Amundsen VS Scott

Conquest of the South Pole

Piroska Luca Kovács 2028b
Introduction

Roald Amundsen Robert Falcon Scott

• The conqueror of the South Pole • He is one of the famous explorers of the
• Norwegian explorer South Pole
• He was the first to sail through the • An officer in the British Royal Navy
Northwest Passage • He made 2 famous trips to the South Pole
 The beginnings
Between December 1911 and January 1912, Roald Amundsen
(leading his South Pole expedition) and Robert Falcon Scott
(leading the Terra Nova Expedition) reached the South Pole within
five weeks of each other. But while Scott and his four companions
died on the return journey, Amundsen's team managed to reach
the geographic south pole first and subsequently return to their
base camp at Framheim without loss of human life, suggesting that
they were better prepared for the expedition.
 Amundsen’s good ideas
• Amundsen took a lot of dogs (about 40-60) with him on the trip,
because dogs can pull people on the sled, and they also helped a
lot at that time. Amundsen idea, so that the dogs would not die of
hunger, the weakest dog is always killed, and the other dogs eat it
until then. In addition, the dogs fed on seals and penguins. At the
end of the expedition, Amundsen returned home with one dog.
• When Amundsen's team transported the petroleum, the plugs
were directly coated with grease to prevent them from turning
into tiny in the cold.
 Scott’s bad ideas
Scott did not accept the advice of his team, he mostly implemented his plans based on
his own ideas.
• Scott had used dogs on his first expedition and felt they had failed, so the next time
he took horses with him. But when the horses ran out of hay, the horses froze and
the ice broke under them. The ponies' food had to be obtained in advance to the
ship, vastly increasing the stores that had to be transported.
• Scott brought a tractor with him, but it consumed a lot of fuel and the ice broke
under it.
• When Scott's team transported the petroleum in a tank, the cork it changed tiny in
the cold and all the petroleum evaporated from the tank, and which is most likely
why Scott's team froze.
The navigation

Amundsen used prepared

navigation sheets that
simplified the calculations
for his team when they were
tired and cold. Four out of
his team of five were
qualified navigators. Scott
used a theodolite which is
heavier and requires more
mental arithmetic.
In the end

Amundsen beat Scott to the

South Pole by 34 days. Scott
lost five men including himself
returning from the pole, out of
a team of 65. Amundsen's
entire team of 19 returned to
Norway safely.
Objectives of the expeditions

Scott and his financial backers saw

the expedition as having a
scientific basis

At that time, the South Pole was a

place that only a few people had
visited before, and no one had yet
conquered it. They thought the
time had come.
Thank you!
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