Antarctica
the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton at the end of the 1990s. Shackleton’s 1914 expedition aimed for the first crossing of the Antarctic on foot but his ship Endurance was crushed by ice – a drama captured on film by expedition photographer Frank Hurley. Thanks to Shackleton’s determined leadership, his party survived their 19-month ordeal. So, where Shackleton has been hailed as a model leader, dynamic and inspirational, Scott has been cast as his negative other; remote, capricious and indecisive. The principal complaint of many visitors to Britain’s National Maritime Museum’s ‘South: The Race to the Pole’ exhibition in 2000-2001 was that Scott had been portrayed too positively. Revived reputation Over the last 10 years or so, however, the revisionist cycle has turned again. The award-winning polar scientist Susan Solomon persuasively argued in 2001 that the British team had been the victims of unusually bad weather on their return from the Pole – as Scott himself had claimed in his ‘Message to the Public’. Sir Ranulph Fiennes harnessed the experience of a veteran polar traveller to mount a direct assault on Huntford’s interpretation in his own book – 2004’s Captain Scott. And, a year later, David Crane drew on a wealth of previously unused sources in his Scott of the Antarctic, the most balanced biography
The burial site of Scott, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers, constructed the following spring
of Scott yet published. These works have helped rescue Scott’s reputation, while the research of Susan Solomon and others on climate change in Antarctica follows directly in the footsteps of Scott’s pioneering meteorologist, George Simpson. Scott must certainly shoulder his share of the blame for the Antarctic disaster, but the scientific legacy of his last expedition deserves acknowledgement and celebration. Max Jones lectures in modern British history at the University of Manchester, UK, with particular interest in the rise and fall of the imperial hero.
find out more E The Last Great Quest: Captain Scott’s Antarctic sacrifice by Max Jones (OUP, 2003) E Scott of the Antarctic: a life of courage and tragedy in the extreme south by David Crane (HarperPerennial, 2005, repub. 2012) E The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott by David M Wilson (Little, Brown, 2011) http://bbc.in/sURINJ E The BBC’s Historic Figures page on Scott
What do you think? Was Scott’s adventure the ultimate failure or a triumph of scientific endeavour? email: bbcknowledge@wwm.co.in
David Wilson is the greatnephew of Edward Wilson, who died alongside Scott. He has just published a remarkable collection of Scott’s photographs that have only recently come to light Why were Scott’s pictures forgotten, and how were they found? The expedition had copyright over the images for the first two years, after which all the photographs were returned to copyright-holders. Instead of Scott’s photos going back to his family, for some reason they were returned to Herbert Ponting, the expedition photographer. They seem to have languished, forgotten, in a photographic agency’s collection until they were sold off in 2001. Quite astonishing.
What did Scott want from the expedition? My great-uncle phrased it that they wanted to make the Pole “merely an item in the results”. So it would be one among many other scientific achievements of the expedition. Scott was always completely clear – the Pole was his promise to the country and the science was his passion. The race to the Pole was Amundsen’s agenda.
How thoroughly is Edward Wilson’s final expedition embedded in your family history? Hugely. His widow, my great-aunt, talked to my father about it quite a lot. We grew up with his paintings on the wall and relics from the expedition. They were just considered normal parts of the furniture. People sometimes ask what it was like growing up. It’s hard for me to explain – it was just normal. E Read more of this interview on the website www.knowledgemagazine.com/blog
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