Scott of the Antarctic

Having had temperatures in the high 80s in New York the past couple of days put me in an odd frame of mind to contemplate the life (and death) of British polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912). It seems blasphemous to try to get cool at this moment! And yet…no one MADE Scott strive with all his might to get to the coldest place on earth. It was his gamble. It isn’t hubris to bet on your own skill and ability and fortitude. But there is something arrogant perhaps in assuming that God will smile on your efforts.

Ostensibly a scientific expedition, Scott’s journey to the pole inevitably became a race for national prestige when it was learned that Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian team were on their way to the South Pole at the very same time. Scott had made some ill-advised decisions. Rather than rely on the proven method of employing sled dogs for hauling, he decided to hedge his bets by also using ponies, ski-mobiles, and the men themselves. The machines conked out in the cold of course. The untried ponies weren’t up to the task, so he shot them, and then decreed in that civilized Britisher way that no one would ever do anything so barbaric as to eat horsemeat on his watch, which might have stretched the provisions further. Decisions like that, and bringing an extra man on the last leg, and the failure of his homebase team to replenish a crucial supply depot, combined with bad weather and the dispiriting reality of having been beaten to the pole, eventually all combined to kill Scott and his men a mere 11 miles (2 days walk) from the next depot — after coming 1,800 miles and getting within spitting distance of home.

I’ve known about the doomed Terra Nova expedition since the 4th grade, when our class did an entire track on Antarctic exploration, which is why Travalanche already has posts on the Shackleton Expedition and the exploits of Admiral Byrd. In contrast with those, Scott’s final trek was a story of heartbreak and miscalculation. In the wake of the tragedy, the British public mourned the fallen and honored them as heroes. Perhaps my own feelings about the events are colored by the time period in which I first learned about them, circa 1974, at the hands of a groovy teacher, on the heels of America’s imperialistic failure in Vietnam, and the final days of a corrupt Presidency. Is there such a thing as a noble failure? Maybe. Our current President famously called America’s fallen soldiers “suckers” and “losers”, and we reviled him for it. They gave their lives. What does it mean to give everything you’ve got — and lose? What does it mean when the people who made that sacrifice are better men or women than we’ll ever be, physically, mentally, spiritually, and they still fail? Is it all hopeless? In the end, we all fall. These people tried to transcend, and they fell anyway. How can that be inspiring?

A marker was erected where the men died with a quote from Tennyson that I have always loved: “To Seek, To Strive, To Find, and Not To Yield”. It’s from “Ulysses”, and I can’t help recalling that Ulysses’ entire ordeal came about because he defied the Gods. And also that, having done so, he eventually made it home. But that’s Shackleton’s story. Scott’s takes the form of a tragedy. It’s more in the vein of Shakespeare. Or like Moby Dick. The Fates conspire; and then you expire. How’s that for a poem? I bet Beckett wishes he wrote that!

Here’s something else I find interesting. Scott and his men died just around 2 weeks before the sinking of the Titanic. Then came a World War, and then another one, and then the sun finally set on “the Empire on which the sun never sets”. Gee, I wonder what made me think about all that.

John Mills Gets The Chills

Just around the time that it was dawning on the British public that their best days were behind them, Ealing Studios turned out a hagiographic bio-pic called Scott of the Antarctic (1948) starring John Mills in the title role. Mills looks like the man, but with those big soulful puppy eyes, he seems a bit wrong for the part. I’ve always imagined Scott as an inflexible hard-ass, a John Wayne type, or whoever the English equivalent is. Anyway, in the tried and true tradition of British cinema, Scott of the Antarctic forces the audience to endure every tedious step of the men’s journeys. And — the unkindest cut of all — most of the film was shot in Norway. Go, Amundsen! But it also reminds us how modern the moment was, this trip halfway to another planet. At the base camp the men entertain themselves with a Victrola and a player piano!

There is also a play by Ted Tally called Terra Nova that premiered at the Yale Rep in 1977 and later won an Obie for its 1984 New York production. It’s what I first knew Tally for. Today he’s most famous for writing the screenplay to The Silence of the Lambs.

One last thing — the South Pole of this essay, as it were. When they found the bodies of the Scott company, they discovered amongst their belongings a number of prehistoric plant fossils which the men had collected. It was the first proof that Antarctica had once been forested and had once possessed a temperate climate. It was also an early clue contributing to the now-well established theory that the continents move around the globe in a process called plate tectonics — continental drift. These are important scientific discoveries. Worth dying for? Yes, maybe! Certainly a much worthier undertaking and outcome than a futile pissing contest for prestige by a Globe Striding Colonial Empire. So it wasn’t all for nothing.