Day 3 Remembering Scott's final entry

RRS James Clark Ross off the Falkland Islands

The sea outside my porthole is calm, with only occasional whitecaps. The sun just creeps above the horizon in a near cloudless sky. About a hundred black-browed albatrosses have gathered around the ship, possibly in the expectation that any minute now we would be hauling up a huge net full of fish for their breakfast. No such thing materialises for the albatrosses, but a Full English awaits the science party in the galley. My stomach isn't quite up to the task yet, and the effects of the sea sickness pills only add to my constant feeling of slight drunkenness.

I had been gently rocked side to side all night, but when I take my first steps in the morning my body seems to need a few moment to realise that everything is moving. As I move a foot to take a step, the ship has shifted slightly by the time it touches the ground. I feel better after a light breakfast, but at the same time still sleepy. We are at 51° 27.95 South, 57°35.95 West just a few miles off Volunteer Point west of  the Falkland Islands. The sun shines and a cool breeze is blowing at 20  knots - a rather fine day to be out at sea.

A far cry from the conditions Robert Falcon Scott's polar party encountered at the South Pole in January 1912 when he wrote in his diary "Great God! this is an awful place". All five who went to claim the pole for Britain didn't make it back. Today is the centenary of Scott's last diary entry. His team had grown worryingly weak whilst hauling their sledges back from the pole back. In February Evans had succumbed to
exhaustion. In mid-March Captain Oates who suffered from severe frostbite and gangrene had walked out of their tent into the Antarctic blizzard with the immortal words "I am just going outside, and may be
some time". The remaining three men had carried on until they were halted again by a fierce blizzard just 11 miles from their next food depot that would have saved Scott, Wilson and Bowers.

The three men holed up in their tent in the impenetrable storm had come to accept the inevitability of death. On 29th March 2912, exactly 100 years ago today, Scott wrote in his diary: "We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. For God's sake look after our people." They are thought to have died shortly afterwards and their bodies together with their diaries and scientific samples weren't recovered until November 1912.

The tragedy made headlines around the world and especially captured the imagination of the British public who, on the brink of World War I was in dire need of national heroes. While most English school children will probably name Scott as the first man to stand on the South Pole it was indeed Amundsen who beat them to it. The Norwegian was ahead of Scott from the start and he set off with sledge dogs that allowed the men in Amundsen's party to carry a lighter load. While Amundsen did not pursue any scientific endeavours - he was after the pole and not much else - Scott dedicated much of his time to the collection of specimen, map making and weather recording. It almost feels that if Scott might have had an inkling that he wouldn't' be the first the pole and the science would give his expedition, should it fail, a lasting legacy. The science would give Scott credibility and recognition of lasting impact.

One hundred years after Scott penned his famous last words I am writing this blog post on board a research vessel of the British Antarctic Survey. Few would dispute that Scott's scientific discoveries laid the foundations for future Antarctic research. So I see myself being here, about to depart for Antarctic Waters, as a direct consequence of Scott's expedition and how the tragedy that befell him and his men captured the public imagination.