A First Rate Tragedy

by Diana Preston

  On the other side of this partition the sixteen officers and scientists eked out the space as economically as they could. Scott had a curtained alcove six foot square where he worked at a linoleum-covered table. When he looked up his eye would fall on photographs of Kathleen, Peter and his mother and sisters. For solace he had his volumes of Hardy, Galsworthy and Browning and his much cherished 23-year-old Royal Navy greatcoat which had become something of a mascot and which he often used for a bedspread. Given that Scott, like most of the men, was a smoker, his section of the tightly sealed hut, like the rest of it, would have had a permanent smoke haze. (Wilson, a non-smoker himself, had written in his medical report on the Discovery expedition in the British Medical Journal in July 1905 that tobacco was invaluable on sledge journeys as ‘a sedative to chronic and insatiable hunger’.)

  There was a meticulously clean darkroom which Ponting had designed for himself and where he also slept. Next door was Atkinson’s laboratory full of microscopes and test tubes, while adjacent to him was the meteorologist Simpson, whose wonderful collection of state-of-the-art instruments hummed, ticked and whirred. These included Dine’s Anemometer which recorded each gust of wind by means of a vane attached to a two-inch pipe projecting above the roof. Ponting described its eerie sound effects: ‘When blizzards raged, the sighing and moaning and utterly unearthly sounds emitted by this tube at night were most depressing.’ They contrasted with the sound of Clissold the cook’s improvised bread-making machine. Clissold made his dough, placed it in a big pot to rise and retired to bed. According to Griffith Taylor: ‘When the dough rose sufficiently it pushed up a disc, which overbalanced a gutter. Down this ran a lead ball which made contact and rang a bell! Further, the bell actuated a pulley and wire and made another contact whereby a red light appeared at intervals above his head!’

  Wilson’s corner was opposite Simpson. Each day would find him hard at work from five in the morning, noting and drawing. Nelson and Day shared one cubicle while the Australians, Debenham and Griffith Taylor, shared another with Gran. In a letter to his mother Debenham confessed rather mysteriously to misgivings about Gran’s ‘morals’.1 Whether this was a reference to his boasting about women or something else, perhaps masturbation, is hard to tell. They curtained off their entrance with some photographic blackout material begged from Ponting, a refinement that was irresistible to Oates, who declared their accommodation no better than an opium den or ladies’ boudoir. He himself shared a cubicle with Cherry-Garrard, Bowers, Meares and Atkinson which earned the nickname ‘The Tenements’ on account of its Spartan austerity. Oates’s only luxury was a small bust of Napoleon whom the chauvinistic soldier admired passionately despite his nationality. The philosophy of the tenement dwellers was ‘Down with Science, Sentiment and the Fair Sex’ and they engaged in a good-natured war of words with their scientific neighbours which sometimes spilled into high-spirited horseplay. Scott described how: ‘Tonight Oates, captain in a smart cavalry regiment, has been “scrapping” over chairs and tables with Debenham, a young Australian student’. Oates in fact spent much of his time in the stables, conscientiously tending the ponies with Anton, who worried about his one-legged girlfriend back in Russia. The latter was so perturbed by the darkness and the dancing Aurora Australis that he left cigarettes out on the ice to appease these spirits of winter. Anton became devoted to Oates. When asked about him he would reply in his broken English that Captain Oates was good to horses, good to Anton.

  Scott was pleased with ‘the universally amicable spirit’. The relatively happy and relaxed atmosphere was due, at least in part, to the fact that everybody was busy. There were scientific experiments to be carried out, instrument readings to be taken, sledging equipment to be checked and mended. Cherry-Garrard revived the South Polar Times and painted a comfortable picture of daily life during the Polar winter.

  Probably anyone arriving here from England would be surprised to find how much work there is to be done during a long and dark winter. There are ten ponies to be exercised every day and they seem to get fresher every time they go out, and seals have to be killed and skinned. There is constant work on the sea-ice, collecting fish and other animals for scientific work, taking soundings and measuring the tides. With the care of the dogs and ponies, meteorological observations, night watch for Aurora, working up the results of last season’s sledging and preparation for the coming season, there is not much spare time . . . And so we live very comfortable . . . and we are all as fit as we can be.

  Ponting caused much amusement when his companions learned that some joker at home had told him that pepper was excellent for warming the feet and that credulously he had brought a case of cayenne with him and was assiduously putting it onto his boots. Sometimes the men played football in the half-light, a game that puzzled the tiny Anton exceedingly, though he joined in. Atkinson was the star, even though Gran had played for the Norwegian national team. Bowers stuck to his daily routine of going outside in his pyjamas to collect snow to rub himself down to keep clean. Wilson sometimes joined him, but the others preferred to let the dirt accumulate.

  The South Polar Times also gave a lively picture of the evening lecture programme instituted by Scott. Oates was an unexpected success with his wry talk on horse management or ‘mismanagement’, which reduced his audience to helpless laughter. Invited to give a second performance he concluded with the story of a young lady who, arriving late at an elegant dinner party, blamed the slowness of the cab-horse. ‘Ah, perhaps he was a jibber,’ suggested her hostess. ‘Oh, no,’ smiled the damsel, all unknowing, ‘he was a bugger. I heard the cabby say so several times.’ Ponting’s magic lantern shows were also very popular, particularly his exquisite pictures of Japan. In her book on Captain Oates, Sue Limb recounts how Oates would say to Meares, ‘Coming to the pictures tonight, dearie?’ He often called Meares ‘dearie’ and Atkinson, his other boon companion, ‘Jane’. It is tempting to draw certain conclusions but there is no evidence of homosexual leanings. The badinage and nicknames, like the horse play, were probably no more than the humour of a closed male society.

  Another well-attended lecture was by Atkinson on scurvy. He like others before him suggested that tainted tinned food might be a primary cause. Scott himself, however, recognized from the Discovery experience the value of fresh meat in avoiding the disease and insisted that his men ate fresh seal and penguin meat despite the reluctance of several, including Edgar Evans.

  On 22 June, they celebrated Midwinter Day, the equivalent of Christmas Day and still the high-holiday of Antarctica. After lunch Cherry-Garrard handed Scott the first edition of the South Polar Times. As Debenham described with some amusement: ‘A silhouette of the Owner by Bill was very good but, as it represents him with his hair awry as it always is here, he didn’t like it at all and said, “Well I’m damned, I didn’t think I was so ugly.”’ Later that day, as blizzards rampaged around the hut, they ate a ‘gorgeous’ dinner of seal soup, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, plum pudding, mince pies, crystallized fruits, chocolates, custards, jellies and cake, with sherry, Heidsieck 1904 vintage champagne, brandy punch and liqueurs – a degree of luxury and sophistication which would have amused and surprised the plain-living Amundsen, celebrating over at the Bay of Whales more restrainedly by eating ‘a little more than usual’ and smoking a cigar.2 Birdie Bowers devised a fine candle-lit Christmas tree out of ski sticks decked with skua feathers and gifts from Oriana Wilson’s sister and there were toasts and speeches galore. Oates danced the lancers with Anton and nearly everyone had too much to drink.

  However, this jollity marked a watershed. The new sledging season was approaching, with everything that implied. Scott felt the mantle of responsibility settle even more firmly on his shoulders. He was also concerned about a strange quest which three of his men were about to attempt – the famous ‘Worst Journey in the World’. Wilson had persuaded Scott to allow him to lead an expedition in the depths of the Antarctic winter to the emperor penguin rookery at Cape Croz
ier. Previous explorers thought that the male penguins tended the eggs during the winter months but no one had proved it. Neither was it known when the eggs hatched. Wilson hoped to answer some of these questions and by retrieving some eggs and studying their embryology to explore the link between birds and reptiles. The scheme had been in Wilson’s mind since the discovery of their breeding ground at Cape Crozier nine years earlier and he had revealed this ambition to Cherry-Garrard in London.

  Shackleton had vetoed a similar proposal from his men and the more cautious Scott was initially very reluctant to allow Wilson to take such a risk. He would be battling against gale-force winds, appallingly low temperatures and a circuitous route of some seventy miles of deeply crevassed ice and cliff. Twice during the winter he had taken Wilson for a walk to try to dissuade him, but without success. He could not find it in his heart to disappoint him and reasoned that some useful experience would be gained for the Polar attempt. More would be learned about the conditions on the Barrier, and he asked Wilson to experiment with diet, trying out different proportions of fats, carbohydrates and proteins. He allowed Wilson to take Cherry-Garrard and Bowers, whom Wilson described in a letter to Ory as ‘the two best sledgers of the whole Expedition’.3 Cherry-Garrard thought he might have done better to take Lashly rather than himself, but described how Wilson had a prejudice against seamen for a journey of that type on the grounds that ‘They don’t take enough care of themselves, and they will not look after their clothes’.

  And so ‘the weirdest bird’s-nesting expedition’ began.4 Ponting took a flashlight photograph and Scott saw them off with a mixture of hope and foreboding, writing in his journal: ‘This winter travel is a new and bold venture, but the right men have gone to attempt it. All good luck go with them!’ Cherry-Garrard’s moving and evocative book, The Worst Journey in the World captures their excitement and apprehension: ‘. . . three men, one of whom at any rate is feeling a little frightened, stand panting and sweating out in McMurdo Sound.’ Their two nine-foot sledges were lashed one behind the other and carried between them some 750 pounds of food and equipment. The surface they had to cross was considered unsuitable for dogs or ponies and so they were to manhaul. They had given up the idea of going on skis because they felt too inexperienced to use them in the darkness. Wilson warned Ory that the trek would be ‘a regular snorter’ but this proved something of an understatement.5

  Existing on a diet of pemmican, biscuit, butter and tea the three men tried to adjust to camping in the dark, finding that everything took much longer. Close to the Barrier the temperature dropped to -47°F. and then -56°F. A badly frostbitten Cherry-Garrard painted a ghastly picture of the nineteen days it took to reach Cape Crozier. ‘I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain . . . It was the darkness that did it. I don’t believe minus seventy temperatures would be bad in daylight, not comparatively bad, when you could see where you were going . . .’ Their clothes became so frozen that it took two men to bend them into the required shape. One morning Cherry-Garrard went outside the tent, raised his head to look around ‘and found I could not move it back’. He had to walk for four hours with his head stuck at a curious angle. The only solace was the magical lights of the Aurora Australis which sometimes danced overhead, though Cherry-Garrard could not appreciate it with his poor eyesight. It was too cold for him to wear his spectacles.

  The temperature continued to fall and the lowest recorded on the journey was an unimaginable -77.5°F. The question inevitably arose of whether to go on. ‘“I think we are all right as long as our appetites are good,” said Bill [Wilson]. Always patient, self-possessed, unruffled, he was the only man on earth, as I believe, who could have led this journey.’ He also kept a close eye on the state of their feet, recognizing that: ‘We couldn’t afford to risk getting anyone crippled in the feet above all else.’ Bowers remained unremittingly cheerful and somehow the party struggled onwards. Finding it too hard now to pull both sledges they resorted to relaying, progressing a bare two or three miles a day but walking three times the distance. Sometimes Cherry-Garrard felt like howling. They were now among deep crevasses and only a fleeting sliver of moonlight saved them from tumbling into an abyss.

  On 15 July, Wilson’s wedding anniversary, after a terrible struggle through crevasses and pressure ridges they reached their destination. Choosing a position high on the cliffs overlooking the rookery they began building themselves an igloo of rock and snow with a canvas roof to be heated with a blubber stove. Wilson named it Oriana Hut. On 19 July they set out to look for the penguins but could find no way of scrambling down on to the sea-ice, though they could hear ‘the emperors calling’. Their cries echoed tantalizingly in the silence. There was no alternative but to return to camp and try again. The second attempt was more successful. Working their way over the pressure ridges they at last found a way down through the ice like a foxhole, and there below them were the emperors, huddled under the cliff, incubating their eggs. They were gazing on a sight never before seen by man, but Wilson was disappointed to find a mere hundred or so birds compared with the several thousands he had been expecting. While the startled penguins kicked up a rumpus, Birdie and Wilson lowered themselves down and collected five eggs. They also killed and skinned three birds to provide fuel for the blubber stove.

  However, the weather was closing in, there was a bitter wind and in the struggle to regain the hut short-sighted Cherry-Garrard stumbled and broke the two eggs he had been clutching in his fur mitts. The men were frozen, exhausted and near the end of their tether by the time they reached shelter. That night a gob of hot fat from the blubber stove hit Wilson in the eye, leaving this normally stoical man writhing in agony, afraid that he was blinded. He admitted that they had ‘reached bed-rock’ – strong language for Wilson – but his belief that things would improve was misplaced. A storm blew up which sounded to Cherry-Garrard ‘as though the world was having a fit of hysterics’. In the maelstrom, the tent, which had been pitched against the igloo to store equipment, blew away. All they could do was struggle to bring what was left into the igloo: ‘to get that gear in we fought against solid walls of black snow which flowed past us and tried to hurl us down the slope.’

  Conditions grew yet more desperate when the canvas roof of the hut ripped off, leaving them exposed. Wilson yelled to the others to get deep into their sleeping bags. When Cherry-Garrard tried to help him, ‘Wilson leaned over and said, “Please, Cherry . . .” and his voice was terribly anxious. I know he felt responsible: feared it was he who had brought us to this ghastly end.’ Ironically, it was Wilson’s birthday. As Bowers later described, ‘I was resolved to keep warm and beneath my debris covering I paddled my feet and sang all the songs and hymns I knew to pass the time. I could occasionally thump Bill, and as he still moved I knew he was alive all right – what a birthday for him!’6

  However, what happened now was close to a miracle and Wilson and Bowers probably interpreted it as such. Bowers thanked God for his mercy in his diary. The hurricane abated, the three of them were still alive, though barely and, most extraordinary of all, their tent had landed intact just half a mile away. As Cherry-Garrard wrote, ‘We were so thankful we said nothing.’ A return journey to Cape Evans without a tent would have been well nigh impossible. Wilson was determined to take no more risks, although Birdie actually urged another visit to the penguins. Failing that he suggested that the Polar party should return that way rather than back down the Beardmore Glacier. The frozen men, somewhat surprised at still being alive, packed up and turned their steps homewards. The remnants of their camp would be found by Sir Vivian Fuchs during the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of the mid 1950s. Birdie was in the best physical condition, exactly the ‘sturdy, active, undefeatable little man’ lauded by Scott,7 but ‘Bill looked very bad’ according to Cherry-Garrard, while he himself felt so weak that he had at last agreed to accept Birdie’s offer of the loan of his eiderdown, a gesture
of such generosity that it almost reduced him to tears.

  The return journey was so grim that Cherry-Garrard wrote that its horrors were blurred in his memory. What he did remember was that as they neared Cape Evans Wilson and Birdie had quite an angry argument about its exact location, the only time they had ever squabbled. He attributed it to the sudden release of tension at nearing home. He also remembered their arrival back at Cape Evans, three frostbitten emaciated scarecrows who were greeted by a cry of ‘Good God! Here is the Crozier Party’. Debenham described how: ‘Three ice-clothed objects came in, sooty, lank-haired and clothed in an armour of ice.’ Some wag suggested a can opener be fetched to release them.

  And so ended this extraordinary Winter Journey. Each man had lost weight but not as much as expected. Cherry-Garrard’s sleeping bag had on the other hand increased in weight from 18 pounds to 45 pounds entirely due to the extra burden of his frozen sweat and breath. Scott was relieved to have his men safely home. Every time the weather had deteriorated around Cape Evans his thoughts had turned anxiously to the Cape Crozier party. He now gave full vent to his feelings in his diary: ‘. . . to me and to everyone who has remained here the result of this effort is the appeal it makes to our imagination as one of the most gallant stories in Polar History. That men should wander forth in the depth of a Polar night to face the most dismal cold and the fiercest gales in darkness is something new; that they should have persisted in this effort in spite of every adversity . . . is heroic. It makes a tale for our generation which I hope may not be lost in the telling.’

  However, this would also have been a fitting tribute to the journey he was about to undertake and which would truly prove to be ‘the worst journey in the world’.

  13