To wait idly is the worst of conditions.

Documents that may have offered explanations are missing from Admiralty records. In 1894 while serving as torpedo officer on the depot ship HMS Vulcan Scott learned of the financial calamity that had overtaken his family. The scientific results of the expedition included important biological zoological and geological findings.

Before his appointment to lead the Discovery Expedition Scott had followed the conventional career of a naval officer in peacetime Victorian Britain where opportunities for career advancement were both limited and keenly sought after by ambitious officers. However having taken this step his name became inseparably associated with the Antarctic the field of work to which he remained committed during the final twelve years of his life. During this second venture Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912 only to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition.