Amundsen and Scott: The Race to the South Pole

Terra Nova sailed from Cardiff on 15 June 1910, bound for the Antarctic. Scott was not aboard: detained by expedition business, he followed on a faster passenger liner and joined the ship in South Africa. Cardiff later marked the voyage with a lighthouse in the lake at Roath Park, built in 1915 and containing a scale model of the Terra Nova, to commemorate Captain Scott's ill-fated voyage from the city in 1910.

Location precision: The ship sailed from Cardiff itself; the pin marks the memorial lighthouse in Roath Park.

Visitor guidance: The lighthouse stands in the lake at Roath Park.

Madeira was Fram's last port of call, and until it was time to leave, Amundsen had led even his crew to believe they were embarking on an Arctic drift. On the afternoon of 9 September 1910, in Funchal Roads, he called all hands on deck and told them his decision, a year old, to make for the South. The Funchal papers had already guessed the South Pole, but the story went no further. He also cabled Scott, in Melbourne: "Beg leave to inform you Fram proceeding Antarctic Amundsen."

Location precision: Fram lay at anchor in the roads off the town; the pin marks Funchal.

Scott built his second expedition's headquarters at Cape Evans and renamed the cape for his second in command, Lieutenant Edward Evans. His journal calls the hut "in every respect the finest that has ever been erected in the Polar regions", 50 feet long by 25 wide. Twenty-five men of the shore party wintered here in 1911, and from here Scott and his men set out on the ultimately fatal trek to the South Pole. The hut and its contents are remarkably well preserved today, thanks to the cold.

Fram reached the Bay of Whales on 14 January 1911: the southernmost point in the Ross Sea a ship could penetrate, 60 nautical miles closer to the Pole than Scott's intended base at McMurdo Sound. Amundsen's hut was dubbed Framheim, "the home of Fram". On 3 February Terra Nova arrived unexpectedly, and Campbell and his officers breakfasted aboard Fram. Scott learned of it from Campbell's letter and decided the proper course was "to proceed exactly as though this had not happened". The bay itself is gone: an iceberg eliminated it in 1987.

Location precision: The bay no longer exists; the pin marks where it lay.

Unlike Scott, who would follow Shackleton's Beardmore route, Amundsen had to find his own way through the mountains. In November 1911 he discovered this glacier and named it for Consul Axel Heiberg, a Norwegian patron. At its summit, of 45 dogs that had made the ascent only 18 would go forward; the rest were killed for food. "There was depression and sadness in the air," he wrote, "we had grown so fond of our dogs." He named the place the Butcher's Shop. Beyond it lay the crevassed ground he called the Devil's Glacier.

Location precision: The Butcher's Shop lay at the top of the glacier; the pin marks the glacier as a whole.

Shackleton had discovered and climbed the Beardmore in 1908, and Scott planned for twelve men in three groups to ascend it, hauling by hand. On 10 December 1911 his journal records the cost: "We sank above our finnesko everywhere, and in places nearly to our knees", and the pulling was "extraordinarily fatiguing". On the way home, Edgar Evans, one of the five chosen for the final trek to the Pole, died around the foot of the glacier on 17 February 1912.

Location precision: Scott's camps stretched along the whole glacier; the pin marks the glacier as a whole.

On 14 December 1911 Amundsen's five men planted the Norwegian flag together and named the plain King Haakon VII's Plateau. They pitched a tent, Polheim, as near the Pole as their observations allowed. Thirty-four days later Scott's party arrived, having found a black flag tied to a sledge bearer: "The Norwegians have forestalled us." Scott wrote: "Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority." In the tent a note asked him to forward a letter to King Haakon.

Location precision: Neither party stood exactly on the point, and the ice slowly moves; the pin marks the geographic Pole.

Fram left the Bay of Whales on 30 January 1912 for Hobart. She reached the Derwent River port on 7 March, and Amundsen went ashore with his cablegrams. He quickly learned there was as yet no news from Scott, and sent telegrams to his brother Leon, to Nansen and to King Haakon, briefly informing them of his success. King George V expressed particular pleasure that Amundsen's first port of call on his return had been on soil of the British Empire.

Location precision: Amundsen's anchorage is not pinned; the pin marks the centre of Hobart.

On the way home, by 20 March, Scott, Wilson and Bowers had struggled on to a point 11 miles south of One Ton Depot, and a fierce blizzard halted them. "Since the 21st we have had a continuous gale", Scott wrote on 29 March. Every day they were ready to start for the depot, but "outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift". His last words: "It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more." And then: "For God's sake look after our people." A search party found the tent, with the frozen bodies of the three men, on 12 November 1912.

Location precision: The record places the tent only 11 miles (18 km) south of One Ton Depot, so the stop is left unpinned.

Terra Nova arrived on 18 January 1913 to bring the expedition home. Before the final departure, a large wooden cross was erected overlooking Hut Point, inscribed with the five names of the dead and a line from Tennyson's Ulysses: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield". The cross in memory of Captain Scott and his polar companions still stands atop Observation Hill.

Location precision: One source puts the cross on the slopes of the hill and another on top of it; the pin marks Observation Hill.