Scott of the Antarctic
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Setting out
Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s second Antarctic expedition set sail on the Terra Nova from Cardiff on 15 June 1910 with a crew of explorers, seamen, officers and scientists.
Having arrived at the edge of the Antarctic in October 1910, Scott selected four men for the journey to the South Pole: Edgar Evans, Lieutenant Henry Bowers, Edward Wilson and Captain Lawrence Oates. In competition with a rival Norwegian expedition, the team made their way to the Pole but were hampered by ineffective motorised sleds and a lack of dogs and ponies which forced them to man-haul their sleds over the increasingly tough terrain.
Arriving at the South Pole
They reached the South Pole on 17 January, 1912, only to discover that the Norwegians had arrived a month earlier. They were then faced with the gruelling return journey with temperatures consistently falling below -30oF. Edgar Evans died on 17 February and by mid March Lawrence Oates was suffering from severe frostbite and an old war wound which was hampering their progress. Knowing he was holding back his companions, Oates urged them to leave him behind but they refused. However, on 16 March he announced that he was leaving the tent and infamously, that he ‘may be some time’. He walked out into the blizzard and was never seen again – his body was never found.
Oates’ companions continued on their journey but they died of starvation and exposure in their tent on 12 March 1912, only 20km away from their supply depot destination. Their bodies were discovered by a search party eight months later and were buried in the tent, under a cairn of snow and ice to mark the spot.
Remembering
There is a memorial to the expedition in Cardiff’s Roath Park and references to Scott, the Terra Nova and the expedition can be seen in Cardiff Bay.