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Hello Doug,

To carry on this interesting conversation:



> Wasn't Sir Ernest a member(2nd or 3rd in command)of a previous Antarctic
> Expedition?I can't remember who with but believe it to be true.

Shackleton was on one of Scott's expeditions. Been a while since I've read
this stuff so I can't conjure it up on spec and I'm too lazy to walk the ten
feet to my library to look it up. In any event, Scott and Shackleton did not
get along and had a falling out early on. Their leaderships styles were very
different; Scott being the toffee-nosed English Upperclassman and Shackleton
being the more egalitarian Irishman. They were bound to clash. Having said
that, Shackleton had his own demons (most polar explorers did) but I won't
get into the details....

Doug wrote:

> Reading accounts of Scott's run to the S. pole and the team's feelings
when
> they reached it and found Admunson was there and gone were heart
renching.As
> were the accounts of his team's slow death going back to base camp.There
is
> a person who made all the wrong choises for the right reasons and payed
> dearly for it.
> An interesting topic.

With all due respect to Scott, he didn't belong there. If you read the
history and if you know anything about polar exploration, Scott was an
amateur. He was bound to get himself into trouble. He refused to learn how
to ski and refused to learn how to drive dogs; despite being strongly
advised to do this by Nansen. Instead he took ponies to do the hauling and
when they died, his men had to haul the heavy loads. If you want to
experience agony of the highest order, try manhauling a heavy load over ice
and snow. It is brutal, nasty work. Scott did, however, have the foresight
to experiment with motorized transportation although this did not pan out.
That wasn't Scott's fault. Vehicles simply weren't that well developed at
the time. For navigation, Scott took theodolites which are cumbersome,
unwieldy and difficult to set up under polar conditions.

Contrast Scott to Amundsen. The latter was a professional. A true
professional. He approached the South Pole trip like a well run military
campaign. For transport, he used dogs and skis. All of his men were expert
dog drivers and skiers. Amundsen took sextants and glass artificial horizons
for navigation. All of his men could navigate with a sextant. Every single
aspect of the trip was planned to the minutest of details. Nothing was left
to chance. In reading Amundsen's account, you would think that the
Norwegians were on a holiday ski-jaunt.

In the end, I too felt bad for Scott, but in the end Scott was the hero and
Amundsen was the goat. Amundsen really hit a nerve with the English by
beating their man to the pole so there was a great deal of animosity towards
him. At one dinner held, ostensibly in Amundsen's honour, one of the English
dignitaries held up a toast: "three cheers for the dogs".  Amundsen was very
bitter about his treatment and described these feelings in his book: "My
Life as an Explorer". Amundsen was very thin-skinned and took things to
heart.

I strongly recommend "Amundsen and Scott" by Roland Huntford. There are some
great descriptions of the navigation techniques of each. Well worth the
read.

Robert

   

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