Three and a half years later came the final race for the South Pole which was to result in two successes and one tragedy. The two principals were Scott and Amundsen. The Norwegian Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) had been born near Oslo. Originally he was going in for medicine but gave up his studies and went to sea. He became an explorer and adventurer, the specialist on Arctic ice. In 1898 he had overwintered in Antarctica on board the Belgica. During the years 1903-06 he became the first to master the North-west Passage which, above all, brought him recognition in Britain. He was just as much at home in the Arctic as Antarctic, possessed outstanding leadership qualities and was a precise planner. His tactics were based on small, fast expeditions. In every respect he was a professional. Amundsen was on the point of setting off for the North Pole, and Fridtjof Nansen had lent him the famous ship Fram for it. When, suddenly, the news spread around the world in 1909 that the American Robert Peary had already reached the North Pole, Amundsen changed his plan without saying anything. He wanted the South Pole. It was in the same year, almost at the same time, that Robert Scott set out for Antarctica a second time. This time Scott had to get to the South Pole. He wanted to 'beat' Shackleton and, as he said himself, secure for the British Empire the honour of having achieved this exploit'. He himself wanted to raise the, Union Jack above the South Pole. On 15 June 1910 Scott sailed from Cardiff in his ship Terra Nova. When he put in at Melbourne, the following telegram was waiting for him: 'Permit me to inform you that the Fram leaves for Antarctica. Amundsen'. Scott knew what that meant; the Norwegian was also after the Pole!
Amundsen had kept his plan a secret until the last minute. His crew thought at first that he wanted to sail around South America to get to the Bering Sea. Once on the high seas he disclosed to his people his real intention and the goal of the voyage. He left to them the choice of joining him or returning home at his expense: no one was to go to the Antarctic unwillingly. Not a single man refused to follow him. On 14 January 1911 Amundsen's ship entered Bay of Whales. From here, from the eastern edge of the Ross Shelf Ice, the shortest route led to the South Pole. On the ice the crew erected the winter camp 'Framheim'.
Scott, who had reached Antarctica ten days earlier, chose as his camping ground Cape Evans, 30 kilometres north of his first landing place. The rivals were 800 kilometres away from each other, but Amundsen's base lay 100 kilometres nearer the Pole. Scott comforted himself with the thought that he would be able to make faster headway on the already known Shackleton route.
Amundsen knew nothing about his route, only that he was 1,300 kilometres from the Pole. Both groups used the remainder of the Antarctic summer to place supply depots along the planned routes. The Norwegians got much further than the British. Amundsen had brought more than a hundred of the best sledge dogs with him. He wanted to operate exclusively with sledges. Scott was equipped with motorized sledges, ponies and dogs.
A hard winter set in. While this was familiar to the Norwegians, Scott shut himself off from his crew. Amundsen had installed a daily programme which had to be strictly adhered to, whereby each man had his task. All the equipment was tested and overhauled. Everything was discussed, including a precise arrangement as to how much alcohol should be allowed. In the quarters of the Scott outfit the hierarchical structure of the Royal Navy prevailed. Boxes of provisions divided the space into officers' and crew's messes. In the evening, the officers and scientists gave erudite lectures.
Amundsen's first attempt miscarried, a false start. On 20 October 1911 weather conditions were favourable for the first time for the march to the Pole. Amundsen had selected four men to accompany him: Wisting, Bjaaland, Hassel, Hansen. Four sledges, loaded with food and fuel for months, were to be pulled by a total of fifty-two dogs, The animals came from the Arctic, mainly from north Greenland. As Eskimo dogs they were used to ice; pulling sledges was their speciality.
Scott started almost two weeks later. On 2 November 1911 he set off with all he had: motor sledges for the first stage across the shelf ice, plus ten ponies and twenty-three dogs. All in all, thirteen sledges and sixteen men. Dogs and ponies came from Siberia. The men of both expeditions used skis.
Amundsen advanced extraordinarily quickly across the shelf ice. At each degree of latitude he constructed and marked depots. At the foot of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, 500 kilometres from the Pole, he still had forty-two dogs. With these he systematically overcame he steep ascent to the South Pole plateau. Once arrived on top he had the twenty-four weakest dogs, whose pulling power he no longer needed, shot. They had no longer to be fed, rather served in their turn as fodder. Cold and sastrugi made hard work for Amundsen. 'The Devil's Dancing Floor' his men called the most dangerous stretch of the polar plateau, a region of crevasses with soft snow. On 14 December 1911 Amundsen and his companions reached the South Pole. They shot six more dogs as food for the remaining twelve which were to get them back to the Fraim. Without great difficulties they were back in base camp in Bay of Whales on 25 January 1912 with eleven dogs and two sledges. The Norwegians had needed ninety-nine days for the 3,000 kilometres. This gives an extraordinary average performance of 30 kilometres per day and it remains to this day the fastest dog-sledge journey of this kind. Amundsen's 'victory' was no accident. It was based on the correct assessment of the South Pole problem and on precautionary planning. Amundsen's tactics, calculated with mathematical exactitude, had proved right. As he selected all components to his best advantage - men, dogs, sledges, food - he had from the first a better chance than Scott, even though he had started with the drawback of an unknown route.
Scott followed Shackleton's tactics, using ponies as draught animals and Shackleton's route. He thought less about his competitor Amundsen, much more about his British rival 'Shack' who had once been his 'pupil'. When Scott reached the Beardmore glacier, he had already lost five of his ten ponies. The rest he now shot and with the meat set up another depot for the return match. After the ascent to the 3,000 metre plateau he sent home the dog team. The British couldn't get on especially well with the dogs and didn't want to kill them. They held them to be unreliable. Pulling one's own sledge did credit to a man.
With only two sledges and seven men he continued on foot. Unfortunately, many difficulties accumulated: storms, sastrugi, heavy snow. Scott's expedition, completely different from that of the 'technician' Amundsen, was ideologically overburdened. Amundsen wanted to reach the Pole, or nothing. He wanted the fame too, to be the first. That presupposed, however, that he survived his undertaking. But Scott and his companions wanted to prove something more than geographical facts. They wanted by their mission to show the world that the British were in no way decadent, rather still a 'race of heroes', ready to die for 'their thing'. Bowers, one of Scott's companions, stylized the sledge pulling in his diary as high proof of that. And Scott wrote: 'The journey has once again shown that Englishmen bear hardship, help one another and can look death bravely in the eye as in the past'.
This form of self-sacrifice was now necessary. On the South Pole plateau with its sastrugi, deep heavy snow and cutting south wind, Scott's team was a worn-out bunch. The group's exhaustion became ever more obvious. Daily stages of only 10 kilometres were commonplace. On 4 January 1912 Scott finally had to split up his small troop once more. With only one sledge now and four men, among them his friend of many years Dr. Wilson, he pressed on for the Pole. In spite of everything he reached his goal on 17 January 1912. He had indeed 'beaten' Shackleton, but lost the race for the South Pole. Near the Norwegian flag which fluttered there, Scott planted the Union Jack. The return march of the demoralized group became a catastrophe. Two, Evans and Oates, died on the way. Thirteen kilometres away from the life-saving One-Ton-Depot the theatrical story of heroism ended on 29 March 1912. Deadly weakened and pinned down by snow storms, Scott, Wilson and Bowers could go no further. No rescue column could reach them. When their frozen corpses were found eight months later, 16 kilos of rock samples were discovered on their sledge and, in the tent Scott's diary which was to 'immortalize, him. In Britain the headlines read: 'Fateful Defeat!'. Scott's death and his ability to relate his suffering graphically, satisfied the need for a tragic hero. For decades the description of the unending drudgery mercifully covered up all the painful questions. Discussions about the inefficient means of transport, the insufficient planning and the men who, lacking training, could not manage their Norwegian skis properly, were stifled. But to compare Amundsen with Scott is false too, because their methods are not comparable. What remained after the 'conquest' of the South Pole?