Amundsen, Scott and the race to the South Pole
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On 17 January 1912, five exhausted British men hauled their sledge to the South Pole and found a tent already standing there, flying the Norwegian flag. Roald Amundsen's team had arrived 34 days earlier and was by then well on its way back to base. Robert Falcon Scott's party never made it home.
The last great "first"
By 1910 explorers had reached almost every coastline on Earth. The poles were the obvious remaining goals. Two Americans, Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, had each claimed to reach the North Pole, in 1908 and 1909; both claims are now doubted. The South Pole, deep inside a frozen continent, was untouched.
The British explorer Ernest Shackleton had come close in January 1909. His party turned back at 88° 23′ S, about 180 km short, because they did not have enough food to reach the Pole and return. The decision probably saved their lives.
Scott announced a new British expedition in 1909. Amundsen had been preparing to drift across the Arctic, but after the North Pole claims he quietly changed his plan. He told most of his crew only once they were at sea, and sent Scott a telegram to say he was heading south.
Two plans compared
| Amundsen (Norway) | Scott (Britain) | |
|---|---|---|
| Ship | Fram | Terra Nova |
| Base | Framheim, Bay of Whales, on the Ross Ice Shelf | Cape Evans, Ross Island |
| Transport | Dog teams and skis | Motor sledges, ponies and dogs, then men pulling sledges |
| Final polar party | 5 | 5 |
| Main aim | Reach the Pole first | Reach the Pole, plus a large science programme |
Both teams spent the dark winter of 1911 at their bases, preparing equipment, and laid depots (stores of food and fuel) along the first part of their routes.
Amundsen's journey
Amundsen's party of five set off in October 1911 with four sledges and 52 dogs. During an earlier Arctic expedition Amundsen had learned from the Netsilik Inuit, and his men were expert skiers and dog drivers. They wore loose fur clothing that kept them warm without making them sweat.
They found a new route up through the mountains, the Axel Heiberg Glacier, onto the high polar plateau. As planned from the start, many of the dogs were killed along the way and fed to the men and the remaining dogs. It is a grim detail, but it meant the team carried far less food.
They reached the Pole on 14 December 1911, pitched a small tent they called Polheim, and left a letter inside for Scott. They were back at Framheim in late January 1912, in good health.
Scott's journey
Scott's party left Cape Evans at the start of November 1911. The motor sledges broke down early. The ponies struggled in soft snow and, as planned, were shot for food at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. The dog teams turned back. From there the men pulled the heavy sledges themselves, up the glacier and across the plateau.
The final polar party was Scott, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans. They reached the Pole on 17 January 1912. Scott's diary shows how bitterly disappointed they were to find Amundsen's tent.
The return
- February: Evans died near the foot of the Beardmore Glacier, after a fall.
- March: Oates, his feet badly frostbitten, walked out of the tent into a blizzard, hoping not to hold the others back.
- Late March: Scott, Wilson and Bowers, pinned down by a blizzard about 18 km from a large food depot, died in their tent.
A search party found the tent in November 1912, with Scott's diary and letters. They also found about 16 kg of rock samples the men had kept hauling to the end. Some held fossils of the plant Glossopteris, later part of the evidence that Antarctica was once joined to other continents, as described in our guide to plate tectonics.
Worked examples with dates and distances
How far behind was Scott?
- December has 31 days, so from 14 December to 31 December is 17 days.
- Add the 17 days of January up to Scott's arrival.
- 17 + 17 = 34 days.
How fast did Amundsen travel?
His team covered roughly 3,000 km there and back in 99 days. 3,000 ÷ 99 ≈ 30 km per day, on average, including rest days and storms.
Why did Amundsen succeed and survive?
Historians still argue about how much was planning and how much was luck. The points most often raised:
- Dogs and skis suited the conditions far better than ponies and motor sledges.
- One goal. Scott's expedition also carried out valuable science, which took time and effort.
- Man-hauling. Pulling sledges by hand burned more energy than the British rations could replace.
- Fuel. Some of the fuel cans in Scott's depots had leaked, leaving less than expected.
- Weather. Records suggest March 1912 was unusually cold on the Ross Ice Shelf.
A fair answer weighs several of these together rather than picking one.
Getting the story straight
- Scott did not reach the Pole first; he was second, by 34 days. The party died on the return journey, not at the Pole.
- Shackleton was not in the race. His attempt came earlier, on the 1907–09 expedition.
- Amundsen broke no rules, because there were none. His secret change of plan annoyed many people in Britain, but it was not cheating.
- Navigation was not easy. A magnetic compass becomes unreliable near the poles, as explained in how a compass works, so both teams fixed their position by measuring the height of the Sun.
Afterwards
In 1926 Amundsen flew over the North Pole in the airship Norge, which probably makes him one of the first people to have seen both poles. Today scientists live and work all year at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, named after both leaders. It stands on an ice sheet nearly 3 km thick, where the yearly average temperature is around −49 °C.
Activity: compare the expeditions
Make a two-column table headed "Amundsen" and "Scott", with a row for each of: ship, transport, date at the Pole, what happened on the way back, and one thing the team did well. Then write three sentences on which single difference you think mattered most, and why. There is no single right answer, but you must use evidence from the table.
Four hundred years earlier, explorers faced heat, hunger and an unknown ocean instead of ice: see the Magellan–Elcano expedition.
Sources and further reading
- Roald Amundsen – Britannica – Amundsen's life and expeditions, north and south.
- South Pole – Britannica – the geographic pole, how it differs from the magnetic pole, and the history of its exploration.
- Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge – the institute founded in Scott's memory, with its Polar Museum and archives.
