A Polar Affair

by Lloyd Spencer Davis

  In the dozen years following their marriage in 1893, George and Mary had six children and gave every indication of being totally devoted to each other, while his father continued to hang out with princesses and prostitutes, right up until his death..

  In the peculiarly inbred partnerships that characterize European royalty, which makes studying the mating behavior of penguins seem straightforward by comparison, by the time King George V has his coronation, another of his cousins has become Norway’s first king, King Haakon VII, and is married to yet another cousin, Queen Maud.

  It is June 1, 1910, and the Terra Nova is leaving behind England and its new king and queen. On board are some sixty men. Among the officers is Murray Levick, who has been released from his naval duties at Scott’s request. Scott has gone out of his way to promote the expedition as one intent on new scientific discoveries first and an attempt to get to the South Pole only second. While that is disingenuous to say the least—because the bulk of the expedition’s equipment, animals, and human cargo will be in the Antarctic to support the push for the pole—he holds up his plan for the Eastern Party as evidence for this.

  It is to be led by Lieutenant Victor Campbell, the thirty-four-year-old first officer of the Terra Nova and one of the few men, like Scott, with a child. Campbell has an eight-year-old son, although his marriage is strained following his wife’s depression after the death of her sister, and secretly he is glad for the opportunity to spend time away exploring new lands. The Eastern Party is to explore the land named by Scott in 1902 after the now dead king: King Edward VII Land. This stretch of land, visible at the eastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, remains unexplored either through Shackleton’s failure to get there, or as Scott believes, Shackleton’s betrayal.

  Sir Clements Markham, Scott’s longtime supporter, is at the wharf to see them off. The Terra Nova makes its way along the southern coast of Britain, stopping at various points until it makes its last port of call in Cardiff. It is June 15 when it finally pulls out of Cardiff and heads into the Atlantic. As Campbell records in his diary that day, in typical perfunctory fashion:

  We left Cardiff weather fine and calm. Several pleasure steamers came some way with us, the tug taking off Captain and Mrs. Scott and friends.

  Scott will stay behind to continue necessary fundraising and shall follow six weeks later in a fast boat in order to meet the Terra Nova in South Africa. Leaving their son Peter behind, Kathleen shall travel with him, together with the wives of Bill Wilson and the second in command, Teddy Evans.

  The Terra Nova sets sail for Madeira, the archipelago of subtropical islands in the Atlantic belonging to Portugal. They arrive on June 23 and stay there for three days.

  It is September 3, 1910. The Fram pulls into Madeira too, where it shall stay, also for three days, taking on fresh water and fresh food while also mending a broken propeller. The Fram had earlier left Oslo on June 3 and traveled down to Amundsen’s home on the Bunnefjorden. There the hut, which Amundsen had built on his lawn and tested so thoroughly with Sigrid, was dismantled, each part numbered, and then stored on the ship. At midnight, at the start of Norway’s Independence Day on June 7, the Fram snuck away quietly with no fanfare at all. As the Fram sailed past Kristiania, across the fjord, in his office at the top of the redbrick tower of his home, Polhøgda, Nansen watched the ship that had served him so well slip out of the fjord toward the open sea under the command of Amundsen. He would call it “the bitterest moment in my life.”

  They had spent a month in the northern Irish Sea, ostensibly on a brief oceanographic survey, but what Amundsen was really doing was testing out his men, the ship’s engine, and their procedures. They went back to Norway, made some adjustments to their fuel, loaded supplies, and ninety-seven dogs from North Greenland that had been specially chosen for their strength. They had finally left the Norwegian coast behind on August 10, ostensibly bound for the North Pole. Their route supposedly is taking them south around Cape Horn in order to get to the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Strait that is to be their gateway to the Arctic.

  Just three hours before their departure from Madeira, Amundsen calls all the men on deck for a meeting. He stands before them with a large map of Antarctica pinned to the mainmast. It is then that he confesses that he has deceived them: they are not going to the North Pole but to the South Pole. The only ones privy to his secret beforehand are his brother Leon, the first mate Kristian Prestrud, and Lieutenant Fredrik Gjertsen, the young officer who had already been entrusted with carrying the train on Queen Maud’s dress during King Haakon VII’s coronation in 1906.

  Amundsen explains the reason for his deception, saying that had the secret gotten out while still in Norway, they would have most likely lost the support of their sponsors. The men are stunned. There is stony silence. One by one, Amundsen asks them in turn if they will come with him. Those who leave the expedition now will have their passage paid back to Norway. Yet there is no need for such a contingency: to a person, they all say “yes” to their leader.

  Leon Amundsen disembarks just before the Fram sails out of Madeira. He carries with him letters written by Roald Amundsen to the king and Nansen, which three weeks later he will get to both men through an intermediary, having given the Fram enough time to get well on its way to Antarctica. He also carries with him letters written by the men to their families explaining their new circumstances that he will post and, then, afterward, cable Scott and tell the press.

  Amundsen’s letter to his childhood hero ends with what sounds eerily similar to the way Jesus may have expressed himself for having deceived Nansen so deliberately and completely:

  I beg your forgiveness for what I have done. May my coming work help to atone for that in which I have offended.

  Forgive me father, for I know not what I have done. Though ye believe not me, believe the works. Indeed.

  Among the first to encounter Amundsen and his “works,” will be the Eastern Party. And Murray Levick is about to become part of that.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE EASTERN PARTY

  The Terra Nova, with Scott in charge, is en route between South Africa and Australia. Still needing more financial support for his expedition, Scott has sent Bill Wilson and the wives ahead in a fast ship so that the good doctor may continue fundraising there until they can all meet up in Melbourne.

  It is during this period that Scott and Campbell start to divvy up who shall be in the Eastern Party and who shall be in the Shore Party to support the push for the Pole. Campbell is to lead the Eastern Party and, as they shall be on their own for upward of a year, he needs a medic. There are two surgeons assigned to the expedition: Murray Levick and Edward Atkinson, who is five years younger than Levick. They decide that Levick is the obvious choice for the Eastern Party, given his expertise in diet and physical exercise—although, presumably, such skills would also be valuable on the proposed march to the pole.

  In truth, Scott is just as happy not to have Levick in his lot as he is for Campbell to have him. Despite having picked Levick for the expedition, Scott is none too impressed with him. As he puts it:

  He seems quite incapable of learning anything fresh. Left alone, I verily believe he would do nothing from sheer lack of initiative.

  In fact, the Eastern Party will require Levick to do triple duty: in addition to being its medic, he is expected to act as the Eastern Party’s zoologist and photographer.

  As for a geologist to map and describe the hitherto unexplored Kind Edward VII Land, that job is to go to the Australian, Raymond Priestley, who had been with Shackleton on the Nimrod Expedition. Priestley is in Sydney and shall travel independently, meeting the Terra Nova when it gets to Lyttelton in New Zealand.

  When it comes to deciding upon the three able-bodied seamen to be assigned to the party, Campbell has already taken a shine to the handsome and physically impressive petty officer, George Abbott, the tallest man on the expedition. Very fit and already at thirty with graying hair, Abbott has been learning taxider
my from Dr. Bill Wilson, who describes him as “an exceedingly nice gentlemanly fellow and a tower of strength.” It is almost inevitable, then, that Abbott should be known as “Tiny” among the men. Petty Officer Frank Browning is a torpedo expert who grew up on a farm and, at twenty-eight, is selected because he is very adaptable. Short, lithe, and dark-haired, he goes by the even more unlikely name of “Rings.” The last of the three is the young Able Seaman Harry Dickason, who, at twenty-five, is already proving to be a skilled cook. Almost as short as Browning, the light-haired Dickason has the most obvious of nicknames: “Dick.”

  An investigation into how Murray Levick could go from being picked for the Eastern Party to becoming a man fascinated by penguin sex would ideally involve interrogating all the members of the Eastern Party: Levick, Campbell, Priestley, Tiny, Rings, and Dick. Except for one problem: they are all long dead.

  I am in Cambridge, England’s beautiful university town with its cobbled streets and colleges, pubs and punts, all of which have been traversed by some of civilization’s greatest minds. From Isaac Newton to Ernest Rutherford to Stephen Hawking, I cannot help wonder which of them may have put their boots on the same cobblestones where I place my feet now. I am there to go to the University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute. It was founded in 1920 by two members of the Terra Nova Expedition, Raymond Priestley and Frank Debenham, to be used primarily as a repository for materials from polar exploration. Its current location is a rather bland, gray building on Lensfield Road. There is the usual security to get in, though perhaps not as tight as that at Tring. You do need to book ahead to reserve one of the few desk spaces allocated for research in the tiny reading room. I have booked a whole week. Eventually, I am led into a small gray room and ushered to a desk. There are already two others sitting at theirs, eyes down, reading. I am shown the blue catalogue files and then told that I can ask to see literally anything in their collection. Anything. Letters written by Scott. Letters written by Shackleton. Letters written by Kathleen Scott. Anything at all.

  What I am most interested in are the diaries of the men who were part of the Eastern Party. Those of the leader, Victor Campbell, are not held here, but pretty much everything else is. Campbell’s diary, however, has been published as a book. Indeed, Priestley’s account of the expedition, based upon his diaries, had been published in 1915. And, nearly a century later, the terse diary of Harry Dickason with its brief entries had been published. I am particularly interested in the diaries of the much more loquacious G. Murray Levick, only one of which is available in published form. I ask for one and it is brought to me and placed on what is a sort of soft beanbag for support. My fingers shake with excitement as I reach for it.

  I am able to smell Levick on the pages, touch him, climb inside his head. These are not zoological notes, his writings about science. These are the thoughts of the man born George Murray Levick. What moved him, what didn’t. What happened to him, yes, but, most intriguingly, what he wished would happen to him. What he thought of his fellows and what he thought about life.

  It feels like such a privilege to be here. At last it seems that I have caught up with my man, my Amundsen, and while I cannot talk to him directly over the next week, this is surely going to be the next best thing. I barely notice the comings and goings of the others in the small room.

  It is October 12, 1910, when the Terra Nova arrives in Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay. It is a huge wide bay and Kathleen insists on Wilson and the wives going out to meet the ship in a launch. Kathleen has been unfavorably disposed to both Hilda, Teddy Evans’s wife, and Oriana, Bill Wilson’s wife. This has led to tensions between the three of them, causing Wilson to reveal that he is ill-suited to be a penguin:

  I hope it will never fall to my lot to have more than one wife at a time to look after.

  Scott and Kathleen, along with the other two couples, then take the launch back to the city and the hotel where they are staying. At the hotel, Kathleen hands Scott the mail that is waiting for him, including an envelope containing a cable.

  Scott opens it. It contains nine words. Nine words that will forevermore change his life and, indeed, that of Levick too:

  BEG LEAVE TO INFORM YOU FRAM PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC AMUNDSEN

  This time it is Scott’s turn to be secretive with his crew: he does not tell them for fear of affecting morale, though he does ask Gran what he can make of the cable. Gran is no help, and so Scott cables Nansen asking if he can tell him Amundsen’s destination. Nansen’s reply is even more concise than Amundsen’s cable had been: UNKNOWN.

  It is October 28, 1910. The Terra Nova pulls into Lyttelton Harbor in New Zealand. In the middle of the harbor is a small green island, Quail Island, which is being used as a quarantine station for livestock and any arriving immigrants to New Zealand who are deemed sick. From 1906, it has also housed a small leper colony. For the last six weeks it has been home to forty-nine exotic animals: nineteen white Manchurian ponies and thirty Siberian dogs, which have been brought there by Cecil Meares and Wilfred Bruce, one of Kathleen’s older brothers. Scott has determined, based upon Shackleton’s experience on the Nimrod Expedition, that ponies and motorized sledges are his best means to get to the pole. Fridtjof Nansen had begged Scott to take dogs and, in deference to him, they are taking thirty, though that is not nearly enough needed to get to the pole, for they are intended only for support work: assistance with setting up food depots and the like.

  Scott may have viewed Levick as lacking in wit and initiative, but Levick shows plenty of both on the journey down to Antarctica as he squirrels away supplies and equipment that might be useful to the Eastern Party, knowing full well that Scott’s own Polar Party will have first call on such things once they are in the Antarctic.

  The Terra Nova’s last port of call is Port Chalmers, my home town. On a hill above my house sits a monument to Scott and his crew: a thirty-foot-high cairn of local stones with an anchor atop. I go past that monument every day and it never fails to connect me to Levick and those times. As I look down on our small town, with most of its houses and shops unaltered since Scott’s time, it always makes me smile to imagine that as much of the crew was out enjoying the last delights of civilization, be they of the alcohol or feminine kind, Levick was sitting in his cabin stuffing goodies under the mattress. Levick alludes to the feminine attractions of Port Chalmers when in the first entry in his Antarctic diary he writes:

  I think most of us feel regrets a (sic) leaving New Zealand, as we have all made friends, and some of us I dare say, more than friends.

  The Otago Harbor is beautiful, a narrow band of sheltered and shallow water that draws the eye up to Taiaroa Head with its lighthouse and the narrow entrance to the harbor slotted between the headland and a spit of sand on the other side. The departure of the Terra Nova from Port Chalmers in the mid-afternoon on November 29, 1910, is notable less for its cheering send-off than it is for the almighty row that takes place in the hotel between Kathleen Scott and Hilda Evans just before the ship leaves, which becomes a three-way battle when Oriana Wilson steps in to try to break them up.

  Titus Oates, the man in charge of the ponies, says in a letter to his mother:

  . . .there was more blood and hair flying about the hotel than you would see in a Chicago slaughter house in a month.

  The women accompany their husbands on the ship as far as Taiaroa Head. When it comes time to transfer to the tug, Kathleen, unlike the other wives, chooses not to kiss her husband goodbye. She will say later that she did not wish to make him sad in front of the other men. Yet this stiff and formal parting speaks volumes about their pairing.

  In penguins, reinforcement of the pair-bond, which they do by mutual calling, is a good predictor of whether a pair will stay together or divorce.

  My finding from the summer of ’85 that pairs that had been unsuccessful in their breeding attempt the previous season have a higher likelihood of divorce can be explained precisely by the lack of reinforcement of their pair-bond.
When male and female Adelie partners greet each other, they do so by engaging in a Mutual Call. The pair trumpet loudly in unison, standing breast to breast, their bills pointed skyward, waving their heads and necks about each other.

  It occurs particularly when a bird that has been at sea arrives at the nest to greet its partner. It is the way they recognize each other and affirm their bond. In humans, we kiss and hug each other.

  Because the pair takes turns going away to sea for about two weeks or more during the first two incubation stints, if they lose their eggs for whatever reason, they will have only two or three occasions to reinforce their bond: during courtship and at the nest changeovers that occur at the end of the first and second incubation spells. After that, the birds change places on the nest virtually every day or two, so there are many, many more times to perform their mutual greeting and reinforce their pair-bond for those pairs that manage to raise at least one of their chicks to fledging. During the Antarctic winter, the pair are not together as they migrate north. When they return to the colony to breed at the start of the following season, pairs that have had the opportunity to frequently reinforce their bond are more likely to reunite. Pairs develop a stronger relationship or bond borne of their frequent mutual calling at nest relief, which is something that only successful pairs experience.

  Kathleen boards the tug beneath the white and red lighthouse of Taiaroa Head. She says goodbye to her husband, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, but deliberately refrains from kissing him. Deliberately refrains from reinforcing their pair-bond.

  She will never see him again.