Captain Robert Scott was one of my childhood heroes. Given my antipathy for the cold, let alone the sub-zero antarctic temperatures, perhaps it should have been Stanley or Livingstone, who explored warmer climes. Although I admired these men, it is Scott who has a place in my heart. Perhaps it was the image of that small band of brave, foolhardy men freezing to death in the wild, white wasteland that captured both my imagination and my admiration.
Yesterday, previously unseen correspondence from that fateful mission was made public. An extract from a letter to his wife:
Dearest Darling – we are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through – In our short lunch hours I take advantage of a very small measure of warmth to write letters preparatory to a possible end – the first is naturally to you on whom my thought mostly dwell waking or sleeping – if anything happens to me I shall like you to know how much you have meant to me and that pleasant recollections are with me as I depart.
The rest is equally poignant and lacking in self pity. This is a man who, facing death, did so head on with dignity. A man who had struggled to the pole only to find that he was second. His disappointment must have been profound, yet he thinks only of those he is leaving.
Scott was a great Briton. He epitomises something in which we seem to excel, the fortitude and courage of which we should be proud. Something all too often forgotten in a world obsessed with facile celebrity and a disdain for nationhood. When we fail, we do so spectacularly, but we do it well. I tip my hat to Captain Robert Falcon Scott and the men who travelled and perished with him.