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Scott's party of eight men try to dig a heavy sled out of soft snow on the Beardmore glacier. (The negatives were thought lost for 100 years.)
The fifth man!
Scott and seven men had already crossed 400 miles of the ice shelf and climbed 10,000 feet of glacier, treacherously criss-crossed with deep crevasses. They had shot their cumbersome ponies and sent their quick-footed dog-teams back because there were too few to continue with.
At last, Scott names the three men who would come with him to the South Pole. As expected, he would be taking his old friend from the Discovery expedition, William ‘Uncle Bill’ Wilson, the chief scientist. But when Scott named the army officer Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates, there were immediate protests. Oates had been badly injured in the leg during the Boer War.
The expedition surgeon, Atkinson, whom Scott had sent back in one of the earlier parties (against Wilson’s advice) had pointed out that Oates’s boots leaked badly and his feet were already in a bad way. They were ‘like hay.’ But Scott insisted that Oates must come with him to represent the British Army. (We argue that Scott had his own personal reasons for keeping Oates with him.)
Last of all, Scott announced, he would take someone to represent the ranks… and it would be... Petty Officer Edgar ‘Taff’ Evans. Yet again there were protests. Everyone pointed out that Scott needed a navigator and the only one on the glacier was Lieutenant Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers. Scott didn't agree. Evans was a mountain of a man and, if there was a sled to pull, Evans had just the kind of muscle to do it.
Eventually, Scott did see sense. Sort of. It was madness for him to be the only navigator and he agreed to take Bowers. But instead of replacing the struggling Oates, Scott announced that Bowers would come along as a fifth man.
Not for the first time, Scott’s endless calculations – pages and pages of scribbled notes on weights and distances and food and cooking fuel to carry – proved to be a waste of time. Not only would the man-mountain Evans consume more than the average Scott had calculated (which the expedition surgeon already believed was too little for men hauling a sled), he was now setting off with five men and food and fuel for only four. They also only had four pairs of skis. They would have to take it in turns to walk.
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The tent left by Amundsen, photographed by a member of Scott's team, Birdie Bowers (Lieutenant Henry Robertson Bowers). What a poignant scene!
'Welcome to 90 degrees'
Meanwhile, Amundsen’s team consisted of four men, with four sledges and 52 dogs. They had set out on 20 October 1911, eleven days before Scott. By 8 November, Amundsen was recording in his diary ‘we are going like greyhounds over the endless flat, snow plain’. Moral was sky high. They had copious supplies. There was even time for one day off in four to rest.
On 6 December 1911 a blizzard was howling across the plain. ‘Can see absolutely nothing at all,’ wrote Amundsen. Hundreds of miles to the northwest, Scott’s expedition had ground completely to a halt and was hunkered down in its tents. Scott would insist that the weather had been his greatest enemy. But that day Amundsen clocked up another 20 nautical miles – more than Scott ever achieved. Soft snow was faster going for dogs, but a disaster for ponies and manhauling. Amundsen and his team were now just over 100 miles from the pole.
Eight days later, Friday 14 December 1911, Helmer Hanssen – who was the best navigator and usually went ahead - called for Amundsen to take the lead. Around 3 o’clock they halted. Hanssen’s calculations told them that they had reached the pole.
‘So,’ recorded Amundsen, ‘we arrived, and planted our flag at the geographical South Pole. Thanks be to God.’ They had got there with three sledges and 17 remaining dogs, though one – Helgi – was exhausted and now had to be put down. The men all gripped the flag as it was planted and they now sat down to what Amundsen called ‘our celebratory meal – a little piece of seal meat each.’
They named the place King Haakon VII’s Plateau. They called their base Poleheim. To compensate for any potential errors in their calculations the four of them (all navigators) each skied 10 miles to different points of the compass, creating a box around the Pole. They marked each corner with a 12-foot long black flag and a small bag tied to a sledge runner.
At the point they reckoned was the Pole itself, they erected their special reserve tent designed by Frederick Cooke, and brought along for the purpose. Inside they left a bag with a letter to King Haakon of Norway. There was also a note to Scott asking him to forward the letter in case they didn’t make it back. The weather continued fair and they had enough supplies to spend three days and five hours at the Pole. Then they turned for home.
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‘the dogs which would have been our salvation have
evidently failed’
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