150th Anniversary of the Birth of Robert Falcon Scott - 2018 Uncirculated Cupro Nickel Polar Medal Coin

Captain Robert Falcon Scott was born in Plymouth, Devon on 6 June 1868. He was a navy officer most famous as an explorer of the Antarctic regions. His first expedition from 1901 -1904 was upon the RSS Discovery which actually features in the design of the Polar Medal. The expedition was difficult and the crew had very little specialised equipment to help with the weather conditions. One of the objectives of the expedition was to explore and hence the crew pushed south towards the pole which resulted in the discovery of the Polar Plateau. At the end of the expedition the Discovery became trapped in the ice and explosives had to be used to free it!

After Ernest Shackleton returned from an expedition where he almost reached the South Pole, Scott was keen to plan a second expedition to try and be the first to reach it. This lead to Scott’s 1910 -1912 expedition on the ship the Terra Nova in order to claim the Pole in the name of Britain! On the 1^st March 1911 Scott began the long and ill-fated journey to the South Pole. During the journey support times with horses and dogs turned at set points in order to give Scott and four other men the best chance of reaching the Pole. On 17^th January 1912 they reached the Pole only to find that they had been pipped at the post as Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen had beat them by five weeks.

The defeated men began the long 800 mile journey back to meet the rest of the crew and encountered unexpected and extreme weather conditions. Scott’s companion Oates toes had become frostbitten and he voluntarily left the tent and walked to his death. Scott then walked a further 20 miles where he made camp for the last time, the weather prevented them from pushing any further and they slowly run out of supplies and perished. Scott’s last diary entry reads “For God's sake look after our people”