Customer Reviews

Scott of the Antarctic: A Biography (Vintage)

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I particularily like the subtitle to this book, 'a life of courage and tragedy.'

Scott was undoubtedly courageous. He could not have been otherwise. On the other hand, his courage and drive to get to the South Pole was not exactly balanced by experience or perhaps by common sense. There's an old saying that if you wanted to get somewhere like the South Pole, Scott would have been a good leader to follow, but if you wanted to get back, then other expedition leaders like Shackleton would be your first choice. Shackleton's quotation: 'Better a live donkey than a dead lion.' Consistent with this, Scott got to the South Pole, Shackleton didn't. Scott didn't get back.

In this book, the author is clearly a deep admirer of Scott. And indeed he did great things. Coming from a humble beginning he appeared driven to accomplish things, and he did. He was a complicated man, and Mr. Crane's access to the family papers and Scott's letters give a view that is perhaps more balanced than what we have seen before.

If nothing else, Mr. Crane is an excellent writer and the story becomes one of those can't put down books.

This is a great "counter" to the Roland Huntford's The Last Place on Earth (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375754741) which is unbalanced in its criticism of Scott. This bio shows Scott as a product of his time. I still don't feel that it dealt with why "no dogs" effectively, other than pulling sleds was honorable. But otherwise the book shows a very rounded view of who Scott was, why he did what he did and what a great leader he was.

David Crane shows how the death of the explorer Captain Scott galvanized the UK on the edge of World War I, but he qualifies British response to the tragedy by pointing up that, despite the weight of popular opinion, the pre-war Edwardian years were not exactly the Golden Age of empire the way they are nowadays painted. Crane's life of Scott is in every way a re-revisionist biography, kicking against what he feels has been the unfair denigration of Scott's life and deeds over the past thirty years.

Sometimes this approach works, sometimes it doesn't. Through meticulous handling of evidence, he tells the story without a hint of strain, and yet sometimes whole paragraphs stop the action to argue that history has shafted Scott once again. A prototypical Englishman in the days when "God was an Englishman," Scott has suffered from unthinking backlhas, or so says Crane, and indeed he says it about four hundred times so that, frankly, I began to sympathize with Scott's attackers a bit, for no one's that perfect.

Indeed Crane admits as much, citing his rivalry with Shackleton and then finally with Amundsen as proof, but in each case, the other man is deeply at fault and Scott was just trying to muddle through on Naval smarts and years of experience leading men. It was a time for heroics, and something in the air (together with a thriving media culture) made heroes out of the most unlikely souls. England expected every man to do his duty, and alas so did Norway and Amundsen came home with the gold, so to speak, whereas the Englishmen after the same glittering prize were all dead by the time Amundsen returned home. "The Englishmen, the goal accompished," bleated the press, "lay quiet in the snows. Through the months since . . . while wives and friends set forth for meetings and counted time, they lay oblivious. All was over for them long ago."

Beyond the heroics of the era, Crane attributes the legend of Captain Scott to his indispitable skill as a prose writer. There is something macabre about the veneration given to his last journal, found by the relief party, but it's a bizarre twist totally understandable in the context, the words that live on after the hand that wrote them has grown cold and still. Without that last journal, its reinscription of subaltern heroics, its narrative of deprivation and memory and love, how else would Scott be remembered? In this regard Crane has an interesting passage about the way in which Westminster Abbey had its own little competition going on with St. Paul's Cathedral about which site had the most pomp and had the most heroes of empire commemmorated there.

Although it is revealing to point things out in an effort to de-bunk British heroism, I found the book to be all over the place. In addition, there is an annoying application of French vogue words to make the author seem more erudite. Not a very well written book. The most complelling sections are from the diaries and rememberances of the explorers themselves.

I had hoped Scott of the Antarctic would be an exciting read, given the subject matter, but I was disappointed. This is not a ripping adventure story; it is a painstakingly detailed biography that analyzes every aspect of Robert Falcon Scott's life, including aspects I did not care to know about. The book starts on a depressing note, with an entire chapter (!) describing Scott's funeral and the public grief over his death. A later chapter details the unremarkable early years of Scott's Navy career. Another describes Scott's courtship and marriage, which was not a subject I was interested in reading about, and I feel no differently now that I have. There are lengthy discussions of politics in the Royal Geographic Society; Scott's efforts to gain funding and sponsorship; and his rivalries with other explorers. I found these topics tedious. Scott's Antarctic journeys (which I hoped would prove exciting) are narrated in a straightforward and objective style that often left me flat.

In fairness, Scott of the Antarctic was clearly not meant to be a tale of adventure. It is a scholarly work intended to rebut the charges of incompetence that other historians have levied against Captain Scott. It is thoroughly researched, and may be of interest to those who have already read extensively on this subject and would like an alternate view. Speaking for myself, I can only say this book did not hold my interest.

The book is dreadful. It continually refers to other expeditions that the average reader will not know about. The writing is random and its impossible to follow the thread. There are also many deliberate and irrelevant literary references just inserted to be clever. A great subject that I w\as looking forward to, treated very badly by a pseudo intellectual. Try as I might I could not finish it.