Robert Falcon Scott Biography

British explorer, born in Devonport; he became a naval cadet in 1880 and received his first command as leader of the Antarctic expedition which left Britain in 1900. The Voyage of the ‘Discovery’ (1905) contains his account of the expedition. In 1910 he set sail for the Antarctic again in the Terra Nova, reaching the South Pole in January 1912 to find the Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen had been the first to reach it less than a month before. Scott and his four companions all perished in extremely severe weather on the return journey. Stephen Gwynn's Captain Scott (1930) and Reginald Pound's Scott of the Antarctic (1977) are among the many biographies. His journals of 1910–12 were published under the title Scott's Last Expedition (edited by L. Huxley, 1913).