South Pole Race: “Mummy, is Amundsen a good man?”
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The invitation to visit the Royal Geographical Society for a lecture and banquet late in 1912, well, it must have felt like an invitation from Sauron to come and have a picnic in Mordor. This cautionary tale is part two of a three-part story. If you've listened to part one, you'll know that the Norwegian Amundsen was a brilliant adventurer.

He'd astonished the world by announcing that there'd be a slight detour in his plans to explore the Arctic. He would first dash to the Antarctic, with one simple aim, being the first man to set foot on the South Pole. His British rival, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, had also headed south with the same mission, but with other missions too.

Scott was going to make maps in Antarctica and do serious science, with funding from the Royal Geographical Society. He was testing out an innovation, a new kind of motorised snow sledge. He would plant the British flag symbolically at the South Pole. But not only that. He would show off British grit and courage by getting there the hard way, on foot. Amundsen had no such distractions. He wasn't going to do science or pioneer technology.

Although his navigation was precise, he had no interest in making maps. That was a chore for those who would come later. Nor did he want to prove a point about endurance. Amundsen knew that a place in the history books awaited the first man to the pole. And he knew the most sensible way of getting there: on sledges, pulled by teams of dogs.

In this unexpected race, Amundsen had comprehensively defeated Captain Scott and his patrons at the Royal Geographical Society. He returned triumphant in March 1912, leaving behind him an Antarctica cut off by the southern winter. Nobody even knew if Scott or any of his companions were alive or dead. When the Society invited Amundsen to tell his story, he could hardly refuse.

He'd wounded his host's pride, he knew. But they'd respect his achievement, wouldn't they? After the lecture, the banquet. The society's president, Lord Curzon, stood to give the after-dinner speech. I almost wish that in our tribute of admiration we could include those wonderful, good-tempered, fascinating dogs. The true friends of man, without who Captain Amundsen would never have got to the pole.

With that, Lord Curzon raised his glass and turned to look down on Amundsen. I therefore propose three cheers for the dogs. Amundsen felt like he'd been slapped across the face. His blood began to boil. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. MUSIC

A year earlier, life had seemed simpler out there on the ice. Amundsen's team certainly faced challenges, but each challenge was overcome with something closer to exhilaration than endurance. For example, the cruel range of mountains stood in his way, a brutal obstacle for both Amundsen and Scott.

Scott slogged grimly up, demonstrating British stubbornness. But as Amundsen and his team explored the snow-clad slopes, they almost seemed to be on a skiing holiday. I made all the preparations for an elegant telemark turn. A telemark turn allows a skier to turn sharply. The technique was invented in the Norwegian town of Telemark.

But I went head over heels, brilliantly. I was on my feet again with surprising speed and shuffled over to Bjarlund. Bjarlund was a former Norwegian cross-country skiing champion, one of the best skiers in the world. He was from Telemark. I am not sure if he saw me tumble. However, I collected myself after the unfortunate exhibition and he undoubtedly believed that I managed the Telemark. At any rate, he was tactful enough to give that impression. You see what I mean?

Fun. There's nothing like this in the diaries of the British Navy Captain Scott and his companions. There's courage in adversity, some gallows humour, soulful conversations late at night in the tent, goofing around on fresh powder. Horrid, overcast, gloomy, snowy. Our spirits became very low. That's Scott expressing how a journey to the South Pole is supposed to feel.

Amundsen was having none of it, even when facing the most treacherous terrain and the most perilous dangers. The wildness of the landscape from above is indescribable. Pit after pit, crevasse after crevasse, and huge ice blocks scattered helter-skelter. It was not without satisfaction that we surveyed the scene. Our tent in the middle of this chaos gave us a feeling of strength and power.

This was supposed to be the worst journey in the world, but Amundsen was loving it. Last episode, I framed the race between Amundsen and Scott as a battle between David and Goliath. Scott, like Goliath, was weighed down, sluggish and unable to focus. But what about David? David was brave and skilful, but neither of those qualities really account for David's victory.

David won because he decided he didn't want to play by Goliath's rules. Goliath expected an epic duel of champions. In fact, everybody expected that on both sides. But David decided instead to do it the easy way by using a sling. Slings are highly effective weapons and with Goliath's open-faced helmet he had no protection against a bone-crushing slingshot right between the eyes.

When David picked up some smooth pebbles to slip into his bag, his fellow Israelites would have understood, oh, David's playing by his own rules and he's probably going to win. One of the most famous moments in cinema is in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In front of a crowd of onlookers, our hero, Indiana Jones, faces off against a terrifying swordsman with an enormous scimitar. With a look of irritation, he pulls out a pistol and shoots the guy. And before his foe has even hit the floor, Indy has turned his back to get on with his next challenge. The scene caused a sensation because we all know that's not how the story is supposed to go. There's supposed to be an epic battle.

In fact, an epic battle was in the original script, but with the lead actor Harrison Ford feeling unwell and the filming running behind schedule, they came up with a shortcut. That unforgettable scene is the best depiction we have of what the battle between David and Goliath might actually have seemed like. Indy had a gun. David had a sling. Both were powerful weapons that could drop a heavily armed opponent from a safe distance.

The question wasn't whether they would work. The question was whether our supposed hero would be so outrageous as to use a missile weapon in what was supposed to be hand-to-hand combat. Amundsen, like David, and like Indiana Jones, didn't want to play the game Goliath's way. He brought a metaphorical sling, and he knew exactly how to use it. And if some people thought it was unfair...

That was their problem. So yes, Amundsen was very good at what he did, just like David. But skill wasn't his only advantage. His real edge was his ruthlessness. He wasn't going to play the game by British rules. And if the British didn't like that, he didn't care. At least, he thought he didn't care.

In his lecture to the Royal Geographical Society, Amundsen described how he'd won his David and Goliath battle with Captain Scott's far bigger, better funded expedition. It was simple really. He'd taken almost 100 dogs, who were perfectly adapted to the cold conditions, along with a small team of highly skilled skiers.

They prepared supply depots every 10 miles, marking them with lines of flags planted every half mile. The small flags were just as they had been left, standing out beautifully against the white background. Amundsen stored lots of supplies, as it later turned out, 10 times more per man than Scott.

He set aside plenty of spares of equipment and instruments. His men expended less physical energy than Scott's team, which meant that they sweated less. And you really don't want to sweat in the Antarctic because it turns to ice in your clothes. Amundsen covered more ground per day than Scott, in much less time, leaving plenty of leeway to rest and recover.

With his dog pulled sledges, Amundsen could travel in conditions that pinned Scott down in his tent. For example, during one storm in early December, Scott wrote in his diary: "One cannot see the next tent, let alone the land. I doubt if any party could travel in such weather. Certainly no one could travel against it." Couldn't they? At that very moment, Amundsen was moving through the same blizzard.

It has been an unpleasant day, but we have advanced 13 miles closer to our goal. Of course, nobody in the audience at the Royal Geographical Society knew yet how unremittingly grim it had all been for Scott. His diaries would be discovered only later. For now, they were just hearing how straightforward Amundsen had found it. Scott's wife Kathleen, or was she his widow, sat discreetly up in the balcony.

Amundsen's speech was plucky and modest, but dull, and of a dullness. And that's the problem with winning like David, or Indiana Jones. Epic battles make for great stories. Quick and easy victories, not so much. Amundsen had thought that merely being first to the poll would bring him the glory he craved. He hadn't understood that there was a deeper, more important objective –

to come back with an interesting and admirable tale to tell. After the break, Goliath's friends complain that David has cheated. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. So, buckle up.

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When Captain Scott's two-year-old son, Peter Markham Scott, heard about Amundsen's victory over his father, Peter asked his mother Kathleen, Mummy, is Amundsen a good man? The British didn't think so. They called him a cheat, a professional, certainly not a gentleman, or a scientist, or a hero. Some British objections were just silly.

They fulminated that Amundsen was an imposter, as though he was trespassing, or jumping the line, or both. But the British didn't own Antarctica. There was no line to jump. There were stronger grounds for complaining about Amundsen's deception. He'd told the world he was sailing north, but he'd long been intending to sail south. He revealed his true plans at the last possible moment, after both expeditions had already set sail.

Scott was almost in Antarctica when he received the notoriously brief telegram. I'm going south. Amundsen. That was crafty. But was it shameful? The last-minute revelation was viewed with some bitterness by the British. Here's Scott's companion, Apsley Cherry Garrard. Nothing makes a more unpleasant impression than a faint...

And here's the diary of Birdie Bowers, as he trudged miserably towards the South Pole alongside Captain Scott. Amundsen has probably reached the pole by now. I hope he has not, as I regard him as a sneaking, backhanded ruffian. But another of Scott's team, Captain Oates, just shrugged.

In a letter to a friend, he wrote, Bloody Norskies coming down south is a bit of a shock. They say Amundsen has been underhand in the way he's gone about it, but personally, I don't see it as underhand to keep your mouth shut. As so often, Oates was a realist. Amundsen was under no obligation to explain his plans in public. But I do think some moments must have troubled Amundsen's conscience.

He accepted £100 from the Royal Geographical Society to help fund his expedition, more than $10,000 in today's terms. But they gave him that funding because they believed he was heading to the Arctic, rather than racing their own man Scott to the South Pole. Captain Oates had said of Amundsen, "'I don't see it as underhand to keep your mouth shut.'"

But Amundsen wasn't keeping his mouth shut. He poured a stream of plausible lies into the ears of journalists, explaining all the details of his plans to explore the North Polar Basin. He lied to others too. The Norwegian parliament, the Norwegian king, and his own mentor Fritjof Nansen, whose ship he was borrowing. He was even lying to his own crew. Amundsen's lies were fuelled by desperation.

He'd already secured some funding to go north when two American explorers, Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, both claimed to have reached the North Pole. That put Amundsen in a pinch. Going north felt pointless, and his backers had lost enthusiasm now that race seemed to be over. But few backers would give him money to go south either, not with the world's eyes on the formidable British expedition of Captain Scott.

He decided that he would borrow heavily and head south in secret, using money already pledged for a northern expedition. If he succeeded in his South Pole coup, all would be forgiven. Only when Amundsen was out of reach of his creditors did he tell his own crew that they were heading to the South Pole. As I said, ruthless. And there was one deception that occurred three months before his secret departure to Antarctica.

In March 1910, Amundsen was at home in Christiana, modern-day Oslo. He received a call from the concierge of a hotel downtown. Amundsen? Captain Robert Falcon Scott was in Christiana too. He'd visited Norway to supervise trials of his motorised sledges, and he'd purchased 50 pairs of skis and even hired a Norwegian ski instructor. Now he wanted to arrange to meet Amundsen.

Amundsen cringed. I see. This wasn't a surprise. Scott had written to suggest a meeting so they could coordinate their scientific work. Amundsen in the north and Scott in the south. Scott, of course, never suspected for a moment that Amundsen was planning to race him to the South Pole. Please tell Captain Scott that Amundsen is unfortunately unavailable.

Amundsen's legendary courage failed him. He couldn't look Scott in the eye and tell him the truth, and he couldn't lie to his face either. And so he hid. For decades, British children were taught that Amundsen had cheated. That's not true. Polar exploration has had its share of cheats, but Amundsen wasn't one of them. Amundsen's journey to the Pole was brave and brilliant.

Yet he left some casualties behind him, such as truth, trust and 89 faithful dogs. Amundsen regarded those dogs as tools to be cherished, to be treated well, but to be discarded without sentiment when they had outlived their usefulness. Amundsen bought 100 dogs for his expedition and most of them arrived safely at his base camp. He set out for the pole with 52.

But at a single camp, about two-thirds of the way to the pole, Amundsen and his men shot and skinned 27 dogs to provide a store of food for those who remained. Shot now followed shot. It sounded gruesome over the wastes. A faithful servant lost his life with each shot. There was something oppressive, miserable in the air. We called the place the butcher's shop. But he didn't hesitate.

And by the time he left Antarctica, only 11 dogs had survived. Still, to win as the long-shot outsider, you can't afford to be squeamish. Amundsen's ruthless choices paid off handsomely. His final victory, when it came, seemed effortless. Here he is, approaching the pole, heading into the wind at a temperature of nearly minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

A little cool to go against with our sore faces, but nothing to make a song about. There was no great outpouring of emotion when he reached the pole. It was all very matter-of-fact. So we arrived, and were able to plant our flag at the geographical South Pole. Helga, one of the favourite dogs, had all but collapsed.

He'd been almost dragged in harness the last few miles to the pole, to die with the honour of a goal achieved. After eating Helga, the other dogs basked in the sun. The men spent four days at the pole, measuring the sun as it spanned in a circle around their heads, making sure of their position. It was a time to relax. They smoked cigars. Amundsen's team rearranged their ever-lighter provisions,

Amundsen left a letter for Scott and some spare supplies in case Scott could use them. And then Amundsen took a last, fateful decision. He pondered leaving Scott some extra fuel and then decided against it. For some time I debated with myself whether or not to leave behind two five-gallon drums of oil I did not expect to need. In the end, I did not leave the oil.

It's hard to blame Amundsen for being cautious. The Antarctic is unpredictable. He didn't expect to need the oil, but he might. Anyway, Scott and his well-funded expedition couldn't possibly need one or two extra cans, could he? And then, without realising quite what a weighty decision he'd made, Amundsen and his men headed north. It was time to go. Two sledges remained and 16 dogs.

Bjarland, the great skier, no longer drove a sledge. Instead, he was to lead, the dogs chasing him all the way across the plateau towards home. They were in a hurry, not for lack of food and fuel, they had more than enough, and not because of the cold, but for fear that Scott might somehow reach the pole, then overtake them on the way home. Amundsen couldn't have known quite how far behind Scott was.

nor that the Norwegians were travelling twice as fast as the British. They tore across the snow, led by a champion, rations being increased as they made progress and Amundsen became more confident of his margin of safety. Even better was the descent from the plateau down to warmer temperatures and richer air. The small team soon reached 30 miles a day. Their final sprint for home was pure joy.

And perhaps one of the last times Roald Amundsen was truly happy.

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It was a full year before the news arrived from Antarctica that Robert Falcon Scott and the men he'd led to the South Pole were all dead. Their bodies had been found, along with Scott's diary, giving a lyrical account of the struggle and the courage and their calm acceptance of death. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity...

But I do not think I can write more. When Amundsen first heard the news, interrupting a hectic schedule of lectures and celebrity appearances, he was incredulous. I am unwilling to believe the report is true. I was reported to have perished. So was Shackleton. But soon the weight of it hit him. Horrible.

horrible. I would gladly forego any honour or money, if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death. Amundsen must have remembered the fuel can he had pondered leaving for Scott at the South Pole. But Scott was to haunt Amundsen's reputation, as well as his conscience. The British had been looking for a hero, and now they'd found one.

Amundsen's calm, matter-of-fact account of his success was eclipsed by Scott's epic description of his failure. Amundsen had won the race to the pole. Scott, in death, was winning the race to become a legend. Amundsen started to realise that he'd made a serious mistake. He'd made his achievement look too easy.

Amundsen had led the first team to navigate the Northwest Passage, then the first team to reach the South Pole. But he couldn't settle for a quiet, comfortable retirement. He had accumulated debts, financial debts, and a debt of obligation to the explorer Fritjof Nansen, who'd lent him a ship after Amundsen promised to use it for scientific work in the Arctic, only to see Amundsen dash for the South Pole.

he had also accumulated enemies. In 1918, six years after returning from the South Pole, Amundsen brought a new ship and tried to please Nansen by navigating the northeast passage between Russia and the North Pole. It was a grim seven-year voyage in which Amundsen broke his shoulder, was mauled by a polar bear and eventually left the command of the ship to someone else.

At the end of the expedition, Amundsen's creditors seized the ship. Amundsen by then looked prematurely aged. In one famous photograph, he looks like a grizzled 70-year-old, but it was taken in 1923, when he was only 50. One account described him as distinguished, but somehow a little decayed.

Amundsen's dog sledging skills were already obsolete, but he was determined to stay relevant. Having left his crew behind attempting the North East Passage, he hatched a new, expensive plan: to be the first man to fly to the North Pole. It did not go well. There were setbacks and embarrassing crashes. His debts were mounting still further. He fell out with his financial manager, his brother Leon.

They stopped speaking. He declared himself bankrupt, despite being advised not to. The Norwegian press increasingly treated Amundsen as a fallen hero. Some said he was a coward, others a madman, and others claimed he had no real plan to fly to the North Pole. The crashes were deliberate, part of a publicity-seeking hoax. "I have so terribly few friends," he wrote to one of the few who remained. He had even less money.

In 1924, Amundsen visited New York to try to raise funds for more polar flights. All seemed lost, until a gentleman named Lincoln Ellsworth appeared at Amundsen's hotel. Ellsworth was a young adventurer, desperate to attach himself to Amundsen's fame and experience. But Ellsworth was also the heir to a fortune. That meant he could solve Amundsen's all-too-apparent money problems.

In his room at the Waldorf, I frequently heard a mysterious rustling of paper on the floor, Ellsworth recalled. Another court summons for Amundsen being slid under the door. Ellsworth put up the money to keep Amundsen flying. Together, they flew towards the North Pole and had to make an emergency landing on the ice cap. The rest of the world gave them up for dead.

but they were desperately hacking ice and shoveling snow to clear a runway to take off again. Three weeks later, they flew back to civilization. Amundsen was back from the dead. It was a sensational return to the spotlight. The year afterwards, Amundsen and Ellsworth flew to the North Pole in an airship with the Italian aviator Umberto Nobile. Amundsen had been to the North Pole

the South Pole, through the Northwest Passage, and through the Northeast Passage. Surely his legacy was assured. And yet Amundsen still needed money, and he still felt bitter. Having fallen out with his brother Leon, he also fell out with fellow adventurer Umberto Nobile.

He wrote a memoir, My Life as an Explorer, which tried to settle old scores and simply reopened old wounds. His young friend Lincoln Ellsworth defended him. He was like a child whose confidence has been betrayed so often that it finally trusts nobody. So he's encased himself in a shell of ice. But, added Ellsworth, if you knew him well, nobody was warmer-hearted. Maybe.

but there was nothing warm-hearted about the sour memoir. Many of Amundsen's rivals and former friends found themselves injured by his words. At the Royal Geographical Society, there was outrage when Amundsen recounted the story about the Society's president, Lord Curzon, proposing three cheers for the dogs. "'It never happened,' said the Society. "'Captain Amundsen must be mistaken, and he should apologise.'"

Captain Amundsen's secretary responded that Amundsen would never forget the gross insult, and he would neither withdraw his remarks nor apologise for them. Amundsen caused such a storm that the Norwegians had to distance themselves from him. Good relations between Norway and Britain couldn't be jeopardised. His old mentor, Nansen, was now a statesman and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

But Nansen took the step of writing to the Royal Geographical Society to explain that Amundsen was not of sound mind. It's a bitter irony. Robert Falcon Scott, defeated and dead, was viewed as one of Britain's greatest heroes. Roald Amundsen, victorious and very much alive, was now being accused by the Norwegian establishment of having lost his mind.

But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. Amundsen's skill and ruthlessness had brought him brilliant success, but that same ruthlessness had helped to isolate him. It was at this moment in his life, ostracised and financially distressed, that Amundsen received word that an airship had crashed over the Arctic ice, stranding his former friend and colleague Umberto Nobile, who was radioing for help.

Amundsen was asked by a journalist whether he would assist in the airborne search for Nobile. "At once," he declared. He really had no business flying out again over the Arctic. There were at least 20 other teams trying to find Nobile, and Amundsen was getting old. He didn't have a robust enough plane, but perhaps it was the last chance to remind people that he wasn't a madman, but a hero.

or the last chance to win what might be the final polar race. Before he left, he told a journalist, Ah, if you only knew how splendid it is up there in the north. That's where I want to die, and I wish only that death would come to me chivalrously, that it will find me during the execution of some great deed, quickly and without suffering.

And so, on Monday, June 18th, 1928, Amundsen and his crew took off in a seaplane from the northern reaches of Norway, looking for Nobile. They never returned. This is the second part in a three-part series about Amundsen, Scott and the race to the South Pole.

In the third part, I try to unlock a mystery which explains why Scott's expedition unravelled so catastrophically, which points to a much bigger question. What happens when we discover new knowledge and then lose faith in it? For a full list of our sources, see timharford.com. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright.

It's produced by Ryan Dilley, with support from Courtney Guarino and Emily Vaughan. The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. It features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Gutteridge, Stella Harford and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane,

Thank you.

Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. Tell a friend, tell two friends. And if you want to hear the show ads-free and listen to four exclusive Cautionary Tales shorts, then sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.

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