The explorer's death sparked a frenzy of mourning, but he was later viewed as a buffoon. A century on, author Carol Birch asks: is he a hero or not?
George V led the mourners at the memorial service for Robert Falcon Scott and those who died with him on his ill-fated polar expedition. Thousands stood outside St Paul's Cathedral in February 1913, far more than had turned out for the Titanic dead the year before. These two tragedies seemed to encapsulate the doomed hubris of an era then drawing to a close.
Two years later, thousands would be required to give up their lives in the service of their country in the Great War. Scott's fate was held up as an example of noble sacrifice. Films of the expedition were distributed to the Front as propaganda, and every schoolchild was told the story of how Titus Oates walked bravely out to his death.
But by the 1970s, Scott had become a standing joke, an imperial buffoon. Four men in a tent was a terrific subject for comedy sketches. Scott was a donkey leading lions, an incompetent fool whose drive to claim the south pole for Britain condemned his men to death. The backlash against the romantic myth of Scott of the Antarctic was complete.
January sees the 100th anniversary of Scott's adventure. A major exhibition, with new material, opened this month at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, while another including a replica of Scott's hut opens at the Natural History Museum in London next month. Official photographs from the expedition are on display at Buckingham Palace. A good time, then, to push past the stereotypes.
When the 1910 Terra Nova expedition to the south pole was announced, Scott was already an Antarctic veteran, having led an earlier exploration to the continent, mapping extensively and instigating scientific studies. His aim now was the pole, but he would take with him a multidisciplinary team of scientists.
Shackleton's unsuccessful attempt on the south pole, and the claiming of the north by Cook and Peary, had fanned a pole fever not unlike the coming space race. Public clamour for the pole was intense. When news came that Roald Amundsen was aiming to take the pole for Norway, there was outrage. Amundsen had concealed his plans to wrongfoot the competition. Still, he was a long way away, and spirits were high as Scott's team overwintered at Cape Evans in Antarctica.
The base hut was divided along naval lines, with officers and scientists in one part, sailors in the other. Nobody seems to have remarked on it at the time, but it bolstered the future image of Scott as symbol of the old regime. Scientific projects got under way, and work began on laying depots for the journey. Lawrence (Titus) Oates was in charge of the ponies. They were a poor lot, he maintained, but Scott thought they were fine. At the same time Oates was writing to his mother, "the ponies themselves are first class." Six died because of a serious misjudgment of the sea ice. Ten out of a team of 13 dogs plunged into a crevasse. They were saved, and Scott was himself lowered down to rescue two who had slipped and were stuck on a ledge. This incident convinced him the dogs would never make it to the pole.
When news came that Amundsen was close by with a small team fixed solely on reaching the pole, Scott knew he could not compete. His expedition, hauling lots of heavy equipment, was planned as a scientific endeavour, not a race. "Any attempt to race must have wrecked my plan," he wrote, "besides which, it doesn't appear the sort of thing one is out for … it is the work that counts, not the applause that follows." But public and press were baying for the pole in the light of this sudden threat to national pride. "Myself," Oates wrote to his mother, "I dislike Scott intensely, and would chuck the whole thing if it was not that it was a British expedition, and must beat those Norwegians.' For Scott, scientific exploration was the "real work", but the pole was his duty to the public.
Sixteen men left Cape Evans with dogs, ponies and sledges for the 900-mile journey. The two motor sledges broke down almost immediately. It was a horrible journey in unseasonably high temperatures. Warm, wet blizzards soaked everything, and deep snow, into which the ponies sank to their bellies, slowed things down. Scott instigated the building of 6ft-high snow walls to shelter them. At the foot of the Beardmore Glacier, they shot the ponies as food for dogs and men. The dog teams turned back, and three sledging teams went on. When they were 146 miles from the pole, Scott chose the final party to accompany him on the last leg of the journey: Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Evans. With full rations to last till April, there seemed no reason for concern.
After three days, Evans revealed a badly wounded hand that had become infected. He had known this before, but said nothing because he wanted to be in the polar party. Oates had also concealed the extent of frostbite in his feet. If he'd known these things, would Scott have chosen differently? Almost certainly. They pressed on, reaching the pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that Amundsen had beaten them by 34 days. It was a bitter blow, but not unexpected.
On the trek back, everyone but Bowers, a dynamo of a man, had severe frostbite. Progress slowed to the pace of Evans, who struggled on for nearly 100 miles. By February he was in a terrible state, and had lost two fingernails. His death was both a blow and a relief.
The depots were depleted, and it's possible that someone on the returning teams had taken more than their share. Temperatures, so unseasonably high on the way, now plummeted to -40 C. Nothing like this had ever been recorded in this region at the time. At a certain point the dog teams should have met them, but owing to a mixup it didn't happen. Progress now slowed to the pace of Oates, crippled with frostbite. Caught in a blizzard, they camped. On His 33rd birthday, 17 March 1912, Oates walked out with the immortal words: "I am just going outside, and may be some time." He never came back.
They might have made it if the weather had not stopped them again. Eleven miles from the next depot they were forced to camp again, and here they died, on or about 29 March. They had been without food, drink, warmth or light for 8 days.
When the bodies were found, eight months later, Wilson and Bowers were in their sleeping bags on either side of Scott, who appears to have been the last to go, and the one to have suffered most. Scott's arm lay across Wilson, his closest friend.
Controversy about Scott is not new. Oates's mother always believed he was responsible for her son's death. Was he to blame? He certainly made mistakes, as did every other polar explorer. But how small are the changes that would need to have been made for this tragedy to have been a triumph? So many elements were unforeseen. Scott cared deeply about his men, and stuck by them through thick and thin. "His was a subtle character," wrote Cherry-Garrard in his memoir of the expedition, "full of lights and shades. He was certainly the most dominating personality in our not-uninteresting community: indeed, there is no doubt that he would carry weight in any gathering of human beings. But few who knew him realised how shy and reserved the man was, and it is partly for this reason that he so often laid himself open to misunderstanding." Scott was impatient and demanding and could throw tempers, though these passed quickly and he didn't hold grudges. "I loved every hair on his head," said Tom Crean, who was with him on both polar expeditions. Tryggve Gran, the Norwegian skiing expert of the expedition, who came in for xenophobic suspicion from Oates and Bowers, remembered him as "a cheerful and easy man … short-tempered and not to be trifled with when angry, but if he had judged someone unfairly and discovered his mistake, he was quick to make amends."
The journals taken from Scott's body show an introspective man, prone to self-criticism. He moans about his men, but praises them far more, frets about the wellbeing of the horses and dogs, worries about the fortunes of the bereaved, and in his last hours writes loving letters to his wife and mother, and paeans of praise about their sons to the mothers of the men who shared his fate. He wrote until his fingers could no longer hold the pen. "For God's sake, look after our people," were his last words. Was he a hero? Set the word free from the narrow definition of his times. Who cares? He was a man who tried, failed and suffered. He was brave, and he left us a marvellous, multi-layered story which, unfinished, still fascinates.