Exploring a Polar Tragedy

After being beaten to the South Pole by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott and two companions died in 1912 on the Ross Ice Shelf only 170 miles short of their base camp on the coast.

Historians have argued that their fate was determined by Scott’s poor organizational skills, his use of ponies to transport supplies and his team’s lack of experience with skis, among other things.

But new weather data collected in Antarctica over the last 15 years indicate that Scott’s tragic death after his second-place finish in the race to the South Pole was probably caused as much by unusually bad weather as by his incompetence, according to a report released this week.

The Scott team endured a prolonged period of unusually cold weather, with temperatures averaging 10 to 20 degrees lower than is normal for the season, according to atmospheric scientist Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo., and Charles R. Stearns of the University of Wisconsin.

They reported in Tuesday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the remarkably cold weather not only contributed substantially to the men’s exhaustion, but it also slowed their progress home by increasing friction on the runners of their sledges and sharply reducing the distance they could cover each day.

“Scott was a boy who cried wolf, who complained about a lot of things,” Solomon said. But when it came to his complaints about the weather, she added, “There really was a wolf there.”

Scott’s image has taken a beating over the past couple of decades, according to Guy Guthridge, a former historian for the U.S. Antarctic Program. “I’m glad to see that modern science has been able to offer us a different perspective on that whole situation,” he said.

The race to the South Pole was one of the most exciting scientific events of the early 20th century. Several brave explorers attempted it and failed before the Englishman Scott and four companions set out in late 1911.

The team arrived at the pole with little major difficulty Jan. 18, only to discover that Amundsen’s expedition had gotten there on Dec. 14. But the heartbreak of that discovery soon gave way to the much greater grief that marked their 800-mile homeward trek to Cape Evans.

Soon after they left the pole, one of the men, Edgar Evans, succumbed to the strain. Another, Lawrence Oates, was severely disabled by frostbite. About March 16, he walked out into a blizzard and disappeared after telling his colleagues that “I am just going outside and may be some time.”

Scott, Edward Wilson and H.R. Bowers froze to death in a small tent sometime after Scott’s final diary entry on March 29. Their bodies and diaries were discovered the next November.

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Scott was lionized in Britain for his heroics, and many people still view his tragic death as the supreme sacrifice of a courageous leader. Over the last two decades or so, however, new analyses by authors such as Roland Huntford have focused on his inadequacies.

Virtually all question his use of ponies rather than dogs to pull his sledges, and some even suggest that he bought sick ponies. His use of humans to help pull the sledges was also questioned, as well as his last-minute decision to take a total of five men on the trip rather than the four he had originally planned for.

Most such authors give short shrift to his written complaints about the nasty weather. “Most of the literature says, ‘What did he expect, a day at the beach?’ ” Guthridge said.

Historians such as T.H. Baughman at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan., also believe that Scott exaggerated conditions in his diary and that his meteorologist, George C. Simpson, who was on the support ship at Cape Evans, would do nothing to contradict him. Solomon and Stearns “trust Scott too much,” said Baughman, author of the recently released “Pilgrims on the Ice: Robert Falcon Scott’s First Antarctic Expedition.”

Little historical weather data exist for the interior of Antarctica, but data have been collected from a series of more than 50 automated stations since 1985. Solomon, who has been a Scott buff “ever since I slept a few hundred yards from Scott’s hut” there, decided to analyze the modern data.

She and Stearns compared temperatures from the weather stations along Scott’s route to Scott’s own temperature readings, which were taken three times a day all through the trip. They found that the readings Scott took at the pole were almost identical to the current average temperature there for the same time of year, about 22 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

That suggests that Scott’s thermometers were accurate and that the very low temperatures they measured on the homeward trip were indeed correct.

Those temperatures were minus 35 to minus 40 degrees, nearly 20 degrees lower than the average temperature today. More important, Solomon said, the temperatures stayed that low for three solid weeks.

In contrast, only one of the 15 years included in the current measurements displayed such a long period of such cold weather. Simpson wrote at the time that Scott would have made it home in nine out of 10 years, when the temperatures would have been higher, she said, “and I have to believe him.”

“What most historians fail to appreciate is that the difference between minus 20 degrees and minus 40 degrees is quite marked in terms of physical comfort,” Solomon said. Such temperatures would have been extremely debilitating.

It also impeded the explorers’ progress. Sleds and skis normally slide easily over snow because the pressure of the surface produces a lubricating film of water. “But at minus 40 degrees, snow becomes like sand,” she said. Instead of traveling the expected 15 miles per day, the team was only able to make 6 to 8 miles, and that only with great effort.

The new findings are not likely to be met with wild enthusiasm among Scott’s detractors. “I cannot agree with the conclusion that it was, indeed, colder in March 1912 than normal,” said Baughman. “Nor could I conclude from the report that the weather was not colder. I cannot imagine [comparing] weather reports of 1985 with those of 1912.”

One thing is certain, Baughman noted. Scott, Bowers and Wilson were only 11 miles from a food depot when they died. If that depot had been placed 30 miles farther north as had originally been planned, they would have survived.