Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) was a British naval officer and explorer who led the first official British expedition to the South Pole.

Its success in reaching the icy plateau in Victorian land was celebrated, and is considered one of the most famous expeditions in modern history.

He was not successful in his second trip, as the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole about a month before him.

The trip ended tragically with the death of Scott and 4 of his team inside Antarctica on the return trip.

Their bodies were not found until about 200 days later, on November 12, 1912.

Birth and upbringing

Robert Falcon Scott was born on June 6, 1868, in Devonport, Devon, England.

His father is John Edward and his mother is Hannah, and he is the third of their six children.

The family was wealthy, as his father, John, was a judge and owner of a small winery in Plymouth that he inherited from his grandfather, but he went bankrupt in 1894, after he invested the proceeds from selling the factory in an unwise manner.

His father died after his health deteriorated due to complications from heart disease.

In the fall of 1898, when his brother Archie died of typhoid fever, Robert became responsible for the maintenance of his mother and two sisters.

Robert Falcon married Kathleen Bruce, a sculptor, in 1908, and they had a son, Peter, who was less than a year old when Scott went on his last expedition.

Study and professional life

Scott belonged to a family with maritime traditions, as a number of his uncles served in the army or navy, so he and his younger brother Archie joined the armed forces, spent 4 years at a local day school, and then was sent to a school that prepares candidates for entrance exams on a training ship HMS Britannia at Dartmouth.

After successfully passing the exams, he joined the British Navy in 1880 as a cadet at the age of 13.

Then he joined the "Bauadessa" ship in South Africa as a naval officer in 1883, after which he worked on a number of Royal Navy ships.

He passed the examination for the rank of lieutenant in 1888.

Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) (Getty Images)

His career progressed smoothly, and he was promoted to first lieutenant in 1889, and by 1897 he had become a midshipman.

Then his name became associated with the South Pole, in reference to the field of work that he committed to for the last 12 years of his life.

In 1891 he applied for a two-year torpedo boating course on the Vernon.

He graduated with first-class certificates in both theoretical and practical exams.

He served for some time in the Mediterranean, and then, for family reasons, returned to his native shores.

His career was successful, except for his delinquency while in command of a torpedo boat in the summer of 1893, which earned him a mild reprimand.

He disappeared from naval records for 8 months while he was a lieutenant, from mid-August 1889 until March 26, 1890, and historian Roland Huntford hinted at his involvement in an affair.

But biographer David Crane reduces the period to just 11 weeks.

The first exploration mission

In early June 1899, Scott had the opportunity to meet the explorer Clements Markham in a London street, who was president of the Royal Geographical Society, and learned from him of an expedition to the South Pole.

With his support, Scott reported his desire to lead this expedition, and the committees' views were divergent on the scope of his responsibilities, but Markham - who admired Scott's intelligence and enthusiasm - insisted on giving him overall command, and promoting him to the rank of commander before he sailed to the South Pole.

In June 1900 Scott took command of the National Expedition to the South Pole at the age of 33.

Then he was appointed a member of the Victorian monarchy as a gift to him, during King Edward VII's visit to the site of the (Discovery) ship the day before it left the British Isle of Wight on August 6, 1901. (Discovery) was specially built for this trip, and was designed to be a research ship that passes across icy seas.

The expedition reached the shores of the icy continent in early 1902, then to Ross Bay, and settled in Commander Bay for the winter.

At the end of the summer of 1903, she reached Victoria Land, and on her way she obtained a lot of important information about the nature and life in the polar region.

Scott with his companions on the expedition (Getty Images)

Achievements

In February 1904 Scott returned home.

At that time, he was the first British expedition team to reach Antarctica, since the James Clark Ross expedition that preceded it by 60 years.

Scott's voyage left its mark in the history of Antarctic exploration, becoming a folk hero, and receiving a host of decorations and medals.

He was also promoted to captain in recognition of his competence, invited to Balmoral Castle, and received by King Edward VII.

He had meetings with Queen Amelie Orléans, Louis Philippe, Prince Royal of Portugal, Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet, and Prince Heinrich of Prussia.

He was busy with public receptions, lectures, and writing the flight log for more than a year.

In January 1906 he resumed his naval career full-time, as assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty, and in August of the same year he became flag captain to Admiral Sir George Egerton on the Victorious.

Second exploration mission

The British government and the Royal Geographical Society appointed Scott to lead a second expedition to continue his explorations of the region.

It aimed to reach the South Pole, and to secure the honor of this achievement for the British Empire.

Scott spent years raising funds for his trip, which totaled £40,000.

On October 24, 1911, two expeditions, the Norwegian and the British, set off with the aim of getting ahead of the Antarctic.

One of them led the Norwegian Amundsen, who was with his crew on their way to the North Pole, and suddenly changed course and headed south.

While Scott led the Terra Nova expedition - the name of the supply ship means "new land" - and the cost of purchasing it was 12,500 pounds sterling.

The expedition set off by land from "Cape Evans" in October 1911. It consisted of 65 men, chosen from 8 thousand applicants, and after a short walk, the motors of the sleds broke down, then the forces of the horses died, and they were shot.

When the team reached latitude 30.80S, the dogs were returned.

On December 10, the campaign continued with a triple slide.

Scott then returned 7 of his men to base on December 31 and, with 4 of them, continued up the Beardmore Glacier and the Arctic Plateau.

And the four are: Knight Oates, head of the scientific program Wilson, Director of Supply Evans, and sailor Powers, and when they reached the South Pole on January 18, 1912, they were exhausted from their march, and they traveled 1,500 kilometers in 79 days.

But they were disappointed when they found that Amundsen, the leader of the Norwegian expedition, had preceded them to the South Pole by about 34 days, that is, he arrived on December 14, 1911.

Scott and his men arrive at the tent left by the Norwegian mission before them, with the flag of Norway (Getty Images)

Death

Bad weather prevailed on the way back to the main camp, and Scott wrote in his diary on January 19, 1912, "I'm afraid the return trip will be dreadfully tiring and tedious."

The first man on the expedition, Edgar Evans, died on 17 February of scurvy.

One month later, Lawrence Watts died after contracting gangrene, which led to the erosion of the cells of his body, the destruction of his tissues, and their gradual spread throughout his body.

while Scott, Edward Adrian Wilson, and Henry Robertson Bowers struggled.

They traveled about 16 km until a strong snow storm pushed them 18 km away from a supply depot containing a ton of food and fuel.

They were trapped inside their tent for 9 days, awaiting death.

The locations of the bodies in the tent, when they were discovered 8 months later, indicate that Scott was the last of the three to die. On March 29, he wrote the last lines in his diary, indicating their inability to move as a result of the storm, despite their approaching way back, and he died at the age of 44. years.

The research teams had found some geological models collected by the expedition from (Birdmore) and Scott's records and diaries.

Their last camp was their grave.

Where the roof of the tent was lowered over the corpses and a high dome of snow was erected over it.

While Captain Oates' body has never been found.

Although the exact cause of their deaths has remained the subject of much debate;

The researchers suggested that hunger, exhaustion, extreme cold, and scurvy were causes that contributed to the death of Scott and his men.

Some scientists who are in the testing stations in Antarctica believe that their grave is currently at a depth of 50 feet below the surface of the ice, which indicates that the accumulation of ice has risen in place to 50 feet since 1912.

French explorer Commander Jean-Baptiste Charcot next to the Robert Falcon Scott memorial in Antarctica (French)

National hero

The world was informed of the tragedy when the Terra Nova reached Oamaru on February 10, 1913. Scott became a national symbol, and the Royal Navy's greatest hero.

The team's tragic story aroused great sympathy in London.

It has been called for it to be taught to schoolchildren, to coincide with a memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral on 14 February.

In the years since that tragedy, more than 30 memorials have been created.

Including a statue sculpted by Scott's widow for his New Zealand base in Christchurch.

The Scott Polar Research Institute is also established in Cambridge.

After the 50th anniversary of his death, the movie "Scott of the South Pole" was shown in cinemas in 1948.