Scott, Robert Falcon (1868-1912), a British explorer and naval officer, became the first person to reach the South Polar plateau. He reached it on an expedition that took place from 1901 to 1904. On Dec. 30, 1902, Scott reached a latitude of approximately 82 degrees 17 minutes, about 530 miles (850 kilometers) from the true South Pole. The latitude reached by Scott was the farthest south that anyone had then gone.
Scott’s successes led the British government and Royal Geographical Society to appoint him commander of an expedition to the true South Pole. Leading the expedition, Scott sailed in 1910 from New Zealand on the Terra Nova. His party reached Cape Evans on Ross Island and set up headquarters there. Scott started over the ice with sleds in November 1911. The men reached the pole on Jan. 17, 1912, but they found that Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, had already reached it about five weeks earlier, on Dec. 14, 1911. On the return trip, all five members of the Scott party died. Three bodies and records and diaries the men had kept were found at their last camping site. Scott made his last diary entry on March 29, 1912. Factors contributing to the deaths included cold, hunger, illness, poor organization, insufficient fuel for motor-powered sleds, and lack of ponies and dogs to pull sleds. Scott was born on June 6, 1868, in Devonport.
