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Both Roald Amundsen (leading his South Pole expedition) and Robert Falcon Scott (leading the Terra Nova Expedition) reached the South Pole within a month of each other. But while Scott and his four companions died on the return journey, Amundsen's party managed to reach the pole and subsequently return to their base camp at Framheim without loss of lives, suggesting that they were better prepared for the expedition. The contrasting fates of the two teams seeking the same prize at the same time invites comparison. This article focuses on some common points that have been raised in the literature. == Overview == The outcomes of the two expeditions were as follows. *Priority at the South Pole: Amundsen beat Scott to the South Pole by 34 days. *Fatalities: 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. *Some authors (including Huntford and Fiennes) associate up to two further deaths (the drowning of Robert Brissenden and the suicide of Hjalmar Johansen) with the two expeditions, but these happened outside the Antarctic Circle. Historically, several factors have been discussed and many contributing factors claimed,〔 including: * Priority at the Pole: Scott wrote that Amundsen's dogs seriously threatened his Polar aspirations, because dogs, being more cold-tolerant than ponies, would be able to start earlier in the season than Scott's mixed transport of dogs, ponies and motors.〔 Scott's diary, 22 Feb 1911 "The proper, as well as wiser, course for us is to proceed exactly as though this had not happened. To go forward and do our best for the honor of the country without fear or panic. There is no doubt that Amundsen's plan is a serious menace to ours. He has a shorter distance to the Pole by 60 miles — I never thought he could have got so many dogs safely to the ice. His plan for running them seems excellent. But above all he can start his journey early in the season — an impossible condition with ponies."〕 * Cherry Garrard in ''The Worst Journey of the World'' agreed but added that in his experience, dogs would not have been able to ascend the Beardmore Glacier.〔Apsley Cherry Garrard, ''The Worst Journey in the World'', chapter 19 "The practical man of the world has plenty of criticism of the way things were done. He says dogs should have been taken (the Polar Plateau ), but he does not show how they could have been got up and down the Beardmore ()."〕 * With regards to the causes of the deaths of Scott and his companions, Cherry-Garrard devotes chapter 19 in his book to examine the causes. Among several other factors, he surmised that the rations of Scott's team were inadequate and did not provide enough energy for the men.〔Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World – Antarctic 1910–13, Chapter XIX, page 573.〕 * Much of Scott's hauling was to be done by ponies, which are ill-suited to work on snow and ice without snow-shoes: their relatively small hooves and large weight caused them to sink into anything other than very firm snow or ice. Oates was opposed to snow-shoes and had left most of them at base camp. * Ponies' coats easily became soaked with perspiration during exertion, thus necessitating constant attention with blankets to avoid hypothermia through evaporation. Dogs in contrast do not have sweat glands - they cool themselves via panting, making them less vulnerable to the cold. With ponies, Scott acknowledged he could not depart until 1 November 1911 when the weather would be warmer, leaving him less time to complete the journey. * The loss of ponies, several of whom had drowned on disintegrating sea-ice, limited the supplies that could be hauled to the depots. Of 19 ponies brought south to aid in laying depots on the Ross Ice Shelf (traversed during the first and final quarters of the trek) nine were lost before the journey began. Further, unlike dogs which could eat the abundant seal and penguin meat found in Antarctica, the ponies' food had to be carried forward from the ship, vastly increasing the stores that had to be transported as Scott's expedition moved towards the Pole. * Had the one-ton depot been placed at latitude 80° S., as planned, Scott and his two surviving companions could have reached it on their return march. Instead, because Scott refused to drive the ponies to their deaths, despite Oates' urgent advice to do so, the depot was placed some 31 miles short of there. Scott’s party died only 11 miles away. * The last-minute addition of Lieutenant Henry R. Bowers to the planned four-man pole party may have strained the rationing plans, although the death of Petty Officer Evans weeks later brought the party down to four again. * The rations were deficient in B and C vitamins. The party became weaker a few weeks after reaching the Pole, despite Scott's racing ambitions before the return march, writing "Now for a desperate struggle to get the news through first (Amundsen reaches the cablehead in Australia ). I wonder if we can do it." * The tins of cooking fuel cached along the return route were found to be partly empty, which forced the men to eat frozen food. Shortage of fuel to melt water likely caused the men to become dehydrated. Apparently the heat of the sun had vaporised part of the fuel, enabling it to escape past the corks. * The weather on the return march seems to have been unusually bad. In particular, when the party reached the Great Ice Barrier, the temperature was much lower than expected for the season, making the surface much less suitable for the sledge runners. Furthermore, the tail-wind which they had expected to aid them home did not appear. Scott wrote, in his final "Message to the Public": “. . . our wreck is certainly due to this sudden advent of severe weather. . . .” * The complexity of the transportation plan made it vulnerable. It depended in part on motor-sledges, ponies, dogs, and southerly winds to assist the sledges (which were fitted with sails). Half of the distance was intended to be covered by man-hauling (and sails whenever conditions permitted). Sullivan states that it was the last factor that probably was decisive.〔 He states "Man is a poor beast of burden, as was shown in the terrible experience of Scott, Shackleton, and Wilson in their thrust to the south of 1902–3. However, Scott relied chiefly on man-hauling in 1911–12 because ponies could not ascend the glacier midway to the Pole. The Norwegians correctly estimated that dog teams could go all the way. Furthermore, they used a simple plan, based on their native skill with skis and on dog-driving methods that were tried and true. In a similar fashion to the way the moon was reached by expending a succession of rocket stages and then casting each aside; the Norwegians used the same strategy, sacrificing the weaker animals along the journey to feed the other animals and the men themselves.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Comparison of the Amundsen and Scott Expeditions」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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