Why the British Were Doomed to Lose the Race to the South Pole
One hundred years ago today, Norwegian Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the bottom of the world. But for his competitor, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, the race ultimately proved deadly: Scott and his team froze to death on their return trip. What many people don't realize is that the rivals were unevenly matched from the start. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Edward Larson, author of the new book An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science, tells PM the story.
By Stephanie Warren
December 14, 2011 12:00 PM
How did the journey to the south pole become a race?
Scott happened to be the captain in charge of the first British expedition to the Antarctic, the Discovery expedition. There were scientists on this and other expeditions doing all sorts of research: paleontological, meteorological, magnetic. The idea of getting to the pole sort of grew on Scott over the course of these expeditions. He was superfluous to the science, so he was free to try for the pole. So, on Scott's final expedition, the Terra Nova, he announced that he would try to get to the pole.
Meanwhile, while Scott was preparing to go, Amundsen announced that he was trying to take an expedition to the north pole. He was a wonderful explorer. He'd already been to Antarctica, been the first to traverse the Northwest Passage. While he was planning this, two different explorers, Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, claimed to have reached the north pole. They never did, but they claimed it. So Amundsen quietly changed his destination. He didn't tell anyone what he was doing. It was only after he was on the way, only at his last port of call that notices were sent to the world of what he was doing.
When did Scott find out that he had competition?
Scott heard about it only when he was at his last port of call in Australia. But by that time, it was too late to change his plans. He had planned a very deliberate trip to the south pole, because he didn't know he would be in any kind of competition. Which was sort of interesting, because he didn't know how to mush dogs [Scott's team used man-hauling instead of dog sleds], and Amundsen did, because of his Northwest Passage expedition.
What Scott was planning to do was use tractors and dogs and ponies to place food and supplies across the ice shelf [for the party bound for the pole to use]. He planned a slow, deliberate route. It was designed for safety—ironically, since it, of course, didn't work out that way. But Amundsen went with just one party, and they just dashed down and dashed back, with dog sleds and skiing. They basically just raced down to the pole and raced back. So you had a very uneven competition.
Why didn't Scott make it?
The plan itself should have worked. He wouldn't have beaten Amundsen, but he should have gotten down and back successfully. He had a lot of bad luck. The weather turned cold, which was the big thing, and half of the ponies that were crucial for bringing food down died early in a freak accident. The seals on the stores of fuel broke, and fuel leaked out, so they didn't have enough fuel, which contributed to them freezing to death.
But Scott also made some terrible, terrible mistakes. He planned on four people going to the pole, but then he changed his mind at the last minute. He had food and supplies for four people but ended up taking an extra person at the last minute. The guy didn't even have skis; he had to walk.
Still, Scott would have made it despite the mistakes—he fell only 11 miles short. It took a combination of bad luck and poor choices. Even if he had made it, though, he was doomed to fall behind Amundsen. Amundsen's human accomplishment was remarkable. The scientific accomplishment of Scott's expedition was magnificent.
What was so scientifically interesting about Antarctica to them?
The British ran a series of expeditions that were primarily scientific research expeditions to Antarctica beginning in 1901. Before that, no one even knew there was a continent in Antarctica. They didn't know anything about the place. They knew there was some land down there, but they thought it might be an archipelago, and that the pole could easily just be on an ice cap.
But research suggested that Antarctica was probably a continent, based on the type of seafloor debris dropped by the icebergs that floated north, and they had some clues that Antarctica governed the global climate and the currents from the oceans, from the cold down there. The fossil records in South America, Africa, and Australia suggested that there was a southern continent and that it was once connected to Antarctica. So there were things pointing to a scientifically interesting body of land down there that no one had ever explored.
What did the scientists in Scott's party find out?
There were endless scientific discoveries that had nothing to do with Scott: that Antarctica was a continent; that it was once, indeed, much warmer; and that there was once rich flora—the whole area was once vegetated; and that it had then gotten colder but was now warming up again. They documented quite a lot of glacial retreat. They also made it to the south magnetic pole and did the first extensive work in terrestrial magnetism, to determine exactly how magnetic lines lay, which are curved. Before they did that, you didn't know exactly where a compass was pointing.
They took a seismograph down and established that the Ring of Fire continues on around through the Ross Sea. They determined the life cycle of emperor penguins. They studied how glaciers move.
In combination with other scientific expeditions, they established for the first time that there was a global ecology, that the entire world is interconnected, and that the most central feature in that system for determining climate and weather and the ocean currents is the Antarctic. Most of the fresh water in the world is in this huge, 9000-foot-high reservoir of ice, and it plays a huge role in governing the global ecology.
It was amazing what Amundsen did, but he didn't do any science. He didn't have any pretensions to do any science—he was simply trying to make it to the pole and back. And he did it magnificently, obviously much better than Scott. Scott never intended to be in a race. He thought his expedition was going to do first-rate science, and in typical British fashion, bag the pole on the side. And his lack of focus certainly handicapped him.
Read more: Why the British Were Doomed to Lose the Race to the South Pole - 100th Anniversary of Reaching the South Pole - Popular Mechanics
