Thank you sir. I appreciate the gesture. I recently read a book about the race for the Pole, Scott’s fatal expedition and Amundsen’s triumph.
Each alternating chapter was one team or the other, starting with their position. There are so many interesting details.
Amundsen and his men were egalitarian in driving the sleds. Scott maintained a heirarchy in terms of who walked first, what the division of labor was, and who camped with whom.
Amundsen had sleds and dogs. Scott had gasoline tractors, Mongolian ponies and the men dragged sleds.
Amundsen and his team ate seals while on the ice flow, entombed the remains of what they didn’t eat for their return trip in easy to find cairns. They also ate at least one generation of puppies. They left with about 50 dogs, returned with just a few. Scott had rations, canned supplies.
When Amundsen got to the pole, there was obviously no way to locate with a compass, and the star shots were not accurate enough to pinpoint the location. So they circumnavigated the celestial pole. I forget the size of the circle, but it’s length was considerable, say 100 km. Flags were placed all along the circumference. These Scott encountered when his team arrived.
Quite a few of the Scott expedition survived, as Scott sent many back including with the ponies.
Modeling subjects aren’t too rare. Shackelton’s Discovery is a nice Airfix model, as is Heller’s Pourquoi Pas? Scott’s ship on the last expedition, the Terra Nova, could probably be bashed for one of those.
My daughter gave me a bottle of Shackelton blended whiskey for Father’s Day. It was recently emptied; a fine spirit.
In any case, I’d love to see what they have about either Scott or Shackelton.
Bill
