National Geographic: September

Here's the link to the National Geographic story about the race to the South Pole.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/09/amundsen/alexander-text

Paying His Way

Through lectures, sponsorships, private donations and other fundraising efforts Scott and his team were able to raise the funds needed for the Terra Nova Expedition. There were some creative advertising tie-ins as well.

Wolsey Underwear used this image in their ads with the headline "Wolsey Chosen By Scott & Amundsen"

Advertisement for Shell Motor Spirit. Scott experimented with motor sledges. The image implies that Shell is in the forefront of modern technology.


OXO the kitchen utensil supplier also came on board with their advertising.








Cigarette Trading Cards became quite popular as well.

Stores on Board

To give you an idea of the enormous amount of supplies that were put into store on the Terra Nova here is a detailed and partial list of food brought on board. This does not include the cooking equipment, medical supplies, surveying equipment, scientific supplies, clothing, tents, blankets etc.

Meats-

Brawn ... .., .., ... 100 2-lb. tins.
Bacon rations ... ... 200Ibs.
Potted Meals........1200 4 oz tins
Ham Loaf.. . ... ... 200 1-lb. tins.
Beef Loaf ... ... . . 200 1-lb. tins.
Assorted Potted Mcats ... ...200 4-oz. tins.

Fish
Sardines ... a . e . , . 15 cases 18-oz. tins.
Cod Roe... 200 tins.
Salmon ... ... 230 tins.
Pilcherds in Oil ... ... 500 lbs. (Is.).
Anchovics ... ... ... 129 doz. 1-lb. bottlcs.
Anchovy Paste ... ... ... 12& doz. qts.
Bloater Paste ... 20 doz. qts

Soups............200 2 lb tins
Scotch Broth
Cock-a-leekie
Ox Tail
Mock Turtle
Giblet
Hare

In addition-
2 Tons of Vegetables and dried vegetables
397 tons of Cereals
2 tons of Jams
2 tons of Boiled Fruit and Dried Fruit
2 tons Milk, butter, Cheese,
Pickles and Sauces
2 1/2 tons of Sugar
Cocoa and Chocolate
Tea, Coffee,
Spices
Wines, Spirits, Lime Juices
Tobacco

CAPE EVANS, Antarctica — A neat stack of seal meat sits in an enclosed porch, tins of cocoa and cabbage are piled on shelves inside, and all seems ready for Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton to take shelter.

Prefabricated in New Zealand in 1910, transported by ship and reassembled on a spit of land on McMurdo Sound in January 1911, the hut was built for the final expedition led by Britain's Scott, whose ill-fated race to reach the South Pole has become the stuff of legend.

It was the biggest structure in Antarctica when it was first built, some 50 feet (15 metres) by 25 feet (7.5 metres), with doors insulated with seaweed and lined with felt. The 52 officers and crew depended on the hut for shelter and for a semblance of civilization: there were clotheslines, clocks and a gramophone.

Early 1911

1911

Terra Nova arrives off Ross Island and scouts for possible landing sites - eventually proceeding to the "Skuary" about 15 miles north of Scott’s 1902
Discovery Expedition base. He renames it Cape Evans The shore parties disembark with the ponies, dogs, motorised sledges and the bulk of the party's supplies

18 January 1911

A prefabricated accommodation hut is made

26 January 1911

Griffith Taylor, Debenham, Wright and P.O. Evans land from Terra Nova at
Butter Point for a geological exploration of the west coast of McMurdo Sound

Depot laying on the Barrier for use on the polar journey begins

30 January 1911

The ‘Western Geological’ party establishes its main depot in the Ferrar Glacier
Region and conducts explorations and survey work in the Dry Valley, Taylor
Glacier and Koettlitz Glacier areas

26 January 1911

A party under Campbell heads east but fails to land on King Edward VII Land. Campbell sails north-west to Victoria Land instead. On its return, Terra Nova encounters Amundsen’s expedition camped in the Bay of Whales

Terra Nova Timeline 1910

1910

15 June 1910

• Terra Nova sets sail from Cardiff, Wales.
• Scott joins the ship later in South Africa and stays on it until it reaches Melbourne, Australia
• He leaves the ship again to continue fundraising, but not after he receives a telegram from Roald Amundsen to tell him that he too is “proceeding south”
• Terra Nova proceeds to New Zealand

29 November 1910

• Terra Nova leaves Port Chalmers, New Zealand. Scott is once again on board – Along with 34 dogs, 19 Siberian ponies and three motorized sledges. However, 2 ponies,1 dog, 1 sledge, coal and petrol are lost a few days later in a heavy storm

10 December 1910

• Terra Nova meets the southern pack ice and is halted for 20 days before being able to continue south

(Painting above based on Edmund Wilson's sketches)

The Discovery Expedition

Robert Scott had already made an earlier expedition to the South Pole before heading up the Terra Nova Expedition. It launched the Antarctic careers of many who would become leading figures in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott who led the expedition, Ernest Shackleton, Edward Wilson, Frank Wild, Tom Crean and William Lashly.

The British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901–04, generally known as the Discovery Expedition, was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since James Clark Ross's voyage sixty years earlier.

Organized on a large scale under a joint committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), the new expedition aimed to carry out scientific research and geographical exploration in what was then largely an untouched continent.

Its scientific results covered extensive ground in biology, zoology, geology, meteorology and magnetism. There were important geological and zoological discoveries, including those of the snow-free McMurdo Dry Valleys and the Cape Crozier Emperor Penguin colony. In the field of geographical exploration, achievements included the discoveries of King Edward VII Land, and the Polar Plateau via the western mountains route. The expedition did not make a serious attempt on the South Pole, its principal southern journey, only traveling to the Farthest South mark at a reported 82°17'S.

As a trailbreaker for later ventures, the Discovery Expedition was a landmark in British Antarctic exploration history. After its return home it was celebrated as a success, despite having needed an expensive relief mission to free Discovery and its crew from the ice, and later disputes about the quality of some of its scientific records. It has been asserted that the expedition's main failure was its inability to master the techniques of efficient polar travel using skis and dogs a legacy that persisted in British Antarctic expeditions throughout the Heroic Age.

Map showing the Discovery Expedition's general field of work, 1902–04. Main journeys: RED line; Southern journey to Farthest South, November 1902 to February 1903. BLACK line; Western journey through Western Mountains to Polar Plateau, October–December 1903. BLUE line; Journeys to message point and Emperor Penguin colony at Cape Crozier, October 1902, September and October 1903.

( from Wikipedia)

To What End?

Amundsen's Singular Focus on Being First

For Amundsen, significance came from being the first to do something. His drive for success was not entirely a matter of ego. To continue to explore he needed to raise money–lots of it–and challenges that were easy or already accomplished by someone else sold no books and garnered little financial support.

His Antarctic team consisted only of men with the skills and training that could help him to achieve his dream to be the first to stand at 90°S. He took no scientists, journalists, or others who might have had their own plans.

For Scott, the significance of this journey was a more complex issue. Being first at the South Pole mattered, but so did science. Because he wanted his expedition to be both a triumph of exploration and an expansion of knowledge, he invited scientists to join him, at significant expense to his program. The observations and collections they made during the course of the Terra Nova expedition formed the basis for an extensive body of scientific literature that is still consulted today.

The Great Barrier

The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica (an area of roughly 487 000 km2, and about 800 km across: about the size of France).[1] It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 km long, and between 15 and 50 metres high above the water surface. 90 percent of the floating ice, however, is below the water surface.

The ice shelf was named after Captain Sir James Clark Ross who discovered it on 28 January 1841. It was originally named the Victoria barrier by Ross, after Queen Victoria and later the Great Ice Barrier as it prevented sailing further south. Ross mapped the ice front eastward to 160°W.

Man vs. Dog

Scott's decision to haul the sleds by manpower instead of by dogs was a probably the most costly of his decisions. Amundsen, on the other hand, had calculated how long his dogs would last and after their usefulness as sled haulers he planned on killing them and using their meat to feed the men of his team.


As the temperature sinks below -20°C (-4°F), friction no longer heats the snow enough to create or maintain a liquid film. As a result, the ice surface feels rougher and the sled becomes harder to pull.)

“Man-hauling” required men strapped into harnesses to drag heavy sleds. Henry “Birdie” Bowers said, “I have never ... so nearly crushed my inside into my backbone by the everlasting jerking with all my strength.”

Uncle Bill

Edward A. Wilson ( 1872–1912): Physician, painter, and naturalist, Wilson produced drawings and watercolors that form lasting visual tributes to the Discovery and Terra Nova expeditions.

Affectionately nicknamed 'Uncle Bill' by the men of the expedition, Wilson was the confidant of many, respected for his judgement, mediatory skills and dedication to others. By all accounts, Wilson was probably Scott's closest comrade of the expedition. Scott wrote "Words must always fail me when I talk of Bill Wilson. I believe he really is the finest character I ever met." When Scott's final camp was discovered by a search team in November 1912, Bowers and Wilson were found frozen in their sleeping bags. Scott's bag was open and his body partially out of his bag - his left arm was extended across Wilson.

Kathleen Bruce Scott

Scott, Kathleen (1878–1947). British portrait sculptor, born Kathleen Bruce at Carlton-in-Lindrick, Nottinghamshire, the daughter of a clergyman. After spending a few months at the Slade School, she studied in Paris at the Académie Colarossi and under Rodin, 1901–6. In 1908 she married Captain Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctic), who died on his return from the South Pole in 1912. Her most famous work is the statue commemorating him (unveiled 1915) in Waterloo Place, London. She did portrait busts of many other distinguished contemporaries. After her husband's death she was granted the rank of a widow of a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and was known as Lady Scott. In 1922 she married Lieutenant-Commander Edward Hilton-Young, who in 1935 became Baron Kennet; some reference books, including Tate Gallery catalogues and the Dictionary of National Biography, list her as Lady Kennet. Her autobiography, Self-Portrait of an Artist, was posthumously published in 1949.

Roald Amundsen

Roald Amundsen: From Aspiring Explorer To National Hero

Early Antarctic Experience and Early Success

Born to a family of Norwegian ship-owners on July 16, 1872, Roald Amundsen was four years younger than Robert F. Scott. Despite his mother's hopes that he would become a doctor, Amundsen knew by the age of 15 that he would one day be an explorer.

Leaving university for a life at sea, he joined the 1897-99 Belgica Antarctic Expedition under Adrien de Gerlache to explore the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The ship became trapped in the ice for 13 months and the relentless darkness, isolation, and inadequate nutrition began to affect the crew. Amundsen credited the expedition's surgeon and photographer, Frederick Cook, for saving them from the looming threat of scurvy by organizing hunting excursions to find seal meat, which contains small quantities of vitamin C. The ship finally escaped the ice and the crew returned home. Amundsen gained crucial experience in Antarctic survival and developed the ability to cope with life-threatening situations.

After several expeditions Amundsen was preparing his greatest adventure; to be the first to get to the North Pole

Amundsen was poised to leave in 1909, but in April, two American explorers—Robert Peary and Fred Cook—claimed to have already reached the North Pole. Had scientific research been Amundsen's chief goal, failure to be the first shouldn't have mattered very much. But for Amundsen, it meant finding another objective, one that would be regarded just as important in the world's eyes.

With Plans to Head North in Shambles, Amundsen Secretly Aims South

But there were some problems with his decision to head south. Robert Falcon Scott had already announced his intention to sail for Antarctica in 1910, with the same aim of reaching the South Pole. More importantly, Amundsen had received funding from the Norwegian government for his planned Arctic expedition.

Amundsen was faced with a choice. He could openly announce his intention to go south and hope that everyone would regard the change of plan as acceptable. Or he could pretend the Arctic trip was still on while surreptitiously making his preparations for Antarctica. Amundsen did not hesitate for very long: All would be done in secret.

NPR Podcast

Link to the NPR podcast.
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/02/137481872/in-race-to-south-pole-scott-lost-or-did-he

Edgar Evans

"I thought it'd be worth a hand for that - to go to the Pole. To be one of the first."

Edgar Evans ("Taff", "P.O. Evans;" 1876–1912): A career petty officer in the Royal Navy, Taff was a favorite of Scott because of his great strength and practical skills. For unexplained reasons he became severely disoriented and then disabled early in the return trip; he slipped into unconsciousness and died in February 1912.

Race to the South Pole Podcast

My favorite podcast has an excellent episode called Race to the South Pole. You can access it through itunes, your smart phone's ipod, computer or ipad. I'm not sure if I can directly link it here but the episode date is 9-22-2010. That should help you find it.