Dan Snow's History Hit - Scott's Last Days in the Antarctic

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

Captain Robert Falcon Scott died in his tent in Antarctica in March 1912 during his failed effort to become the first person to reach the South Pole. He'd just missed out to the Norwegians under explorer Roald Amundsen. You might think the British had no chance from the beginning- Amundsen's crew were wearing sealskins and using dogs, sledding 50 miles a day while Scott's team were outfitted in kit from Bond Street, covering just 10 miles a day. The motorised vehicles they took lasted only a couple of days; one sank through the ice the moment they took it off the ship. But, Tim Maltin's new research suggests there was something more unusual else at play that led to their failure and ultimately Scott's death: thermal inversion. The same meteorological phenomenon that caused the Titanic to hit the iceberg just two weeks later.Tim joins Dan on the podcast to discuss the rivalry between two great explorers, the similarities and differences between their expeditions and he takes Dan through the gruelling last months of Scott's expedition, what happened the night of Scott's death and the discovery of their bodies, months later.Produced by James Hickmann and mixed by Dougal PatmoreIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. In the last week of March 1912, Captain Robert Falcon Scott died in his tent in Antarctica. He had failed in his efforts to become the first person to get to the South Pole. He'd arrived with his UK expedition one month after Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who claimed the title as the first man to get to the South Pole. In this episode of the podcast, I'm going to be talking about Scott, I'm going to be talking about Amundsen, but I've been looking at some new research as well from Tim Moulton, who's been on the podcast before. He is fascinated by the meteorology, the weather that led to Scott's death.

And he's particularly interested in it because just two weeks after Captain Scott died in Antarctica, Captain Smith died on the Titanic in the North Atlantic. The two tragedies were only a fortnight apart. And they were both caused by clear skies and temperatures that plummeted way below zero, as you will hear in this podcast. Tim is one of the world's greatest experts on the Titanic, and his study of the meteorology has led him to the story of Scott and Amundsen as well. He's rapidly becoming a great authority on the race to the South Pole. In the early 20th century, as you may have had been talking about in this podcast before, the South Pole exercised a great fascination over people's imaginations. Scott had led an expedition to the South Pole right at the beginning of the 20th century

on the Discovery, a ship that you can still go and see in Dundee. On that expedition was one Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton would then return on the ship Nimrod for the Nimrod expedition, desperately trying to become the first man to get to South Pole. He failed, got to within about 90 miles, a record at the time. And that left the Norwegians under Amundsen

to claim the title in 1911, 1912. This is the story of what happened next. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again.

And liftoff, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Tim, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. Absolute pleasure, Dan. Thanks for having me back. There's no end to your talents. Tell me first, who was Scott? Well, Captain Scott was a naval officer. He had been on a mission to the Arctic already in the Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the century, sort of 1902, 1983. And of course, Shackleton had then come back. He had nearly got to the pole. Shackleton got to within 90 miles of the pole without Scott. And I think it was slightly unfinished business. So Scott then went back in the Terra Nova expedition. Scott was

really hoping to claim the pole for Great Britain in 1912. As you say, he was a naval officer. Was he an innovative guy? Was he quite sort of conservative? I went on Discovery once, which is the ship, as you mentioned, he went on the Discovery expedition to Antarctica. And he slept in the coldest cabin away from the cooking stove and things

in the officer's accommodation. It didn't occur to him to sort of bunk up with one of his other officers. Or he said, you know, the commander needs to be in this cabin all by himself. And apparently he was covered in ice when he woke up in the morning. So he was quite a kind of, perhaps wasn't a free thinker in that way. No, I think one does get the feeling with Scott that he stands on ceremony a bit and there's quite a lot of this Edwardian ideal of how things should be done. On the other hand,

what does come across is he is a man of science. He's very interested in science and the scientific part of the expedition was very important to him. The other thing is what we call now really in terms of humanitarianism and animal welfare and things like that, he was deeply affected on the mission I first told you about, the discovery mission at the turn of the century. He was really affected by having to kill the dogs on the way back. I think in the end, they actually ate all their dogs and some of the dogs died and some of them ran away. But I don't think they got back with any dogs. That really did affect him. And I think he slightly had the view that dogs were a little bit cheating. The British had this idea of sledging was the way forward,

right from early polar expeditions. So I think he sort of felt that he was going to do it properly manhauling. That said, if you look today at how vehicles move around in the Antarctic, they're often tracked vehicles. So he brought three tracked vehicles to the Antarctic. They were designed by the Woolsey Motor Company. And unfortunately, one of them dropped through the ice as they were unloading it from the ship. The other ones failed due to the cold temperatures. They had air cooling. And unfortunately, there was not enough testing done. The testing was done in Norway, but not absolutely as far north enough to replicate the Antarctic conditions. So unfortunately, they were only useful for the first sort of 50 miles

or so on the barrier. However, his idea of motorized transport actually, of course, now is the accepted way to get around the Antarctic. And then talk about Amundsen, his nemesis, the Norwegian explorer. Was he a sort of similar in character or a bit of a different guy? I think very different in the sense that Amundsen, he called a spade a spade. He didn't have any compunction about eating the dogs. I mean, he liked the dogs and everything, but he was very happy to eat them. The point there is that he secretly, he kind of snuck up on the South Pole because originally he was heading for the North Pole. And then he suddenly realized that really the race was for the South Pole and this was the time to go for it. So he didn't tell anyone. He

didn't tell Nansen, his mentor. He didn't even tell his prime minister. And he didn't tell his crew. But what he did is he sailed off for the North Pole. And then when they got about halfway, he caught the crew together and said, actually, we're going for a race to the South Pole. If anyone wants to get off, they can. We'll stop off and they can get off. Or if they want to carry on, who's with me and we'll go. And they all to a man said, let's do it. And he then went down to the Antarctic, and he actually found a harbour, if you like, that was a little bit closer to the pole than Scott's base. And he then set off with, I think it was about 48 dogs, whereas Scott had less than half that number of dogs. And Scott never intended to bring the dogs further than at the Beardmore Glacier

foot. He was always just going to use the dogs and the ponies, and indeed the mechanised transport, across the flat Ross Ice Shelf, and then head up the Beardmore Glacier, which Shackleton had pioneered in 1907. Whereas Amersden was desperate to get there first, had the dogs, and was prepared and planning, as he did, to take the dogs all the way to the pole. And I'm struck when I look at some of the British expeditions. You mentioned they tried the vehicles out in Norway, but Shackleton couldn't ski and didn't seem to do much training. He spent most of his time trying to raise money and chase women and sort of get in trouble. Amundsen and his crew were extremely impressive high-latitude survivors and explorers, weren't they?

Absolutely. They wore reindeer clothing, for example, whereas Scott's clothing was from Bond Street. They were Burberry Macs and things like that that he was wearing to keep the wind off. So there was this idea that the Norwegians were happy to get involved with nature to learn lessons from the Eskimos, in fact, as well. And there was this idea that we were going to do it the sort of British traditional way. And as I said, there was this idea of, you know, it was a bit cheating unless you were manhauling. That's not to portray Scott as being backward, but certainly he was interested in not being rushed. He was interested in doing all his geological surveys. Whereas, to be fair to Scott, Amersden's one mission was to be the first to the South Pole.

And why is it this weird timing? It's so dramatic. Why do they both end up sort of almost racing each other to the pole? Was it just the season or what's going on there? Yeah, I mean, it was close because Shackleton had pioneered a path with the Nimrod expedition. He only got to only 90 miles from the pole. So they knew it was doable.

There was, in fact, not just Scott and Amersden on the ice barrier. There was a German expedition there. There was a Japanese ship there as well that was looking to do an expedition. I think the world knew that the South Pole would fall in 1912. Interestingly, Amersden actually wanted to get out there first. So he started a bit too early because in the Antarctic, it's just way too cold in our summer out there to go out there. But actually, Amersden tried to go out when it was really not yet summer. And he was too early in the spring. And in fact, he had to turn back because people got frostbite on their ankles and it was just too cold. And In fact, he was very roundly criticized

by his own team, particularly one of his lieutenants, who he almost had to sort of, not exactly court martial, but he had to say, you're not coming to the poll anymore. They had a bit of an internal argument. In a way, Amundsen's greatness there was he was willing to set out, okay, too early, but he was then willing to say, do you know what? It's too early. We're going to come back. Then, Amundsen then set out about a couple of weeks before Scott. So, Scott set out properly on the 3rd of November. Amundsen set out in October. And high summer was December. So, what listeners have got to realise is, obviously, in the Antarctic, it's the complete opposite seasons to what we have. I didn't realise that. So, after the false start, how does it go for

both these teams then? They're both heading towards the South Pole. Listening to Amundsen's diaries is jolly interesting because it kind of all goes perfectly in the sense that he knows how to handle the dogs. He leaves cairns every couple of kilometres he leaves cairns. And not only that, but he leaves cairns in parallel lines each side of the cairns so that if he misses a cairn in a blizzard or something, he can find it again very easily. The other thing is that Amundsen's making remarkable mileage. Amundsen's doing sort of 15 miles a day, whereas Scott is averaging more like 10. Now, that might not sound like

much, but if you think about it, Amundsen's going basically a third faster than Scott, traveling a third further than Scott every single day. And here's the crucial point, I think, Dan, which actually also gets us onto the weather point, which I think is so fascinating here, which is actually Amersden had quite bad weather on the plateau. He had a head wind. Actually, Scott really didn't have such bad winds on the polar plateau itself. But here's the point, is that Shackleton was only out sledging, as they call it, for three months, okay? He was back by the end of February. Now, Amersden, again, was only out for three months. He was back by the end of February. But Scott

was the only sledger out there with his party of men for four months. Scott probably died on about the 29th of March in 1912. And in fact, no one had really been out on the barrier in March. And I think they were all surprised with the lateness of the season and how once the sun starts to dip below the horizon, because remember, in December, the sun never sets in the Antarctic. It's always about 20, 30, certainly 10 degrees above the horizon all day long. It's daylight all day long. But by March, the sun was dipping below the horizon and it created these very cold nighttime temperatures for Scott in March. Well, let's keep the drama going here, Tim. So they're both racing for the

South Pole. Amundsen's going much faster. Is Amundsen, they're eating better? They're just coping a bit better, are they, with the conditions at this point? Or is Scott still doing fine? Good point. I mean, in a way, Scott's doing fine in the sense that he wants to travel 10 miles a day and he is averaging 10 miles a day. Amazon's doing fine because he wants to average, you know, about 15 miles a day and he is averaging 15 miles a day. Some of the better things that Amazon was doing is he was wearing seal skins and animal skins on his clothing. Scott had reindeer sleeping bags, but actually not animal skin clothing. Amundsen always wondered why Scott didn't have that clothing, which was much warmer. But the other thing is, crucially, that Amundsen was eating some fish as well. Amundsen bought fish, whereas Scott only had

this thing called pemmican, which your listeners will kind of think of as the equivalent of spam. So basically, all Scott had was spam, biscuits, sugar, and tea. That's basically all he had. I think they sneaked in a little Christmas pudding for Christmas Day that was there, and they had a little bit of alcohol as well for Christmas Day in a tiny little vial. But I think a slightly more balanced diet. And the nutritionist amongst your listeners will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the Edwardians at that stage fully understood about vitamins. So I think Scott was eating about 4,000 calories a day, but he was burning about 8,000 calories a day. So as he was plodding forward, he was depleting his fat reserves and his strength reserves. And Amundsen made it to the South Pole first.

He did. He arrived there about a month beforehand. And then when Scott gets there and he sees Amundsen's tent there, which Amundsen left a tent there with the Norwegian flag flying. And at one point in his diary, Scott says, he says something like, great God, this is an awful place and all the worse for having striven here without the reward of priority. And I think that really cuts to the heart of it. To be fair though, Scott did have dogs on the barrier and Scott's dogs performed so well on the barrier under Mears, who was in Scott's group, that Scott actually says in his diary, with some almost premonition, he says, the dogs are going so well that if Amundsen's got dogs, he's going to beat us to the pole.

As you say, they're very aware of each other. Did Amundsen leave a letter in that tent? You're absolutely right, he did. So he left a note for King Hacon and said, basically, dear Captain Scott, if you get this message, please pass it on to King Hacon. Scott, in his diary, is a bit perplexed about this. He's like, why have you left this here? Well, come on to when the letter was discovered later on, but we're still at the Pole now. And one of the interesting things is that we've all, some of us, read the actual typed up diary of Captain Scott. But it's different from the handwritten diary of Captain Scott. There was some edits made. So for example, Evans, who's the first of Scott's party to succumb to the cold, on the way down the Beardmore Gasser, on the way back,

at the pole already, his hands get very frostbitten. His fingernails start to drop off later on. And he really becomes unable to help himself. He can't sort of put his boots on properly. Scott actually says in his diary, Evans' hands are really bad. It seems that the man's lost heart over it. And I'm really disappointed in him for obvious reasons. That was edited out of the diary, presumably to save the relatives of Evans from hearing this, and also to save Scott's reputation partly as well. But it's interesting,

you get a bit more frankness in my diary. And just one other point, while we're at the poll, Scott's printed diary says, gosh, and we've got all that struggle to get back, basically, is what he says. I wonder if we can make it. Okay? So that's how the reader is left of the official diary. What he actually says in the real diary is, more or less, I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but in modern language, he says, crikey, Amundsen's got here first. I need to be first backed with the news. I need to get to my ship before the ice closes in in because we can salvage something from this for our reputation and for our expedition if we can be the first with the news. And then he

says, I wonder if we can make it. Oh, that's interesting. So actually he's still thinking about it. He's desperate to be first. Yeah, first with something. First with the news to control the narrative. And that's actually what he's wondering, if we can make it. So he's not having existential thoughts at the pole. That comes later. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking about Scott and the Antarctic. More coming up.

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and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Right, so Scott leaves the Pole a month after Amundsen. He's clutching the letter for King Harkon of Norway. And how does it go for Scott on the way back? Well, the wind, it's called a southerly wind, it blows towards the north. In other words, it blows away from the pole up towards his ship,

is basically how the prevailing wind always is. And it was the same for Amersden as well. Now, unluckily for Scott, whilst having actually quite good weather on what we call the polar plateau, he didn't have much wind for coming back. So whereas Amundsen's able to set a sail, and the sail actually helps, and in fact Scott did set his ground sheet from the tent as a sail to help him, he doesn't have enough wind to give him as much of a boost as he would hope. And as we'll discuss later when he gets down to the barrier, there's no wind at all and he just cannot make progress with the sledge as he had planned. They're going slower than Amundsen anyway. What

the other reasons are? There were more people on the Scott expedition, weren't there? The Scott expedition started off very large. They started off with a dog team. They started off with ponies. So I think there were about 20 of them when they actually started off across the barrier. Whereas obviously, Amundsen always had a much smaller team and took four people on to the pole. Whereas Scott actually, at the last minute, took five people. It was planned that he would take four. He takes Oates, I think, partly as a reward because Captain Oates is looking after the ponies and has done a great job with them. And then at the last minute, Bowers, who didn't really expect to be in the poll,

final poll party, is chosen. Now, whether Scott chose five people because if someone got injured, it would allow them to sledge back an injured man, we don't know. But what really slowed Scott down was having Evans incapacitated more or less from the pole. And then, of course, later on, Captain Oates' feet were very bad, and that slowed the party down as well. So they're really struggling, and that's partly because you think they're wearing the wrong kit. I think certainly when the temperatures got really cold down on what we call the barrier after they got down the beard more glassier on the way back I think the extra clothing would have helped them but actually I don't think that was the critical factor. They just were too late in the season bad luck they got frostbite. I think if they had taken

dogs which they were perfectly capable of doing and perfectly capable of handling, I think they would have got there. However, even if they'd taken dogs, they wouldn't have beaten the Amersden for the simple reason that Amersden started before Scott. So in a way, Amersden was always going to get there first, provided his plan of the dogs worked. And in a way, Scott was always going to be second because he just didn't start before Amersden. But there is a moment in Scott's diary where he says, oh, should I start earlier because of Amersden? And then he thinks to himself, well, it's a proper scientific expedition. We've got a lot of targets and a lot of things we're coming back with, geological surveys, meteorological surveys. And he decides to stick with his program. And to be fair to Scott,

he does put his wider objectives ahead of an all-out race to the pole. That's fascinating. Yeah. So, Amundsen's just there to dash to the pole and back. Tell me about the end. Where does it all go wrong for Scott? Well, very gradually is the answer. I think the first real thing that shakes them up is Evans. They're walking along. They're going down the glacier, a bit more glacier, which is quite steep. It's from 10,000 feet down to sea level. And they're nearly at the bottom of that. And they notice that Evans is very far back. And Evans has been struggling with his shoes. And obviously, Evans has got problems with his hands. And they decide to sort of carry on, but keep an eye on him. And they pitch a lunch tent. And they think, well, we'll have lunch, and then he'll turn

up. And then he doesn't turn up. So what they do is they obviously leave the tent there and they dash back to see him. They find him in a disheveled state, kneeling in the snow, a little bit insensible. In fact, he's basically unconscious. They then nip back to the tent, grab a sled, go back, put him on the sled, get him in the tent. And then in the night, Evans dies. And they actually say that it's kind of merciful because, you know, we couldn't do anything with him. Scott actually said we can barely help ourselves, let alone help each other, if that makes sense. In fact, he's almost critical of Wilson for attending so attentively to both Evans and, in fact, Oates, because he's kind of depleting himself. It's a sort of healthy man depleting himself for sick people who may well not make it. Wow. So Scott's still able to

use his hands and write at this point? Yes. I mean, it's remarkable. He says things like, we've played the game out to the end. His penultimate diary entry says, I don't think I'm going to be able to write anymore, which seems a pity. All this fantastic kind of Englishness. But I think Captain Oates is the one that your listeners will probably be aware of the most. He's very brave. He knows he can't make it. He reveals to Scott on about the 2nd of March that his feet are very bad. And he basically says to Scott at one point on the barrier on the way back, he says, look, at the lunch camp, just leave me in my sleeping bag. You just carry on with the tent. Just leave me in my bag. I'll fall asleep and I won't wake up and that'll be fine. And they all say, true English gentlemen and all the rest of it, they say, no, no, no, no. You know, come on, you'll be all right.

Buck up and we'll take you with us. So they kind of force Oates, almost against his will, to keep going with them. And then Oates hopes that he's going to die that night in the tent. But Oates doesn't die. He wakes up in the morning. And that's kind of everyone's worst nightmare, strategically. So Oates then says to them, you know, I'm going outside, I may be some time, which is code for, look, don't stop me, I'm off, type thing. And Oates knows very well he's walking to his death. They're only 50 miles, not very long, three or four days march from a ton of food at One Ton Depot. And I think Oates felt without him slowing them down

and now without Evans, that those three who were in good form at that point, so Scott and Bowers and Wilson, they were all in a pretty fit still. And he felt to give them a chance to make it, he would sacrifice himself. And so he goes for a walk. He is indeed sometime, he never comes back. So those three, how do they not make it? What happens? They keep thinking they're going to make it. And they keep being quite fit. Unfortunately,

as well as the lack of wind I mentioned to you, which means that they can't get their sledge blown along by the wind, the other thing they're noticing is much lower temperatures than they'd expected, minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which is actually about minus 35 Celsius. It's very, very cold. What they're noticing is that there's these ice crystals on the surface. What it does, Scott says when he gets down to what we call the barrier at sea level, he expects there to be a good glide on the sledge. But there isn't. He says it's like pulling through sand. And it's because the clear skies mean very strong, what we call radiative cooling of the surface temperature. And that creates little crystals on the ice surface.

And unfortunately, it was so cold that they didn't melt as the sledge passed over. Normally, with a skate or something, it actually melts the ice just under the blade, which gives you a glide. But unfortunately, it was too cold and those crystals were too solid. And they actually created little bumps like sandpaper. And he said it was like pulling through sand. So they would kind of do the amount of effort that would give them 12 miles, but it was only sort of giving them five miles. And then just one other point I'll mention on this topic is when they get to their penultimate depot before they died, unfortunately, the super cold temperatures have actually perished the seals on the fuel canisters that Scott had buried in advance so that he could come back and collect fuel. And unfortunately,

that means that they were on low fuel. One of the things they all really needed was a hot meal. Really heating up their food, they called it a hoosh when they had hot food. They loved it. It used to reinvigorate them. He'd say, oh, we had a good hoosh and now we're back to normal and we feel fine. For those last few days, he wasn't able to cook the food. He cooks it a bit tepid. He just heats up the pemmican, which is Spam, a little bit. He says, oh, we all pretended that we preferred it more this way from before when it was hot. What he's basically saying is we all knew it wasn't. We were all putting a brave face

on it. I think by the last week or two, they each in their own minds feel they're not going to make it, but none of them admits it to the other person. They all try and keep going for the sake of the others. In every man's heart, each man knows they're probably unlikely to survive. Wow. How far are they from safety when it all happens? Not very far, about 150 miles. So they are very close. So just to give you an idea, they have walked the same as from London to Moscow. They've done the longest polar Antarctic march in history. They've marched for four months, nearly five months. They've marched hundreds and hundreds of miles in terribly bad conditions, and they're on the last leg. The one-ton depot was halfway

along the barrier. I suppose in terms of the journey, they had about 10% left to go, but they had the easiest stuff left to go, but they had the easiest stuff left to go. They had the best weather, the least wind, they had the flattest surface, they had the most depots, they had geography they knew the best, and yet this extra cold temperature that they weren't expecting and these clear skies. They also noticed quite a lot of miraging as well when they're out there, which obviously means very clear skies and they also noticed quite a lot of miraging as well when they're out there, which obviously means very clear skies, very cold temperatures. And the funny thing is, a lot of your listeners won't realize this, but people think of blizzards

as being the main threat to Antarctic travel. Now, the reason why that's true is that when you've got a blizzard, you can't see, so you can't travel. However, it's not the main threat to life because a blizzard's quite warm. Because when you have a blizzard, you have what's called mixing of the air. And what you do is you have one degree Celsius air, which has come from the sea. And bear in mind, they were near the sea on the polar plateau, right? What happens is when you get good mixing of the air, you get a lot of this one degree Celsius air, which by Antarctic standards is very warm. Bommy. Yes, balmy. Balmy.

So blizzards mean warmth, OK? Blizzards mean warmth. But what Scott had was absolute calm in what we call a thermal inversion, which is one of the things we noticed that was a contributing factor to the Titanic disaster. And what happens is you get this absolutely solid thermal inversion that creates a bit of a dislocation in the atmosphere. So what you've got is actually wind higher up, but absolute calm lower down. What it meant was that with the radiation cooling at night, radiative cooling and the clear skies, it meant that the surface

temperature got colder and colder and colder and remained cold. Unfortunately, Scott's waiting almost for a blizzard to get the warm air back, to reinvigorate them, and to improve the glide on the surface. But unfortunately, when the blizzard comes, it pins them down for 11 days, and they run out of food while they're in the blizzard. Oh, wow. Okay, so they just can't move through it. That's right. So they are only, get this, they are only 11 miles from one ton of food that would have been their salvation. So 11 miles, to give you an idea, is a good day's march for how they are at the moment. In other words, they're only one day away from the depot. But unfortunately, when the blizzard hits, they can't travel. And they

think, oh, it'll be fine the next day. And then the next day, it's not fine. Then they think, oh, it's bound to go. Most blizzards in the Antarctic sort of blow over after two or three days. But then the fourth day, it's still there. And then the fifth day, it's still there. And then the sixth day, all the time, they're getting down to the last biscuit, the last bit of food. And then eventually, Scott admits that his foot is bad. And so the only really fit traveling people on the trip there are then Bowers and Wilson. They have a plan to make a dash for it. Their plan is leave Scott in the tent, make a dash for the depot, grab some food, and come back the 11 miles to feed Scott and look after everyone. Even Wilson, in his private diary to Ori, Oriana, his wife, even he says, look, we're planning on making a dash for the depot,

but I don't think we're going to make it. He says, look, I think it's just going to be like falling asleep in the snow and just not waking up. What you've got to realize is even though Bowers and Wilson are thinking of making a dash for it, even they in their hearts don't think that their dash for it is going to work. In the end, they don't make that dash. In the end, the tent is discovered the following season, several months later, about six months later. And the bodies of Wilson and Scott and Bowers are in the tent. Wilson and Bowers are inside their tent with the covers pulled over them as though they died in the cold. And Scott has thrown his sleeping bag open as if he died in the blizzard when it was warm, and it was actually too warm for him to be in his sleeping bag. So it looks from that as

though Scott, who was the oldest of the party, I think he was 36 when he died. Ancient. Well, I mean, what we've got to realize is Bowers was like 23 or something. I think Wilson was like 28 or something. I mean, these numbers are not exact. But what I'm saying is Scott's a much older man than the others. But I suppose he has more reserves of strength, perhaps. So we think Scott dies last. And then he makes this last entry and actually says in his diary, final entry. So he knows it's his final entry. And his final entry is, for God's sake, look after our people. And that is a message to the government and to Britain and to the public, that he knows he's not going to make it and he leaves a wife and a son behind,

who, of course, Sir Peter Scott. So Scott, he doesn't die of cold. Does he die of just starvation? Starvation. Absolutely starvation. In fact, the tent's quite warm because the sun is above the horizon for much of the day. I'm talking about like for 20 hours or 22 hours, the sun is above the horizon. So during the day, it's really quite hot in the tent. And of course, in a big blizzard such as they had, although they didn't record the temperatures by that stage, right? They were too ill to record the temperatures by that stage. In fact, their thermometer broke about 10 days before they died. But we know from the data going out there and from Amundsen's data, we know that the temperature could have been as high as zero, as one degree, something like that, as maybe minus one, minus two. And that combined with the sun and with their sleeping bags would actually have

made it stiflingly hot in the tent during the day. So no, they absolutely didn't die of cold. They died of starvation. Well, that's extraordinary, Tim. Now, you've mentioned it in passing, but this is what's so interesting about your work at the moment. People have heard you on here talking about the Titanic podcast and the very particular climactic conditions that led to that collision with the iceberg.

In what respect is it the same here, do you think? Well, it's extraordinary because Titanic didn't just hit a the iceberg. In what respect is it the same here, do you think? Well, it's extraordinary because Titanic didn't just hit a lone iceberg. She actually crashed into a lump of ice that was just in front of an ice barrier, we call it. It was three miles wide and it was 75 miles long. In other words, it was a huge chunk of ice floating on the Atlantic Ocean. And it was a very clear night. And what's fascinating is when you read about Captain Scott, who was walking on floating sea ice, he was walking on an ice barrier. Whenever the sky is clear, you get a very strong thermal inversion and you get a mirage. So for

example, the first 20 days of Captain Scott's journey in November and December on the barrier towards the Beardmore Glacier, he records in his diary 10 different mirages, 10 different occasions when there's a mirage. And every time it's when there's no wind and no cloud, and he's on the barrier. And that's the same as what we have for Titanic. So for Titanic, we have no wind for several days before she gets into that area. We also have clear skies, so we have this strong radiative cooling which causes this thermal inversion, which meant that Titanic saw the iceberg just a little bit later than she would normally have done because she could see so far

that was scattered light on the horizon. And what's also fascinating about Scott is, often when he talks about Mirage, he talks about a haze around the horizon, which is what the lookouts on the Titanic saw. So what interests me about it all is, I mean, first of all, Scott died two weeks in the Antarctic, two weeks before Captain Smith died on the Titanic. And the factors that caught those people out, you know, what caught out the Titanic and Captain Smith was this very unusual miraging conditions, this very strong thermal inversion. And bizarrely, what caught Captain Scott out, what made him miscalculate how cold it would be, how little wind there would be, and how bad the surface would be, was this very strong thermal inversion that lingered over the

barrier because of the clear skies. So what is extraordinary is it seems that there are these great Edwardian hopeful projects of optimism of Scott's definitely going to get to the pole and back safely. The Titanic's definitely going to complete her maiden voyage safely. And what actually does for both of them is a mirage. Well, that is extraordinary stuff, Tim. Thanks very much for coming on talking about it. Tell everyone how they can follow your work and buy your books and things. Yes, if anyone's interested,

there's www.timmoulton.com where you can see my blogs and things like that. And you can also follow me on Twitter, at Tim Moulton. I've written a few books on the Titanic. One of them is called 101 Things You Thought in You About the Titanic But Didn't. There's another one called Titanic First Accounts.

There's one about the weather conditions on the Titanic called A Very Deceiving Night. And of course, a forthcoming book on Captain Scott and Amersden and how the weather affected them unexpectedly. Brilliant. Everyone go and buy all those books. Tim, thank you very much for coming on. My pleasure, Dan. Thanks for having me. you