Tin Plague and Scott's Antarctic Expedition

Abstract

IT will be recalled that a chief contributing cause of the failure of Scott's party to get back to their base was the “leakage” of the fuel oil that was stored in tin cans at the depôts along the line of the return march from the Pole. The oil-cans as found were apparently intact and “without hole of any kind,” and it was therefore thought by some that the oil had evaporated through the “stoppers.” Scott himself, however, wrote in his last message: “We should have got through in spite of the weather but for… and a shortage of fuel in our depôts, for which I cannot account, and …”