INLSA

The five men of Scotts ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1911-13, at the South Pole on January 17, 1912. Standing from left are Captain Lawrence Titus Oates, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Petty Officer Edgar Evans. Sitting are Lieutenant Henry Birdie Bowers, left, and Dr Edward Wilson. They all died on the terrible journey back.

HARDSHIP and bitter disappointment are etched into the five weather-beaten faces that stare at the camera in a photograph taken 100 years ago today.

The faces are those of British polar explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his four companions – Captain Lawrence “Titus” Oates, Lieutenant Henry “Birdie” Bowers, Dr Edward “Ted” Wilson and Petty Officer Edgar “Taff” Evans. The image, triggered by Bowers using a piece of string, records what should have been their greatest moment of triumph as they reached the geographic South Pole.

Instead, the picture taken on January 17, 1912, captures what must be one of biggest disappointments endured in the history of human exploration: being beaten in the great race south and in the symbolical conquering of the last unexplored place on Earth.

The British team’s dream of being the first to stand at 90° South had already been shattered the previous day when, “man-hauling” their heavy sleds across the featureless white desert of Antarctica’s high polar plateau, they had come across tracks and other evidence indicating they’d been beaten by their great rival, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his four companions.

Reaching the South Pole the next day, they found a tent and a Norwegian flag, left by Amundsen who’d arrived there on December 14, 1911, 34 days earlier.

Inside the tent was a note from Amundsen to Scott which the British naval officer must have found galling to read:

“Dear Captain Scott, As you probably are the first to reach this area after us, I will ask you kindly to forward this letter to (Norwegian) King Haakon VII. If you can use any of the articles left in the tent, please do so. The sledge left outside might be of use to you. With kind regards, I wish you a safe return. Yours truly, Roald Amundsen.”

Scott and his companions did not make a safe return to their base at Cape Evans on the Antarctic coast. Instead, wracked by illness and injury, limited to near-starvation rations and pounded by blizzards, they perished on the return journey, just 20km short of a supply depot.

An anguished Scott made several poignant entries in his diary about his team’s “heroic failure”. He described their arrival at the pole as “a horrible day” and commented: “The worst has happened”, “All the day dreams must go”, and “Great God! This is an awful place”.

A later entry just before their departure reads: “Well, we have turned our back now on the goal of our ambitions, and must face our 800 miles of solid dragging – and good-bye to most of the day-dreams!” By March 29, they were all dead.

Amundsen, who had alerted Scott to his own South Pole ambitions in a telegram sent by his brother Leon at the last minute , was shocked by the death of his rivals. The Norwegian, by then a hero in his own country, was quoted as saying: “I would gladly forgo any honour or money if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death.”

There is a final irony in Scott’s “heroic failure” – Amundsen’s heart was set on being the first person to stand at the North Pole, and he had been planning that expedition when he learned of separate claims by two Americans, Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, to have achieved this goal. So he secretly switched his expedition to the southern hemisphere.

Of his arrival at the South Pole, news of which was cabled to the world from Tasmania on March 7, 1912, Amundsen later wrote: “I cannot say… that I stood at my life’s goal. I believe no human being has stood so diametrically opposed to the goal of his desires as I did… the North Pole had attracted me since the days of my childhood, and so I found myself at the South Pole. Can anything more perverse be conceived?”

That would have been of cold comfort to the men of Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition, 1911-13.

john.yeld@inl.co.za