Polar Capital

Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.--Robert Falcon Scott.

Those words, written in Explorer Scott's diary not long before he perished in March 1912 on the Ross Ice Barrier, stirred Englishmen more than any triumphant saga would have done. They are engraved on the statue of Scott made by his widow and unveiled after the War in Devonport, the Devonshire town where he was born in 1868.

Robert Scott was a hard man, hard-bitten and harddriving. He trained himself to endure hardships. The implacable oppositions of Nature roused in him cold furies of combat. Educated at Stubbington House School, he got into the Navy, quickly made his abilities apparent, was rapidly promoted. At the turn of the Century he was named commander of the National Antarctic Expedition, set out in the Discovery with Shackleton among his men. They discovered King Edward VII Land, were frozen in for nearly two years off Ross Island, learned what scurvy meant. In the following years Captain Scott commanded three of His Majesty's war boats and dreamed of the South Pole. Finally, in 1910, backed by Government funds, he steamed away in the Terra Nova.

In November 1911 Scott started south from winter quarters on Cape Evans with dogs, ponies, sledges. On the way the ponies were killed to feed men and dogs. Phenomenally good weather was soon followed by blizzards. Deep snow held the party in a soft vise. On Dec. 14 Scott wrote, "We are just starting our march with no very hopeful outlook." That same day the famed Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, traveling fast by a different route, became the first man to reach the South Pole.

Still 140 mi. from his goal, Scott with Wilson, Bowers, Gates and Evans split off from the others for the final dash. They reached the Pole on Jan. 16, were staggered to find a black flag left by Amundsen. "Great God!" Scott wrote. "This is an awful place, and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority."

Furiously he started the 800-mi. trek back. Sickness, starvation, bad weather ground him and his four companions down. Evans collapsed, lost his mind, died. One day Oates said, "I am just going outside and may be some time." He never came back. His sacrifice was in vain. In November 1912, a searching party found Scott's tent, half buried in snow, a few miles from the last route camp. The three bodies were in their sleeping bags.

Already aware of Amundsen's prior success, Britain was stunned by the tragic news. A national memorial service was held. Scott had written, "For God's sake, take care of our people." The Lord Mayor of London started a fund for the dead men's' families. Before long -L-90,000 had poured in. It was decided that the surplus should be used not only for a Scott monument but for the advancement of polar research. Professor Frank Debenham, Cambridge University geographer who had traveled with Scott, had an idea that became a vision.

Professor Debenham had vainly tried to lay hands on the geological records of previous expeditions. He found that explorers, on returning home without funds to publish their notes, often gave them to friends as souvenirs. Thus a later traveler might return with what he thought was a new discovery, only to learn that a prior note of it had been gathering dust in someone's attic for years. And although dozens of countries might be represented by expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic in a single season, there existed no provision for international exchange of polar news.

Professor Debenham's idea was to establish an international capital of polar research and a museum of polar relics. Nominally he got the Scott Polar Research Institute under way in 1926 in a small house in Cambridge. But what he contemplated eventually was a suitable building, housing a great polar library including maps, manuscripts, paintings, photographs, many of them rescued from the musty cupboards of explorers' families. As Professor Debenham saw it, such an institute should have relics as far back as the Parry Expedition of 1821. It should have Scott's letter to Wilson's wife. Amundsen's scrawled reckoning of his position when he stood at the South Pole. It should have such displays as an exhibit of snow-goggles showing a half- century's improvements; cases of every sort of polar rations; skis, tents, dog harness, whips, compasses, thermometers, medicine kits, ice axes, crampons, sleeping bags, sledges, kayaks. It should be a place where an expeditionist could find all that is known about the region he intends to invade, chart his routes, examine the latest types of gear and their records in service.

Last week in Cambridge this vision became a full-fledged reality. The new, trim, Georgian building housing the Scott Polar Research Institute was opened with ceremonies presided over by Stanley Baldwin and attended by polar travelers of a dozen nations. A bust of Scott in hooded parka, carved by his widow,* looked out from a niche over the doorway. Across the facade was a Latin inscription in yard-high letters: "He sought the secrets of the Pole, he found the secrets of God."

* She married Sir Hilton Young in 1922.

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