But I do understand my Antarctic friend's obsession with Shackleton and Scott. The more I read about them and their fellow polar explorers the more there is to admire:scientific endeavour, hardiness and self sacrifice. They embody the ideal of a British Empire that, at its worst, was brutal, greedy and patronising. The mid-winter expedition to Cape Crozier to collect Emperor Penguin eggs, so horrifically described by Apsley Cherry-Garrard in The Worst Journey in the World, is a tale of such quixotic heroism as to begger belief. Cherry-Garrard's two companions and friends on that journey, Wilson and Bowers, died with Scott and it was he who found their bodies the following year.
Wilson, Bowers and Cherry-Garrard: the privations of their journey on their faces
Scott's final diary entries movingly sum up this spirit. “We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.”. On the centenary of his death these stoic qualities are now outshining his well-documented weaknesses - and deservedly so.
