Our Daily Bill: An item in the results

[tealin]

When Scott was planning his second trip to Antarctica, and had secured the help of Wilson as head of the scientific aspect, Wilson described his plans thus:

No one can say that it will only have been a Pole-hunt, though of course that is a sine qua non. We must get to the Pole; but we shall get more too ... We want the Scientific work to make the bagging of the Pole merely an item in the results.

(Seaver, 182)

So when the final Pole party discovered they were not the first human beings to set foot at the nadir of the planet, he did not seem to have been particularly badly affected:

... in any case [we] are all agreed that he can claim prior right to the Pole itself. He has beaten us in so far as he has made a race of it. We have done what we came for all the same and as our programme was made out.

(Seaver, 279)

In fact, in one of the less famous 'outtakes' of the photos taken at the Pole, Wilson appears downright jovial:


That's Wilson, standing left; Scott seems to be laughing too. In the full photo (which you can find in Race to the End, the companion book to the AMNH exhibit) Birdie's armpit frames the shot, so one can only assume he was adjusting the camera or something and accidentally took an exposure. It's probably my favourite of the Pole pictures because it so captures a moment ...