Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Meteorological Detective Work, January 4, 2002
I've always been more interested in Arctic exploration than the Antarctic -- it seems less two-dimensional, and far more colorful in terms of history. But this book really got my attention. Solomon isn't some armchair theorist, she is an Antarctic professional, and an expert on weather conditions there. Taking a close look at what happened to Scott's 1911-12 expedition, and contrasting it with his earlier journey (with Shackleton) plus Shackleton's 1908 attempt, and the rival Amundsen polar bid, she shakes out a lot of rumors, innuendos and plain nonsense about what Scott 'knew' versus what he 'ought to have known.'Scott has always seemed a stiff-upper-lip bumbler to me, and to some extent he was, but what happened is not as simple as it appears. He made some educated guesses, and he also made some mistakes. Using motor sleds was a waste of time, considering the poor engine technology of the time. He allowed someone else to select some unsuitable Manchurian ponies. He didn't trust dogs, based on prior experiences. He didn't pay enough attention to suitable clothing and sleeping bags. But he did set up a workable logistical system for his polar attempt, that should have worked. So what went wrong? The factors above, plus too great a level of fatigue for his team. Poor Bowers ended up walking 400 miles in snow, instead of skiing. They didn't know, as we do, what a menace dehydration at high altitudes would be. Scurvy was poorly understood, and they probably suffered marginally from this, too. And finally, they set out for the Pole a month too late, and got caught in an extremely cold spell that made sledding by manhauling almost impossible. Solomon proves every contention with solid data from the expedition's copious records and from modern survey work. In the end, Scott died -- with Wilson and Bowers keeping him company, in all probability -- because he contracted severe frostbite in -40 degree weather. The idea that he was trapped by a '10 day blizzard' just eleven miles short of a supply depot is disproved by Solomon: the katabatic winds don't blow from the south for more than two or three days, it now seems. This is a well-written, highly documented piece of work, and is not in any sense an attempt to 'whitewash' Scott. Starting late, and hitting some extremely bad weather was all it took to kill him and his four brave companions.
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still not exonerated, October 27, 2001
Susan Solomon has tried very hard in this well-written and documented new book to exonerate Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the leader of the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1911-1912. In recent years Scott has been accused of everything from simple incompetence to real stupidity by critics of his leadership and organization, which Solomon, an NOAA scientist with a distinguished career and Antarctic experience, clearly finds unjustified. By extensively researching not only the original documentation - diaries of Scott and his men, the expedition's meteorological records, information from other Antarctic expeditions of the day such as Shackleton's 1908-1909 try for the pole and Amundsen's successful polar bid of 1911-1912 - but also modern meteorological data, now available for some years along the entirety of Scott's route to the pole (now the course for aircraft bound for the Amundsen-Scott Station), she has tried her level best to suggest that abnormally cold weather was the deciding factor in the loss of the five-man polar party. And indeed cold weather must have been a factor. The poor weather conditions not only would have debilitated the men and caused severe frostbite, the friction of cold snow would have made it almost impossible for the men to pull their sledges more than a few miles a day. Indeed Solomon has charted the progress of the polar party, comparing it with the two supporting parties that turned back short of the pole, and her information does demonstrate how badly slowed up Scott and his four companions were.The trouble remains, however, that while poor weather clearly contributed to the loss of Captain Scott and his men, Scott's own mistakes and poor planning were also a factor, and to her great credit Solomon does not conceal them, just as Scott, an undeniably courageous and honest man, did not conceal them in his own writings. Scott's assiduous copying of Shackleton's mistakes in 1908-09 (the use of ponies, reliance on unproven motor transport), his own short cuts (spending time testing his motor sledges but not clothing, tents, or other gear), and his failures in leadership (taking five men instead of the planned four to the pole) were instrumental, I believe, in his failure to survive the trek. One also must question why, after the blizzard that trapped the men in their tent 11 miles from a depot of food and fuel, the two well men, Dr. Wilson and the redoubtable Lt. Bowers, did not leave Scott, who was crippled by frostbite, and go to the depot for supplies or even, in the finale extremity, leave Scott to die and save themselves, something Solomon herself seems to find as mysterious as others who have pondered the question, although she advances a possible explanation. Overall this is a very good book, the first to take into account modern knowledge of Antarctic weather and apply it to Scott's tragic expedition. Although I don't feel that the author has entirely proved her thesis, it is a valuable and useful contribution to the controversy over Captain Scott's expedition.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Despite bungling, Scott might have made it back alive., November 9, 2001
The Coldest March is a well-written and compelling enough book, that I feel bad to suggest it would have made a far better magazine article. Susan Solomon's exhaustive research does indeed convince one that the weather that year was extraordinarily harsh. But the essence of her argument as I saw it, is that despite undeniabley bad decisions and willfull ignorance, Scott probably would still have made it back alive 14 years out of 15. Instead of leaving it at that however, which really is a facinating and original perspective, she tries quite hard to explain or rationalize Scott's decisions, which is usually a stretch, often requiring strategic ommission. She does not try to entirely exonerate the man, and I completely support her desire to avoid the shallow condemnation of Robert F. Scott as an incompetent bumbler, but I found myself again and again cringing at the examples she employed in his favor. The suggestion that the winter expedition of three men to Cape Crozier was a proper scientific experiment to determine nutritional requirements for the polar party is simply absurd. Scott, Amudson and Shackleton were all facinating and complicated figures, sharing as do all great leaders, a mix of strengths and weaknesses that is almost impossible for the rest of us to really understand. They were also products of a unique historical era, social class, and national ideologies. Roland Huntford's book - The Last Place on Earth has done the best job of trying to consider all these factors, but there is definitely an anti-Scott sentiment to it. Actually, after reading a good 8 or 9 books on the subject now, I have been amazed at the "polarization" of opinion and the slant each author places on their telling. Huntford describes Scott as foolishly loosing two dogs down a crevasse. Diane Preston (A First Rate Tragedy) describes the same event as Scott gallantly going down a crevasse to rescue the two dogs! Cherry-Garrard (A member of the expedition and author of The Worst Journey In the World - if you read just one book, read this!) has it most accurate, that Scott did go down to rescue the dogs, and then two died of their injuries. Still, I recommend this book as a vital contribution to the facinating world of polar literature.
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