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Captain Scott Biography And Visits

There is an episode of The Simpsons where clever Lisa is given an assignment to write an essay on Jebediah Springfield, the founder of the town of Springfield. The 200th anniversary of the founding of the town is only a week away, and all the children must write about Springfield's founding father. Most children trot out the usual story about wonderful Jebidiah, but conscientious Lisa goes to the town museum. There she meets kindly curator Hollis Hurlbut who shows her the museum's precious Jebediah exhibits. These include "his fife on which he sounded the sweet note of freedom," and also his chamber pot. While Hollis is off checking his microwaved jonny cakes, Lisa has a go at playing a tune on Jebediah's fife, but all she succeeds in doing is blowing out a rolled up sheet of paper on which Jebediah had written his secret confession:

"Firstly I did not tame the legendary buffalo. It was already tame. I merely shot it. Secondly I have not always been known as Jebediah Springfield. Until 1796 I was Hans Sprungfeld, murderous pirate, and the half wits of this town shall never learn the truth! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

Countries have their national myths, which often aren't the same as history. The controversy that surrounds the story of Captain Scott suggests that he might be a good example. At the time of his death he was considered a hero, and to some extent the association of heroism remains with him today. Some writers, Ranulph Fiennes for example, continue to defend Scott. Naturally of course there are Lisa Simpsons who have come along and questioned the standard story. Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen is a Lisa Simpson, comprehensively demolishing the myth of Scott's heroism. Usually acknowledgements in a book are not the most interesting bit, but for Huntford the acknowledgements reveal a story in themselves. Both the director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and Scott's family gave help, but wanted it known that they totally disassociated themselves from the book which resulted. So let's have a look at what Huntford, this Lisa Simpson, says. I am not suggesting the following is a definitive view of the Scott story. I am, for example uneasy about the portrayal of Scott as an ambitious egoist, when part of the reason for his ambition was the collapse of his father's business, and the resulting feeling of financial responsibility placed on Scott. Huntford doesn't mention this. Also Huntford seems to want it both ways in his assessment of Scott's career in the Royal Navy. He portrays the navy as a glorified yacht club with officers promoted by how smart the paintwork on their ships looked; and yet after saying that the navy promoted people for the wrong reasons, he makes much of the fact that Scott did not win rapid promotion. But I'm not really qualified to get involved in the arguments around Scott. What I present is the demolition of a national myth, and what is left to us afterwards. We'll consider the question Lisa had to face: if our heroes aren't what they seem, is it still worth marching in the town parade where everyone enjoys themselves celebrating their memory?

 

Ceiling painting at the Polar Research Institute, Cambridge - which shows the various exploratory trips made to the continent

In 1769 James Cook was sent by the Royal Navy to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. He was also on a secret mission to discover a fabled southern continent. Failing to find anything, he tried again in 1772, travelling even further south in HMS Resolution and HMS Adventure. This time Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle, but was forced back by pack ice before he reached land. It wasn't until 1819 that a British merchant ship, the Williams, blown off course round Cape Horn stumbled on the South Shetland Islands. Returning in the Williams to investigate in 1820, Edward Bransfield landed briefly on the Graham Land peninsula, making the first landing on the Antarctic continent. With Antarctica discovered exploration in the name of national prestige then became important. The ultimate challenge in the south was to reach the South Pole, and of course the British wanted to be there first. With an empire based on overseas possessions this kind of exploration was ingrained in British culture. Meanwhile Norway, sitting in its northern position in Scandinavia, was struggling to assert itself as a newly independent nation. Befitting its northerly latitude, the country had a number of great polar explorers, and as with Britain this exploration was linked to national prestige. It was to be Roald Amundsen, born in Hvidsten, on July 16 1872, who was to become Norway's representative in the south. Amundsen seemed destined for this calling. He grew up enjoying ski journeys across the snows of Norway, worked on a whaling ship, and in 1898 - 1899 took part in a Belgium led expedition to Antarctica. He was learning all the time, and proved extremely adaptable. On an epic journey through the North West Passage, Amundsen learnt survival techniques from Eskimos, building igloos with them, and taking careful note of their clothing and culture. Eskimos did not hurry, they conserved their energy, avoiding the sweat which tends to freeze in polar climates. Amundsen had originally been inspired by reading of the exploits of the British explorer Sir John Franklin who died along with all 128 of his men during an attempt to find a way through the North West Passage in the 1840s. This was one of those heroic failures that can seem rather inspiring. But the Eskimos had no illusions about heroic effort, and this rubbed off on Amundsen. By October 1906 Amundsen in his ship Gjoa had successfully negotiated the North West passage, and lived, the first ever to do so.

According to Huntford, Britain's Robert Falcon Scott provides a stark contrast to Amundsen. He was born in Devonport on 6th June 1868. Robert, the eldest son, was brought up in a Victorian nursery, taught by a governess until he was eight, and then sent to a day school. His father who at that time lived off the proceeds of an inherited brewery business, decided that Robert should go into the navy. After being sent to a cramming school establishment to prepare him for the entrance exams, Robert entered the naval college at Dartmouth in 1881. A regular career progression then followed, proceeding in 1883 to midshipman, then to lieutenant by 1889. At this point automatic progression stopped, and advancement on merit seemed slow in coming. With his career not moving forward Scott tried specialising as a torpedo officer. He seemed good at exams, but weaker in day to day practice. Promotion still did not come. One way to speed up progression was to get involved in polar exploration, which had remained a naval tradition since the visit of James Cook to Antarctica in the eighteenth century. Nelson, as a young midshipman, also went on an Arctic expedition which helped to cement the naval polar tradition. So, with no previous interest in polar exploration, the thwarted and ambitious Scott approached Sir Clements Markham, President of the Royal Geographical Society. The Society was trying to put an expedition together, and Scott applied. With all of the navy's best officers preparing for possible war, there were no other applicants. The naval men on the RGS committee did not want Scott, thinking quite reasonably that he did not have any relevant experience. However, they had to deal with the fearsome Markham, who had some strange ideas about polar travel. Markham gave lectures romanticising the suffering of polar explorers. He seemed to have an implacable hostility towards all expeditions not organised by the RGS, and had no time for the experience or expertise of foreigners. Dogs were "useful to Greenland Eskimos and Siberians" (Memorandum on Sledging 1899), with the implication that dogs used by lesser races were not suitable for Englishmen. Britain had an experienced polar explorer in Sir Martin Conway who had made a crossing of Spitzburgen, an island north of Norway. But he was not even invited to join the expedition. Perhaps a more experienced man would have seen through all of Markham's nonsense. Scott in contrast was the obedient naval man who did what he was told.

Under pressure from Markham, Scott was appointed to lead the expedition. He fulfilled Markham's expectations in doing no research of his own, simply adopting the president's views. Using generous funds a ship called the Discovery was built, a ship which survives and can be visited in Dundee. Rather than using civilian contractors with relevant experience, a naval architect was given the job. The result was a ship not well suited to the task in hand. While the building of an unsuitable ship went ahead, Markham turned his attention to hounding a truly talented man out of the team. Professor J.W. Gregory, was a mountaineer, geologist, and explorer, who believed in the use of dogs, small teams, and the employment of Swiss mountain guides. With his foreign ideas and respect for the experience of others, Gregory clearly did not fit the bill and was forced out. Meanwhile Scott was given full executive powers. Now the only person above him in the chain of command was Markham. This was the situation when Discovery sailed from Cowes for the Antarctic on March 21st 1901. The British party reached Antarctica in January 1902 with no proper training. Making a base at McMurdo Sound on the Ross Ice Shelf, the winter was wasted playing games of football and engaging in amateur dramatics. A disastrous trip into the interior followed in the summer, where poor planning endangered the party of three, Scott, Edward Wilson and Ernest Shakleton. With no margin for error allowed, the group would reach a resupply depot almost as food and fuel were exhausted. One awkward blizzard would have killed them. Meanwhile Albert Armitage led a relatively drama-free expedition from Discovery to the Western Mountains. He turned with food in hand and got back safely.

 

Scott at work in his cabin

Scott was then supposed to return home, but by accident or design he allowed Discovery to become frozen in and had to spend a second winter in Antarctica. The second winter passed as the first, in lassitude on Discovery. Shakleton was sent home on a relief ship, supposedly for physical collapse on the sledge journey. In reality his competence was probably a threat to Scott's fragile authority. Two more relief ships arrived in the spring insisting that the party must return. The fact that Scott had allowed Discovery to become frozen in did not impress the naval authorities, and doubts about Scott were aired again. But Markham sent a report to Edward the Seventh about Scott's "heroism." It was then hard for the navy to move against an apparent hero admired by the king. Scott applied for, and was granted, leave to write a book. Markham provided a room in his house, and the result was published in 1905 as The Voyage of the Discovery. Scott was a very good writer, and he produced a stirring tale, which in some ways bent the truth. Shakleton objected to the falsehoods, the portrayal of himself as a weakling for example.

Sandringham - The Union Jack flag Scott carried to the pole is on display here

Meanwhile out in the real world life went on. Frederick Cook claimed to reach the North Pole in 1908. When doubts were cast on this claim, the American William Edward Peary claimed the North Pole in 1909. Amundsen himself had been planning a journey to the North Pole, but with that goal now reached he turned his attention to the south. Others were also in the running for the South Pole. In 1909 Shakleton got within ninety seven miles of the pole. He turned away because as he said to his wife: "I thought you would rather have a live donkey than a dead lion." (Quoted Huntford P245) Scott was jealous of his former colleague's achievement. He was also, as ever, impatient with his career. Since publishing The Voyage of the Discovery he had been captain of a number of battleships, but was possibly out of favour after a ship under his command was involved in a collision. Once again polar exploration offered the way to enhanced promotion, and to prove himself against Shakleton. Another expedition was organised, and in May 1910 his new ship the Terra Nova left London for the Antarctic, following a period of the usual lacklustre preparation. Scott carried a Union Jack given to him by Queen Alexandra, which he intended placing at the pole. Amundsen, meanwhile, kept quiet. He knew that if his plans to reach the South Pole became common knowledge the British would be spurred on in their efforts. In secret he continued his own meticulous preparations. His ship, the Fram, left Christiania in June 1910. The race for the pole was on, although Scott didn't know it yet. By the time he landed in Antarctica he was already behind. Studying records of summer melt Amundsen realised he could safely make his base on the western side of the Ross Ice Shelf, ninety miles nearer the pole than Scott. Scott had not looked at any records of ice melt. He returned to his old base at McMurdo Sound, on the eastern side of the Ross Ice Shelf.

 

Items from the Terra Nova expedition on display at the Polar Research Institute

Amundsen quickly built on his advantage. Setting up resupply depots for a journey to the pole, his men averaged twenty miles a day, twice that of Scott. Norwegian depots were generously supplied, and were clearly marked by lines of flags set up for six miles on either side. Scott's depots were marked by a single flag, which in fog or snow were much harder to find. Amundsen used dogs, run by experienced dog handlers. Scott had brought dogs, but didn't believe in them, and hadn't taken the time to understand them. He used ponies, which tended to sink into ice and snow. Dogs could eat plentiful seal and penguin meat. There was of course no food for the horses except for that brought in on the Terra Nova. Motorised sledges, which Scott hoped would be his secret weapon, quickly failed due to inadequate testing beforehand. So while Scott struggled with his ponies, and his temperamental motor sledges, Amundsen moved more supplies further inland than the British. The Norwegians were well organised and comfortable. They created a village under the snow, called Framheim after their ship. Facilities included an improvised sauna! They ate well, building up their strength with fresh, under done seal meat which preserved vitamin C. They ate wholemeal bread which provided vitamin B. The British meanwhile ate white bread, overdone seal meat and tinned food. Their vitamin levels were already falling. As Huntford puts it: "Fate was sitting at the dinner table." (P389) The fear and mystery of the great ice barrier faded in the face of Amundsen's competence: "The mysterious barrier of the Englishmen has once and for all disappeared, and must give place to a completely natural phenomenon - a glacier." (Amundsen's Diary, April 24th 1911) Heroism of course requires a great obstacle to overcome. It was to be Amundsen's misfortune to overcome the obstacle too well.

Once summer came, the journeys for the pole began. After a false start the Norwegians set out on October 20th 1911. Of course a journey such as this was not without incident. Once the ice shelf had been crossed the Transantarctic Mountains had to be negotiated. This was a feat of mountaineering expertise. Then beyond the mountains Amudsen's route took him over the Devil's Glacier, a mass of dangerous crevasses. But Amundsen and his men were experts and made it look rather easy. Soon they were up on the Antarctic Plateau and heading for the pole. Meanwhile Scott was struggling, tent bound in weather where Amundsen could continue, the delays causing him to overrun his supplies. Finally getting across the Ross Ice Shelf, the exhausted ponies were shot at the bottom of the Beardmore Glacier which provided the route through the Transantarctic Mountains. From here Scott and his men were pulling their own sledges, two hundred pounds per man. Scott seemed to welcome this self inflicted pain, remembering Markham's lectures on noble suffering perhaps. Obvious effort is seemingly more dramatic than the apparent ease that comes from the long hard work of meticulous preparation. Only Lawrence Oates, an aristocratic cavalryman who had been brought along to care for the horses, did not share this sentiment. But he was a military man and did what he was told.

 

Last letters written by the Pole Party, on display at the Polar Research Institute

On the 15th of December 1911 Amundsen's team reached the South Pole. Three days were spent there making observations and fixing the position of the pole carefully. This was followed by an uneventful, at times joyous journey back to Framheim. Amundsen told his colleagues on his return over a celebratory breakfast: "We haven't got much to tell in the way of privation or great suffering. The whole thing went like a dream." (Diary Jan 26th 1912) Scott meanwhile was suffering enough for both of them. He and four men had reached the South Pole on January 17th 1912. Their journey home then turned into a long nightmare. No lessons had been learnt from all previous trips. Supply depots were too small, too infrequent, and too difficult to find. Exhausted with man-hauling, malnutrition and the effects of a fall, Edgar Evans died at the bottom of the Beardmore Glacier. Lawrence Oates died next, suffering terribly from a frostbitten foot, before crawling away to die in the snow. He felt his companions would have a better chance of survival with one less mouth to feed and without his now inevitable slowness of pace. Scott and his two remaining men, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers lasted two more weeks, before they themselves died in their tent, trapped by a blizzard eleven miles from One Ton Camp, where a rescue party and dog team had been waiting for them. The bodies of Scott, Bowers, and Wilson were discovered during a search the following spring. The bodies of Evans and Oates were never found.

 

The Oates Museum at Gilbert White's house, Selborne, Hampshire

On February 10th 1913 Terra Nova reached Australia with news of Scott's death. The gulf between the Norwegian and British expeditions was brought home to me by the following quote from The Daily Sketch for February 11th 1913, which I saw on display at the Oates Museum in Selborne, Hampshire: "It must be a big mistake, and I am not yet prepared to believe it. It is impossible that all the party can have perished, as a South Pole blizzard doesn't necessarily mean much." Amundsen was so in control of circumstances on his expedition that he simply could not believe what had happened to the British.

Lisa Simpson found out the truth about Jebidiah Springfield. But in the end she decided to march in the town procession celebrating his memory. And for all of Huntford's closely argued, enthralling demolition of the Scott myth, we must now decide whether we want to march in our own version of the Springfield town procession. I think the answer might lie not in the race to the pole itself, but in what happened afterwards. Amundsen was truly brilliant in the Antarctic, so much so that life afterwards never quite measured up to that moment of triumph. He made a journey through the North East Passage, the first to do so, and with Umberto Nobile, was the first person to fly over the North Pole. And yet there seemed to be no settling down for Amundsen. He had returned safely home to Norway, but in a wider sense never seemed to find his way home. He suffered constant financial problems and was never able to form a long term relationship with a woman. After years of these frustrations it seemed he finally gave up on that brilliant meticulous approach of his. The approach which brought him to his goal, but gave him no rest. In May 1928 his former colleague, Umberto Nobile disappeared on a flight over the Arctic in an airship called Italia. Amundsen was consulted about a rescue, but was not asked to take part. Not being able to accept this apparent rejection, frantic efforts were made to organise a private rescue mission. Amundsen managed to get hold of a French flying boat, which it quickly became apparent was unsuited to the Arctic. Casting aside his usual prudence and good sense, Amundsen pressed on, even refusing to delay departure, which would have allowed his party to enjoy the security of flying with other aircraft involved in the search. On June 18th 1928 Amundsen's aircraft took off and disappeared. Months later an improvised life raft was found made out of a float and a fuel tank. Amundsen had fought to the last; but at the last you could say he had been as reckless as Scott. Perhaps in his own way he came to see that reaching the goal isn't all that there is. If the Scott myth is anything it is linked to the idea of mystery and difficulty. People did not want the mysterious ice barrier to be, as Amundsen said "just as glacier." Amundsen's competence seemed to reduce his trip to another skiing expedition across Norway. The South Pole, it was vaguely hoped, would offer more. People want mystery and obstacles as much as they want clarity and solutions to problems. In the end Amundsen threw himself into a situation where he was unlikely to remain in control, and thus flew off into a mystery.

Let's assume - although many disagree - that Huntford's story is accurate, that Scott was a poor leader, had no experience, and made few attempts to make up for his shortcomings. Let's assume that man-hauling sledges many hundreds of miles might seem heroic, when in fact those cruelly heavy sledges constitute a "lazy man's load." My father used to say this to me when I was struggling to carry, for example, a pile of books up the stairs. If I had taken the time to make a few more journeys with smaller piles of books the job would have been much easier. If Scott had taken the time to acquire proper training, and make proper preparations, his journey would have been much easier. Alongside the huge effort of man-hauling was lassitude. Scott did not work hard in preparation, believing that British improvisation would see him through. Let's assume that Scott's men, restrained by naval discipline, were obliged to put all their trust in their leader, and that their trust was abused.

And yet, even if all this were true, like Lisa Simpson I hesitate at the last to dismiss the myth of Scott. This is simply because in the end Amundsen seemed to go the same way as Scott. He got into an aircraft clearly unsuited to the job in hand. Amundsen did not prepare, and flew north without taking proper precautions for emergencies. I hesitate to dismiss the myth of Scott because his antithesis, Roald Amundsen, having no more worlds to conquer, ended his story in a similar way.

The Union Jack flag carried to the South Pole by Scott's party was returned, and is now on permanent display at Sandringham. Sledge flags used by the pole party are kept at Exeter Cathedral. Many items relating to the expedition can be seen at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, the Oates Museum in Hampshire, and at the Discovery in Dundee.

The Terra Nova returned to its former life as a whaling and sealing ship, and was sunk by ice off Greenland in 1943. The figurehead of Terra Nova, removed in 1913, is kept at the Museum of Wales in Cardiff.

Amundsen's ship the Fram survives as a visitor attraction in Oslo. In 1936, a year after the Fram was brought onto dry land, one of Amundsen's closest companions, Oscar Wisting, who stood with him at the Pole, asked to stay overnight on the ship. He was found dead in the morning in his old cabin.