17 January 1912 – Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition reached the South Pole, only to find that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen’s team had beaten them by 33 days.

15 comments

  1. In the photo, top row: Edward Adrian Wilson, Robert Falcon Scott, Lawrence Oates, standing

    and Henry Robertson Bowers and Edgar Evans at the South Pole, sitting.

    All 5 died on the way back from the South Pole.

  2. What I always think about when reading about the race for the South Pole I think that only 52 years later man walked on the moon.

  3. A quite sad story, and fascinating in its own way. Me personally, however, fail to understand why was Falcon Scott so adamant on his man hauling approach. They were hauling rocks and books for 3000 kms ffs.

  4. The two expeditions were the polar opposite. One a fatal disaster, the other an incredible success. It’s only when you dig into the details you see how badly Scott&co failed, right down to their rations. Sheer incompetence.

  5. Oates thought he was slowing the others down so in an attempt to save them during a storm he just ups and says “I am just going outside and may be some time.” Bloody legend

  8. He originally was going for the North Pole, but when someone beat him there he turned the ship around without telling anyone and went for the South Pole to be the first one there.

  9. I guess it is a bad sign for the times we live in, but when I only saw the outline of the picture it looked to me like a ISIS propaganda foto

  10. Mind you, 33 days is almost a lifetime in antarctica. A whole month later means completely different weather and much lower temperatures.

  12. This is something I was taught heavily about in school, we even did plays about this. Only because my city built the boat which was eventually abandoned there after everyone died. It got towed back to the UK eventually and is now fully restored and [has since been turned into a museum](https://i.imgur.com/X4e6iXI.jpg)

  13. One of my favorite books is Worst Journey in the World. It’s written by one of the lesser members of the crew who should never have been part of the expedition but Scott took pity on him. The whole thing was poorly funded, poorly thought through, poorly executed and suffered terrible bad luck. We, the English, still haven’t learned the lessons from this disaster. Every man, dog and pony was as brave as any but that’s just not enough.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14363

    It’s well worth reading to understand the English psyche.

  14. Invest an enormous amount of willpower and energy to achieve a lifegoal.

    Get to the final destination but only to find out someone else got there first and took everything away from you.

    Tries to return to a starting place to lick the wounds and head for a new start – failed to do even that. And they died.

    ​

    Yeah, this is the story of my life basically lol!

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