Growing up in Britain in the 1950s, during a time when my native country was hungry for inspiration, I learned about the heroes of what was still (erroneously) called “The Empire.” One of the most prominent was Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912), better known as “Scott of the Antarctic.” Scott vied with Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen to win the race to the South Pole, but when Scott’s five-man expedition arrived there on Jan. 17, 1912, they realized they’d been beaten by five weeks. Amundsen and his men may have been the first to reach the pole, but most of the glory went to Scott. Although he and his men all perished of exhaustion and starvation on the 800-mile return journey, Scott’s “Message to the Public,” found a few months later by a search party, became the stuff of legend. In this poignant document, Scott’s version of the fate of his expedition claimed that he and his men died, not because of any lack of leadership ability, but due to chance and bad luck.
This heroic version of Scott’s saga was current when I was a schoolboy. Scott’s standing as a stalwart leader — brave-but-prudent, fated by circumstances beyond his control — kept him in the public eye as the very model of a British gentleman-explorer. True, a few rumblings occasionally challenged that unstintingly positive assessment, but in general his reputation was secure — until the 1979 publication of a joint biography of Scott and Amundsen by Cambridge historian Roland Huntford, who concluded that Scott was a “heroic bungler” and “one of the worst polar explorers.”
Both sides can make a good case. Almost certainly, Scott did a terrible job of planning his return journey from the pole by mismanaging the location of food depots (he and the remaining two survivors were only 11 miles from “One Ton” depot when they died, but 24 miles beyond the original intended location); and, unlike Amundsen, Scott failed to take advantage of the tremendous strength and endurance of huskies as sled dogs. On the other hand, a new analysis of weather conditions for the two months following his arrival at the pole determined that the weather on the “Barrier” through which the party was trekking was about as bad as it ever gets, and that Scott was more unlucky than incompetent. The argument continues to this day.
Scott’s reputation may have more to do with what historian Stephanie Barczewski calls “current cultural forces.” That is, 1912 was another world, a time when the public had different expectations for its heroes. Back then, a tendency to recklessness — which does seem to apply to Scott — might have been seen as more of a positive attribute than is the case today. Perhaps Scott was both a champion and a bungler, depending on how you look at it. For this British schoolboy, Scott’s reputation is safe: He’s my hero of the Antarctic, and always will be.
Barry Evans (barryevans9@yahoo) will be toasting R.F. Scott on the centenary of his death this week.
PHOTO CAPTION: Scott’s expedition at the South Pole, Jan. 18, 1912, the day after they discovered they’d been beaten by Amundsen. L-R: Lawrence Oates, Henry Bowers (pulling string to operate the camera shutter), Scott, Dr. Edward Wilson, Edgar Evans. Scott later wrote, “We are showing that Englishmen can still die with a bold spirit, fighting it out to the end.”
This article appears in The Death of Redevelopment.
I hate to break it to you Barry, but the analysis of weather which you mention (Susan Solomon’s article and book) has been debunked. I recommend you take a look at these articles: http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.1272
http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.5355
I hate to break it to you Kristoffer (or anyone who likes to say that the disaster was Scott’s fault), but Huntford’s allegations that Scott left no fixed orders for the dogs and only left verbal orders at the last minute has been debunked.
In fact Scott left written orders for the dog-teams to come and meet the Polar Party: these were not followed by the men back at base, who only came out part of the way specified by Scott, and as a result four men died. Huntford made a massive mistake in his book. The evidence shows that Scott and his men could have been saved had his WRITTEN orders been followed correctly.
Check it out: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0032247411000751
Good summary article:
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/01/07/1974059/what-scott-learned-on-fatal-trek.html
On February 8 1912 on Scott’s homeward journey he did a bit of geology. at that time of the year theSun’s declination is begining to accelerating northward and the Sun”s insolation is falling swiftly, So why waste time doing that and seeing that the party was bloated and also having a “passenger” in the fom of Evans did he do that bit of geology?Ttherein is the genesis of the tragedy that befell him and his comrades
H.L.J., defensive much? I never even mentioned Huntford. As for Karen May’s alleged “discovery”, Huntford has already stated on page 457 of his book (The Last Place On Earth, 1999 edition) that Scott had changed the orders for the dogs verbally to Lt. Evans. He goes on further to say on page 520 that in the crisis of saving Lt. Evans from scurvy, that Lt. Evans forgot them. Thus, May’s little strawman is refuted. Cherry-Garrard’s own account of the First Relief Party is extremely suspicious, given that he records 4 days of blizzard with no corresponding blizzard reported by Captain Scott until March 10, and the timing of the blizzards, which occur just when he could have reached Scott from his position in under 5 days (with 14 days food left for men and 17 left for the dogs, after starting out with 21 for men and 24 for the dogs, as per The Worst Journey in the World) suggests that he knew the distance between himself and Scott. In other words, it smacks of an ex post facto cover-up by Cherry-Garrard.
Barry, you have fallen victim to a classic example of rewriting of the facts. The articles that talk about Scott’s Glossopteris fossil have the same reasoning: In order for plate tectonics/whatever variant to be proven, a Glossopteris fossil had to be found in Antarctica. Scott found one there. Therefore Scott proved whatever variant of the argument. This is a logical fallacy call affirmation of the consequent, with a long record of abuse, first defined and refuted by Aristotle in his Sophistici Elenchi: “A consequent gives rise to fallacy because the consecution
of consequent and antecedent seems reciprocal. If ? follows from A we imagine that A must follow from B. Hence mistaken perception in sensation, as when gall is mistaken for honey because it is yellow ; and because rain wets the ground, wetness of the ground is supposed a proof of rain.” (http://archive.org/stream/aristotleonfall01postgoog/aristotleonfall01postgoog_djvu.txt)
Aside from D.J. Beerling’s undocumented claims in his book The Emerald Planet: How Plants Shaped Earths’ History, there is no evidence that Scott’s Glossopteris fossiil was ever used. In fact, if one looks at the actual history of plate tectonic theory, one will see that the fossil failed utterly to resolve anything, and likely would have been regarded with suspicion: http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/biogeog/DUTO1944.htm This link indicates how Glossopteris fossils found in Russia were misidentified. This would have opened Scott’s fossil to attack.
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/biogeog/LONG1944.htm) This link does a good job of illustrating the skepticism still in place about plate tectonics, and has these prophetic words: “When these numerous problems are viewed together, emphasis that has been placed on the Glossopteris flora as “compelling evidence” of once-continuous lands seems dangerously near the unscientific procedure of selecting evidence to support a favored theory.”
I forgot to mention, in addition to the 4 days of non-existent blizzard, Cherry-Garrard claimed Dimitri Gerof, the dog driver, faked illness for 2 additional days, thus extending the delay for Cherry-Garrard to 6 days, almost the limit of his endurance before he would have to turn back (assuming he didn’t kill the weaker dogs for food). So Cherry-Garrard’s account of the First Relief Party is highly suspicious and smacks of him covering up after Scott’s body was found, at which point he would have known the distance between himself and Scott.
Kristoffer, with regard to the statement below:
“As for Karen May’s alleged “discovery”, Huntford has already stated on page 457 of his book (The Last Place On Earth, 1999 edition) that Scott had changed the orders for the dogs verbally to Lt. Evans. He goes on further to say on page 520 that in the crisis of saving Lt. Evans from scurvy, that Lt. Evans forgot them.”
“Alleged”?
You clearly haven’t read May’s article. This is exactly what she was writing about. This story of last-minute orders you hold as “the truth” is unquestionably an error from Huntford. May shows that Huntford took Scott’s written orders left at base in October 1911 and through gross error transformed them into last-minute “verbal orders” given to Evans in January 1912.
Besides, on closer inspection Huntford’s story of Evans losing the orders (due to his scurvy) is unsubstantiated. Huntford’s narrative implies that Evans would have told someone that he’d been given verbal orders which he never passed on to the men at base: otherwise, how would Huntford know of it? But strangely Huntford lists no sources for this story at all. How odd! Why does Huntford not point to a confession from Evans in later life to back up this assertion? Huntford lists no sources because this story is not true. The truth is that the orders Huntford cites were not “verbal”: they were written down by Scott in a document dated 20 October 1911, and left at base before he embarked for the Pole.
It may strike you as surprising that Huntford is capable of such a gross error in his narrative, but the primary evidence cannot be denied.
When I read Karen May’s article, I was struck by the contrast between the two Polar expeditions. Scott had cut things so fine that his very life depended on flawless execution of months-old orders under unpredictable circumstances (e.g. Simpson’s departure, Evans’s scurvy, Meares’s late return). Amundsen, on the other hand, had such a generous safety margin that he could and did make the entire trip on his own, with little opportunity for Murphy’s Law to intervene.
This back and forth on whether Scott’s orders were indeed genuine or not seems to be side stepping the real issue. And that is Scott’s competence as both a leader and a studied expert on polar travel. His obsession with besting Shackleton displayed a complete disregard for the preferred method of polar travel and living that Cook and Amundsen clearly understood years in advance. The hubris of the British empire and it’s sense that there was nothing left to learn about the Poles meant that young better thinking individuals were told to be still and to not question authority. This top down method of leadership does not work in expeditions where there is much at risk. Scott’s lack of experience and understanding of engineering, horses, dogs, skis, polar clothing (canvas kills) is appalling. His nonchalance about the importance of depot laying and the methods of finding them later on is just another example of his intellectual inferiority. We have in part Sir Clements Markham to thank for choosing Scott to be his poster boy above more qualified contestants. This uncalled for effort to resurrect Scott’s reputation by numerous authors seems to me nothing more than a predilection to gain a journalistic position and media exposure. As a lifelong mountaineer and backcountry explorer, I find Scott’s methods and lack of curiosity to better his skill set beyond comprehension and as it turned out deadly for his companions.