A First-Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole [Hardcover]

Diana Preston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1998

On November 12, 1912, a rescue party trekking across Antarctica's Great Ice Barrier found what they had set out to find: the snow-covered tent of the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Inside, they made a grim discovery: Scott's frozen body lying between the bodies of two fellow explorers. The remaining two members of the party were nowhere in sight, but Scott's eloquent diary soon revealed their fate. They, like the others, had perished in nightmarish circumstances after successfully reaching the South Pole. The elusive character of Scott, in whom incredible courage was fatally matched by self-doubt and miscalculation, continues to haunt the popular imagination. His story--and that of the other four men on his final expedition--has never been told more grippingly or with greater compassion than it is in this book.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

British explorer Robert F. Scott spent three years exploring the Antarctic, returning to England a hero in 1904. His ambition was to be the first man to reach the South Pole, and he overcame innumerable obstacles to assemble another expedition, which left in 1910. Scott and three of his men did reach the pole, only to discover that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had been there only five weeks earlier. Slightly more than two months later, Scott and his companions died in their tents, their bodies--and Scott's diaries--found eight months later by a search party. This account of Scott, having followed the explorer from childhood through his naval training and marriage, gives us at the end not only a national symbol but a fully developed tragic hero. Diana Preston commendably ventures beyond the longstanding myth, including material that shows how Scott's decisions and faulty judgements ultimately sealed his fate.

From Publishers Weekly

"Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman." So reads Captain Robert Falcon Scott's message from the grave, found in a tent with his frozen corpse and the bodies of two fellow explorers, after his expedition had lost the race to the South Pole. Disheartened by their defeat at the hands of the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, the British team struggled on their return trip, succumbing to the Antarctic elements only 11 miles from the fuel and food that might have saved them. Scott was the most revered of the major Antarctic explorers of his day: Amundsen may have personified professionalism, and Shackleton, endurance; but Scott?perhaps only by dying?represented the courage and heroism that an insecure, prewar Britain craved. Drawing on the poetic writings of the explorers themselves, Preston (The Road to Culloden Moor) illuminates Scott's occasional bad luck, inexperience and even ineptitude without diminishing his unquestionable courage, honor and humanity. Indeed, it is Preston's balanced look at Scott's life and its context that sets this book apart from the many other works on the subject. Three maps, two 8-page b&w inserts.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (November 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395933498
• ISBN-13: 978-0395933497
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #544,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The fatal consequences of weak leadership, October 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A First-Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole (Hardcover)

After reading Caroline Alexander's account of Shackleton's adventure in the Antarctic, I then read this book. How anyone can say that this is not an apologist account is beyond me! Scott's mistakes are so terribly glaring and numerous, I am baffled as to why his status as a hero remains when true leaders like Shackleton are virtually unknown to most people. The tone might be more tolerable if the author was only trying to defend Scott, however, she continuously berates both Shackleton (seemingly more on the grounds that he is Irish) and Amundsen (characterizing him as a Nordic barbarian) throughout the book and promotes Scott as the "gentleman" explorer. Shackleton was able to keep over 20 men alive over the course of 2 years, cross a 1000 miles over the ocean in something akin to a row boat and then hike over mountains to save his men. In contrast, it was almost painful to read about Scott's errors in judgment and wonder what was motivating his thinking at the time - worrying about killing the dogs for food, bringing an additional person on the trek to the pole without enough food, making sure that they did a "man" haul - which finally and collectively sealed Scott's fate as well as the fate of his men. I use the term "fate" lightly because so many of the errors in judgment could have been avoided, I finished the book believing that if Scott had been a stronger leader, he and his men would have survived the ordeal.

I still rate this book 5 stars, because regardless of the tone, I found it to be a fascinating study of weak leadership and the fatal consequences that can result from it

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a not so cold appraisal, April 22, 2001

By 

John W. Cotner (Belmont, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A First-Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole (Hardcover)

i found this to be, overall, a good book and worth reading. diana preston's writing style was easy to read, informal and breezy, once i got into the rhythms of her "britishisms" and use of english and military slang.

ms. preston's account of robert falcon scott's doomed trip back from the south pole was gripping and poignant, and her distillation of myriad sources, diaries and letters into a cohesive, readable factual, detailed account reveals her to be a first-rate historical biographer, perhaps the best female british biographer since antonia fraser.

as i read this book, i found ms. preston to be somewhat apologetic and rationalizing for rfs, but not overly or annoyingly so, as some reviewers contend. what struck me was the focus on the amateurish, stiff upper lip, muddle through, "be a good sport and gentleman and if not live, then die heroically" mentality that seemed to permeate not only the scott venture, but most interpretations of, and rationalizations for it ever since.

it struck me as similar to the mentaility that assumed that the men on the titanic -- which went down only a month after RFS and his men died and nine months before the public learned of it -- willingly gave up their lives in response to an edwardian code of honor and chivalry. that assumption was used to rationalize the tragic deaths of rfs and his men, by turning what was really, in large part, the result of miscalculation and ineptitude, into a template example of british superior character, somehow triumphing in failure.

ms. preston buys into that explanation somewhat in her account of rfs, but comes up with other, more mundane or logistical explanations for his failures: why he used ill-suited ponies instead of sled dogs; why he used the wrong kind of fuel for his snow sledges; why he picked arguably some of the wrong men, although their hallmark was that, until things got really bad at the end, they all got along and were decent chaps; why rfs, wracked with self-doubt, was perhaps not first rate command material for this arduous mission; why he could not decide if this was a geological exploration or a race to the pole; why, near the end, he insisted on hauling 35 lbs. of rocks when his weakened, scurvied crew, starting to see the deathshead at the end of the tunnel, might have been better served with sledging a lighter load; and why he vainly and pettily got obsessed with shackleton and amundsen, in terms of the race to the pole, rather than put them out of mind and focus on the mission at hand.

part of the british phenomenon of embracing rfs's death and wringing every last bit of sentiment out of it -- not unlike the world-wide reaction to princess diana's untimely, tragic death -- was no doubt in reaction to the perception that their good, heroic amateur explorer had fought the good fight but lost -- somehow prized even more than the winning -- and been snookered by a professional exploratory cad, amundsen, to boot.

one thing ms. preston alludes to is that the years when this, and the titanic disaster occurred were years in britain of extreme, deliciously enjoyed sentiment, of decorous art and music -- elinor glyn, arne, beardsley, elgar -- in which one relished the poignant, inevitably doomed beau geste. more than the death of rfs, the death of gangrenous, frostbitten soldier, titus oates, who willingly walked out into the storm to face his certain death, struck a chord with the public as such a noble act. ms. preston points up that oates, of all those involved, was of the upper class; perhaps he was doing what was expected more of him than some of the others.

the real hero, whose book ms. preston has not yet written, was shackleton, who did it -- in terms of getting himself and his men out alive -- and then went back and did it again, in an open boat. he did not get to the south pole, but he took care of his men -- the first responsibility of a commander and something, as ms. preston points out without pointing the finger at him, that rfs ultimately did not do.

i recommend this book as it will make you think about what goes into making a good leader, a hero and a failure. in the end, you, as i, will probably not be able to put rfs neatly into any one of those categories.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The story has been better told previously, March 8, 1999

By 

Dennis Raphael (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A First-Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole (Hardcover)

A First-Rate Tragedy, while certainly well-done adds nothing to the earlier "Scott and Amundsen" written by Roland Huntford. In fact the latter does the job in more detail, with greater insights into the time and context of the Antarctic Expedition. It also covers both Amundsen as well as Scott. Finally, the author serves at times as an apologist for Scott - perhaps this is so as she is British herself!