From Ice Floes to Battlefields

by Anne Strathie

  By 22 February Pennell had completed his final expedition correspondence and had packed, ready to leave Queen Anne Street to return to Awliscombe, where he would stay until he was due to join the Duke of Edinburgh:9

  Mr [Reginald] Smith, Admiral Beaumont and Sir Edgar Speyer have all written very appreciative letters in reply to the letters of thanks written on behalf of the ship’s party … The Wyatts are very sad at the breakup of the household. It has been the making … of the last 9 months having Wyatt’s house to live in with [Atkinson] under the same roof. Old Mr Wyatt, James & Miss Wyatt are now friends I will try & keep in touch with.

  On Tuesday, 24 February, Pennell wrote a long journal entry detailing the past fortnight’s events. He closed the entry – and that volume of his journal – with a poem by a young schoolgirl who had described, in her own words, the difficulties Wilson, Bowers and their companions had faced on their way to and from the South Pole:10

  The food was bad, their night bags froze

  They could not even blow their nose

  Because the drop upon it froze

  The heroes could not even doze.

  On Friday, 23 January 1914, Herbert Ponting had showed a selection of his expedition photographs and cinematograph images to Ernest Shackleton and other invited guests at London’s Philharmonic Hall in Great Portland Street. An article in the following day’s Times praised both Ponting’s work and Scott’s foresight in appointing him as expedition photographer. The reviewer noted that, although some images had already been seen during lectures (notably that by Commander Evans at the Royal Albert Hall), Ponting’s conversational style of commentary had added much to the audience’s enjoyment.

  Ponting had been unhappy for some time about the ways in which Teddy Evans and others used his work. On his return to England in 1912 he had written a long letter to Scott complaining about the use of his images for ‘detestable advertisement work’ by expedition sponsors and delays in reimbursing him for expenses. Following Scott’s death Ponting’s letter had been returned to him unopened.11

  Almost as soon as Teddy Evans left for North America Ponting block-booked the Philharmonic Hall, which was conveniently close to the Oxford Mansions apartment he shared with his friend Meares. He placed advertisements in The Times with details of afternoon and evening performances and ticket prices. When he received enquiries for showings outside London, he passed them on to Meares.

  While Ponting was attracting good houses to his film showings, people were also eager to see Scott’s handwritten journals which, with Kathleen Scott’s permission, had been put on display at the British Museum. In Cheltenham, Wilson’s home town, thousands visited exhibitions of Ponting’s photographs and of Wilson’s drawings and watercolours.12 One Cheltonian was so enthusiastic about Wilson’s works that he suggested they should be permanently displayed in a new, purpose-built gallery adorned by ‘a sculptured copy of a sledge drawn by a full team of Esquimaux dogs, accompanied by ski-shod explorers’ and statues in the form of penguins.13

  On 12 May Ponting had the honour of showing his photographs and films in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace to an audience including King George, Queen Mary, the King and Queen of Denmark, other members of the British royal family and numerous distinguished guests.14 The king, who seemed to grasp the challenges Ponting had faced in capturing his striking images, expressed the hope that many of his subjects would have the opportunity to see the images in the future.

  In early June Meares travelled to Cheltenham to give five lectures at the Town Hall. Audiences flocked to see Ponting’s photographs and films and applause broke out whenever Edward Wilson appeared on screen. The following week The Great White Silence, a fictionalised but ‘admiring tribute’ to Wilson and his companions, ran for six performances at the town’s Opera House.15 Whether by coincidence or design, Oriana Wilson and other members of her husband’s family left for holidays just before the play opened.16

  By June 1914 Harry Pennell was some 1,500 miles south of London on the Duke of Edinburgh, which had a top speed almost four times that of the Terra Nova and a complement of almost 800; she was also armed with three torpedoes and thirty-six guns.17 While Pennell had been in Valletta, Malta, he had written to Captain Ramsay of Oamaru, who had sent Pennell a photograph of his home as a souvenir of Pennell’s visit in early 1913:18

  it brings to mind the typical New Zealand welcome we received in spite of arriving in the dead of night. I hope Mrs Ramsay appreciates the fact that we really were most comfortable despite the fact of choosing to sleep on the floor. It is all a matter of custom & if accustomed to sleeping on a board one gets to consider that the most comfortable form of couch.

  In answer to Ramsay’s enquiry after Atkinson, Pennell responded that his friend was now in the Far East.

  Pennell was happy to be back at sea but he had already missed two important events in London. One was the presentation ceremony for a Murchison Grant (worth £40), which he had been awarded by the Royal Geographical Society for ‘important services’ to the expedition. The other was the wedding, on 25 April, of his friend Henry Rennick and his fiancée, Isabel Paterson of Dunedin.19 There were now fewer ‘Antarctics’ in London than previously but Murray Levick had served as best man; Kathleen Scott had also arranged for the expedition pianola, which Rennick had so enjoyed playing, to be presented to the couple as a gift from the expedition.

  Pennell had recently been concerned about the wedding gift he had sent to Silas Wright:20

  The parcel is a hearthrug & meant for your wedding present, why ‘To be forwarded to Comd’r Pennell’ should have been put on it I do not know at all …

  Life here is very pleasant. We are doing a 4 day stint at Trieste being entertained royally and soberly by the Austrians, [who] have too much sense to suppose that the only form of hospitality is to try and make a man drunk. On Saturday we go to Venice & then back to Malta where an Austrian squadron is visiting us. If the English must have ententes why not have them with either the Austrians or Germans, i.e. people it is a pleasure to meet.21 We are hovering on the border of whites [summer uniform] now & as this ship refits at Malta in June & July will be pretty baked by the time it is over. Jane wrote very cheer-ho from Shanghai at the end of March.

  Give my chin-chin to Lillie, Deb & Priestley please.

  Priestley’s and Debenham’s friend Douglas Mawson had recently arrived in England. Mawson had travelled to London with his new wife, Francesca ‘Paquita’ Delprat, whom he had wooed by wireless while marooned on Cape Denison, waiting for the Aurora to rescue him and his companions. Captain John Davis of the Aurora had served as Mawson’s best man and guests including Edgeworth David had admired Antarctic-themed decorations in the form of penguins, icebergs, sledge dogs, snowy petrels and the Aurora. The visit to London was officially the couple’s honeymoon, but Mawson and John Davis (who had sailed from Australia with the newly-weds) spent hours with Ernest Shackleton, discussing the role Davis and the Aurora would play in Shackleton’s forthcoming Antarctic venture.

  Priestley’s 19-year-old sister Doris was due to travel in the opposite direction to the Mawsons, so she could be reunited with her fiancé ‘Griff’ Taylor.22 After meeting Doris, Taylor had stayed on in England, writing up his scientific findings, drafting an Antarctic memoir and lecturing, including at the Royal Geographical Society. Before leaving England for Australia Taylor presented his fiancée with an engagement ring designed by Kathleen Scott and incorporating a piece of green marble Edgeworth David had gathered from the top of the Beardmore Glacier.

  On Monday, 15 June, a few miles north of Cheltenham, Silas Wright married Priestley’s sister Edith in Tewkesbury Abbey. Frank Debenham was best man; guests with Antarctic connections included Oriana Wilson, Kathleen Scott, Wilfred and Dorothy Bruce, Murray Levick, Dennis Lillie, Edward Nelson and his new wife Violet and Frank Wild.23

  Debenham returned immediately after the wedding to Cambridge to pack, as he was due to leave for Australia to attend, as a British deleg
ate, the first overseas conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.24

  Teddy Evans returned from the United States in June to fulfil a long-standing commitment. His North American lecture tour had gone well. In Washington he had stayed at the British Embassy as the guest of Ambassador Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, and lectured to 3,000 people, including the daughters of President Woodrow Wilson.25 He had appeared in a weekly soap-opera-cum-documentary, Our Mutual Girl, clad in full dress uniform, playing himself.26 He had also been forced to publicly deny rumours that he was engaged to be married to Kathleen Scott. On 22 June, in accordance with his promise to Antwerp’s British community, Evans unveiled the new memorial window in St Boniface’s church. The stained glass maker had ensured that the model ship held by St Nicholas, patron saint of seafarers, bore more than a passing resemblance to the Terra Nova.27 Evans, having fulfilled his promise, returned to London and full-time naval duties.

  On 28 June Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia. The assassin had connections with Serbia, whose government Emperor Franz Joseph decided was responsible for his nephew’s death.

  In London, Cherry-Garrard was beginning to assemble material for his narrative history of the Terra Nova expedition. On his return from China he had met up with Colonel Lyons, secretary of the publications sub-committee, who assured him that, regardless of any differences of opinion about the exact causes of death of the South Pole party, Cherry would have a free hand in his narrative.28

  On 9 July, on Cheltenham’s Promenade, Cherry watched as Sir Clements Markham unveiled a bronze statue of Edward Wilson clad in sledging gear. Oriana Wilson, Wilson’s parents, sisters and other family members were there, as were Joseph Kinsey and Reginald Smith and their wives and other representatives of the Discovery and Terra Nova expeditions. The statue had been sculpted by Kathleen Scott who had, as a young woman, studied in Paris with Auguste Rodin.29 She was currently working on a sculpture of her late husband for a planned memorial, but had also been commissioned to create likenesses of Captain Smith of the Titanic, Prime Minister Asquith and explorer Fridtjof Nansen.30 Following the unveiling ceremony Cherry joined other members of the platform party at Westal, the Wilsons’ family home, which was close to Cheltenham College.

  By the beginning of July, Tryggve Gran’s plans for his attempt to break the record for the longest continuous flight over water were almost complete.31 He had based himself at Cruden Bay, near Aberdeen, where he took delivery of his customised Bleriot monoplane Ça Flotte (‘it floats’) on a long beach suitable for take-offs. Once the aircraft was assembled, Gran had to wait for the weather to be right on both the Scottish and Norwegian coasts of the North Sea. He had done everything he could, including preparing for unexpected ‘ditchings’ by swimming fully clothed in the North Sea. But there was nothing he could do about the summer fog.

  On the morning of Thursday, 30 July, the weather finally looked set fair. Gran took off to the east but was soon forced back by a dense bank of fog. He now only had one more chance at breaking the record. From 6 p.m. that evening all civil flights were banned due to the situation which was developing in Europe following the Archduke’s assassination just over a month previously.

  Just after 1 p.m. Gran was airborne again. This time the weather held and by 6 p.m. he had landed in Stavangar. His fuel tank was almost empty but he had broken the record for the longest-ever flight over open water.

  Gran was received by King Haakon and Queen Maud and feted by his fellow-Norwegians. There were, however, disappointingly few reports in British newspapers about his achievement. One exception was the Daily Mail, whose proprietor, Alfred Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe, was a great flying enthusiast. Louis Blériot had received a £1,000 Daily Mail prize after crossing the Channel in 1909 – and Gran now had his eye on the £10,000 prize which would go to the first pilot (or pilots) to cross the Atlantic in less than seventy-two consecutive hours.

  With aviation there would always be something new to strive for. Gran was glad he had decided not to travel to Antarctica with Shackleton.

  On Friday, 1 August, Germany (an ally of Austria-Hungary) declared war on Russia (an ally of Serbia). France (an ally of Russia) began mobilising troops; Britain (linked to France by the Entente Cordiale) put her navy on alert; Italy and Belgium reiterated their neutrality.

  As Britain put her navy on a war footing Ernest Shackleton contacted the Admiralty. Although J. Foster Stackhouse was still fundraising for his planned purchase of Scott’s Discovery, Shackleton was all prepared to sail on his third Antarctic expedition. He had his two ships, the Endurance and the Aurora, the blessing of the RGS and, thanks to the generosity of Dundee jute mill owner and philanthropist Sir James Caird, a fully financed expedition.32 He had an experienced crew: Alf Cheetham was third mate and Tom Crean was boatswain, in charge of sledges for the trans-Antarctic crossing.

  Shackleton was relieved to receive Admiralty clearance to leave Britain with a ship and several naval officers and seamen at a time of national crisis. An Admiralty official sent him a one-word telegram (‘Proceed’) and First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill sent a longer message, thanking him for offering to forego his expedition.33 Shackleton then gave his men the option of leaving the ship, in case they wanted to rejoin or join the armed forces. Frank Bickerton, who had been working on a propeller-driven ‘air tractor’ (based on one he had developed for Mawson’s expedition), decided to leave the expedition; Alf Cheetham and Tom Crean stayed on board the Endurance.34

  On 3 August, Bank Holiday Monday, the sun shone in Cheltenham as a motor vehicle decorated as the Terra Nova joined a procession heading north to Prestbury, where crowds had already gathered to enjoy the village fair. The day’s proceedings ended with rousing renditions of Rule Britannia and the national anthem and a firework display, a highlight of which was a ‘fire portrait’ of the town’s Member of Parliament, James Agg-Gardner. He had hoped to be present, but had been detained in London for an emergency sitting of the House of Commons.

  The following day, 4 August, Germany invaded Belgium. As this was in direct violation of the 1839 Treaty of London (of which both Britain and Germany were signatories), the British government issued an ultimatum to Germany requiring her to withdraw from Belgian soil by 11 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, midnight in Berlin. The deadline passed with no response from Germany.

  By 11.01 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time on Tuesday, 4 August 1914, Britain was at war with Germany.

  Spitsbergen, showing distances from Norway, North Russia and Britain. Map from The Sphere, 9 November 1918; Image © private.

  Antwerp, showing forts, railway lines, River Schelde and Dutch border. Map © and courtesy of Roy C. Swales.

  Notes

  The words of the title are a line from Tennyson’s In Memoriam (see note 14 to chapter 4).

  1. MS 433, 18 January and 2 February 1914.

  2. MS 433, 24 February 1914.

  3. The encounter is described in Huntford, Shackleton, pp. 355–7.

  4. MS 433, 24 February 1914.

  5. By 1914 the Northern Exploration Company (‘NEC’) and its principals ‘staked out’ large areas of Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago. Spitsbergen was a ‘condominium’ or ‘terris nullis’, which belonged to no country so was subject to claims by explorers, prospectors and investors from, inter alia, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Russia. William Speirs Bruce (whose Scotia Antarctic expedition coincided with Scott’s Discovery expedition) co-founded the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate in 1907; Shackleton was reported in 1911 as contemplating an expedition to Spitsbergen, although this came to nothing. Norway, the nearest country to Spitsbergen, organised conferences in 1910 and 1912 to try to resolve ownership and governance of the island, which Russia at one point tried to annex. Campbell’s involvement with NEC is mentioned in Barr et al., Gold, or I’m a Dutchman (pp. 126–7) and Kruse (pp. 266–7); his and Barne’s 1914 expedition
is covered by Erskine, ‘Victor Campbell and Michael Barne in Svalbard’, and in the introduction to Campbell, The Wicked Mate. Information on the NEC’s activities also regularly appeared in the newspapers.

  6. The UMCA (as it was known) had been founded by members of the Anglican Church at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and Dublin in response to a plea by David Livingstone for support for the establishment of mission stations in Zanzibar and Nyasaland (now Malawi).

  7. The schistosomiasis (or bilharzia) group of diseases (caused by the parasites Atkinson was investigating) rank second only to malaria in terms of numbers infected worldwide, particularly in Africa and the Far East.

  8. The Times, 2–27 February 1914.

  9. MS 433, 24 February 1914.

  10. This is the concluding passage of the last entry in journal MS433. It is not known whether Pennell, who had kept a journal for at least the previous ten years, decided to stop doing so or whether he began another journal.

  11. Ponting’s letter is quoted in part (without source details) in Arnold, Herbert Ponting, pp. 32–3; Francis Drake, recognising Ponting’s handwriting, would have returned the letter unopened (Dennistoun, Peaks & Passes, pp. 215–6, refers to Drake opening Dennistoun’s letter due to not recognising the writing.)