South

by National Maritime Museum

  2 DISCOVERY AND NIMROD

  by Pieter van der Merwe

  Discovery, 1901–1904

  [The Commander] must be a naval officer … and he must be young. These are essentials. Such a commander should be a good sailor with some experience of ships under sail, a navigator with a knowledge of surveying, and he should be of a scientific turn of mind. He must have imagination and be capable of enthusiasm. His temperament must be cool, he must be calm, yet quick and decisive in action, a man of resource, tactful and sympathetic.

  Sir Clements Markham

  The man who crossed the road to greet Markham in 1899 was the torpedo lieutenant of the battleship Majestic, flagship of the Channel Squadron. It was within days of his 31st birthday and his name was Robert Falcon Scott. Known to his family as ‘Con’, Scott was born at Stoke Damerel, Devonport, on 6 June 1868, the third of six children and the elder of two sons. His parents both had naval connections, although his father, John, owned a Plymouth brewery. ‘Con’ was a rather dreamy, self-sufficient boy, largely educated at home until he went, relatively late, to board at a Hampshire preparatory school known for taking those intended for the Navy. He joined the training ship Britannia in 1881 and, despite minor scrapes, was made cadet captain early in 1883 before passing out seventh in a class of 26 that summer, with first-class certificates in mathematics and seamanship. He was still a midshipman in November 1886 when he joined the training ship Rover, which took him out to the West Indies. It was here that he first came to the notice of Markham by winning a cutter race. Markham invited Scott to dine with him in the squadron flagship, where the former was a guest of his cousin and fellow polar veteran, by now Admiral AH Markham. Markham was impressed by Scott’s ‘intelligence, information and the charm of his manner’, though Scott was not the only, or even the most favoured ‘mid’ to fall under his calculating eye.

  Sir Clements Markham was a driving force behind the 1901 British Antarctic Expedition, and an advocate of man-hauling sledges based on his own previous Arctic experience.

  Confirmed as a sub-lieutenant in 1888, Scott was posted to the cruiser Amphion in which he served in the Pacific and the Mediterranean, rising to lieutenant in 1889. Though he performed well, his letters at this time show he became depressed and dissatisfied both with the ship and himself, and probably realised that any prospect of command was a long way off. He thus changed course into the new and more specialised path of torpedo warfare, training at Portsmouth before returning to the Mediterranean late in 1893 as torpedo lieutenant of the Vulcan, an experimental vessel.

  In the following autumn came the first of several family disasters. His father, John Scott, had some years before sold his brewery to retire in gentlemanly comfort but the money had been lost through poor investment. The large family home had to be let: Scott’s younger brother, Archie, gave up his commission in the Royal Artillery and joined a local regiment in Nigeria where the pay was better and costs were less. The sisters all found work: the eldest, Ettie, to her mother’s disquiet, became an actress but soon married a Member of Parliament. Their 63-year-old father resumed work as a Somerset brewery manager.

  Robert Falcon Scott, shown here in full uniform with the Polar Medal from the 1901–1904 expedition. In the Navy he had specialised as a torpedo officer. Photograph by Maull & Fox, 1904–10.

  To be closer to home, Scott transferred to Portsmouth and in 1896 was serving in the Empress of India in the Channel Squadron when he met Markham again, this time a guest in the Royal Sovereign at Vigo when they were en route to Gibraltar. Now Sir Clements, Markham was renewing his campaign to mount a British Antarctic expedition following the Admiralty’s initial refusal to assist. Scott heard little more of this campaign, though. Their ways quickly parted and the following year he transferred to the battleship Majestic.

  Four months later, in July 1897, Scott’s father died leaving just over £1,500, and the cost of supporting their mother fell largely to the two brothers. This tragedy and Scott’s financial difficulties were compounded in 1898 when Archie also died, of typhoid, while on home leave. Scott now felt that he was burdened by ill fortune and that he had to find some way to advance himself more rapidly. It was in these circumstances that he met Markham in the street, heard that the National Antarctic Expedition seemed a real possibility, and two days later formally applied to command it. His success brought him promotion to commander, and in due course a further allowance.

  It was nearly a year until Scott’s appointment was confirmed by the Joint Committee of the Royal and Royal Geographical societies, of which Markham was vice-president. During this time Scott returned to Majestic under Captain Egerton, whose warm reference nonetheless pointed out that his junior had no knowledge of polar work. The same period also marked the successful end to a number of long-running battles for Markham, including getting his way that the prime aim of the voyage would be geographical rather than oceanographic and that the commander of the ship would also command the expedition, not a scientist. This was difficult since a distinguished geologist had already been invited to become Scientific Director, but eventually chose to withdraw rather than take a subordinate role. With Prime Minister Balfour’s interest having finally secured Markham the official funding he sought, the Admiralty also agreed to provide another regular officer as second-in-command and two or three others from the Royal Naval Reserve. In fact they supplied rather more, let alone the bulk of the crew, most of whom were volunteers Scott had canvassed through friends in the Channel Squadron.

  Notably, Scott chose a number of men from the Majestic: Lieutenants Michael Barne and Reginald Skelton (as chief engineer), Warrant Officer James Dell-bridge as second engineer, and two petty officers, David Allan and Edgar Evans, who was the first to die returning from the Pole in 1912. The navigator and second-in-command was in the end a lieutenant Royal Naval Reserve (RNR): a P&O officer called Albert Armitage who had been part of the Jackson–Harmsworth Arctic Expedition to Franz Josef Land (1894–1897). The first lieutenant, 23-year-old Charles Royds, had recently been commanding a torpedo-boat destroyer. The last officer was a merchant navy second mate called Ernest Shackleton, making his polar debut as a specially rated sub-lieutenant RNR. He came on leave from the Union Castle Line, having first used his considerable charm on the son of Llewellyn Longstaff, the expedition’s main private sponsor, and then on Scott himself to secure a place. He had excellent experience in sail and steam, an outgoing personality and a natural leader’s ability to get men working together. In the long term, however, these qualities would give rise to underlying tensions with Scott’s reserved character and tendency to be irritable under stress.

  A group photograph of the officers and men of Discovery. Scott is in the centre and Shackleton is standing fifth from the left. Unknown photographer, 1901.

  The regular officers all had scientific functions – Royds being the meteorologist, for example – but there was also a civilian scientific complement. Louis Bernacchi, a Tasmanian who had wintered at Cape Adare with Borchgrevink was the physicist, particularly concerned with the magnetic work, and joined the ship in New Zealand. Hartley Ferrar, a recent Cambridge graduate, and Thomas Vere Hodgson of the Plymouth Marine Biological Laboratory joined as geologist and biologist respectively. Dr Reginald Koettlitz (known as ‘Cutlets’ and at 40 the oldest member of the expedition) had been with Armitage in the Arctic and was senior surgeon and botanist. His assistant, both medically and as naturalist, was Dr Edward Adrian Wilson, the artistically gifted and deeply Christian peacemaker of both Scott’s voyages, known ten years later as ‘Uncle Bill’. Though initially closer to Shackleton, he was to become the confidant and companion on whom Scott, not himself religious and also prone to self-doubts, came most personally to rely: ‘a brave, true man – the best of comrades and the staunchest of friends’ as he wrote to Wilson’s wife when both lay dying in their tent in 1912.

  The question of what vessel would be used was faced by the Ship Committee long before Scott appeared. The comm
ittee was chaired by Admiral Sir Francis Leopold McClintock who, as a captain, had solved the Franklin riddle 40 years before. Markham had known him since those days and was much influenced by him (and was later his biographer). McClintock’s method of man-hauling sledges – which employed the manpower available to him – had subsequently become a practical orthodoxy for Royal Naval Arctic expeditions and, less justifiably, one that time hallowed with ‘manly’ moral weight. In hindsight, this is difficult fully to understand given that McClintock was a good dog driver and that naval expeditions as far back as Parry’s in the early 1820s had experience of dogs from Inuit practice, some copying it. Part of the answer lies in numerical ratios: dogs are most effective as ‘primary traction’ when few men are involved. Otherwise, the number of dogs required becomes impractical. In the matter of a ship, however, the experience of McClintock and his colleagues produced a winner.

  Markham himself visited Norway in 1898, as did Scott, to consult the explorer Fridtjof Nansen about potential steamships and to look at the possibility of having a vessel built similar to the Fram, in which Nansen had made his own epic voyage towards the North Pole in 1893–1896. Later to be Amundsen’s ship, the Fram was designed to be squeezed up out of heavy pack ice that might threaten to crush it. This came to nothing, though, as did the idea of using various wooden whalers including the old Bloodhound, which under the name HMS Discovery had been one of the ships taken to the Arctic in 1875–1876 by another Ship Committee member, Sir George Nares. The end result was that a new wooden steam-auxiliary sailing ship was designed, based on Nares’s Discovery. Significant modifications were made, and principal among them was a massively strengthened ‘ice-breaker’ bow, a rounded overhanging stern to resist ice pressure, and a carefully calculated use of ferrous metals to make the vessel a suitable platform to conduct geomagnetic experiments. Designed by Sir William Smith and laid down by the Dundee Shipbuilders Company, who were well experienced in building polar whalers, the new auxiliary barque was both one of the last three-masted wooden ships to be built and the first specially for scientific use since the little Paramore in 1694 (which was constructed for a voyage under the astronomer Edmond Halley). She was 52.4 metres (172 feet) long, 10 metres (33 feet) in the beam and weighed 1,570 tons, with sides 66cm (26 inches) thick and a coal-fired 450 indicated horsepower (i.h.p.) triple-expansion engine. On 21 March 1901, with Markham, Scott and many others present, Lady Markham launched the ship at Dundee as the Discovery – a name first borne into Arctic polar ice by one of Cook’s ships in the 1770s.

  Discovery sailed from London on 31 July 1901, cheered by large crowds and provisioned to support 47 men for three years – much of her supplies being donated by commercial sponsors. Off Cowes, King Edward VII came aboard with Queen Alexandra and invested Scott with the Royal Victorian Order. On 3 October she stopped briefly to refit and replenish stores at Cape Town en route for Lyttelton, New Zealand, where she docked on 29 November. On the way, to begin the magnetic survey work, Scott diverted far south over the 60th parallel, encountered their first ice and called at the deserted Macquarie Island, where the crew reacted well to the addition of penguin to their diet. The ship proved a slow sailer and heavy on coal when steaming but was otherwise an excellent sea-boat in the worst conditions. At Lyttelton her rigging was reset and stores replenished, with the gift of 45 live sheep being added to the 23 sledge dogs carried on deck. Again cheered by crowds, she sailed on 21 December, though immediately put into Port Chalmers to bury a seaman called Charles Bonner who was killed falling from the masthead. He and a deserter were replaced by two volunteers from an accompanying warship, HMS Ringarooma. One was Able Seaman Thomas Crean, henceforth the most indestructible and permanent figure in both Scott and Shackleton’s stories. The addition of Stoker William Lashly proved to be valuable, as he was to be one of the heroes of Scott’s last expedition.

  On 2 January 1902 Discovery saw her first icebergs and began to push through a 435km (270-mile) belt of pack ice, amid which the crew tried their skis and slaughtered the sheep, seals and penguin for the larder, now that the cold would preserve the results. Scott’s squeamishness about such necessary butchery is well recorded: compared to Amundsen who routinely killed sledge dogs to feed the other dogs – and his men – it was a significant weakness. On 8 January they landed near Cape Adare, visiting Borchgrevink’s hut, before sailing on to seek winter quarters further south. They found McMurdo Sound full of ice, and on 23 January, after establishing a mail-drop for their relief ship Morning at Cape Crozier on Ross Island (which they later first recognised as such), they sailed east along the edge of the Ice Barrier itself. This had now receded since Ross first found it but was generally from 15 to 75 metres (50 to 240 feet) high above the sea. On 26 January Discovery reached her further point south, latitude 78° 36’, and on 30th Scott realised both from soundings and crags visible up to 610 metres (2,000 feet) that they had discovered the eastern coast of the Ross Sea, naming it King Edward VII Land. Turning back on 1 February, they briefly stopped in a 5km (3-mile) inlet in the ice front and from here a sledging party reached latitude 79° 03.5’ (later revised to 78° 34’) to examine the surface. Here Scott and Shackleton created another first, going up by balloon to survey the limitless plain. They saw no land in any direction, and Scott, who ascended first, nearly vanished for good by dropping too much ballast. Fortunately, the balloon was securely tethered but it developed a leak and was never used again.

  Discovery was launched on 21 March 1901. She was the first purpose-built British polar exploration ship designed to resist ice pressure and allow geomagnetic experiments on board. Photograph by Watt, Dundee, 1901.

  An informal photograph of Scott seeing King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra off after their visit to Discovery at Cowes, August 1901; who took it is unknown.

  While the intention had been to live in the hut, Scott decided to use Discovery as accommodation. However, later expeditions used the hut as a refuge.

  Shackleton’s photograph of Discovery’s hydrogen balloon, Eva, being inflated on 3 February 1902. Scott and then Shackleton did the first balloon ascents in the Antarctic, the latter reaching a height of around 230 metres (750 feet).

  Discovery returned to McMurdo Sound, which had cleared sufficiently to anchor in a sheltered inlet at what became known as Hut Point near the south end of Ross Island. By the end of March the ship was safely frozen in with huts erected ashore for auxiliary accommodation (though everyone in fact lived in the ship) and as observatories. By then George Vince, a seaman, had been killed while on an abortive mission led by Royds to leave messages for Morning at Cape Crozier. He, Evans and others had been sent back in deteriorating weather when they slipped on a steep slope. Vince disappeared into the icy sea. Clarence Hare, the steward, was also presumed dead until he walked in over 36 hours later, having survived that time in the open. Experience was proving the best of teachers, but the costs were heavy. Before the winter night finally descended, everyone began to learn to ski and tried to get the dogs to work as sledge teams. In both cases the British were novices, to a degree now almost unimaginable, in skills that were almost native (certainly the skiing) to their Scandinavian compeers. Scott found skiing ‘a pleasurable and delightful exercise’ but was not convinced at first that it would be useful when dragging sledges. Despite liking his dogs, he was also not at ease with their savagery and the ruthlessness needed to manage them. For both Scott and Shackleton the cultural prejudice in favour of man-hauling sledges or using hardy ponies rather than dogs, against the urging of their Norwegian colleagues, was to prove near-fatal in their first voyages and, with other factors, finally so for Scott in 1911–1912.

  The front cover of the first edition of the South Polar Times. This series continued an Arctic tradition of creating newspapers to inform and entertain the officers and crew.

  Aside from regular scientific observations and the normal business of living, winter was taken up with activities that had been naval traditions in the Arctic. Amateur
theatricals in the ‘Royal Terror Theatre’ (the hut) were high points, while Shackleton as editor and Wilson as illustrator put out five eagerly awaited typed editions of the South Polar Times. Time was also spent on preparing sledges and making up clothing and rations for the spring, and Scott did a great deal of relevant reading and laid plans for travelling south when light returned.

  Scott’s first sortie with two companions was a disaster. Two days later they struggled back with frostbite after their tent blew away in temperatures of -50°C. The next try saw him, Shackleton and Thomas Feather lay a large depot 137km (85 miles) south of the ship. Feather fell down a crevasse, from which Scott rescued him, but with difficulty. On their return they found that scurvy had made its appearance among another party that had explored to the westward, living primarily on pemmican – a high-energy mixture of dried beef and lard that was a staple of all British polar expeditions. Scurvy was not then understood as a dietary deficiency, though fresh meat was known to prevent it, which led to a further round of seal hunting. On 2 November 1901, Scott, Shackleton and Wilson – with 19 dogs, five sledges, and skis – struck out on a major journey southwards, the Pole being the unstated objective. A second party of 12 under Barne man-hauled in parallel with them to lay further depots until 15 November.

  Shackleton was editor of the South Polar Times until he left in 1903. Dr Wilson created most of the illustrations that accompanied the poems, stories and articles, as seen on this page.

  Scott, Shackleton and Wilson, with the Depot Party, leaving for the attempt on the South Pole. Unknown photographer, 2 November 1902.