Great Expeditions: 50 Journeys that changed our world. Levison Wood

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       Scott’s disappointed party at the South Pole, 18 January 1912. Clockwise from top left: Oates, Scott, Evans, Wilson, Bowers. Frostbite is plainly visible on their faces.

      On 17 January 1912, Scott looked up from the endless snow at his feet to see a black flag fluttering above a small tent. Amundsen had led his five men, sixteen-dog team on a straight run to the Pole. They encountered little difficulty on the plateau and on 14 December 1911 they made the first human footprints at the bottom of the world. They had erected a tent and left a letter detailing their achievement.

      Scott had been beaten to this long-sought goal by thirty-four days. ‘All the daydreams must go,’ wrote the anguished explorer in his diary. ‘Great God! This is an awful place.’ There was nothing for the distraught men to do but start the 1,300-km (800-mile) return journey. This was a savage undertaking and the exhausted team were pained with frostbite and snow blindness. The first man to die was Edgar Evans. He succumbed on 17 February after falling down a glacier.

      The remaining four trekked on but Lawrence Oates’ toes had become severely frostbitten and he knew that he was holding back his colleagues. On 16 March, Scott wrote in his diary that Oates stood up, said ‘I am just going outside and may be some time,’ then walked out of the tent and was never seen again.

      ‘We knew that Oates was walking to his death... it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman.’

      The three surviving men camped for the last time on 19 March. A ferocious blizzard kept them in their tent in temperatures of -44°C (-47°F) and sealed their fate. They died of starvation and exposure 10 days later. They were 18 km (11 miles) short of One Ton Depot. Had it been in its planned location, they would have made it. Scott was the last to die.

      ‘Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R. Scott. Last entry. For God’s sake look after our people.’

       Both quotes from Captain Scott’s diary

      To the victor, the spoils

      Amundsen’s team arrived back in base camp six weeks after reaching the Pole, on 25 January 1912. They were in Australia at the start of March. News of their success was telegraphed to the world.

      Scott was hailed as a tragic hero, brave in the face of certain death. His legend was held up to inspire generations of Britons. When Amundsen found out about Scott’s death, he said, ‘I would gladly forgo any honour or money if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death.’

      The search party which found Scott and his colleagues collapsed the tent over the bodies then built a cairn of snow above, placing a cross made from their skis on top. Today, after a century of snowstorms, the cairn, tent and cross now lie under 23 m (75 ft) of ice. They have become part of the ice shelf and have already moved 48 km (30 miles) from where they died. In 300 years or so the explorers will once again reach the ocean, before taking to the water and drifting away inside an iceberg.

      Extracts from The Times newspaper reporting on the contrasting outcomes.

Darwin and the Beagle

       Charles Darwin’s voyage on HMS Beagle

      “When on board HMS Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species...

      Introduction to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

       WHEN

      1831–6

       ENDEAVOUR

      Charles Darwin was the naturalist on this five-year circumnavigation of the world.

       HARDSHIPS & DANGERS

      The two summers spent around Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn, with violent weather and unhelpful natives.

       LEGACY

      Darwin amassed evidence from the many places visited on the voyage that led him to develop the theory of evolution.

       Charles Darwin, photographed towards the end of his life.

      Charles Darwin served as the naturalist of the five-year voyage of the surveying ship HMS Beagle, during which it circumnavigated the world. His observations of the natural world, particularly in the southern hemisphere, provided the evidence which led him to develop the theory of evolution.

       The university drop-out

      Darwin was born in Shrewsbury in 1809, the son of a prominent local physician and the grandson of two leading lights of the Industrial Revolution, Josiah Wedgwood and Erasmus Darwin. He was educated at Shrewsbury School, and in 1825 he went with his brother to study medicine at Edinburgh University. His dislike of anatomy and surgery quickly drove him away from a career in medicine and he left Edinburgh without a degree in 1827. The following year, he started at Christ’s СКАЧАТЬ