expedition was the chief scientist and headed a team of “as impressive a group of scientists as had ever been on a polar expedition” He was also Scott’s closest confidant. Zoologist Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who we will get back to, had no official scientific training, but Wilson liked him, and he also gave them the modern-day equivalent of over 100,000 pounds and they decided that was good enough. They also brought Norweigan skiing Tryggve (TREEG-va) Gran. Scott actually raised much of the funds for the expedition himself.

 Scott and his team decided on a combination of motorized sleds with sails, which were a very new invention at the time, dog-sledding, pony-riding, and good old fashioned walking for the Terra Nova trip. The team’s dog expert and Russian translator Cecil Meares, who we will also get back to, went to Siberia to select dogs and horses, although he didn’t know very much about the latter, and the ponies he chose were not well suited to the Arctic work.

Bon Voyage!

 On June 15, 1910, the Terra Nova set sail. While they were traveling, Scott would receive a shocking telegram which told him that he was not only facing a trip to the South Pole but a race against the Norweigan team led by Roald Amundsen. When reporters asked him about this he stated that it did not affect his plans and he would not give up their scientific goals to try and beat the Norwegians. He privately wrote in his diary that he knew the other team had a solid chance at beating them.

The voyage to Antarctica was not smooth. A storm nearly sank the ship, and the men had to bail it out by hand. They lost two ponies, a dog, 10,000 kg of coal, and 300 L of petrol. Then the ship got stuck in ice for twenty days. Then they dropped one of their motor sledges when they were unloading it and it broke through the ice and sank. When they made land, they realized the ponies slowed them down more than helped. 

 A group of Scott’s men went out to explore Victoria Land, and while there, they confirmed that the Norweigan Amundsen team was camped 200 miles east of them, and they were 69 miles closer to the Pole. According to Cherry-Garrard, Scott’s party kind of wanted to go over and “have it out” with them, but they wisely decided against it. Scott wrote in his diary: "One thing only fixes itself in my mind. The proper, as well as the wiser course, is for us to proceed exactly as though this had not happened. To go forward and do our best for the honour of our country without fear or panic."

 The men then began setting up supply depots along their planned route, and it didn’t go super great. They made slow progress. Lawrence Oates refused to use snowshoes on the horses for some reason. As the team moved to set up the most important supply area, the One Ton Depot, Scott realized the ponies would not survive the trip unless they turned back. Oates insisted on moving forward and using letting the ponies die, but Scott refused. Oates told Scott, "Sir, I'm afraid you'll come to regret not taking my advice.” The Depot was set up thirty miles farther from the pole than where it was intended to go. 

Three more of the ponies died after falling through ice on the way back, and Scott had to risk his own life to save a dog team that had fallen into a crevasse, but all the men returned.

While they waited for the right conditions and prepared for the main journey, the team enjoyed games of football, European style. Atkinson was the best player, according to Scott. Cherry-Garrad restarted a magazine called the South Polar Times that Shakleton’s team had produced. They also celebrated Scott’s 43rd birthday and Midwinter Day.

 Several other exploratory teams journeyed out, including a scientific mission looking for Emperor penguin eggs. Cherry-Garrard who went on the trip described it as “the worst journey in the world” and Scott, who didn’t go, called it “a very wonderful performance”

The Southern March

But now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve been waiting for, it’s time for the main show. The Great Southern March. The entire shore team set off towards the Pole in November of 1911 with the motors, dogs, and horses. Scott wrote: “I feel sure we are as near perfection as experience can direct" and I wish I had his confidence, to be honest. 

Slowly, the group shrunk, as support teams returned to base until there were eight men left on January 4th 1912. Scott chose the final five-man team: himself, Dr. Edward Wilson, Lt. Henry Bowers, Capt. Lawrence Oates, and Petty Officer Edgar “Taff” Evans. The other three men returned to base. It was only intended to be a four-man team, so the rations remained off for the remainder of the trip. The dog team, Meares and Dimitri, brought back the message “ "things were not as rosy as they might be, but we keep our spirits up and say the luck must turn." And I am sad to report, it did not. 

Damn It, Norway!

 January 17th was the day. The team finished their agonizing trek through the snow and reached their long-awaited destination and Scott raised his eyes through the glaring fields of white… only to find a Norweigan flag waiting for them. Amuseden’s team had beat them there by five weeks. Scott was absolutely crushed and his excitement for the Pole rapidly turned to anger and disgust. He recorded in his diary: “The worst has happened [...] All the daydreams must go [...] Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority.”

 Suddenly the antarctic plains that had seemed so full of promise now seemed like a terrible slog, much like all of our calendars for the year 2020. He wrote: "I'm afraid the return journey is going to be dreadfully tiring and monotonous." They had 862 miles to go back to base and they set off on January 19th still hoping to beat the Norwegians back to Australia to send a telegram home with news. By February 7th, they had made it across the 300 miles across the Polar Plateau. Then they reached the 100-mile cliff face of Beardmore Glacier. Edgar Evans, the massive powerful worker, had been declining physically for weeks, and a fall had weakened him.  He had a hand injury that wouldn’t heal, terrible frostbite, and head injuries from several slips on the ice. Scott wrote: "He is absolutely changed from his normal self-reliant self". On February 17th he had to be left alone while the rest of the team went to the supply depot and when they returned for him, “'He was on his knees, clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frostbitten and with a "wild look in his eyes" Edgar Evans died that night near the glacier foot. 

The Beginning of the End

On February 27th, they reached the spot where Atkinson had been instructed to meet them with the dog team. There was still 400 miles to go to get back to base. The dogs weren’t there, but they were three days early, so they didn’t panic. Scott wrote: "We are naturally always discussing possibility of meeting dogs, where and when, etc. It is a critical position. We may find ourselves in safety at the next depot, but there is a horrid element of doubt."

 But the dogs never came. The temperature dropped steeply. And the team was running out of fuel. The wind that they hoped to push them along disappeared. Scott wrote of that the ice was “coated with a thin layer of woolly crystals, formed by radiation no doubt. These are too firmly fixed to be removed by the wind and cause impossible friction on the [sledge] runners."

 Scott believed he had miscalculated the meeting point and wrote "We very nearly came through, and it's a pity to have missed it, but lately I have felt that we have overshot our mark. No-one is to blame and I hope no attempt will be made to suggest that we had lacked support." 

Oates was suffering from severe frostbite. He could barely walk alongside the sled, let alone help with the work. It was clear he was slowing the team down. On March 15th, he tried to convince them to leave him behind to die in his sleeping bag, but they refused. So he decided he would do the only thing he could think of to help his friends.

 When the team was sheltering in their tent from the negative 40 chill, on March 16th, Oates told his friends, "I am just going outside and may be some time". He walked out into the endless field of white, and Lawrence Titus Oates never returned.  

 Scott later wrote of the experience: “We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to discuss outside subjects. He did not – would not – give up hope to the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning – yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard... He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.”

 Later, his comrades from his army unit would put up a memorial plaque for him at the church across from his house, and his mother, Caroline, polished it every week for the rest of her life. 

WTF Atkinson

 Now if you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking, what the hell Atkinson? You had one job and now you’re that one guy in the group project team who didn’t do his slides and now the whole presentation is screwed up. Except in this case the slides are saving your teammates from a literal icy grave. Where were you? 

 But guess what. There was someone else at fault and his name was Cecil Meares. Meares had been explicitly instructed by Scott that he needed to meet them at One Ton Depot with a dog team, and if he couldn’t do that, he needed to bring a man team. When Atkinson left Scott, Scott repeated these orders to him. 

 But Meares returned to base camp and then promptly resigned. He had fought with Scott throughout the trip, including refusing to help rescue the dog team that had fallen into the crevasse. The exact reason he quit is unclear but it was not the best timing. 

 Now Atkinson was in charge of base camp, and when the ship came back, he used the shore party that was supposed to go meet Scott to unload the ship instead. Atkinson, Dimitri Gerov, and the dog team left late was further delayed by bad weather, and then on the way, they ran into Lt. Evans, who was about to die of scurvy. The team turned around to bring Evans back to the safety of the ship, and he barely survived. 

 Someone else had to go get Scott and his team. Wright was the most qualified as an expert navigator, but the chief scientist Simpson said he had to stay to continue his research, which Evans would later say he thought Scott would have approved of. So Cherry-Garrad and Dimitri Gerov set off. In Cherry-Garrad’s book, he originally claimed that Atkinson had given him unclear verbal orders to “decide what to do” if he reached One Ton Depot before Scott, and stated it was not a rescue. However, Cherry-Garrard later admitted that Scott had given a clear order to meet him no matter the circumstances and both he and Atkinson had violated this. Historian Karen May even suggested Atkinson had fabricated an excuse for not meeting Scott. 

 No matter what conversations occurred, Cherry-Garrard and Dimitri Gervov spent six days waiting for Scott’s team at the One Ton Depot, claiming that their limited rations and the weather prevented them from going out further to look for the men. 

 In summary, I think a single orange could have saved this mission, but I am neither a historian nor a doctor. 

The Letters 

 The three remaining men, Wilson, Bowers, and Scott made camp on March 19th after walking 20 more miles on frost-bitten toes. 

 Edward Wilson wrote a letter to a friend, “This looks like a finish to our undertaking, for we are out of food and oil and not able to move for three days now on account of the blizzard. We have had a long struggle against intense cold on very short fuel, and it has done us in.”

“We shall make a forlorn effort to reach the next depot but it means 22 miles and we are none of us fit to face it. I want to say how I have valued your friendship … I have no fear of death, only sorrow for my wife and for my dear people. Otherwise all is well. I should like to have seen the grouse book but it is not allowed to me. God’s will be done.”

They were only 12 miles away from the depot where the dogs were waiting. But a blizzard hit and kept them from finishing the journey. For nine days, they huddled inside as their supplies slowly dwindled. And Robert Scott began to write. 

 Scribbled on paper scraps with frozen hands, he wrote a letter to Wilson and Bower’s mothers, his own mother, his wife, his former navy commander, and several others. 

 To the commander, he wrote in part: “My Dear Sir Francis I fear we have shipped up - a close shave. I am writing a few letters which I hope will be delivered someday. I want to thank you for the friendship you gave me of late years, and to tell you how extraordinarily pleasant I found it to serve under you. I want to tell you that I was not too old for this job. It was the younger men that went under first. Finally, I want you to secure a competence for my widow and boy. I leave them very ill provided for, but feel that the country ought not to neglect them. After all, we are setting a good example to our countrymen, if not by getting into a tight place, by facing it like men when we were there. We could have come through had we neglected the sick.” Concerned about his handwriting, Scott added, “Excuse writing - it is -40” which feels like a good enough excuse to me. 

 He wrote to his wife: “Dearest Darling – we are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through – In our short lunch hours I take advantage of a very small measure of warmth to write letters preparatory to a possible end – the first is naturally to you on whom my thought mostly dwell waking or sleeping – if anything happens to me I shall like you to know how much you have meant to me and that pleasant recollections are with me as I depart – I should like you to take what comfort you can from these facts also – I shall not have suffered any pain but leave the world fresh from harness and full of good health and vigour – this is dictated already, when provisions come to an end we simply stop where we are within easy distance of another depot. Therefore you must not imagine a great tragedy – we are very anxious of course and have been for weeks but on splendid physical condition and our appetites compensate for all discomfort. The cold is biting and sometimes angering but here again the hot food which drives it forth is so wonderfully enjoyable that we would scarcely be without it.”

He also told her: “Since writing the above we have got to within 11 miles of our depot with one hot meal and two days cold food and we should have got through but have been held for four days by a frightful storm – I think the best chance has gone we have decided not to kill ourselves but to fight it to the last for that depot but in the fighting, there is a painless end so don’t worry.”

 His last diary entry, likely on the day he died, was concluded: "Last entry. For God's sake look after our people". Scott was the last member of his group to die. 

Search and No Rescue

 Cherry-Garrad and Dimitri Gerov arrived at base camp with Scott and his party. Atkinson set out with a search party as soon as the weather allowed, on March 26th. On March 30th, they had to stop because of the weather, and Atkinson wrote that "In my own mind I was morally certain that the [polar] party had perished".

 The men were forced back to base camp and continued their scientific work in quiet mourning until October 29th, when weather allowed them to leave again. They had a choice to make to try and help a group of their men who were stuck at Cape Adare in the north of Antarctica, or to search for Scott. They decided on Scott (don’t worry, the whole Adare team pulled through and rescued themselves while this team was gone) and they set out. 

On November 12th, 1912, they found the polar team’s frozen bodies. Tryggve (TREEG-va) Gran, the skiing expert, later wrote that the tent was "snowcovered til up above the door, with Scott in the middle, half out of his bagg... the frost had made the skin yellow & transparent & I’ve never seen anything worse in my life.” The group covered the bodies with the tent and then with snow, and Gran used his skis to make a cross over their make-shift grave.

 Aspley Cherry-Garrad, who would be haunted by his failed rescue attempt for the rest of his life, described the scene “We have found the bodies of Scott, Wilson & Bowers, and all their records … Their death was, I am quite sure, not a painful one – for men get callous after a period of great hardship – but the long fight before must have been most terrible.” 

Atkinson read out parts of Scott’s diary to understand how everything had unfolded. They also tried to find Oates’s body, but only found his sleeping bad, and they set up another makeshift cross where they thought he died.

 The rescue team found several 35-pound Glossopteris tree fossils that Scott’s group had dragged on hand sleds. They were the first-ever fossils found in Antarctica, which proved that the climate had once been warm there. 

 The rescuers also found a small case among Scott’s things with a picture of his baby son, only 9 months old when he left, and a last treasured letter from Kathleen. She addressed it to “Con”, a shortening of his middle name, and it read in part, “ ‘I love you more than is at all comfy and moreover I think you are splendid.’‘Now don’t forget to brush your hair – and don’t smoke so much and altogether you’re a ducky darling and hurray for you!’ ‘How can I guess how things will be with you when you get this . . . But oh dearie I am full of hope.  ‘My brave man will win – with his own right hand and with his mighty arm hath he gathered himself the victory.’‘When you come home, we’ll feel closer and closer together and the long time we’ve been apart will seem only a little hour. May all the good gods conspire to bring my Con through his great difficulties with a glad heart and a constant hope. Bless you dearest of men. K.’ 

 Before the remaining members of the expedition left, the ship’s carpenter created a large wooden memorial cross inscribed with the lost explorer’s names and a line from Alfred Tennyson's poem Ulysses that read: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".

Legacy

 The Terra Nova reached New Zealand on February 10th, 1913 and broke the news about the death of Scott and the others. Britain was overtaken with honoring their legacy. The founder of the Boy Scouts Association Robert Baden-Powell stated: "Are Britons going downhill? No! ... There is plenty of pluck and spirit left in the British after all. Captain Scott and Captain Oates have shown us that". A memorial service was held at St. Paul’s Cathedral four days later. 

 The survivors were given awards, honors, and promotions. It is likely that Scott would have been knighted if he returned alive, so his widow Kathleen was given the rank of a widow of a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. She remarried in 1922 to politician and writer Edward Hilton Young, and she defended Scott’s reputation until her death in 1947. Kathleen also sculpted a memorial statue of Scott that stands today in Christchurch New Zealand. 

 When news reached Scotts former rivals, Shakleton and Amundsen, they were shocked and horrified. The Times reported that they were “‘[amazed] to hear that such a disaster could overtake a well-organized expedition". Amundsen later stated, "I would gladly forgo any honour or money if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death". 

 Comparison

 There had been quite a bit of comparison between Scott’s expedition and Amundsen’s expeditions, in fact, it has its own Wikipedia page, god bless Wikipedia, the backbone of this podcast. Roald Amundsen’s expedition made it to the Pole first, and returned home with all 19 of their men, although one later took his own life. Five of Scott’s 65 men died in Antarctica. 

 One major factor is their methods of transportation. Amundsen's team relied almost exclusively on dogs, while Scott’s team used a mix of dogs, ponies, and motorized sleds fitted with sails. Ponies are not well-suited for snow and ice without using snowshoes and Lawrence Oates didn’t believe in using them. Ponies also had to start much later in the season than dogs, adding to the advantage Amudesen’s team had in beating the British to the Pole. Scott’s team brought 19 ponies and only ten made it to the main part of the journey. Dogs were also able to eat the food found in Antarctica, where the ponies' food had to be lugged. 

 The motor sledges were a unique addition, but Scott did not bring their engineer, Lieutenant Commander Reginald William Skelton because Teddy Evans refused to have someone of higher rank to him, which… Teddy… come on. 

 Scott felt that the dogs they had taken on their first Discovery expedition had failed, as they all eventually died, but experts now point out the problem to be that he and his men did not use them properly. Scott ignored advice that he received from experienced explorer Fridtjof (FREED-yoff) Nansen's advice to bring "dogs, dogs and more dogs". Scott recognized that the dogs could be more effective than man-hauling if they were pushed to their death, however, he did not want to use them this way, stating “One cannot calmly contemplate the murder of animals which possess such intelligence and individuality, which have frequently such endearing qualities, and which very possibly one has learnt to regard as friends and companions." Amundsen, on the other hand, planned for his weaker animals killed during the journey. He went to the arctic with 52 dogs and came back with 11. 

 The depot that Scott and his men were trying to reach on their return was intended to be farther out, which would have saved them. However, when they were setting it up, Scott made the kind-hearted but dangerous decision to reduce how far he drove the ponies, despite Oates's insistence on pushing them to the planned spot, which would have killed them. 

 Walter Sullivan summarized the transportation comparison as follows: “Man is a poor beast of burden, as was shown in the terrible experience of Scott, Shackleton, and Wilson in their thrust to the south... However, Scott relied chiefly on man-hauling in 1911–12 because ponies could not ascend the glacier midway to the Pole. The Norwegians correctly guessed that dog teams could go all the way. Furthermore, they used a simple plan, based on their native skill with skis and on dog-driving methods that were tried and true. The moon will be reached by burning up a succession of rocket stages and casting them off. This, in effect, is what the Norwegians did with their dogs, the weaker animals being sacrificed to feed the other animals and the men themselves." 

 There has also been discussion of the different rations between the two teams. You are what you eat, and Scott’s team was eating trash. By the time his team reached the Pole, they were in rough shape, while Amudesen’s team had actually put on weight during the grueling trip. Cherry-Garrard later estimated that Scott’s rations only had half the calories required for the work they were doing hauling sleds themselves, and a 2006 recreation by the BBC confirmed this when their team had to stop because of their severe weight loss. There was no vitamin B or C in their rations, and the team developed scurvy. The fuel they had brought leaked out of its canisters, which left them struggling to melt ice for drinking water. Amundsen had soldered his cans shut to prevent this problem. 

Mystery

 Strangely, one additional member of Scott’s crew, Petty Officer Robert Brissenden died during a stop that the Terra Nova ship made in 1912 after the expedition. Brissenden’s body was found floating face-down in shallow water near the wharf with several wounds and a broken neck, although his death was attributed to drowning. A phonograph catalog was found on his body. Partying and drinking had been going on late into the night, but none of the Terra Nova crew members had participated. 

 It’s been theorized that Brissenden must have been unconscious when he hit the water, as otherwise, the athletic man could have easily saved himself.

 Kathleen Scott was the one to break the news to Brissenden’s wife and two children, not yet knowing that she had lost her own husband. The mystery of Brissenden’s death would be overshadowed when news of the South Pole team’s fate hit the news. Brissenden’s son, Ordinary Seaman R. T. Brissenden, followed his father’s footsteps and joined the Navy, and in 1924 he was given leave to visit his father’s grave in the hills overlooking the French Pass. 

Conclusion

Despite his controversy, Robert Scott is remembered as a tragic hero.  The 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic further solidified his reputation as a heroic explorer, although it did criticize him for his poor implementation of the ponies and motors. Biographers in the later decades of the 1900s criticised Scott further, with one even stating, “Scott doomed his companions, then covered his tracks with rhetoric". But more recent historians have repaired Scott’s reputation. We now know that the weather conditions he faced were especially brutal, and Scott gave express written orders that the dogs come meet him, not just mentioned it casually. 

The British people took Scott’s pleas in his diary entry to take care of their people and ran with it, raising £75,000 (equivalent to £7,480,000 today) for the families of him and the other team members. Over 30 monuments and memorials were erected for Scott in Britain. Eventually, when a research station was built at the South Pole by the United States, it was jointly named for Amundsen and Scott.

The Terra Nova returned to England with over 2,100 plants, animals, and fossils, over 400 of which had never before been observed by science. The team also collected the longest stretch of continuous weather observation ever recorded at the time, which today help us understand the effects of climate change. In 1920, the Scott Polar Research Institute was founded by the Terra Nova’s expedition’s geographer Frank Debenham and the geologist Raymond Priestly, which today is the largest collection of polar research.

One of Robert Scott’s last letters was to the public. To us. It did not place blame on any member of his team but on the weather and the inherent dangers of the expedition. 

 It read in part: “We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last ... Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.”

Sources for this episode include:
https://antarcticsociety.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Antarctic.V34.1.2016.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_Amundsen_and_Scott_expeditions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_Expedition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%27s_South_Pole_expedition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Evans

https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2014/06/09/football-in-the-archives/