Scott Dies in Antarctica: Eleven Miles From Safety

Robert Falcon Scott's last diary entry reads: "It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more." He was found frozen in his tent on the Ross Ice Shelf, eleven miles from a supply depot that could have saved his life. Scott and his two remaining companions, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers, died around March 29, 1912, after failing to reach the South Pole first and failing to survive the journey home. Their bodies were discovered eight months later, along with the diary that made Scott a legend. Scott's Terra Nova Expedition had reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912, only to find a Norwegian flag planted by Roald Amundsen's team 34 days earlier. "The worst has happened," Scott wrote. "Great God! This is an awful place." The five-man polar party began the 800-mile return journey in deteriorating conditions, hauling sledges that Amundsen's dog teams would have made light work of. Scott had rejected dogs in favor of man-hauling, a decision that cost everything. The retreat was a catalog of catastrophe. Edgar Evans, the strongest man in the party, collapsed from a head injury and died on February 17. Lawrence Oates, crippled by frostbitten feet that had turned gangrenous, walked out of the tent into a blizzard on March 16 with the words, "I am just going outside and may be some time," sacrificing himself to avoid slowing the others. Scott, Wilson, and Bowers made camp eleven miles from One Ton Depot, but a nine-day blizzard pinned them in place. The expedition's scientific specimens, 35 pounds of geological samples that Scott refused to abandon even as his party died, proved to contain fossils of Glossopteris, a fern that helped confirm the theory of continental drift. Scott's diary transformed him from a failed explorer into a symbol of British endurance, though later generations would question whether his decisions killed his men.