Big job, bagging a pole. Captain Robert Falcon Scott knew this when he started planning his famed if ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica. As well as all of the logistical wranglings – not least the challenge of shipping 65 men to the bottom of the earth to live in self-made huts for a year – Scott had to smile his way though a charm offensive in his quest for financial help. Having pressed more flesh than a busy physiotherapist, he was still chasing cheques as he sailed to New Zealand, from where his boat would set off at the end of 1910 for its historic final leg.
Scott was an effective frontman for the expedition, and his public relations campaign back home helped ignite the spirit of a nation. Few were as smitten as Britain’s schoolchildren, who bought into the mission with both their hearts and their pocket money. Poring over his plans in their classrooms, these pint-size supporters queued up to sponsor a pony or dog, or to buy the Captain a sledge.
One hundred years later, polar exploration still fascinates the young. As the descendants of the Terra Nova party step up their own fund-raising efforts to host a memorial service at the South Pole in 2012 under the banner of the International Scott Centenary Expedition (ISCE), Scott the historical figure is set to inspire pride and interest once more from the children of Britain’s schools.
“No one involved in the ISCE wants this to be a backward-looking centenary,” says polar historian Dr David Wilson, whose great uncle Dr Edward Wilson died alongside Scott in March 1912. “They want to reconnect people with their stories. This isn’t about some jolly on the ice – we want to give the children lots to talk about.”
As the descendants fly down to the Pole early next year, a team of modern-day adventurers will be carrying the ISCE banner on an overland trek that follows in the footsteps of Scott’s polar party.
Led by experienced explorer Antony Jinman, the team will include, among others, the winner of a competition held by this newspaper to join the expedition. Jinman can’t wait. Having already done 200 talks in the nation’s classrooms, he’s hungry for some fresh material.
“I didn’t do too well in school,” says the 29-year-old adventurer. “I was 21 when I found out I was dyslexic. But when you travel to a place, everything you heard in a classroom suddenly makes sense. My job is to try and harness what happens on the expedition and take it back to the schools.”
It’s a prospect he relishes, even if he knows – having now told the stories of the 11 polar expeditions he has completed – that the first question these youngsters will ask is: “How do you go to the loo in sub-zero temperatures?”
Antony and the ISCE team are fully committed to getting Scott, the Antarctic and polar science into the classroom this year and the next, and their aim is to build one of the largest ever online and interactive expedition platforms.
Students from around the world will be able to follow the project as it happens, and if all goes to plan teachers will even be able to send live questions to Antony’s team as they trudge across the ice.
A key focal point for the ISCE’s rapidly-expanding education and outreach programme is a series of Polar Fun Days that will be held in Plymouth – Scott’s home town – during the half-term holidays. Highlights will include the chance for youngsters to make glaciers out of a gooey substance known as “gloop” and to bake bread using Inuit recipes.
Beyond half-term there will be more, too, including a musical piece called Great Scott, which schools are being encouraged to try out, a teachers’ conference in the summer and a partnership with the Children’s University. In March, though, the fun quotient will be scaled down a notch when an epitaph to Scott and the polar team will be carved out of ice at a site in the middle of Plymouth.
The memorial will quietly melt in the course of subsequent days and will call to mind the sad fate of Scott, Wilson and the other men who never returned from the expedition. This poignant piece will give the residents of Plymouth pause in their daily routines.
“People get so wrapped up in whether Scott should have used dogs or ponies that they have lost some of the importance of the expedition and of Scott’s legacy,” says Dr Wilson.
That legacy, of course, includes Scott’s own son Peter, a toddler when his father died, who went on to help found the World Wildlife Fund and have a powerful influence on how all of us now think about our planet.
“The scientific enthusiasm of all members of that expedition changed the lives of everyone in the country,” says Dr Wilson. “It’s important to all of us involved in the ISCE to remember that as we try to inspire the next generation.”
Mike Peake/The Telegraph
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