The Race to the Pole

coolantarctica.com

10 pointstosh3 comments

I recently read "Tom Crean: Unsung Hero of the Scott and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions" - very good, exactly what it says on the tin - and was shocked about just how much of a leadership and planning failure the Scott expedition was. Ignoring all strategies for efficient polar transit (man-pulled sledges??), severe issues with scurvy, scope creep, etc... Insanity, with lots of opportunities for heroism. Very "British empire".

The writeup of the Shackleton expedition was also very good. Truly amazing how close they had to cut it at every stage.

The Andrée expedition is a similar failure in well just about everything. Can recommend that rabbit hole as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9e%27s_Arctic_balloon...

man-pulled sledges

TBF, that wasn't really part of the plan. They had tractors that failed, and ponies that ended up as emergency food. The failure was really to identify when they should quit. By then, the British public were demanding a "Race to the Pole" with the Norwegian group, equipped with "battle-tested production-ready" dogs (there's a software planning lesson).

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