A First Rate Tragedy (51 page)

Authors: Diana Preston

BOOK: A First Rate Tragedy

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Kathleen Scott and Peter. Peter was less than a year old when Captain Scott sailed from England but he more than fulfilled his father’s ambition that he should grow up loving nature.

Petty Officers Crean and Evans mending sleeping bags. Crean would one day join Shackleton on his fateful
Endurance
expedition and would again prove his mettle.

Camping near the Polar Plateau, December 1911. Shortly afterwards Scott selected the four men who would accompany him to the Pole.

Amundsen’s tent at the South Pole. The shock of finding that Amundsen had beaten them had a profound psychological effect on Scott and his men.

Roald Amundsen, the victor of the race to the Pole, called by some ‘a Viking raid’.

The famous painting by Dollman of Captain Oates walking to his death in the blizzard. Oates’s gesture caught the popular imagination as the epitome of English gallantry and self-sacrifice.

Monument to Captain Scott, Cape Town, South Africa. This was one of several monuments to Scott and his men erected around the world.

Monument to Captain Scott, Christchurch, New Zealand. This was one of a number of monuments sculpted by Kathleen. Another stands in Waterloo Place near St. James’s Park in London.

Table of Contents

1 The Early Heats of the Great Race

2 Scott – The Early Days

3 ‘Ready, Aye, Ready’

4 ‘Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came’

5 ‘Poor Old Shackleton’

6 ‘Little Human Insects’

7 The Reluctant Celebrity

8 Captain Scott in Love

9 A Matter of Honour

10 ‘Am Going South, Amundsen’

11 Stewed Penguin Breast and Plum Pudding

12 Winter

13 ‘Miserable, Utterly Miserable’

14 ‘What Castles One Builds’

15 ‘God Help Us’

16 ‘Had We Lived . . .’

17 ‘We Have Got To Face It Now’

18 The Reason Why

Epilogue

Sources and References

Bibliography

Index

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