Captain Scott's Lost Photos From South Pole
Expedition Unveiled
Previously
unseen photographs from Captain Scott's doomed 1911 expedition to the South Pole
have been discovered, some of which were taken by the ill-fated explorer
himself.
The photos,
which depict scenes from the Terra Nova Expedition as it travelled the
Antarctic, were acquired by the Scott Polar Research Institute in spring this
year. People have known of the existence of Scott's photographs, but they've
been thought to be missing for nearly 100 years.
They have
gone on display this week at the University
of Cambridge's Polar Museum,
alongside poignant images of Scott taken by Herbert George Ponting, the
professional photographer who went along to capture the expedition.
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"I am just going outside and
may be some time."
Captain Oates
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Snow goggles, clothing, and equipment
Snow
goggles were essential equipment for polar explorers. These goggles belonged to
explorer William Laird McKinlay, one of the scientific staff on the disastrous
Canadian National Arctic Expedition 1913-1918.
McKinlay
told the story of the expedition and his survival for over a year on Wrangel Island in 'The last voyage of the Karluk'
published in 1976 when he was 87.
McKinlay's
goggles were presented to the National Library of Scotland along with his
papers by his family.
Types of
snow goggles
Snow
goggles were used to protect the eyes and to prevent snow blindness. This was a
painful eye condition caused by exposure to sunlight reflected from snow and
ice.
Goggles
were worn almost constantly by Captain Scott's expedition team. Scott described
the variety of goggles available:
'A few men
preferred the ordinary wire-gauze type with smoked glass but the drawback to
these was their liability to become frosted over. The alternatives were to have
a piece of leather with a slit in place of the glass or to have goggles cut
from a piece of wood. Personally, I much preferred the latter and in the end
invariably used them; mine were very carefully shaped to fit over the nose and
eyes, had a considerable cross-shaped aperture, and were blackened outside and
in.'
Clothing
Weather
conditions in Antarctica are the harshest in
the world. Early Antarctic explorers wore clothing made of natural materials,
such as wool and fur. Before the British Antarctic Expedition took place, Scott
organised for some tests to be carried out on different types of material. This
was to find out which were most suitable in terms of insulation, waterproofing,
and durability.
The
Norwegian expedition team wore more fur clothing than the British team. The
Norwegians relied heavily on dog sledges, and the fur helped to protect the men
from cold whilst sitting on the sledges. Scott however was more reliant on
man-hauling. The men would have been too hot whilst undertaking this strenuous
physical activity in fur clothing.
The
reindeer fur boots made by the Lapps for the British expedition team were
called 'finnesko'. They were lined with felt and insulated with hay called
'seannegrass'.
Each member
of the expedition team was responsible for caring for and repairing their own
items of clothing. They were able to adapt their kit to suit their own
individual preferences and needs. The kit would have included:
Windproof
outer layers, such as canvas trousers and hooded smocks
Reindeer
fur gloves
Strong
boots with canvas wrappings to keep out the wind
Woollen
undergarments.
Modern day
explorers and travellers have the benefit of lightweight, synthetic, breathable
material. You can find out more about modern Antarctic clothing on the Cool
Antarctica website.
Sleeping
bags and sledges
Scott and
his team used sleeping bags made of reindeer fur. This worked well when the men
were at base camp and conditions were dry. However, if the sleeping bags got
wet or iced up, they soon became stiff and heavy to carry.
Apsley
Cherry-Garrad described the sleeping bags in his book 'The worst journey in the
world', first published in 1922:
'When we
got into our sleeping-bags, if we were fortunate, we became warm enough during
the night to thaw the ice: part remained in our clothes, part passed into the
skins of the bags … and soon both were sheets of armour-plate'.
The sledges
were made of wood, leather, and rope. The conservation team at the Scott Polar
Institute in Cambridge
is currently conserving some of the sledges and other equipment used on the
British Antarctic Expedition. You can find out more about this process on the
Scott Polar Institute blog.
Pony snow
shoes
Special
snow shoes were made for Scott's team of Siberian ponies. Using a circle of
wire for the base, the shoes were created from bamboo, and were fitted to the
ponies with leather straps. Enough shoes were transported for all of the
ponies. However, before the initial depot laying expedition in 1911, there was
not enough time to train the ponies in their use. Scott was not convinced that
they would be effective, and only one pair was taken on the journey.
The ponies
had great difficulty walking in the snow, and the one available pair of snow
shoes proved to be invaluable when tried out on one pony, Weary Willie. Scott
regretted having left the other pairs at Cape Evans,
as the slow progress of the ponies had an adverse impact on the success of the
depot laying expedition. Meares and Wilson were sent back to the base to
collect more of the pony snow shoes. Unfortunately by that time, the ice had
broken up and it was impossible to retrieve the shoes.
Suggested
discussion points
Find out
the average summer and winter temperature where you live, and compare these
with the average temperatures at Scott Base in Antarctica.
Think about
the clothes that you wear, and the fabrics that they're made of. Check the
labels and list some of the materials. Which of these fabrics help to keep you
dry, cool, or warm? Are these materials natural or synthetic?
Find out
more about the weather conditions and terrain in Antarctica.
What are some of the challenges of living or visiting the continent? What type
of clothing and equipment are essential for survival in this type of climate
and environment?
Discuss the
potential psychological impact of living in or visiting Antarctica.
Consider the climate, and also the amount of daylight during the two seasons —
summer and winter.
What
animals are indigenous to the region, and how have they adapted to living in
such harsh conditions?
Photograph
of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's team finding Amundsen's tent at the South Pole
Captain Scott’s
party suffered terribly, while the Norwegian group led by Amundsen mastered the
elements
A farewell letter
from polar explorer Captain Scott in which he pledged that his team would
"die like gentlemen" is expected to sell for £150,000 at auction. The
letter, which was found on Scott's body in November 1912, was written on March
16 of that year to financier Sir Edgar Speyer, honorary treasurer of the
fund-raising committee for the ill-fated trip. Scott wrote, "We have been
to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen."
Picture: Kirsty
Wigglesworth
Farewell
letter from Captain Scott pledged Antarctic team would 'die like gentlemen'
A farewell
letter from polar explorer Captain Scott in which he pledged that his team
would "die like gentlemen" is expected to sell for £150,000 at
auction.
The letter,
which was found on Scott's body in November 1912, was written on March 16 of
that year to financier Sir Edgar Speyer, honorary treasurer of the fund-raising
committee for the ill-fated trip.
In it,
Scott expresses his great concerns for his family and the families of his
companions and asks that the nation provide for their future.
Sensing
that the position was hopeless, Scott wrote, "I fear we must go...but we
have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen - I regret only for the
women we leave behind. If this diary is found it will show how we stuck by our
dying companions and fought this thing out to the end.
"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 lacked support."
The letter
was at one time owned by the famous American polar explorer, Rear Admiral
Richard E Byrd, and was presented to him at a dinner in his honour in 1935 by
Sir Edgar Speyer's widow.
The
recipient of the letter, Edgar Speyer, was a well known business, political and
philanthropic figure before the First World War. He had played a major role in
raising funds for Scott's expedition and Mount
Speyer in the Arctic
was named in his honour by Scott.
American
born to a wealthy German family, Speyer
became a British national at the age of 30 in 1892. A great patron of the arts, particularly
music, he personally funded the Proms for many years and single- handedly
secured their long tem future. Richard Strauss dedicated his opera Salome to
him.
Scott need
not have worried about the future of the team's widows and orphans. Once the
contents of his final letters became known, there was a huge outpouring of
public sympathy resulting in enough money not only to pay off the expedition's
debts but also to settle annuities on the families of those who died and to
endow the Scott Polar Research Institute.
The letter,
which has an estimate of £100,000 -£150,000 is for sale at Bonhams Polar Sale
in London on 30
March 2012.
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“Gieves, the
naval taillor, had been the main supplier of Royal Navy officers' uniforms
since the late 18th Century and Scott was just one of its customers, who wore
the then-standard "Reefer No. 5," a high-buttoning, close-fitting,
double-breasted jacket worn by all ranks from lieutenant up. It is this garment
that is largely considered the original pattern for the classic navy blazer.” (…)
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Scott
outlined his plans for the southern journey to the entire shore party, but left
open who would form the final polar team. Eleven days before Scott's teams set
off towards the pole, Scott gave the dog driver Meares the following written
orders at Cape Evans dated 20 October 1911 to secure
Scott's speedy return from the pole using dogs:
About the
first week of February I should like you to start your third journey to the
South, the object being to hasten the return of the third Southern unit [the
polar party] and give it a chance to catch the ship. The date of your departure
must depend on news received from returning units, the extent of the depot of
dog food you have been able to leave at One Ton Camp, the state of the dogs,
etc ... It looks at present as though you should aim at meeting the returning
party about March 1 in
Latitude 82 or 82.30
The march
south began on 1 November 1911,
a caravan of mixed transport groups (motors, dogs,
horses), with loaded sledges, travelling at different rates, all designed to support
a final group of four men who would make a dash for the Pole. The southbound
party steadily reduced in size as successive support teams turned back. Scott
reminded the returning Atkinson of the order "to take the two dog-teams
south in the event of Meares having to return home, as seemed likely". By
4 January 1912, the last two four-man groups had reached 87° 34′ S. Scott
announced his decision: five men (Scott, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence
Oates and Edgar Evans) would go forward, the other three (Teddy Evans, William
Lashly and Tom Crean) would return. The chosen group marched on, reaching the
Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that Amundsen had preceded them by five
weeks. Scott's anguish is indicated in his diary: "The worst has
happened"; "All the day dreams must go"; "Great God! This
is an awful place".
The
deflated party began the 800-mile (1,300 km) return journey on 19 January.
"I'm afraid the return journey is going to be dreadfully tiring and
monotonous", wrote Scott on the next day. However, the party made good progress despite
poor weather, and had completed the Polar Plateau stage of their journey,
approximately 300 miles
(500 km),
by 7 February. In the following days, as the party made the 100-mile (160 km) descent of the Beardmore Glacier, the physical condition of Edgar Evans,
which Scott had noted with concern as early as 23 January, declined sharply. A
fall on 4 February had left Evans "dull and incapable", and on 17
February, after a further fall, he died near the glacier foot.
Meanwhile
back at Cape Evans, the Terra Nova arrived at the
beginning of February, and Atkinson decided to unload the supplies from the ship
with his own men rather than set out south with the dogs to meet Scott as
ordered. When Atkinson finally did leave south for the planned rendezvous with
Scott, he encountered the scurvy-ridden Edward ("Teddy") Evans who
needed his urgent medical attention. Atkinson therefore tried to send the
experienced navigator Wright south to meet Scott, but chief meteorologist
Simpson declared he needed Wright for scientific work. Atkinson then decided to
send the short-sighted Cherry-Garrard on 25 February, who was not able to
navigate, only as far as One Ton depot (which is within sight of Mount Erebus),
effectively cancelling Scott's orders for meeting him at latitude 82 or 82.30
on 1 March.
With 400 miles (670 km) still to travel
across the Ross Ice Shelf, Scott's party's prospects steadily worsened as, with
deteriorating weather, frostbite, snow blindness, hunger and exhaustion, and no
sign of the dog-teams, they struggled northward. On 16 March, Oates, whose
condition was aggravated by an old war-wound to the extent that he was barely
able to walk, voluntarily left the tent and walked to his death. Scott wrote
that Oates' last words were "I am just going outside and may be some
time".
After
walking a further 20 miles,
the three remaining men made their final camp on 19 March, 11 miles (18 km) short of One Ton
Depot, but 24 miles
(38 km)
beyond the original intended location of the depot. The next day a fierce
blizzard prevented their making any progress. During the next nine days, as
their supplies ran out, with frozen fingers, little light, and storms still
raging outside the tent, Scott wrote his final words, although he gave up his
diary after 23 March, save for a final entry on 29 March, with its concluding
words: "Last entry. For God's sake look after our people". He left
letters to Wilson's mother, Bowers' mother, a string of notables including his
former commander Sir George Egerton, his own mother and his wife. He also wrote
his "Message To The Public", primarily a defence of the expedition's
organisation and conduct in which the party's failure is attributed to weather
and other misfortunes, but ending on an inspirational note, with these words:
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. These rough notes and our dead bodies
must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see
that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.
Scott is
presumed to have died on 29 March 1912, possibly a day later. The positions of
the bodies in the tent when it was discovered eight months later suggested that
Scott was the last of the three to die
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Captain Scott: a second-rate hero?
After a lifetime's research, Roland
Huntford thinks he has finally nailed the myth of Scott of the Antarctic: far
from being a national hero, the explorer was an amateur whose incompetence
condemned his men to death
John Crace
The Guardian, Monday 27 September 2010 /
It was hard to escape Captain Scott if you
were a child growing up in Britain
any time between the 1920s and the 1970s. He was the man who made the ultimate
sacrifice on his return from the south pole; the man who achieved a greater
nobility in coming second than his rival did in coming first; the man who
embodied the noblest qualities of stoicism and suffering. In short, he was the
quintessential British hero, the venerated subject of school assemblies
everywhere.
And then – almost overnight – the Scott
myth ended in 1979 with the publication of Roland Huntford's book, Scott and
Amundsen. For the first time, the British and Norwegian expeditions to the
south pole were forensically examined side by side and Scott was found
seriously wanting.
The undisputed facts remained the same –
that Amundsen and his team reached the south pole on 15 December 1911 using
skis, dogs and sledges, before returning safely to their base camp just over a
month later. And that, after Scott's polar party reached the south pole on 17
January 1912 using skis, dogs, sledges and man-hauling, the team died one by
one: Edgar Evans died of exhaustion, frostbite and starvation on or around 16
February; Captain Oates, his leg frost-bitten and gangrenous, walked to his
death on or around 17 March; and Scott, Wilson and Bowers, too tired to go on,
died in their tent out on the Ross Ice Shelf on or around 21 March.
Everything else in the story, however, was
up for grabs. Where Amundsen's attention to detail made his expedition seem no
more demanding than a skiing trip in the Norwegian outdoors, Scott's appeared a
disaster almost from the off. According to Huntford's account, he ignored the
basic lessons of previous polar expeditions by failing to either take enough
dogs or learn how to drive them properly; he took men who barely knew how to
ski; he came unprepared for extreme temperatures; he was indecisive, taking an
extra person with him to the pole when his supplies had been based on a team of
four. Worst was the veiled accusation that because of all this, which had
reduced his frost-bitten men to man-hauling in a blizzard, Scott had
effectively condemned his team to death.
It was a damning indictment: one from which
rehabilitation seemed impossible. And yet, within 25 years or so, serious
writers and academics began to rewrite history in Scott's favour again. First
came Ranulph Fiennes in 2003, dismissing Huntford for not being an explorer
himself; in the same year, Susan Solomon suggested Scott had just been
unusually unlucky with the weather.
Huntford, though, has never been one to
duck a fight. He has devoted the last 35 years of his academic career to the
study of polar exploration – and in particular to the Scott and Amundsen story.
Indeed, his own reputation is now inextricably linked to both men. Two years
ago he wrote Two Planks and a Passion and this week he publishes Race for the
South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen. The first of these
was a history of skiing, the second the unedited diaries, but the subtext of
both was the same: to nail the Scott myth once and for all.
The Expedition Diaries breaks new ground by
letting both men live and die side by side in their own words. And so, on the
very day Scott is complaining about unexpectedly cold conditions, Amundsen
writes that the temperatures are about what he expected and he is making good
progress. And on days when Scott is tent-bound in a blizzard, Amundsen is again
achieving his expected daily distance, because he has brought proper sledge
compasses. This is a story of amateurs and professionals, heightened by entries
from the diaries of Olav Bjaaland, Amundsen's lead skier, who makes the whole thing
sound like a day in the Norwegian mountains.
Even more damning for Scott's reputation,
Huntford has restored all the cuts that Scott's family and literary executors
had made to his published diaries. Here we find a man given to blaming his
colleagues for his own failings; a man with a strong sense – quite early in the
expedition – that his preparations have been inadequate; a man who describes
one of his dying colleagues as stupid; a man who, on realising he has missed
out on being the first to the pole, writes that he can still salvage his
reputation if he can get the news to the outside world before Amundsen. A man
eager to mask his failure by playing up his mission's scientific endeavour. A
man who at one point writes his expedition is a shambles.
"Before Scott left for the Antarctic,
the British public had little interest in him," says Huntford. "He
was considered an inferior version of Shackleton [who then held the record for
the going the furthest south] and polar exploration wasn't big in the public
imagination, being considered the preserve of the Royal Geographical Society
and the navy and therefore a hive of mediocrity. Those with the real ability in
extreme conditions went into mountaineering; the unwritten story of British
polar exploration is the men who didn't go."
Amundsen's success in reaching the south
pole was broadcast almost a year before news of Scott's fate reached the
outside world. In that time, while some of the British newspapers were a little
huffy about Amundsen having concealed from Scott his intention of heading
south, the British public were fairly sanguine. Amundsen's UK lecture tour
in the autumn of 1912 was a success and there was feeling that the best man had
won.
All that changed in 1913 when news came
through that Scott and his men had died. "There was a public outpouring of
grief almost on a par with what we later saw with the death of Princess
Diana," says Huntford. "The British have frequently made a virtue of
disaster, and have a perverse attraction to romantic heroes who fail rather
than to Homeric ones who succeed. Most important of all was that Scott was
dead; had he come home alive, he would have been soon forgotten."
Yet even this Diana moment was
comparatively short-lived. When Scott's expedition diaries came out towards the
end of 1913, the reviews were mixed at best – as if the critics suspected the
edited diaries were covering up a truth altogether more uncomfortably prosaic
than the legend they had been sold. By the time the first world war started,
Scott's memory had been half eclipsed; by the end it had been almost totally
so.
It was the aftermath of the first world war
that was largely responsible for Scott's revival. "The war was the first
fought on an epic scale and it left the country with a vacuum of heroes,"
says Huntford. "There were no Wellingtons
or Nelsons for the country to unite around. The generals were discredited and
the footsoldiers largely anonymous and forgotten. So there was a real national
desire for a modern hero."
The publication in 1922 of The Worst
Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the expedition member who had
discovered the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers, put Scott back on a national
pedestal, and with the release of the 1947 film Scott of the Antarctic, with
its Vaughan Williams soundtrack , his heroic status remained almost untouched
for more than 50 years.
By the time Huntford began his research in
the mid-70s, the Scott family and the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) in Cambridge happily opened
up their archives to him, confident that nothing critical would ever be
written. Huntford got an early indication of what was in store, however, after
a run-in with a senior academic at the SPRI, who warned him of the dangers of
damaging Scott's reputation. When his original book was published in 1979, he
had to fight off an injunction taken out by Peter Carter-Ruck on behalf of the
Scott family for libel by implication.
The Scott family were right to be
concerned. Huntford had been ruthless in his research, and though Scott did not
go undefended, Huntford's version rapidly became widely accepted. And yet the
Scott legend refuses to die to this day.
"It's strange," says Huntford.
"Shackleton, who didn't lose a man when the Endurance was crushed in the
Antarctic ice, remains a footnote in the national psyche, while Scott still has
an iconic status. Only in Britain
do we revere the man who died in failure above the survivor. Elsewhere in the
world, Scott is seen as rather second-rate – an incompetent loser who battled
nature rather than tried to understand it."
The Race for the South Pole represents
Huntford's final attempt to get Scott and Amundsen's legacies restored to what
he believes should be their proper balance. There is simply no more evidence
left to find. Will it be enough? Possibly not.
Scott will always have his supporters – and
maybe that is as it should be. After all, decline and fall is a paradigm of
British life over much of the last hundred years. Perhaps we get the national
heroes we deserve.
Celebrating 100 years: Roald Amundsen’s South Pole Expedition 1911 from
Viking Cruises on
Vimeo.
