One thing I don't understand...
Scott and his surviving members died on presumably March 29th, 1912, but their bodies were not discovered until November 1912. Why did it took eight months to finally organize a rescue party to find them?
shareThe rescue party had to wait until winter was over before they could set off to search for the polar team. They also had to restock the nearest depos with food and prepare for a long journey because obviously they had no idea how far the polar team had made it before they died in the snow storm. The rescue team was prepared to travel all the way to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier as some of them believed Scott's team might have fallen down a crevasse there. I was just reading about all of this today in The Worst Journey in the World, Cherry-Garrard's memoir of the expedition.
shareThe rescue party -- which of course was not a "rescue" party, since after eight months they all knew Scott and his men were dead -- did leave base prepared for a long journey, not just to the foot of the Beardmore but farther if necessary. (Had Scott's party indeed fallen into a crevasse, it's highly unlikely the relief party would have found them.)
The relief party was prepared to restock the depots as necessary, which they planned to do along the way -- they didn't do this separately. As Scott's party never reached "One-Ton Depot", the nearest depot to the base, it was fully stocked, though because the British used outmoded and ineffective storage tins for paraffin, which caused it to evaporate within a few months, that item at least would have had to be replenished. But of course they didn't have to go more than 11 miles beyond One-Ton before finding Scott's tent, making further exploration unnecessary. The party did search for Oates's body for a few miles around but never found it. They made no effort to undertake the longer trip necessary in what would have been a hopeless effort to find Evans's body.