Followup: Scott versus Amundsen

The Right Honourable Meester Ludwig asks a question, and since he is a man of considerable resource and sagacity, the question is a good one:

Not to be tetchy about such a tragic expedition, but weren't Amundsen's folks also in the same boat, and yet they made it to the Pole and back in good order?

It will come as no surprise that Cherry-Garrard answers this question in quite some detail. The reasons are various and intertwined:

1. The first difference between the two expeditions was one of motive. Amundsen’s goal was to get to the Pole and come straight back, with no further purpose than to be first on the scene. Scott’s expedition, by contrast, was a full-fledged scientific mission which stayed in Antarctica for 3 years before and after the attempt on the Pole itself. This meant that Scott faced a number of constraints and tradeoffs that Amundsen simply did not have to deal with.

(Examples of these tradeoffs: speed versus endurance; supreme adaptation to one task versus flexibility and versatility; lightness and maneuverability versus sturdiness and durability. And that’s just the equipment).

2. The difference in motive led to major differences in strategy. Specifically, Scott espoused a ‘slow-and-steady’ philosophy: laying depots, man-hauling large quantities of supplies, establishing multiple base camps and transit huts, and so on. Amundsen’s plan by contrast was more ‘smash-and-grab’ in nature.

As it turned out – and unfortunately for Scott, there was no way to know this beforehand – ‘slow-and-steady’ was not a viable strategy in the Antarctic. The debilitating effects of prolonged exposure to severe cold, on men, animals and equipment, were far greater than anyone had foreseen – perhaps even greater than anyone could have foreseen. Even worse, these effects were insidious, cumulative, and viciously non-linear, so that even a prudent explorer might think his expedition was in good shape when in reality it was on the brink of catastrophe.

3. Moving from the abstract to the concrete, Scott’s scientific mission dictated the location of his main base camp, at McMurdo Sound. This in turn dictated the route he would follow to the Pole. And the route dictated his mode of transport: ponies for the initial stages across the Ross Ice Shelf and the Barrier, then man-hauling up the Beardmore Glacier, and skis across the polar Plateau. This route was probably more difficult, and certainly longer, than the one taken by Amundsen, who used dog teams and skis from the Bay of Whales up Axel Heiberg Glacier to the Pole.

(Note, incidentally, that Scott’s route had been partially reconnoitred by Shackleton in the Nimrod expedition of 1907-10, while Amundsen’s route was brand new; Amundsen took a gamble, and it paid off).

4. Given his route, Scott thought he had no alternative but to use ponies. Big mistake. Scott’s ponies (not in the best condition to start with – a failure of expedition planning) suffered tremendously on the ice, while Amundsen’s dogsleds did just fine. This was perhaps the single biggest (and certainly most obvious) determinant of the failure and success of their respective expeditions.

5. Scott did not carry enough food. For that matter, neither did Amundsen. But since the latter’s journey was much shorter (there’s that slow-and-steady thing again), it didn’t matter too much. Scott’s party, though, suffered terribly from calorific depletion (especially the heavier men like Seaman Evans) and from scurvy (Lieutenant Evans). Mind you, both Scott and Amundsen provisioned their expeditions using the best information available to them at the time; it's just that the state of the art in nutrition science was lamentably backward (why, the term 'vitamin' was coined only after Scott's death).

6. Scott ran out of oil. This was a failure of equipment: the dramatic variations in temperature loosened the cork stoppers and allowed paraffin to creep through the leather lining of the storage flasks. Amundsen encountered the same problem and had his bottles welded shut, multiple times.

7. Scott was a fine leader of men but not, perhaps, the best organizer of them. For example, too many tasks were allocated by asking for volunteers, with the result that the willing and able were vastly overworked. To quote Cherry-Garrard, “Men were allowed to do too much, and then told they had done too much; this is not discipline”. Scott's character did not help: authoritarian at times, sentimental at others, moody and possibly manic-depressive, stubborn, impulsive, and occasionally aloof; he was also warm, generous, unstinting in his work, immensely durable, and an inspiration to his men. A fairly volatile mix of characteristics; perhaps they contributed to his demise, but perhaps without this mix he would never have reached the Pole in the first place. The fact remains, though, that at crucial times, Scott made some very questionable decisions.

8. Most famously, Scott decided, at the last minute, to take 5 men to the Pole instead of the 4 originally planned. This was another bad mistake. All the equipment (skis, stoves, tents) was optimized for a 4-man party; the marginal cost of the extra man was far more than 25%. For example, cooking for 5 on a 4-man stove took twice as long as cooking for 4. This was a clear example of sentiment overruling rationality, and presumably Scott would not have taken the extra man along had he known how close he was to the brink(see point 2 above). But he made the decision, and paid the price.

8. It was bloody cold. Temperatures at the Pole were lower, and for longer, than anyone had expected; indeed, there is evidence that the summer of 1911-12 was exceptionally cold even by Antarctic standards. This compounded all the ills described above.

That’s the executive summary. But to quote Cherry-Garrard again, “Of course the whole business bristles with what-ifs”. And plenty of books have been written post-morteming the two expeditions. Two which I can recommend are Roland Huntford’s “Scott and Amundsen”, republished as “The Last Place on Earth”, which is critical of Scott, and Ranulph Fiennes’ “Captain Scott”, which is almost a direct rebuttal. Cherry-Garrard’s own final chapter, titled “Never Again”, is a quite harrowing (because personal) series of second-guesses; the author is unable to relinquish the nagging possibility that some action done or left undone may have saved the lives of the Polar expedition party. The truth is, we shall never know.

Postscript: Further reading: “South” by Ernest Shackleton, and “Scott's Last Expedition”, being the journals of Robert Falcon Scott.