On this day in 1911, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team became the first people to reach the South Pole. The expedition beat the team of Britain’s Robert Falcon Scott by over a month.
By November 1912, Amundsen had returned from his expedition and was in Britain, promoting his book ‘The South Pole’. Whilst in Britain, both the Guardian and the Observer recognised the Norwegians success over their own team in a number of newspaper columns.
The Terra Nova Expedition, as the British team was known, was not nearly as successful. Not only did they fail to reach the South Pole first, reaching it 34 days after the Norwegian team, nearly all the members of the expedition failed to return from Antarctica. On their return from the Pole, Evans, Oates, Bowers, Wilson and finally Scott himself, all died in the difficult arctic conditions. Edward Atkinson, left in charge of Base Camp, and his team set out once the weather improved to look for Scott’s party. There was nothing to be done to save their fellow explorers, however the mission has remained a part of history due to the recovery of letters and diaries written by the men. These have since been on display in various exhibitions, describing the trials of arctic exploration, and the discoveries made even during those last days.
The scientific finds of Scott’s expedition were massively important at the time, and helped to shape ideas which have since been proven. That was the key difference between the missions of Scott and Amundsen (other than the great success of one and not the other) – Amundsen simply wanted to be the first to reach a pole, something his heroes had been unable to achieve. For Scott, the trips purpose was, and had always been, science. Scientific research was the reason for braving the elements and difficult terrain, and reaching the pole first would simply be an exciting bonus. As far as research goes then, Scott was successful, as his technology and use of technology (even the failures) helped to shape arctic exploration for the future.
The south pole’s research station is named the Amundsen-Scott base, in recognition of these early explorers.
History @ Aber 