A short life of the author
Captain Robert Falcon Scott, CVO, RN (6 June 1868 – 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic — the Discovery Expedition (1901–1904) and the Terra Nova Expedition (1910–1913) — and whose journals, written in the tent where he lay dying with his two surviving companions during a blizzard on the Ross Ice Shelf, constitute one of the most celebrated and emotionally devastating documents in the literature of exploration.
Early Career
Scott was born in Devonport, Devon, into a family with naval traditions but no particular distinction. He entered the Royal Navy as a cadet at thirteen and rose through the ranks competently but unremarkably. He was not, by temperament or training, a polar explorer — his appointment to lead the Discovery Expedition in 1901 owed more to social connections and ambition than to any special fitness for the work. This biographical fact is important because much of the subsequent debate about Scott has centred on the question of whether he was adequately prepared for the challenges he faced.
The Discovery Expedition (1901–1904)
Scott’s first Antarctic expedition, aboard HMS Discovery, was primarily scientific rather than geographical, but it included a southern journey with Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson that reached 82°17’S — the farthest south anyone had travelled. The expedition made important contributions to meteorology, magnetism, and biology, and it established Scott’s reputation as a polar explorer. The Voyage of the Discovery (1905), Scott’s two-volume account of the expedition, is a competent if conventional work of exploration writing.
The Race to the Pole
In 1910, Scott set out again for the Antarctic aboard the Terra Nova, with the explicit goal of reaching the South Pole. He was aware that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had changed his plans and was also heading south, but he underestimated Amundsen’s advantages — lighter equipment, greater experience with dog sledging, a closer starting point, and a single-minded focus on speed.
Scott’s plan relied on a combination of motor sledges (which broke down), ponies (which died), and man-hauling — the practice of dragging sledges by human effort alone. The decision to use man-hauling rather than dogs for the final push to the Pole has been the most criticised aspect of Scott’s planning. It was slower, more exhausting, and more dangerous than dog-sledging, and it left no margin for error.
The Pole and the Return
Scott’s polar party — Scott, Edward Wilson, Edgar Evans, Lawrence Oates, and Henry Bowers — reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912 and found Amundsen’s tent, Norwegian flag, and a letter confirming that the Norwegians had arrived on 14 December 1911. Scott’s journal entry is famous: “Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.”
The return journey was a catastrophe. The party was weakened by cold, hunger, and exhaustion. Evans died on 17 February from injuries sustained in falls. Oates, suffering from severe frostbite and knowing that his disability was slowing the party, walked out of the tent into a blizzard with the words “I am just going outside and may be some time” — an act of self-sacrifice that became one of the most famous moments in British history. Scott, Wilson, and Bowers were trapped by a blizzard eleven miles from a supply depot and died in their tent around 29 March 1912.
The Journals
Scott’s journals were found with his body eight months later by a search party. They were published in 1913 as Scott’s Last Expedition and became an immediate sensation. Scott’s final entries — written as he lay dying, knowing that the journals would be his only memorial — are extraordinarily powerful. His last words are famous: “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.”
The journals made Scott a national hero. He was commemorated with statues, memorials, and a national mythology of noble failure that dominated British perceptions of the expedition for half a century.
Revisionism and Counter-Revisionism
Beginning in the 1960s, historians — particularly Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (1979) — challenged the heroic narrative. Huntford portrayed Scott as an incompetent, vain, and poorly prepared leader whose planning failures killed his men, and contrasted him unfavourably with the efficient, professionally brilliant Amundsen. This revisionist view dominated for decades.
More recent scholarship has partially rehabilitated Scott, acknowledging his planning errors while noting that the weather conditions on the return journey were abnormally severe, that his scientific programme was genuinely important, and that the revisionist critique sometimes verged on character assassination. The debate continues, and Scott remains one of the most contested figures in exploration history.
Collecting Scott
Scott’s Last Expedition (1913, Smith, Elder & Co., two volumes) in first edition is one of the most sought-after works of exploration literature, bringing $2,000–$5,000 or more for fine copies. The Voyage of the Discovery (1905, two volumes) is also valuable. Polar exploration memorabilia, photographs, and equipment from both expeditions are extremely collectible. The Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge holds the largest archive of Scott material.