Captain Robert Falcon Scott: The Controversial Life and Expeditions of the British Explorer

The golden age of polar exploration of the Northern and Southern continents did not reach its zenith until the turn of the 20th century, and national rivalries abounded between the major seafaring nations of the world. Where past explorers made glancing journeys to Antarctica, the superior technology of the coal engine, various new survival materials, and even the motorcar opened new possibilities for more daring treks. Backed by governments, banking organizations, and great newspapers, a small group of restless adventurers assaulted the polar continents with the intent of reaching and marking the exact locations of Earth’s northern and southernmost points.

More than any other country, Britain staked its national pride on being the first to reach the poles. Britain made its first and finest statement for actually reaching the South Pole in the first years of the 20th century, even as the dangers of the Antarctic, including scurvy, dehydration, and hypothermia, were well known to all major explorers. They also understood that even the most incidental detail of an expedition going amiss could spell doom for all parties involved. The era was universally dubbed the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, and some of the explorers who were involved became household names around the world, including British explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton and Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. However, one name above all others has become associated with this period: Robert Falcon Scott. Widely referred to as “Scott of the Antarctic,” Captain Scott became an icon of tenacity in the face of incredible adversity, and his final expedition to the South Pole lives on as an example of the nobility of the human spirit, even in the face of utter disaster. A monument to Scott’s persistence still stands at Observation Point, inscribed with the last line of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”