Page "Robert Falcon Scott" Paragraph 18

By early 1906, Scott had sounded out the RGS about the possible funding of a future Antarctic expedition.

It was therefore unwelcome news to him that Ernest Shackleton had announced his own plans to travel to Discoverys old McMurdo Sound base and launch a bid for the South Pole from there.

Scott claimed, in the first of a series of letters to Shackleton, that the area around McMurdo was his own " field of work " to which he had prior rights until he chose to give them up, and that Shackleton should therefore work from an entirely different area.

In this, he was strongly supported by Discoverys former zoologist, Edward Wilson, who asserted that Scott's rights extended to the entire Ross Sea sector.

This Shackleton refused to concede.

Finally, to end the impasse, Shackleton agreed, in a letter to Scott dated 17 May 1907, to work to the east of the 170 ° W meridian and therefore to avoid all the familiar Discovery ground.

It was a promise that, in the event, he was unable to keep after his search for alternative landing grounds proved fruitless.

He based his expedition at Cape Royds in McMurdo Sound, and this breach of agreement caused a profound shift in the Scott – Shackleton relationship.

Historian Beau Riffenburgh states that the promise to Scott " should never ethically have been demanded ", and compares Scott's intransigence on this matter unfavourably with the generous attitudes of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who gave freely of his advice and expertise to all, whether they were potential rivals or not.