Scotts Final Journey
On the 24th
of October 1911, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions set off on an
expedition to the coldest, windiest and driest place, the South Pole,
Antarctica.
Getting
Prepared
Scott had planned
hard for the expedition. He had to decide what to take. The food he took on the
journey was cocoa, sugar, biscuits, butter, seal meat and a dry meat called
pemmican. They mostly drank champagne and tea. They wore woolen clothes,
leather gloves with wool in them and leather boots. To transport themselves to
the South Pole they used sledges, ponies, tractors, dogs and they man-hauled on
skies.
Arriving at the
South Pole
On the 3rd
of January 1912, Scott chose four men to join him on the final part of the
journey. He was still 278 kilometers away from the South Pole. Scott and his
companions arrived at the South Pole on the 17th of January 1912. To
their disbelief the Norwegian flag stood in front of them. They had been beaten
by Amundsen. The worst thing they thought would happen to them. After taking
some photographs and eating a meal with their frostbitten fingers
What went wrong?
After finding out
that they were second to get to the South Pole everything fell to pieces after
that. They wore wool which made them sweat, which then froze in their jackets
and then defrosted in the daytime to make their clothes wet. They used the
wrong transport by traveling on sledges but they soon broke down. Then the
ponies struggled in the snow and had to be shot. So in the end they man-
hauled. They got severe frostbite and scurvy and when a blizzard set in they
could travel no further.
In The End
One by one the men
died. Evans collapsed and died at the bottom of a glacier. A month later
Laurence Oates knew that he could not go away further. His foot had frostbite
and he was suffering in pain. One morning he got out of the tents, limped out
into the cold and was never seen again. In the icy silence the men started
dying in their sleeping bags. Only 18km from food depot and they never made it.
In the summertime a search party found the tent and dug the bodies out. The
men’s diaries and letters were sent back to their families.
By Nikita
