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Title: The Voyage of the Discovery, Vol I-II
Author: Robert Falcon Scott
Published: 1905
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 875 (455+420)
Total Page Count: 538,670
Text Number: 1970-1
Read Because: boys: the coldening, borrowed from the Internet Archive
Review: Polar exploration narratives perforce have a slow start, and Scott is particularly boring when trying to politely thank everyone for the excruciating committee-based construction of the Discovery expedition. As expected, things improve once the Discovery reaches Antarctica; the more Scott quotes from his diary, the better the text, as Scott is less self-aware and over-explanatory in his direct account; that said, there's remarkable retrospective sections about the experience of (springtime) sledging in particular.

I'm struck by the fact that both of Scott's major sledging trips on this expedition were haunted by the same issues that would eventually kill him, re: fuel and food shortages, vitamin deficiencies, overwork, and weather. Not because they're surprising--they're endemic to the work. Rather, because he did learn and did improve and it was still, memorably!, unprepared: the risk I took was calculated.jpg. Scott also gives insight into his disinclination to use dogs in his subsequent attempt at the Pole; it's sympathetic without remotely vindicating the Terra Nova's use of either ponies or dogs: further inadequate improvement. While doomed to pale in comparison to Scott's final journals, I'm glad I plowed through this hefty memoir. Scott gets in his own way, and the Discovery is interesting largely in context rather than its own right, but it is interesting in that context, and Scott, at his best, is evocative, honest, and revealing.