Comparison of The Amundsen and Scott Expeditions - Overview

Overview

The causes of Scott's disaster have been much discussed and many contributing factors cited. For example:

• As early as 1922, expedition member Apsley Cherry-Garrard surmised that the rations of Scott's team were inadequate and did not provide enough energy.
• Much of Scott's hauling was to be done by ponies, which are ill-suited to work on snow and ice: their relatively small hooves (compared to their weight) caused them to sink into anything other than very firm snow or ice, and their coats easily became soaked through thus making the ponies very vulnerable to wet and cold - the precise conditions that would be encountered. Further, unlike dogs who could eat the abundant seal and penguin meat found in Antarctica, the ponies' food had to be carried forward from the ship, vastly increasing the stores that had to be transported as Scott's expedition moved towards the Pole.
• The loss of ponies beforehand limited the supplies that could be hauled to the depots. Of 19 ponies brought south to aid in laying depots on the Ross Ice Shelf (traversed during the first and final quarters of the trek) nine were lost before the journey began. It also caused Scott to delay his departure until November 1st 1911, leaving him less time to complete the journey.
• Had the one-ton depot been placed at latitude 80° S., as planned, Scott and his two surviving companions could have reached it on their return march. Instead, because of the weakness of the ponies, it was placed some 31 miles short of there. Scott’s party died only 11 miles away.
• The last-minute addition of Lieutenant Henry R. Bowers to the planned four-man pole party may have strained the rationing plans.
• The rations were deficient in B and C vitamins. The party was so weak, even before reaching the Pole, that Scott wrote before the return march, “I wonder if we can do it.”
• The tins of cooking fuel cached along the return route were found to be partly empty, which forced the men to eat frozen food. Shortage of fuel to melt water likely caused the men to become dehydrated. Apparently the heat of the sun had vaporized part of the fuel, enabling it to escape past the corks.
• The weather on the return march seems to have been unusually bad. In particular, when the party reached the Great Ice Barrier, the temperature was much lower than expected for the season, making the surface much less suitable for the sledge runners. Furthermore, the tail-wind which they had expected to aid them home did not appear. Scott wrote, in his final “Message to the Public”: “. . . our wreck is certainly due to this sudden advent of severe weather. . . .”
• The complexity of the transportation plan made it vulnerable. It depended in part on motor-sledges, ponies, and dogs. However, three quarters of the distance was to be covered by man-hauling.

Sullivan states that it was the last factor that probably was decisive. He states "Man is a poor beast of burden, as was shown in the terrible experience of Scott, Shackleton, and Wilson in their thrust to the south of 1902–3. However, Scott relied chiefly on man-hauling in 1911–12 because ponies could not ascend the glacier midway to the Pole. The Norwegians correctly guessed that dog teams could go all the way. Furthermore, they used a simple plan, based on their native skill with skis and on dog-driving methods that were tried and true. The moon was reached by expending a succession of rocket stages and then casting each aside; the Norwegians used the same strategy, sacrificing the weaker animals along the journey to feed the other animals and the men themselves.