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Scott of the Antarctic once lived in this very house
Location: 56 Oakley Street, Chelsea, SW3 5HB
Description: Robert Falcon Scott CVO was born on 6 June 1868, and alas passed over on 29 March 1912.
He was a British Royal Naval officer who 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.
It was the chance for personal distinction that led Scott to apply for the Discovery command, rather than any predilection for polar exploration. However, having taken this step, his name became ever after associated with the Antarctic, the field of work to which he remained committed during the final twelve years of his life.
He went on to lead two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery Expedition, 1901-04, and the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1910-13.
During this second venture Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian party in an unsought 'race for the Pole'.
On their return journey Scott and his four comrades all perished because of a combination of exhaustion, hunger and extreme cold.
And so to this very spot - Scott once resided here and the property is rightly marked by a Blue Plaque.
Scott of the Antarctic once lived in this very house |
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