The Race to the South Pole

When Scott and Amundsen launched rival expeditions to the South Pole, they knew that only one group could be the first to reach the pole. Each believed his strategy would prevail, but which explorer won? Tune in and learn more in this podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
And Katy Lambert and I'm Sarah Downy. And some say
that the only frontier that we have left to explore

(00:21):
is space, but Sarah and I were talking about it
earlier and we think the depths of the Ocean should
be at the top of that list instead. You do
kind of have to argue for that though. There aren't
that many places left on Earth to explore, and it's
been that way for at least a hundred years or so.
By the time we get into the twentieth century, there's
not really that much out there that we have no

(00:42):
clue about, or at least not stuff that's very easy
to reach. But in nineteen o nine, Robert Peary announced
that he'd reached the North Pole. So all those young
men keen on making the history books realize that they
had to adventure elsewhere, and these roving explore eyes had
to settle on something else. The natural choice the South Pole. Yeah,

(01:05):
so we have two big players in our South Pole story.
One is Robert Falcon Scott. One rolled Almondson. And it's
interesting because there's gonna be one man here whose whose
name is forever linked to the South Pole, and one
who people don't even really know much about. And it's
not what you might think as far as the winner

(01:27):
and the loser go. So let's talk a little bit
more about these two guys. Robert Falcon Scott was a
British naval officer who had participated in another Antarctic expedition
on the Discovery, which was nineteen o one to nineteen
o four with Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson. They tried
to reach the South Pole, but their dogs died and

(01:48):
they almost died too, so that went really well. And
our other player, Rolled Almondson is actually named Rolled ingle
Brick Governing Almondson. So that's that was a valiant tries.
That's my attempt at Norwegian. So yes, this is obviously
a Norwegian explorer. And Almondson has also had his shot

(02:09):
at Antarctica before though he was first mate on an
expedition there, and in nineteen o three he commanded the
first single ship to make it through the Northwest Passage,
which if you've listened to anything we've said about the
Northwest Passage, or if you've read my article about exploring
the Northwest Passage. You know that that is a very

(02:29):
impressive feat. Indeed, people forever to make it all the
way through. But more importantly, on his travels he learned
as much as he could from the Canadian Inuits on
how to survive in polar weather, which will come in
handy when you're traveling to the South Pole. So, as
we mentioned, Pierry reached the North Pole in nineteen o nine,

(02:49):
or at least he announced that he did. Nowadays we're
not actually so sure if he did make it when
he said he did. But at the time the man
had the spotlight and he was American, which made it
worse in the eyes of Scott, who was quoted as saying,
what matters now is that the South Pole should be
attained by an Englishman. Yeah, but Perry reaching the North
Pole also throws Almondson for a loop because he had

(03:12):
been planning a North Pole track. So, hey, what's the
point if somebody else has already done it first, That's
what they're thinking. They're not really appreciating the full extent
of what you can learn from going to these places.
So Scott had already been planning this South Pole trip
and Almondson knew it, so he's tricky. He tells everyone
that he's still going to the North Pole when he

(03:33):
sails from Oslo in June. Scott leaves twelve days after
him from Wales, and Almondson didn't even tell the men
on his own ship that they were going to the
South Pole instead of the North until October. I'm going
to say he's pulling into Poleon here and going to Egypt.
And he tells Scott about it in a rather cryptic
telegram that read beg leave inform you preceding Antarctica. And

(03:57):
even though it was rather unclear, Scott said, Almondson is
acting suspiciously in Norway. He avoided me in every conceivable manner.
Let me say it right out. Almondson was too honorable
to tell me lies to my face. It's the pole
he is after all right. So Scott knows that the
two of them are in a race. The races on
the other races on. So Almondson sets off on the

(04:19):
from with some very experienced sled dog drivers, which is
going to come in handy. Scott ship is called the
Terra Nova, and his aim isn't just to reach the
South Pole, he also does want to make some contributions
to science. Sorry if I if I suggested otherwise in
minute ago, but he wanted to collect specimens and bring

(04:39):
back information about the rocks and the minerals and the
animals and possibly plants, if any exists in this extreme
environment that people have very little idea about. So he
brought twelve researchers with him on his ship, and one
fantastically named grad absolutely Cherry Gerard paid to join them.

(05:00):
I think that could be a house to works freelance now,
I'm putting that on my possible baby nuns list. Almondson,
on the other hand, brought a lot of sled dogs,
but Scott, after this dying dog expedition the Discovery, decided
that ponies and man holds sledges were a better idea,
which is mystifying to me because it seems like you

(05:20):
would make it as difficult as possible a man hauling,
you know, eight hundred pounds over hundreds of miles in
these steep glaciers. Mistake. I think this might be a
new podcast theme to bringing really inappropriate transport on your
long arduous expedition, Champagne. So far it happens over and over.
So Almondson plans to use dogs to help transport everybody.

(05:43):
You know, he's got experience with them after all, But
he also plans to eat them along the way, which
I don't think Scott would like that very much. As
an Englishman, you know, it was below him certainly wouldn't
like that idea. But uncivilized it is. You know, if
we look at it practically, and we look at it,
you know, considering the reality of what it's like in Antarctica,

(06:03):
it's a practical idea. It made sense for Almondson. So
both ships arrived at the Ross Ice Shelf in January
nineteen eleven and set up their bases. Scott called his
Cape Evans and it was at McMurdo Sound, and Almondson
set up his at Wales Bay, which he called Fromheim.
And the crucial difference was that Almondson's base was almost

(06:25):
ninety miles closer to the pole. But lest you think
that this is Scott being stupid, which you might think
a couple of times in this podcast, Shackleton had already
taken this route, the one that he was planning on
taking before, right, so it was at least a little
bit better known to him, and he thought that might
be an advantage. Yeah, exactly. So now we get to

(06:46):
the preparation point because they've made it, but it's obviously
too close to Antarctic winter to set up coaching for
the pole. So Antarctica has two seasons, basically summer and winter.
But since they do has cold and one is cold,
is a lot colder. Since they do have a little
bit more of these warmer summer months left, they have

(07:09):
a little time to start preparing for this big truck
they're going to be doing later. So since this route
was so long, almond Sin's men start setting up supply roots.
They travel by their sledges pulled by dogs, um, you know,
up a little ways, set up a supply depot, come back,
go even further next time, set up a supply depot.
So they'll have these depots along their future route before

(07:33):
this you know, terrible way taking a long hike exactly,
and there's no time to go back. They'll need this
along the way. And they also set up near some
ice caves so they'll they'll be able to still work
on stuff even in the worst weather. Scott tries to
do this too, but he's working with the ponies, not dogs,
and I guess what. Ponies don't really do that great

(07:54):
and snow dogs are faster and they're not as quick
to freeze and slate Scott should have brought more of them.
And when someone suggests that they used the ponies to
feed the men or the dogs, Scott says, the ponies
are our friends. I'm not going to kill them, my
little pony, which is yeah, it's it's sad right now,

(08:16):
it gets sadder, but some of the ponies die anyways,
they're just not suited to these temperatures. Well, and the
Brits didn't even bring the right clothes. They brought wool
versus the reindeer and seal skins of the Norwegian team
brought because of course, Almondson had learned from the Inuits
and realize, hey, they don't starve or freeze to death,

(08:37):
so let's quit being so snooty and listen to what
they have to say, which again, um Scott and his
men thought might be a little beneath them. So Scotsman
may have been dressed in wool, but they also had
a pretty hefty supply of opium pills and also cigars.
This is again kind of like the Champagne Safari bringing

(08:59):
things that we have are in the Foi Gras. Do
not need your truffles. You probably don't need thirty five
thousand cigars on your trip. And their supply depots during
the styme aren't quite set up as well as Almondson's are.
They've got one one ton depot with a black flag
to market because you know, that's really easy to spot
when you're snow blind. Just this, this little black flag

(09:20):
in the middle of nowhere. Not so, now we enter
the waiting period. Preparation has ended. It's winter, and it's
just weeks and weeks and weeks of complete dark, like
as in no light at all, and of course it's
extremely cold, so you have to find something to entertain
yourselves to keep from getting cabin fever and going totally nuts.

(09:43):
So how would you do it, Sarah if you were
in Scott's expedition. Well, if I were in Scott's exhibition,
I'd be watching movies and reading books and listening to
the gramophone, maybe reading some poetry, painting, having interesting intellectual
discussions with my peers. Or maybe you would adopt an
Emperor penguin chick like Wilson did um or learn to

(10:06):
make a lovely seal consume with the rest of your expedition,
which these do sound like pretty good ways to avoid
cabin fever. Unfortunately, they aren't the most practical things to
be doing, because meanwhile at their camp, the Norwegians are
working on maintaining their equipment, maintaining their dogs, keeping up
their health. They had their eyes on the prize. So

(10:28):
on September eight, Almondson decides, let's do this. It's warm enough,
the winter's finally ending, he thinks, so he takes eight
guys and eighties six dogs out, but they do have
to turn back a bit when it becomes too cold
and foggy. They're stuck at a supply depot for a while.
Um and they make it forty five point five miles
in nine hours, which is so much faster than Scott

(10:52):
can do with ponies and man hauled sledges. Dogs are
definitely the way to go. I wonder how you'd get
the lot to be the the man hold hold sledge driver.
I don't know, but I don't want it. And as
a side note, during this time this journey occasioned a quarrel.
Some say a mutiny from one of his men, Johanssen,

(11:12):
and Almondson dismissed him and basically erased his record with
the expedition when he came back like just wouldn't even
acknowledge that he'd ever been there, and uh Kalmar Johansen
later committed suicide mostly because of that. So by October
we have the Norwegians finally heading back out again. This
time they have five men, four sledges, and fifty two dogs,

(11:36):
and they get pretty nice weather for Antarctica. At least
they make it and there a head of schedule, and
Almondson plants the Norwegian flag of the poll on December seventeenth,
nineteen eleven, and he writes in his journal, so we
arrived and we're able to plant our flag at the
geographical south Pole. God be thanked, and they make it

(11:57):
back to their Bay of Whales base at the end
of January nineteen twelve. They covered seven eighty nine miles
in ninety nine days and to Tasmania on March seventh,
nineteen twelve, where they can announce their big win. So
Norway had triumphed over Britain, but no one knew yet
what had happened to Scott's expedition. So let's go back

(12:19):
to our man catch up with Scott. So he leaves
later than Amondson two weeks. It doesn't sound like very long,
but it's a crucial amount of time. That puts his
return journey right in the middle of a particularly awful winter.
And the motor sledges break pretty quickly. The ponies keep them,
only going about five and a half miles a day,

(12:41):
and they switched to those awful sounding man hauled sledges. Finally,
two ponies fall through the ice and are eaten by
killer whales, which I mean, I don't think you could
make that up. That's a kind of the craziest part
of the day. I read that in a Wall Street
Journals story by Mark Yost, and I wrote it all

(13:02):
in caps on my outline, although I do have to
say I think I screwed up the chronology a little bit. Uh.
The motor sledges broke at the beginning of their journey
and not at the end, so they were already pretty
tired by this point, and by December thirty one, only
five of the men were left. The others had all
returned to base or to a supply deep how we've
got Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates, and Evans and Scott finally

(13:26):
reaches the Pole January eighth, and there he found a
letter to the King of Norway from Amondson asking Scott
to deliver it to the King to let him know
crushing he'd gotten there and told him he could use
any of the supplies that he'd left, and he wished
him a safe return. First, truly read the letter. It's

(13:49):
it's just so just imagine this guy finding this after
all the trouble he's gone through. Okay, So, dear Captain Scott,
as you probably are the first to reach this area
after us, I will ask you kindly to forward this
letter to King Hawk on the seventh. No idea if
I said that right, if you can use any of
the supplies left in the tent, please do not hesitate

(14:11):
to do so. I wish you a safe return yours truly.
So they do use the supplies, But what a crushing
disappointment for the brit heartbreak, Scott writes the Pole. Yes,
but under very different circumstances from those expected. Great God,
this is an awful place and terrible enough for us

(14:32):
to have labored to it without the reward of priority.
So now they would have to make this grueling return
journey without even the prospect of this victorious trip home,
which isn't a great place to be psychologically. But you know,
at least they collected some rocks on the way back.
They weren't in as much of a hurry as they
should have been. They decided, if they weren't first anyways,

(14:54):
they might as well bring some stick around and you know,
pick up more heavy things to put on their man holes.
Sledge is clearly unstuck on that old sledge thing. But
the weather had gotten much much worse, and this Arctic
winter was even worse than it was, of course in
the summer, but this one was particularly bad, according to
the records that we have, probably somewhere in the negative

(15:15):
forties or negative fifties fahrenheit, and the men were probably starving.
They were working at as fast a pace as they
could manage, but they were nearly out of food, so
they're cloric intake is not going with the energy expenditure.
Need a lot of energy to haul the sledge too.
And it's also possible that they had scurvy, but that's
a point of debate. So the first man to die

(15:38):
was Evans. He had fallen behind and when they finally
went back to check on him, he was very disoriented
and said that he'd fallen and he went into a
coma and died in February. But the next is perhaps
the best known Oats and he was already severely frost
bitten and exhausted and starving in on his thirty second birthday,

(15:58):
which was March seventeen, he said to the men, I'm
just going outside and maybe sometime, which is probably again
the most quietly heartbreaking British thing you could say too.
And so he thought that they might have a better
chance at survival without him, And Scott writes, Oates died
like a good Englishman. And so we have three left,

(16:22):
and they're hit by yet another blizzard, and this one
lasts for nine whole days, and they're out of food,
they're freezing. You know, they're in this like light tent
kind of contraption, hardly anything to weather a blizzard. In
that they're only eleven miles from one tund which is
so frustrating. That would take Almondson and those dogs like

(16:45):
half an hour probably, So they're only eleven miles away,
but they know they're going to die, and Scott writes
a final letter home to eleven letters. Actually this is
the one that he wrote to the British people. We
have shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another,
and meet death with as great fortitude as ever in

(17:05):
the past. And then we have an excerpt his last
diary entry, which was March nine. Every day we have
been ready to start for our depot eleven miles away,
but outside the door of the tent it remains a
scene of whirling drift. 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. And that

(17:28):
is the last thing that Robert Malcolm Scott ever wrote.
So their bodies are found in November nineteen twelve, along
with their writings and the specimens. They had collected thirty
five pounds of rock. So yeah, that weight on that
sledge unfortunate. But people are moved by how these men died,
and the public raised seven million dollars for their families.

(17:51):
According to a New York Times article by Edward Rothstein,
and Scott left behind a little baby and a wife,
and his widow is actually given the knighthood that would
have been bestowed upon him had he lived. And people
were so enamored with this romantic tragedy that Amindson's triumph
was overshadowed despite it being this huge accomplishment, because Scott's

(18:16):
story is simply more interesting. Amondson was incredibly capable and efficient,
but you know, he's just missing that certain genesee klaw
that Scott had. Everything went went perfectly with his mission,
it's there's after you run through the details of what happened,
there's there's not much more to tell. Or perhaps his
reputation just has a dearth of cigars. And we should

(18:37):
note that while Scott's expedition maybe argued to be a
spectacular failure, the scientific aspect of it was successful. This
thirty five pounds of rock meant a lot because we
learned quite a bit from all of their observations on
glaciers and the mapping they did, and all those specimens
they collected, including that little Emperor penguin chick. So my

(18:59):
introduction to Captain Scott was in and Fataman's ex libris,
which if you haven't read it, please please go by it.
It's not a book about polar expeditions. It's about the
love of books and what she calls her odd shelf,
the one that's home to all of your strange obsessions,
and for her it's polar expeditions and the romance of

(19:20):
the failed but gallant British explorers. And it was from
fat Amon that I knew. Scott's literary picks for the
journey were Russian and Polish novels, chilly novels. Well. Oates
preferred a five volume work on Napoleon's campaigns in Iberia,
and Wilson was a lover of Tennyson. And it made
me go back to the question that can make or

(19:42):
break a date and maybe even a friendship of your
very snooty what are your desert island or polar ice
scape book picks? They have to be a different, different
kind of lists for each. We'll give you two, and
since Oates had five volumes, will let you have five choices.
You can eat. Mail us in history podcast at how
Stuff Works at dot com with something about books in

(20:04):
the subject title. You know we love a good read
and we do read all of your emails, so drop
us aline and that brings us to listener mail. So
since we've already talked about possibly eating ponies and ponies
getting eaten by killer whales, I feel like we should
come back with something a little more positive. Happy pony,

(20:26):
a happy pony, a happy horse story. And this email
is from Lauren. She was writing in reply to our
episode we did a while back on famous horses of history.
She wrote, this interesting tidbit is a perfect example of
how history directly affects current actions. You may know that
horseback riders, especially those of us who ride English, always

(20:47):
get on the horse from the left side. It's strongly
frowned upon to mount from the right, and some horses
even become spooked if mounted on the off side. The
reasoning for this dates back to medieval times. Horses were
taught to be mount it from the left so that
knights who wore their swords from their right hip pointing
to the left toe could properly mount the horse. Despite
our obvious lack of stores and current riding attire, we

(21:10):
still persist in doing things the old fashioned way, and
this is the kind of trivia that we really love.
So again, our email address is history of podcast at
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(21:34):
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