Antarctica

People in Antarctica - the story of Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition

title	People in Antarctica - the story of Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition		
key/topic sentence	For millions of years humans have explored the world in search of new lands. One unexplored continent was Antarctica. In 1911 two European expeditions set out for Antarctica in a race to be first to the South Pole. They were Roald Amundsen from Norway and Robert Falcon Scott form England.	action verbs - past tense	
topic sentence - more information about the topic sentence	On 15 June 1910 Scott and a crew of doctors, artists, scientists, dog handlers and engineers left England for Dunedin, New Zealand and then for the South Pole. When they got to Antarctica they knew that they had to move quickly because Antarctica is only accessible by sea for a few months of the year, in summer. Scott's ship arrived in Antarctica on 4 January 1911.	

present tense to show the state of something	
topic sentence - more information about the topic sentence	On 24 October 1911 Scott and the British expedition left Scott's hut for the last time. They took a lot of supplies with them - food, fuel and clothing as well as equipment for scientific research. While the men were by the sea they were able to eat fish, sea birds and penguin eggs, but after they went inland they had only the supplies of biscuits, tea, butter, sugar and dried meat that they had taken with them.		
	Scott's expedition experienced a lot of problems. The Antarctic summer is very short and Scott knew that if he did not reach the South Pole and back before winter came he and his men would be doomed. Firstly a terrible storm came and trapped the men in their huts for five days. Then the ponies ran out of food and had to be shot. The dogs were still very hard to handle and finally the men decided they would rather pull the sleds with the supplies themselves, so they let the dogs go. However the sleds were very heavy and this made progress slower and put more strain on the men. Finally, when the men reached the South Pole they found that the Norwegian team had beaten them. They were very disappointed, very tired and hungry. Scott had taken five men on the last leg of the expedition to the Pole. They all perished in their tent in a terrible storm just 11 kilometres from their food depot. Amundsen and his men returned safely to Norway.