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| Captain Scott writing in his journal in October 1911 |
Captain Scott lay trapped in his death tent for more than a week before he wrote in his diary for the last time. He was out of food. He had neither light nor heat. A wild blizzard howled outside, ending any chance of going on. "I do not think we can hope for any better things now..." he wrote. "We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more."
That diary entry - a century ago today - tells you all you need to know about the immense character of Robert Falcon Scott. By that point he and his men had been dragging their sledge across Antarctic for months. They had lost the race to the South Pole. They had seen two friends die on the trail. It was cold enough to crack teeth.
That Scott found the strength to write anything is a miracle. And yet, incredibly, there were letters, too. Two other men had made it this far with him. To the wife of Dr Edward Wilson, the 43-year-old explorer wrote, "I should like you to know how splendid he was at the end - everlastingly cheerful." To the mother of Henry Bowers, just 29 when he died, "He remained cheerful, hopeful and indomitable to the end."
A third note was addressed to Scott’s great friend James Barrie, creator of Peter Pan. “We are in a desperate state, feet frozen etc…” it reads, “but it would do your heart good to be in our tent, to hear our songs and the cheery conversation.” And there was also a plea to the public to look after the families of his men: “Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale…”
Once a national icon, Scott’s reputation has taken a pummelling in recent years. He was a bungling amateur, it’s been claimed; an incompetent fool who made a dreadful hash of things. I’m not so sure. Ranulph Fiennes, the world’s greatest living explorer, thinks this version of the story is a travesty. And in his 2003 biography of Captain Scott, he convincingly draws on his own grim experiences of polar travel to robustly rebut the critics.
That diary entry - a century ago today - tells you all you need to know about the immense character of Robert Falcon Scott. By that point he and his men had been dragging their sledge across Antarctic for months. They had lost the race to the South Pole. They had seen two friends die on the trail. It was cold enough to crack teeth.
That Scott found the strength to write anything is a miracle. And yet, incredibly, there were letters, too. Two other men had made it this far with him. To the wife of Dr Edward Wilson, the 43-year-old explorer wrote, "I should like you to know how splendid he was at the end - everlastingly cheerful." To the mother of Henry Bowers, just 29 when he died, "He remained cheerful, hopeful and indomitable to the end."
A third note was addressed to Scott’s great friend James Barrie, creator of Peter Pan. “We are in a desperate state, feet frozen etc…” it reads, “but it would do your heart good to be in our tent, to hear our songs and the cheery conversation.” And there was also a plea to the public to look after the families of his men: “Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale…”
Once a national icon, Scott’s reputation has taken a pummelling in recent years. He was a bungling amateur, it’s been claimed; an incompetent fool who made a dreadful hash of things. I’m not so sure. Ranulph Fiennes, the world’s greatest living explorer, thinks this version of the story is a travesty. And in his 2003 biography of Captain Scott, he convincingly draws on his own grim experiences of polar travel to robustly rebut the critics.
“No previous Scott biographer has manhauled a heavy sledgeload through the great crevasse fields of the Beardmore Glacier, explored icefields never seen by man, or walked a thousand miles on poisoned feet,” he observes. “To write about Hell, it helps if you have been there.”
I’m with Fiennes. Scott made mistakes. We all do. But for me he remains a hero, a man of astonishing guts and courage. His life – and the way he exited it - is the true stuff of legends. What do you think?
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