Exploration
The first attempt
to find a route from the Antarctic coastline to the South Pole was made by
British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on the Discovery Expedition of 1901–04.
Scott, accompanied by Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson, set out with the aim
of travelling as far south as possible, and on 31 December 1902, reached 82°16′
S. Shackleton later returned to Antarctica as leader of the British Antarctic
Expedition (Nimrod Expedition) in a bid to reach the Pole. On 9 January 1909,
with three companions, he reached 88°23′ S – 112 statute miles from the Pole –
before being forced to turn back.
The first people
to reach the Geographic South Pole were Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his party
on December 14, 1911. Amundsen named his camp Polheim and the entire plateau
surrounding the Pole King Haakon VII Vidde in honour of King Haakon VII of
Norway. Robert Falcon Scott had also returned to Antarctica with his second
expedition, the Terra Nova Expedition, in a race against Amundsen to the Pole.
Scott and four other men reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912,
thirty-four days after Amundsen. On the return trip, Scott and his four
companions all died of starvation and extreme cold.
In 1914 Ernest
Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition set out with the goal of
crossing Antarctica via the South Pole, but his ship, the Endurance, was frozen
in pack ice and sank 11 months later. The overland journey was never made.
US Admiral
Richard Evelyn Byrd, with the assistance of his first pilot Bernt Balchen,
became the first person to fly over the South Pole on November 29, 1928.
Robert
Falcon Scott was born on 6 June 1868 in Devonport. He became a naval
cadet at the age of 13 and served on a number of Royal Navy ships in the 1880s
and 1890s. He attracted the notice of the Royal Geographical Society, which
appointed him to command the National Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1904. The
expedition - which included Ernest Shackleton - reached further south than
anyone before them and Scott returned to Britain a national hero. He had caught the
exploring bug and began to plan an expedition to be the first to reach the
South Pole. He spent years raising funds for the trip.
The whaling
ship Terra Nova left Cardiff, Wales in June 1910 and the expedition set off
from base the following October, with mechanical sledges, ponies and dogs.
However, the sledges and ponies could not cope with the conditions and the
expedition carried on without them, through appalling weather and increasingly
tough terrain. In mid December, the dog teams turned back, leaving the rest to
face the ascent of the Beardmore Glacier and the polar plateau. By January 1912, only five remained: Scott,
Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Evans.
The members,
(l to r) Lawrence Oates, Henry Bowers, Robert Falcon Scott, Edward Wilson and
Edgar Evans
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On 17
January, they reached the pole, only to find that a Norwegian party led by
Roald Amundsen, had beaten them there. They started the 1,500 km journey back.
Evans died in mid-February. By March, Oates was suffering from severe frostbite
and, knowing he was holding back his companions, walked out into the freezing
conditions never to be seen again. The remaining three men died of starvation
and exposure in their tent on 29 March 1912 . They were in fact only 20 km from
a pre-arranged supply depot.
Eight months
later, a search party found the tent, the bodies and Scott's diary. The bodies
were buried under the tent, with a cairn of ice and snow to mark the spot.
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