History of science - world fame to Robert Scott / Edward G. Larson

Explorer Robert P. Scott refused to give up the ambitious scientific agenda he set for his expedition in the race to the South Pole in 1911

One hundred years ago, in June 1911, Robert Falcon Scott and 32 members of his expedition, most of them British scientists, shippers and sailors, huddled in the darkness of the Antarctic winter. In this season the sun does not rise above the horizon and a layer of 2.5 meters of ice seals the sea around the continent. Winter temperatures on Ross Island, the southernmost exposed piece of land reached by Scott's ship, can drop to minus 45 degrees and severe blizzards hit frequently. Completely cut off from the rest of the world and without wireless communication, the researchers waited for the longer and warmer days of spring, the days of October. Some of them were then to embark on a science of nearly 1,500 kilometers, crossing an ice shelf, a mountain range and the South Pole Plateau, to reach a point of no particular interest except that it marks the bottom of the earth.

Two British expeditions have already tried to reach the South Pole. Scott himself headed one of them in 1901-1904 and Ernest Shackleton headed the second expedition from 1907 to 1909. They did not reach their destination. But this time Scott was full of confidence. Based on those previous attempts, he planned this journey methodically, not only to reach the South Pole first but also to advance a challenging scientific agenda. He had already placed several teams that were to deploy and scan the Ross Sea basin and collect fossils, data and other finds of interest to science. With the coming of spring his crew planned to start moving south and plant the British flag at the Pole at the beginning of the Antarctic summer, then return with double glory, both for the conquest of the Pole and for the scientific discoveries.

The long winter months gave Scott plenty of time to turn around and make the fateful decision he had made four months earlier, just before winter closed in on the group of explorers. In February 1911, some of his men tried to reach King Edward VII Land on the eastern side of the Ross Ice Shelf. There they met another expedition, which set up camp on the seaward side of the ice shelf, about 560 kilometers from Scott's camp. They were nine men from Norway, headed by Roald Amundsen, an expert in arctic skiing and dog sledding. In 1905, Amundsen was the first to cross the "Northwest Passage" north of Canada. At that time he was supposed to be on his way to the North Pole, which is about 20,000 kilometers away. But Amundsen secretly changed his plans and set his sights on the South Pole precisely in an attempt, it seemed to Scott, to surprise the British explorers. The equipment of Amundsen's group was light because it had no scientific ambitions. They planned to race to the pole on skis and dog sleds from a base they had set up 100 kilometers closer to the pole than Scott's camp on Bruce Island. Scott's measured and well-planned march to the Pole suddenly turned into a race.

The news caused a kind of crisis in the Scott camp. Some suggested giving up science and concentrating on racing. If you have to choose between the pole and science, they argued, it is better to choose the pole. But Scott thought otherwise. Scott's first trip to Antarctica yielded a host of geological and biological samples, meteorological and magnetic data, and findings related to oceanography and glacier research. For him, the scientific part of the current trip was important.

Not expecting the competition, Scott had to choose between throwing all his gold on the pole and sticking to the original plan. He chose to stick to the plan. "The proper, and more prudent course for us is to continue our actions as if nothing had happened," Scott wrote in his diary regarding the challenge posed by Amundsen. He doubted that Amundsen's sled dogs would be able to withstand an accelerated run of hundreds of kilometers over unfamiliar terrain, but even if they did, he hoped to catch up with them nonetheless. From a historical point of view, it is to be congratulated that he did not abandon research in favor of going to the Pole, since his expedition contributed a lot to science. But this loyalty to the scientific agenda took a heavy toll on Scott and his men.

scientific diversions

The pursuit of science was a kind of tradition in the British Navy. And Scott ended up being a naval officer. All three British expeditions to Antarctica at the beginning of the 20th century included physicists, geologists and biologists. Since evolution was one of the main topics at the time, the scientists looked for important evidence in the form of a particular fossil: a plant from the Paleozoic era called Glossopteris. Critics of Darwin's theory relied on the seemingly sudden appearance of the same broad-leaved plant in the fossil record of both Africa and Australia and South America to support the creationist view. Darwin replied with his own hypothesis about an ancient continent that was previously in the South Pole region and bridged in some way between all these southern continents, and on which the Glossopteris developed. The first expedition led by Scott found veins of coal in the soil, proving that vegetation once flourished in Antarctica. Whereas Shackleton's expedition even found plant fossils, but not glossopteris fossils. Scott hoped to end the controversy.

Scott's plan for the journey to the Pole included several auxiliary groups that would separate from the group at various points along the way and wait. Only a small team that would drag one sled was supposed to reach the pole itself on foot. This approach, Scott thought, would provide a margin of safety and perhaps even enable research and mapping along the way. And throughout his stay in Antarctica he planned to send research teams to collect scientific findings only. Scott could have ordered the various teams to abandon their arduous scientific tasks and concentrate on the journey to the pole, but he chose not to order so. During the voyage to the Pole, some officers and scientists were to remain at the main base to record meteorological and magnetic data, while the sailors and scientists on Scott's ship continued the oceanographic study of the South Seas. Scott changed nothing due to Amundsen's appearance.

The first group left the mother base in January 1911 before its men knew about Amundsen and his men. Scott sent ten men in two separate groups to explore the mountains and glaciers of the Antarctic continent itself. Even after the larger group between the two discovered Amundsen's camp, it returned and set out to fulfill another scientific mission: the study of protruding rock layers, glaciers and bays along the northern coast of "Victoria Land". This team stayed there in the winter of 1911, as planned, without being able to contribute their part in the effort to reach the Pole. And in November 1912, after a second and unplanned winter in the field, the group returned to Scott's base with a bunch of fossils in hand, including an impressive wood print, but not Glossopteris.

The smaller group, which included the pair of geologists T. Griffin Taylor and Frank Debenham, explored the dry valleys, bare peaks and vast glaciers of the central coast of Victoria Country in February and March 1911. They spent the winter months, from April to October 1911, at the main base, where they examined their findings, which included many fossils (but not Glossopteris). Then, in early November 1911, shortly after Scott left for the Pole, Taylor and Debenham set out on an even longer tour. They were joined by the best nordic skier among Scott's men, Trygve Gran, and Sergeant Robert Ford, who was a very sturdy sledder, to help them navigate the difficult terrain. The fact that Scott placed Grann and Ford in the scientific expedition and not in his own group proves his commitment to science. It was worthwhile; Taylor and Debenham surveyed a vast area of ​​unknown mountains and glaciers, where they found an extraordinary selection of Paleozoic fossils (which unfortunately did not include a Glossopteris fossil).

Following the penguins

However, the most significant diversion from the effort to reach the pole stemmed from the promise that Scott made to Edward A. Wilson in exchange for his agreement to join the expedition. Wilson, the zoologist, participated in Scott's first Antarctic expedition and excelled in his actions. That expedition found a nesting colony of emperor penguins at Cape Crozier on Bruce Island. Wilson discovered that these birds, then believed to belong to an ancient race, laid eggs and hatched in winter. Scott assured Wilson that he would be able to return to this hatchery in mid-winter to see if the remains of reptile teeth could be identified in the emperor penguin embryos. Wilson hoped to prove that birds evolved from reptiles.

Three of Scott's best men - Wilson, his assistant, the zoologist Apsley Sherry-Gerard, and H. R. Bowers known as "Birdy" - were therefore absent from the base during the preparation and planning of the trip to the Pole. Instead, they set off to the nesting colony on their own journey that presented them with the unknown dangers of sledding in the dark of the Antarctic winter. Wilson and his group set out on June 27, 1911 for a 112-kilometer journey across the Ross Ice Shelf. They hauled scientific equipment, antifreeze equipment, and supplies weighing 343 kilograms in two 2.7 meter long sleds tied nose to tail and harnessed to the group members.

The group moves south past Ross Island, where the temperature often drops below minus 55 degrees Celsius. The surface became difficult to slide on because of the intense cold, and they had to drag the sleds alternately. They thus advanced one kilometer for every three kilometers of walking. At the end of three weeks of arduous towing, they finally arrived at the moraine overlooking Cape Crozier. They built a stone hut there in which they hoped to examine the embryos before the eggs froze completely. They used one sled as a roof, spread a tarp over four stone walls, covered the slits with snow and installed a grease gun for heating. Then, in the twilight of midday, the light that dimly illuminates the ice for a few hours each day, they made their way through a maze of huge ice humps and deep glacial crevasses to the penguin colony. They arrived just as it was getting dark. "Material that may be of the utmost importance to science was within our reach," Sherry-Gerard lamented later, "with every observation we made we turned theory into fact, and we only had one short moment at our disposal." They took six eggs and hurried to the cabin hoping to return to the colony at another time.

A fierce storm broke out that night. The roof sheet of the hut rose and fell in the fierce storm until at noon on the third day it was torn to pieces and scattered everywhere. The members of the group remained curled up in their sleeping bags under the drifting snow. When the storm finally abated on the fourth day, Wilson decided to retreat. "We were forced to admit defeat by the weather of Cape Crozier and the darkness," he wrote. Some of the eggs were lost and the others froze and were no longer of any research use.

On the way back the men were exhausted. The temperature dropped again to minus 55 degrees, and the sleeping bags lost their insulating capacity. They hardly sleep at night. Bowers and Sherry-Gerrard were so tired that they dozed off while pulling the sleds. On one occasion, Bowers fell into a deep crevasse and remained hanging on the harness until he was extricated. Sherry-Gerard's jaws shook so hard that his teeth broke. By the time they reached the base, in August, each bag they had weighing 8 kilograms had accumulated up to 12 kilograms of frozen sweat and snow that melted and refrozen. "They looked more weather-worn than anyone I'd seen up to that point," Scott said. "Their faces were scarred and wrinkled, their eyes dull, their hands white as lime and grooved from exposure to moisture and cold."

Bowers recovered quickly and in September 1911 went out into the field again for one last tour before the journey to the Pole. Scott went with Bowers and Edgar Evans on a two-week tour over 280 miles. His purpose was to test pegs stuck by another team in the glaciers to measure their movement. Walking in the mountains was tiring. The group dragged a heavy sled in a temperature of 40 degrees below zero. Every 24 hours they had to cover a distance of 56 kilometers. "It's not really clear why they're leaving," Debenham said at the time. The most likely reason was scientific research. Scott had previously written in his diary: "Things are really satisfactory on the whole." If the journey [to the Pole] is carried out, nothing, not even the first setting foot at the Pole, will rob the expedition of its position as one of the most important polar expeditions that have ever set out." It was the scientific discoveries that gave his expedition this status.

The exit to the pole

Bad weather and delays due to other missions delayed Scott's departure to the Pole. When he finally left, on November 1, 1911, he was already 12 days behind Amundsen.

"I don't know what to think of Amundsen's chances," Scott wrote shortly before setting off with his men. "A long time ago I decided to act exactly as I would have acted had he not appeared. Any attempt to compete with him would spoil my plans." The guiding line in Scott's way to the pole was safety and not necessarily speed. The plan included several auxiliary teams equipped with tractors to pull the sleds across the ice shelf they had to initially navigate. Other teams will be equipped with dog sleds and ponies. These will be able to reach the very foot of the mountains of the Birdmore Glacier and maybe even qualify for them. Each auxiliary team will leave a stockpile of supplies at a certain point and return as they come. The stockpiles will be used by the polar expedition on its way back. In this way, the teams will be eliminated one by one, until only one small group with one sled remains that will cross the polar plateau, a plateau that is about three kilometers above sea level, and reach the pole itself. This was a cumbersome method, because the maximum speed of such an entourage does not exceed the speed of its slowest component. It turned out to be the ponies. They had difficulty making their way through the soft snow, which reached up to their waists, and needed fodder and special protection from the wind at stops.

On January 3, 1912, the last relief team started to make their way back from the polar plateau. In the last group that turned to the pole itself were Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Evans and British Army Captain Lawrence Oates known as "Titus". Before them stretched 240 kilometers of ice wasteland, which was of no interest to scientific research, except for the usual meteorological observations and observation of the windswept terrain.

Meanwhile Amundsen and his men advanced rapidly. The dogs dragged vigorously, and they reached the Pole on December 14 after a sled journey that lasted two months. The way back took even less. The ground surface was solid, and most of the way is downhill. "The wind was at our back all the time, and all the days were sunny and warm," Amundsen wrote. The amount of food allotted to the people and the dogs increased as they passed through the supply depots that were equidistant from each other. Five weeks later they reached their base. Amundsen gained weight.

On January 17, 1912, Scott reached the pole and found the Norwegian flag there. "My God," he wrote, "this is a terrible, terrible place."

The march is back

But the hardest part was still ahead of them. The weather became very cold, and the snow took on the texture of sand. Every day, the sledders' diaries were filled with one complaint: we only drag and don't slide at all. The skis of the sled would sometimes sink so deep into the grain bed that the crossbars of the sled plowed through the coarse snow. The food was sufficient, but did not provide all the calories needed for walking and dragging in such conditions.

The members of the group became weaker and weaker. Evans' hand was cut and the wound became infected. Oates suffered severe frostbite. There was no medical diagnosis, but all showed signs of scurvy. Even so, they set aside time for geological observations. Descending from the Beardmore Glacier, they made their way to the moraine at the foot of Mount Beckley. "Obviously, this moraine is so interesting that... I decided to camp and devote the rest of the day to geological research,” Scott wrote after lunch on February 8. “We found ourselves at the foot of vertical cliffs of Beacon-type sandstone, weathering rapidly and containing unmistakable coal veins. The sharp-eyed Wilson recognized several imprints of plants in these coal veins. The last one he found was a piece of charcoal with clear outlines of layers of leaves."

The plants were similar to Glossopteris. Bowers helped Wilson load fossils and rock samples weighing 16 kilograms onto the sled.

Evans and Oates died first. After trudging down the glacier for a week, Evans' sense of direction was fading. He lost consciousness and passed away on February 17. Oates' frostbite got so bad that he couldn't keep up with the pace of the walk. But he refused to hold back his friends. So he left the tent in the middle of a snowstorm on March 16. According to the reports, he said: "I'm just going out, maybe for a long time," and never came back.

The rest marched until the 19th of March. They left all the equipment and took with them only the minimum necessary and at Wilson's request, the journals, the observation notebooks and the geological samples. Thus they reached the last parking point, only 18 kilometers from a vital supply depot. A blizzard trapped them in this spot for eight days. The food and fuel ran out. They died together. Wilson and Bowers looked asleep, and Scott between them, his sleeping bag half open and his arm resting on Wilson.

The searchers found them in the spring, frozen, and the logs and samples with you. Wilson, it turned out, was right about the fossils; Indeed it was the glossopteris fossils that were so sought after. "The 150 grams of samples brought by the Polar Expedition from Mount Beckley," wrote Debenham, "are particularly suitable for settling a geological dispute of many years as to the nature of the ancient union of Antarctica and Australia." Wilson, a tireless researcher and imbued with the zeal of a holy doer, must have been pleased. Darwin was right, and he helped prove it.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

And more on the subject

The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole. Roland Huntford. Modern Library, 1999.

The Coldest March. Susan Solomon. Yale University Press, 2001.

The Worst Journey in the World. Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Penguin, 2006. www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14363

Scott of the Antarctic. David Crane. Vintage, 2007.

Robert Falcon Scott Journals: Captain Scott's Last Expedition. Reissued edition. Edited by Max Jones. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Scott Polar Research Institute: www.spri.cam.ac.uk

Scientific American online

You can listen to an interview with the author of the article and recordings from Scott's polar expedition diary atwww.ScientificAmerican.com/jun2011/south-pole

Facebook