Robert Falcon Scott Trivia
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60 free Robert Falcon Scott trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Robert Falcon Scott trivia quiz follows Captain Scott from a Plymouth brewer's son and teenage naval cadet to the Discovery Expedition — the 82°S record with Shackleton and Wilson, the Polar Plateau, the ship blasted from the ice — and on through his marriage to Kathleen Bruce, the row with Shackleton and the Terra Nova Expedition of 1910. It covers the motor sledges, Manchurian ponies and dogs, One Ton Depot, Amundsen's telegram and black flag, the five-man polar party, the deaths of Evans and Oates, the final camp 12.5 miles from safety, the diary and Message to the Public, the search party, the fossils, the memorials, John Mills's film, Roland Huntford's attack and the modern rehabilitation. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation. Enjoy this one? Try our Roald Amundsen, Ernest Shackleton and Antarctica quizzes next.
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Q 01Scott's last diary entry was written in March 1912, about two weeks before which famous disaster?
The sinking of the Titanic
The sinking of the Titanic came on 15 April 1912, yet the world mourned the liner first: nobody outside Antarctica knew Scott's party was dead until the following February.
Q 02Who scored the film Scott of the Antarctic?
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams later reworked his music for the film into a full symphony, his seventh, the Sinfonia antartica, first performed in 1953.
Q 03Amundsen's tent at the South Pole held a letter he asked Scott to deliver to whom?
King Haakon VII of Norway
King Haakon VII of Norway was the addressee: Scott kept Amundsen's note and logged the request in his diary with an exclamation mark, the beaten man asked to play postman for the winner.
Q 04Where was Scott born in 1868?
Near Devonport, Plymouth
Near Devonport, Plymouth: with soldiers and sailors on both sides of the family, Scott and his younger brother were marked out for the armed services from boyhood.
Q 05Which Royal Geographical Society president backed Scott to lead the Discovery Expedition?
Clements Markham
Clements Markham had marked Scott out years earlier, after watching the young midshipman win a boat race in the West Indies, and he stayed Scott's firmest champion.
Q 06In 1902 Scott made Antarctica's first flight, rising above the ice in what?
A tethered balloon
A tethered balloon, bought so the Discovery Expedition could survey from the air, took Scott up first, and another officer followed him for a look across the ice shelf.
Q 07What feature did Scott's 'western journey' of the Discovery Expedition discover?
The Polar Plateau
The Polar Plateau proved so featureless that Scott's party, their navigation tables lost in a gale, no longer knew where they were, until a tumble down a slope landed them beside a glacier they recognised.
Q 08What was needed to free Scott's vessel Discovery from the Antarctic ice in 1904?
Two relief ships and explosives
Two relief ships and explosives were needed: Morning and Terra Nova came with orders to abandon Discovery if she stayed stuck, and the ice broke up less than two weeks before the deadline.
Q 09Which member of Scott's Discovery Expedition died in March 1902 after slipping over a precipice in a blizzard?
George Vince
George Vince could get no grip on an icy slope and slid over a cliff into the sea; his body was never found, and the wooden cross his shipmates raised at Hut Point still stands.
Q 10Which famous author, a friend of Scott, was godfather to his son Peter?
J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, was the boy's godfather, and one of Scott's last letters from the tent asked him to 'help my widow and my boy'.
Q 11Which organisation did Scott's only son, Peter, go on to help found?
The World Wide Fund for Nature
The World Wide Fund for Nature had Peter Scott among its founders in 1961, half a century after his father's last letter begged his wife to 'make the boy interested in natural history'.
Q 12Scott insisted the McMurdo Sound area was his own 'field of work' in a dispute with whom?
Ernest Shackleton
Ernest Shackleton promised to land elsewhere but, with pack ice barring the way and his coal running low, based himself in McMurdo Sound after all.
Q 13Which port gave Terra Nova such a generous send-off in June 1910 that Scott promised she would return there first?
Q 21What did Scott's written orders of October 1911 tell the dog teams to do?
Meet his returning party
Meet his returning party about 1 March near latitude 82, the orders said, so the dogs could hurry it home; in the event the teams went no farther than One Ton Depot, far short of that.
Q 22What did Scott's diary call the South Pole on the day he reached it?
'An awful place'
'An awful place' was his phrase: 'Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority', written once his party knew the Norwegians had been first.
Q 23What did the fifth man added to Scott's polar party march without?
His skis
Cardiff
Cardiff held Scott to it: Terra Nova left its docks on 15 June 1910 and, three years later almost to the day, came back to them without him.
Q 14Three of Scott's men hauled sledges through the darkness of the polar winter to collect what for science?
Emperor penguin eggs
Emperor penguin eggs were the prize, because the embryos were thought to hold the missing link between reptiles and birds; only three of the eggs survived the journey back.
Q 15Before his 1910 telegram told Scott he was heading for Antarctica, where had Amundsen said he was going?
The North Pole
The North Pole was his announced goal until Cook and Peary each claimed it; he then switched in secret, telling even his own crew only as Fram left Madeira.
Q 16What did Scott's party find running mysteriously short at depot after depot on the march back from the Pole?
Stove fuel
Stove fuel had leaked away: in the cold, paraffin crept past the leather washers of the stored cans, a fault Amundsen had avoided by soldering his cans shut.
Q 17In which Scottish city, where she was built in 1901, is Scott's ship Discovery now preserved?
Dundee
Dundee won the order because by 1900 few British yards could still build a big wooden ship, and its shipwrights had long made whalers for Arctic ice.
Q 18How was Terra Nova saved when a storm choked her pumps?
Bailing with buckets
Bailing with buckets, in a chain the officers and scientists kept going for hours, held the water down until a hole cut through a bulkhead let them reach the choked pump.
Q 19What did Scott refuse to do to get One Ton Depot to 80°S?
Kill weak ponies
Kill weak ponies for food and push on, his horse expert urged; Scott would not, the depot went in about 35 miles short, and he was warned he would come to regret it.
Q 20Where had Amundsen made his base, well to the east of Scott's?
The Bay of Whales
The Bay of Whales put Amundsen about 60 nautical miles nearer the Pole, and Scott learned of it only when his own ship, hunting for a landing place, found the Norwegians camped there.
His skis had been cached days earlier with the rest of his supporting team's, so the fifth man walked to the Pole on foot and all five squeezed into a tent made for four.
Q 24What did the polar party spot in the distance the day before reaching the Pole?
Amundsen's black flag
Amundsen's black flag, tied to a sledge bearer, was first taken for a trick of the wind-carved snow; around it lay ski tracks and the prints of many dogs, and the race was plainly lost.
Q 25Which member of Scott's polar party was the first to die, near the foot of the Beardmore Glacier?
Edgar Evans
Edgar Evans, the strongman of the five, went downhill fastest after a fall on the glacier left him 'dull and incapable', and he collapsed and died near its foot.
Q 26Which tribute did the search party inscribe where Scott's frostbitten companion had walked into the blizzard?
'A very gallant gentleman'
'A very gallant gentleman' went on a cross raised near where he vanished, because his body was never found; he had walked out willingly, the inscription said, to try to save his comrades.
Q 27How far short of One Ton Depot was the final camp of Scott, Wilson and Bowers?
About 11 miles
About 11 miles was all that lay between the tent and the depot's supplies when a blizzard pinned them down, and the depot itself had been laid well short of its planned position a year earlier.
Q 28On the march back from the Pole, Scott wrote that hauling the sledge was like pulling over what?
Desert sand
Desert sand was his image for the ice shelf's soft, sandy snow, with 'not the least glide in the world', so every mile cost the weakening men far more effort.
Q 29What were the concluding words of Scott's final diary entry?
'For God's sake look after our people'
'For God's sake look after our people' sits below his signature like a postscript: he had written nothing for six days, then managed one last entry as the supplies ran out.
Q 30Which farewell document did Scott write in the tent to defend the Terra Nova Expedition's conduct?
The Message to the Public
The Message to the Public blamed weather and bad luck, not planning, and closed by asking 'a great rich country like ours' to provide for the dead men's dependents, which it did.