Diagram of Amundsen and Scott’s polar expedition

All four forms of transport were mobilized to haul the cargo over the ice from Terra Nova to dry land: dogs, horses, motor sledges and man-hauling. Disembarkation, however, had not been properly planned, and the scene was one of confusion and disarray. 〈...〉

The motor sledge was hoisted over the side on to a floe adjoining the ship. Scott then went ashore, leaving Campbell in charge of the proceedings. Shortly afterwards the ice next to the ship began breaking up. 〈...〉

“ Amundsen’s landing had been carefully worked out in detail. Each man knew the plan to which Amundsen was working; and therefore could see himself in relation to the whole. The  Norwegians knew they had to have their base ready before the end of April, with all seal meat laid in for the winter, and that they were to run three depot journeys to advance supplies to the 83rd parallel of latitude for the Polar dash in the spring. At McMurdo Sound, nobody yet knew what they were going to do because, even after landing, Scott was not sure himself. He had not chosen to take his officers into his confidence. All that remained was rigid unquestioning literal obedience to orders, without regard for circumstances, to which the sunken motor sledge was an outstanding monument. ”

On his departure from 82° S., Amundsen carried supplies for a hundred days, taking him to February 6th, 1912. According to his timetable, and based on his performance so far, he would return to Framheim by January 31st. This meant that even in the unlikely event of missing all depots laid so far, he could still reach the Pole, return to Framheim, turn around, and do another hundred miles to the south before his food gave out. He had three or four times as much paraffin as he needed. He allowed one day in four for rest and bad weather. He assumed that he would be forced to man-haul from 86° S. on the return journey. The margin of safety was great and was seen to be great.

Scott, by comparison, had allowed no margin of safety in food, fuel or weather. Simple figures make the point. When Amundsen started, he had three tons of supplies in his depots; Scott had one ton. There were five in Amundsen’s party, making 1,300 pounds per man; Scott started with seventeen men which meant 124 pounds per head. Amundsen had ten times more food and fuel per man than Scott. For Scott to miss a single depot would be fatal. ”

Amundsen's diary: ‘The English have loudly and openly told the world that skis and dogs are unusable in these regions and that fur clothes are rubbish. We will see – we will see. I don’t want to boast – it’s not exactly in my line, but when people decide to attack the methods which have brought the Norwegians into the leader class as polar explorers – skis and dogs, well, then, one must be allowed to be irritated and try to show the world that it is not only luck that brought us through with the help of such means, but calculation and understanding of how to use them’. 〈...〉

Scott had worn his men out on the climb, without thinking of the return. In any case, by his basic decision to man-haul, he had graphically proved Nansen’s point that ‘taking the  dogs is cruel, but it is also cruel to overburden human beings with work’. That Scott faced temperatures between five and ten degrees lower than Amundsen was his own fault. By taking ponies and consequently delaying his start, he had made certain of being on the Plateau three weeks after the summer solstice and the turn of the season.Low temperature was a strain he could ill afford. Excepting mittens and boots, Scott had no furs, the absence of which around the face was enough to explain some of the party’s persistent frostbite. Poor skiing technique, unintelligent navigation, a badly-loaded, ill-maintained and ill-running sledge, inefficient camping routine, the disruptions caused by the last-minute addition of a fifth man; the list of defects was comprehensive. Scott had been so consistently inept as to almost suggest the workings of a death wish. ”

Since December 5th, Scott had been stopped by a blizzard near the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. ‘One cannot see the next tent,’ he wrote, ‘let alone the land … I doubt if any party could travel in such weather, certainly no one could travel against it.’

As it happened, the weather was much the same as that facing Amundsen on ‘The Devil’s Nameday,’ although he was handicapped threefold by the rarefied atmosphere of an altitude of 10,000 feet greater, a temperature fifteen degrees lower, and completely unknown country with no predecessor’s footsteps to guide him. His diary read: ‘It has been an unpleasant day – storm, drift and frostbite, but we have advanced 13 miles closer to our goal.’ 〈...〉

But Scott, unlike Amundsen, had cut things fine. In his own words, ‘we can’t afford’ the delay. In a journey of four months, he had not allowed for four days’ bad weather. At the most, said Bowers in his diary, ‘the delay will mean nothing worse than a little short commons on our return journey, a trifling matter’. ”

Slowly the speck turned into something that moved, and then they were standing under the black flag of disillusion. Dog stools and paw marks in the snow told their simple tale. The pitiless wind in their faces seemed colder than an hour before. 〈...〉

Scott wrote gloomily in his diary: ‘The Pole. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected. We have had a horrible day – add to our disappointment a head wind 4 to 5, with a temperature −22°, and companions labouring on with cold feet and hands … Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority. 〈...〉
Now for the run home and a desperate struggle to get the news through first. I wonder if we can do it’.

In other words, Scott was still hoping for a kind of victory. He did not yet quite grasp that the return was going to be a fight for survival, although he did understand that there was no time to be lost. ”

Scott would have to answer for the men he had lost. Shackleton would have the last laugh. That was something Scott could not face. It would be better to seek immolation in the tent. That way he could snatch a kind of victory out of defeat. Wilson and Bowers were persuaded to lie down with him and wait for the end, where the instinct of other men in like predicament was to keep going and fall in their tracks. For at least nine days they lay in their sleeping bags, while their last food and fuel gave out, and their life ebbed away. 〈...〉

When Amundsen’s and Scott’s first reports reached civilization, a Norwegian newspaper remarked that Amundsen... leaves the impression that it was all basically a comparatively simple affair [while] Scott brings out and underlines the ‘inhuman exertion’... ‘the tremendous dangers’... ‘the exceptional ill fortune’ and the ‘unsatisfactory weather’ both when it froze and when it thawed.

This was fair comment. Scott wanted to be a hero; Amundsen merely wanted to get to the Pole. Scott, with his instinct for self-dramatization, was playing to the gallery; Amundsen thought of the job in hand, not of an audience. ”