Newsgroups: sci.space.history
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Scott (was Re: In the Line of Duty)
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 05:40:20 GMT

In article <6q2pov$fb1$9@nntp.Stanford.EDU>,
Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>|> ...and gross incompetence it was, too -- had he returned, it is
>|> quite likely that he would have faced a court-martial.
>
>Are you sure?

No.  Huntford comments on it as a serious possibility, but I no longer
remember the details, and I don't have the book handy at the moment.  (He
noted that such issues may have demoralized Scott on the return trip.  It
is likely that the party *could* have reached the next supply cache, but
Scott appears to have talked them out of trying.)

>Scott's party were dying of scurvy. That was reasonably well-known in
>Antarctic scientific circles in the 1970s, if not in the popular press...

Huntford's conclusion is that although this is likely, it is not certain.
It would explain certain things, but the evidence is slim and the case is
not ironclad.  (One complication is that they were also almost certainly
suffering from B-vitamin deficiencies as well.  Not to mention exhaustion,
starvation, dehydration, and exposure.  Sorting the mess out well enough
to identify specific symptoms with specific causes is difficult,
especially since their own records are scanty near the end, and there was
no systematic medical examination -- at least, none whose results were
written down -- when the bodies were found.)

>...It would've made little difference what they found in their
>last cache...

And in fact it wasn't their last cache.  Again, romantic legend does not
line up well with the facts as determined from primary sources.  They were
still a long way from home, in bad shape, and facing worsening conditions
with inadequate preparation.  It wasn't just a question of bad luck
preventing them from reaching the next cache; reaching that cache almost
certainly would not have saved them.

>...The RN's
>institutional knowledge that vitamin C prevented scurvy and was
>necessary on long voyages is well-known dates back to at least Cook.
>(It's the source of `Limeys', after all.)

The history here is much more complex than that.  The very notion that
scurvy was the result of a dietary deficiency was not at all solidly
established until modern times, partly because there was little systematic
experimenting and the results were so maddeningly inconsistent.  For
example, the RN's well-known lime-juice ration did some good in early
days, but later stopped working!

(Not until vitamin C was actually identified did it become clear that
careful control of preparation methods is crucial, and in particular that
juice processing must not use copper vessels or tubing, because that
rapidly destroys the vitamin.  To this day, there are aspects of scurvy
that are not fully understood; experimentation remains difficult -- the
animal analogs which finally made scientific investigation practical do
not exactly duplicate human scurvy -- and interest in it is minimal now
that effective prevention is available.)

The race to the South Pole took place a few years before the discoveries
that clarified this confusing situation.  Scott can't really be blamed
*specifically* for this, because nobody in the RN really understood what
caused scurvy or how to prevent it.

What Scott *can* be blamed for, in this area, is his failure to take more
general precautions against such problems.  Amundsen didn't know what
caused scurvy either, but he knew that being away from a varied and
natural diet for extended periods of time was worrisome.  His party
regularly picked out and shot the weakest dogs in the dog teams, and
cooked and ate the resulting dog meat (and everything the men couldn't eat
was fed to the rest of the dogs).  His preparations, the previous autumn,
including hauling frozen fresh meat (seals) to the farthest pre-positioned
supply cache.  And above all, he planned his whole trip to the Pole and
back to be completed within a length of time that was generally known to
be safe.  Scott simply didn't pay any attention to the issue.

(Amundsen's concern for the most natural possible diet also resulted in
his travel rations including whole-wheat biscuits, which largely saved his
party from the B-vitamin deficiencies which are likely to have debilitated
Scott's party both physically and mentally toward the end.)
--
Being the last man on the Moon is a |  Henry Spencer   henry@spsystems.net
very dubious honor. -- Gene Cernan  |      (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)

Newsgroups: sci.space.history
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Scott (was Re: In the Line of Duty)
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 14:21:18 GMT

In article <6q4d0v$sti$2@nntp.Stanford.EDU>,
Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>...The obvious contrast is to
>Amundsen's expedition, who reguarly killed, cooked, and ate the
>weakest of their sled dogs. (planned, not from desperation; if memory
>serves they didnt have enough seal-meat to feed all the dogs all the
>way back.)

Very much planned.  For example, after the climb to the Antarctic plateau,
they thinned the dogs out fairly drastically, knowing that the trek over
the fairly-level plateau wouldn't need nearly as many.  Some they ate on
the spot; others they left (frozen!) for the return trip.

Had they encountered a real emergency, of course, all of the dogs would
have been available for food.  Amundsen's party could have made it back
from the Pole even if they'd missed *all* their supply caches on the
return trip, although it would have been a rough trip and it would have
ended with the men pulling the sleds.  He planned for the possibility;
the necessary harnesses were along.  (As it was, on the return trip they
ended up leaving food behind because they couldn't eat it all.)

Scott's party was so short on supplies that they didn't dare miss a single
cache, or even delay reaching one much, leading to near-panic when they
had trouble finding one or two of them.  They relied on following their
own tracks back, which didn't always work.  (Amundsen marked his caches
carefully.)

>|> ...the RN's well-known lime-juice ration did some good in early
>|> days, but later stopped working!
>
>Something to do with the type of barrels used?

Mostly excess heat and use of copper plumbing in commercial preparation, I
think, although it's been a while since I read about this.  The changes in
preparation, of course, happened gradually enough and haphazardly enough
that there was no sudden loss of effectiveness to make people suspicious.

>|> ...And above all, [Amundsen] planned his whole trip to the Pole and
>|> back to be completed within a length of time that was generally known to
>|> be safe.  Scott simply didn't pay any attention to the issue.
>
>(And other issues, like whether ponies would survive on the ice.)

It didn't help that the men he sent to buy the ponies knew little about
ponies, and that Scott (who didn't know much about them either) insisted
on *white* ponies, perhaps in the belief that they were better suited to
polar conditions.  The combination of inadequate knowledge and irrelevant
constraints let the Siberian pony traders make a real killing, very much
at Scott's expense.  High-quality ponies would have done better.

>Is that why Huntford thinks Scott would've been court-martialled?

If memory serves, yes.  Reaching the Pole first would have excused almost
anything, but coming second would cause questions to be asked, especially
since even in a fairly optimistic case, only three of the five men in the
Pole party would have made it back.  And any serious asking of questions
would have revealed the depth of Scott's blundering incompetence, his
total lack of attention to one critical issue after another.
--
Being the last man on the Moon is a |  Henry Spencer   henry@spsystems.net
very dubious honor. -- Gene Cernan  |      (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)