Front cover image for The last great quest : Captain Scott's Antarctic sacrifice

The last great quest : Captain Scott's Antarctic sacrifice

Max Jones (Author)
"Scott's last Antarctic expedition is one of the great adventure stories of the twentieth century. On 1 November 1911, a British team set out on the gruelling 800-mile journey across the coldest and highest continent on earth to the South Pole. Five men battled through unimaginably harsh conditions only to find the Norwegian flag planted at the Pole just weeks before. Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Lieutenant Henry Bowers, Petty Officer Edgar Evans, Captain Lawrence Oates, and Dr Edward Wilson all died on the return trek, starved and frozen to death, only eleven miles from a supply camp. In November 1912, a rescue party discovered their last letters and diaries, which told a story of bravery, hardship, and self-sacrifice that shocked the world." "Recent decades have seen controversy rage over whether Scott was the last of a line of great Victorian explorers, intent on discovering uncharted lands, or a hopeless incompetent driven by personal ambition. Rejecting the stereotypes, Max Jones reveals a complex figure, a product of the passions and preoccupations of an imperial age. He also shows how heroes are made and manipulated, through a close examination of the unprecedented outpouring of public grief at the news of the death of Scott and his companions."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2003
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003
Biographies
xv, 352 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm
9780192804839, 9780192805706, 0192804839, 0192805703
59303598
Measuring the world
The race to the South Pole
Disaster in the Antarctic
Remembering the dead
Martyrs of science
For the honour of our country
These were men
So many heroes
Epilogue
British memorial commemorating the Antarctic disaster, 1913-1925
Message to the public
Maps on end papers