Tired, frozen, beaten: image of Captain Scott’s expedition that foretold a tragedy

The photograph is still one of the most poignant ever taken. Captain Robert Falcon Scott, surrounded by four colleagues, poses at the South Pole, a Union Jack hanging limply in the background, on 17 January 1912. He and his men look haunted. Their expressions suggest weariness and defeat – as well they might.

Henry Bowers, Edward Wilson, Edgar Evans and Lawrence Oates, along with their leader, had just tramped 850 miles over glaciers and ice fields in an attempt to become the first men to reach the South Pole, only to find they had been beaten by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. “It is a terrible disappointment,” Scott recalled in his journal, shortly after posing for the photograph.

That photograph, one of a limited edition of prints taken during Scott’s expedition, is to be sold at Sotheby’s this week. Experts expect it to fetch between £800 and £1,000. But what it cannot show is the tragic story of what happened next, as the five disconsolate explorers headed back to base camp and safety – and one by one succumbed to the extremes of Antarctica.

Evans was first to go. By 7 February, Scott noted that the strongest man in his team was “going steadily downhill”, constantly falling behind the party as it trudged over Antarctic wastes. Ten days later, Scott found “the poor man… on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frostbitten and a wild look in his eyes”. Evans died that night – most probably of brain damage, incurred during a fall that no one else had witnessed.

The party was still hundreds of miles from base camp and, the weather closing in, the four survivors had to spend days huddled in their tent as gales howled and their food dwindled.

By mid-March, Oates was lame from frostbite and could hardly walk. On 16 March, he staggered out of the tent into a blizzard. “We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman,” Scott wrote.

A week later, Bowers, Wilson and Scott were three days short of their next food depot when they were caught in another blizzard. They never left their tent. Wilson wrote to his wife, Oriana, and Bowers to his mother, while Scott scribbled copious letters to friends, family and colleagues. His final words were written on 29 March. “It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R Scott,” he scrawled, before adding a last frantic message: “For God’s sake look after our people.”

Eight months later, a party of explorers from base camp found the tip of the tent containing the bodies of Bowers, Scott and Wilson. Scott was lying with his two comrades on either side. Scott looked agitated, as if he had struggled to the last. The others seemed at peace. The search team took away the bamboo supports of the tent and on top of it they built a cairn, which is now buried deep under the Antarctic ice.

In January 1913, the remaining members of the expedition left the Antarctic; they reached New Zealand a month later, when a cable was sent to Britain bearing the grim news. Four days later, a memorial service was held at St Paul’s, attended by the King, the archbishop of Canterbury and the elite of British society. More than 10,000 people gathered outside. Britain was awash with grief.

Over the years, Scott’s reputation has fluctuated. For decades, he was regarded as a national hero, a member of that noble lineage of Britons who have laid down their lives for their country. In the 1970s and 80s, his standing waned and he was depicted by historians such as Roland Huntford as an imperialist buffoon. Since then, the explorer Ranulph Fiennes, the biographer David Crane and others have written in support of Scott and helped restore his reputation..

Yet the idea persists that the race was won because Scandinavian efficiency vanquished British have-a-go pluck. The Norwegians had better rations, some argue, while others point out that Amundsen used dogs, while Scott’s men dragged their own provisions for much of their journey - and died in the process.

But there is a darker interpretation of the events that led to the deaths of Scott and his men, one that suggests Amundsen’s involvement in the race to the South Pole was the consequence not of predestined efficiency but of deceit. Dishonesty was the real cause of the tragedy, in other words.

Amundsen had already succeeded, in 1905, in navigating the Northwest Passage in the Arctic – a task that had confounded all previous efforts, including the doomed 19th-century expedition of Sir John Franklin. Now the Norwegian explorer was seeking new goals. The conquest of the North Pole seemed a logical prize for his ambitions and he began preparations for an attempt until, in 1909, Robert Peary and Frederick Cook, both Americans, claimed separately that they had reached the pole. Neither man’s claim is now accepted, so poor was the proof they provided.

But at the time Perry and Cook’s “successes” seemed plausible enough to persuade Amundsen there would be no glory going north. So he turned his sights to the South Pole, a logical decision, though it presented him with a major problem. Norway had recently gained its independence from Sweden, and Britain had been an ally in its struggle. Protocol dictated that Scott’s British expedition should not face a rival bid from Norwegians.

Amundsen decided on subterfuge – or more accurately deceit. On 3 June 1910, when he set sail from Oslo in his ship, Fram, he did so claiming that he was heading for the North Pole. Only when he was at sea did he reveal his real plan to his crew.

A telegram was waiting for Scott in Melbourne: “Beg leave to inform. Fram heading south. Amundsen.” Scott was aghast. He was planning a complex, scientific expedition to study the geology, meteorology and biology of the Antarctic and to test equipment such as the newly developed motorised sledge, while also taking a shot at the pole. Amundsen would have little interest in science or technology, Scott realised, and would be geared up for a quick race to the pole and nothing else.

“Faced with a man uninterested in anything but the pole, unfettered by science and unburdened by any of the gentlemanly baggage of a British explorer, there was little that Scott could do,” Crane notes in his biography, Scott of the Antarctic.

Both expeditions reached Antarctica in January 1911, Scott a few days ahead of Amundsen. The following summer (in the southern hemisphere) Amundsen set off for the pole 11 days earlier than Scott, who had stuck rigorously to his programme of scientific research. The Norwegian reached his goal on 14 December 1911. Scott arrived 34 days later to the realisation that he had been beaten to the great prize.

“Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority,” he wrote. Sadly, he was right to question their chances of survival.

However, it was only thanks to a series of deceptions that Scott and his men had been placed in that tragic position. If Perry and Cook’s false claims to have reached the North Pole had not been believed, then Amundsen would have been content to go there and would not have lied, in turn, to get to the South Pole.

Scott would not have reached the South Pole any quicker but his team would have been first and, buoyed with victory, their return would have been a much happier, more confident affair, That could have made all the difference, particularly for Scott, Bowers and Wilson. They died 11 miles short of a food depot. Would the spring of victory in their steps have taken them over that tragically short distance? We can never know.