Robert Falcon Scott

(1868 - 1912)

A British naval cadet at thirteen, Robert Falcon Scott became a national celebrity after the return of his first polar expedition in 1904. In 1909 he heard news that Ernest Shackleton had come close to reaching the South Pole, and he announced his own expedition, on the Terra Nostra, later that year. In January 1912 Scott finally reached the pole; a team of Norwegians had preceded him there by thirty-four days. The bodies of Scott and his men were found in November. “Nothing in our time,” proclaimed one newspaper, “has touched the whole nation so instantly and so deeply as the loss of these men.”

 

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