A First Rate Tragedy

by Diana Preston

  Scott again had to rely to a large extent on sponsorship and described with satisfaction how ‘the advertisement to be derived from the supply of stores to an Expedition such as this is thought of very highly in this country, and thanks to this and to a patriotic wish for our success, we are getting goods on extraordinarily favourable terms.’39 Some companies donated their products free while, as Scott noted with something approaching glee, they were even handsomely paid to take a wide range of branded products. Colman’s supplied ‘new ready mixed mustard’, flour and semolina. Scott wrote from his winter quarters in Antarctica to thank the company. He also took Bovril, pemmican and Oxo. The makers of Oxo devised an advertisement showing Polar bears advancing on a jar of Oxo but substituted penguins when they belatedly realized that there were no Polar bears in Antarctica. Other products included goods from Imperial Tobacco, Abram Lyle’s golden syrup, Henry Tate’s sugar and Frank Cooper’s Oxford marmalade. Jaeger provided the expedition with special boots, while the brewers Bass donated some cases of the celebrated ‘King’s Ale’, the brewing of which had been inaugurated by King Edward VII during a visit to the brewery in 1902. The directors expressed the hope that Captain Scott would use it to drink to the King’s health at the South Pole.

  Scott was also delighted with the generous response from schools across the country which he had invited to raise money to buy dogs, ponies, sledges, sleeping bags and tents. More than one hundred public, secondary and private schools took part. Dogs cost £3.3s each, sledges £5 12s 6d, sleeping bags £2 and ponies £5. Each contribution was carefully recorded in the appendix to Scott’s journals of the final expedition and Scott made a point of writing to every school himself to thank the girls and boys – he wrote to South Hampstead High School for Girls to acknowledge the donation of a pony nicknamed ‘Bones’ and a dog nicknamed ‘Jackass’.

  Throughout this period of frantic hard work – Nansen had been right to warn that the hardest part of an expedition was the preparation – Scott had to be careful to cultivate the right public image. There must be no sign of the inner worry and bouts of depression, ‘the black thundercloud’ as Kathleen called his darker moods. There was a revealing report in the Daily Mail of January 1910 for which Scott must have projected absolutely the right image of a man of action and determination.

  Captain Scott has a personal force which is plain for all men to see. Thick-set, deep-chested, with a thoughtful geniality in his clean-shaven ‘naval-officer’ face, he is much of the bull-dog type, with blue eyes that look out sparklingly from a face hard-bitten with adventure. ‘Suppose you don’t succeed at first?’ he was asked. . . . Captain Scott took his cigarette from his lips and brought his finger down on to the table with slow emphasis. ‘. . . we shall jolly well stop there till the thing is done’.

  This display of confidence was at odds with his inner doubts. He later wrote to Kathleen from Antarctica of his worries during the early stages:

  And now that I can say these things and feel myself as I do, a competent leader over the team, I must be honest enough to confess a certain amount of surprise at finding everything so satisfactory. I am quite on my feet now, I feel both mentally and physically fit for the work, and I realize that the others know it and have full confidence in me. But it is a certain fact that it was not so in London or indeed until after we reached this spot. The root of the trouble was that I had lost confidence in myself . . .40

  The tension was heightened when Shackleton wrote to him announcing that he was preparing an expedition in 1911 to map the western coastline between Cape Adare and Kaiser Wilhelm II land. He explained that he had no plans to go to the Pole, promised that his expedition was purely scientific and offered, should Scott still be in Antarctica, to cooperate with him in exploring this western region. Scott’s response was lukewarm. While he would welcome cooperation to explore this little known area ‘it should be clearly understood that my own programme for a second season will not be modified by the publication of your plans’.41

  On 3 February came another development which excited public interest. The US National Geographical Society announced that it would launch an American expedition to the Pole from the Weddell Sea coast to begin in December 1911 and with the goal of reaching the Pole a year later. Peary had written to Scott to ask whether he had any objections to these plans. He had replied that he welcomed the plan and would be happy to cooperate in scientific work. However, the press now took up the story, presenting it as a challenge to British ambitions. Scott allowed the correspondence between himself and Peary to be published, adding the rider that the rivalry would be of an entirely friendly character, but that each would naturally be keen that his own nationality should be first. At the end of February Peary gave the public what they wanted, promising ‘the most exciting and nerve-wracking race the world has seen’.

  The following month Scott was in Norway to consult Fridtjof Nansen, who seems to have been very taken with Kathleen, and to test out a prototype motor sledge at Fefor at the foot of the Jotunheim mountains, north of Oslo. This was built on lines devised by Scott and Reginald Skelton by the Wolsey Tool and Motor Company and its design was a forerunner both of the tank and of the Sno-cats later used by Fuchs and Hillary on the Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955–8. He was also able to visit the company that was making his conventional sledges and other equipment, including fifty pairs of skis.

  Nansen listened carefully to Scott’s plans and did his best to advise him. He personally had little confidence in motorized sledges but approved Scott’s decision to take dogs as well as ponies. He also advised him to take an expert skier and introduced him to a good-looking, lively, confident young man, Tryggve Gran. Gran was wealthy (or at least wealthy for a Norwegian as Wilson observed) and had serious plans of his own to go to the Pole.42 He had had a vessel especially built and his idea, based on advice from Nansen, Shackleton and Borchgrevink, was to ski to the Pole taking dogs. He planned to start out from Norway the following summer and wanted Scott to be aware of his plans. It must have seemed to Scott as if Antarctica was developing into a kind of Piccadilly Circus for explorers with everyone explaining their plans to everyone else to ensure they did not trip over one another or breach understood spheres of interest.

  However, one explorer, also Norwegian, was at this time keeping exceptionally quiet about his plans – the thirty-seven-year-old Roald Amundsen. Since serving as second mate on the Belgica he had matured as a Polar explorer. He had traversed the North West Passage and been the first to confirm that the North Magnetic Pole was not fixed but migrated. His publicly avowed intent was now to reach the North Pole and explore the Polar basin despite Peary’s successful expedition. Significantly, however, although Scott made several attempts to make contact, Amundsen avoided him. Scott even sent a matched set of instruments so that comparative measurements could be taken of north and south. Amundsen accepted these quietly and, although he felt awkward, had no intention of revealing that for the past six months he had secretly been planning to head for the South Pole. Gran, who had tried to engineer a meeting, was deeply embarrassed. Amundsen wouldn’t take his telephone calls and when Gran took Scott to Amundsen’s house they were told by his brother that, even though he knew Scott might be coming, Amundsen was out. Although they waited an hour, Amundsen didn’t return.

  Scott decided that the best way to deal with the ardent Tryggve Gran was to invite him to join his own expedition. He was impressed with the speed with which Gran had been able to ski to the nearest blacksmith to have a motor sledge axle repaired, and by his skiing technique – using two sticks, rather than one – which was new to Scott. The offer was accepted, Gran interpreting it as a mission ‘to root out that opposition and ill-will towards skiing which had characterized previous English South Polar Expeditions’.43 He had a high opinion of his abilities – an expedition colleague later described how he delighted in ‘speechmaking and in telling tales of his exploits on ski – our strong man – at any rate by his own accounts’.44
The trials themselves went quite well. The motorized sledge performed promisingly, although there were problems with the fuel. The sledge was tried out across level surfaces and up hills. It was found that it could haul 10 hundredweight over deep snow and several times that weight at least over firm ice.

  Scott flirted with some other novel ideas. The reign of Edward VII had been a revolutionary period in transport. Electrical propulsion was taking over from steam: man was taking to the air in planes and venturing into the deep in submarines. The British and Colonial Aeroplane Company of Bristol offered him the use of a Zodiac monoplane, but he turned it down because he felt it was too experimental. By 1910 there had in fact been considerable advances in aviation. More powerful and reliable engines had been developed and aircraft design improved so that pilots were undertaking more daring feats. The most outstanding achievement of the year was the crossing of the Alps by Georges Charez. By 1911 aviation had developed from a sport for the adventurous to a serious commercial proposition. While Scott was probably correct not to take a plane in 1910, had he been departing just a couple of years later he might have benefited from doing so. While he was away Kathleen Scott had great fun visiting airshows and becoming only the second British woman to be airborne. Scott was also interested in being the first explorer to use wireless telegraphy in Antarctica but had to reject it because the equipment was too cumbersome to transport and erect. However, the National Telephone Company supplied equipment that would enable Scott to lay a telephone link between his two huts on McMurdo Sound.

  Leaving the sledge to undergo final tests and modifications Scott returned to London to be greeted by news of yet further rivals for the Pole. The Germans had announced an expedition commencing, like the Americans, from the Weddell Sea. Not only that, but having reached the Pole they intended to march on across the plateau to McMurdo Sound and thereby complete the first crossing of Antarctica. This roused the Royal Geographical Society to more than its usual acerbity and it sent a sharp rebuke to Berlin, prompting a promise from the Germans to leave the way clear for the British and the Americans. However, Scott was probably more concerned with Shackleton who now published his plans for exploring the western coastline. There was no intention to compete with Scott, but Scott insisted that his own freedom of action be clearly understood and wrote to the President of the Royal Geographical Society that ‘I want it settled before I leave that I am free to go where I please without the reproach that I am trespassing on his ground’.45 In the event, though, Scott need not have worried. Shackleton abandoned his plans and left the work to the young Australian Mawson whom he had intended to accompany.

  The final weeks before departure were spent trying to wring some final donations out of an increasingly reluctant public. Scott now put the expedition’s costs at £50,000 but hoped to raise £10,000 from Australia and New Zealand. Nevertheless money continued to trickle in and then in April came the news that Peary was postponing his bid for the Pole because of lack of money. The scene looked set for Scott, but in the first week of May the death of King Edward VII cast a blight over everything including making subscriptions. Scott decided that when the Terra Nova sailed he must stay behind to raise the final funds and follow on by steamer.

  On the eve of the Terra Nova’s departure Scott made a revealing visit to Thomas Marlowe, editor of the Daily Mail, whom he had known since the Discovery expedition. He was already looking ahead to what he could do on his return and asked Marlowe when he believed war with Germany would break out. Marlowe replied with extraordinary prescience, ‘I can only tell you that there is a well-informed belief that Germany will be ready to strike in the summer of 1914 and it is thought that she may do so.’ Scott mulled this over then replied, ‘By that time I shall be entitled to command a battle cruiser of the Invincible class. The summer of 1914 will suit me very well.’46 The irony is that if Scott had not died in the Antarctic, he could well have perished at the Battle of Jutland in 1915.

  10

  ‘Am Going South, Amundsen’

  The Terra Nova slid out of the London Docks as planned on 1 June 1910. Just before arriving at Cardiff to take on the Welsh coal so generously donated to her, Scott called all hands aft and made an earnest appeal that every man should make a will. He even offered to give advice. However, the warm reception they received banished sombre thoughts for a while.

  Cardiff held a special place in the expedition’s heart as the city that had given them the most fervent support. The Lord Mayor now produced a further £1,000 for the fund. In recognition, Scott promised to make Cardiff the Terra Nova’s first port of call on his return. The Cardiff Chamber of Commerce gave a farewell banquet for the officers in the wood-panelled rooms of the Royal Hotel. The crew were feted in the nearby Barry’s hotel, but Scott invited them to join him for a smoking concert. Edgar Evans, as a native of south Wales, was given pride of place between Scott and the Mayor of Cardiff. Described by the Cambrian as ‘one of the biggest and burliest members of the crew’, he made a memorable impromptu speech in which he paid an emotional tribute to Scott declaring that: ‘No one else would have induced me to go there again, but if there is a man in the world who will bring this to a successful issue, Captain Scott is the man.’ Despite putting up such a magnificent performance Evans had had so much to drink that it took six men to help him re-embark that night. He appears to have fallen out with Teddy Evans at around this time by drawing Scott’s attention to the loading of the wrong sort of skis – Teddy Evans’s fault. New skis were ordered and Chief Petty Officer Edgar Evans put in charge of them – a slight which rankled with Lieutenant Evans.

  On 15 June Edgar Evans’s family gathered on the Gower cliffs at Rhosili to watch the Terra Nova’s departure for Cape Town after a tremendous send-off from the crowds amid the din of steam sirens and hooters. Her escort of little flag-draped vessels turned back and she was alone. Scott also watched her, proud that she was flying the White Ensign rather than the flag of the Merchant Navy. He had been elected a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, entitling him to the Ensign – an honour that had cost him £100. However, he would not see her again until South Africa. His time must now be spent arranging newspaper contracts and squeezing out any last subscriptions because the expedition was still underfunded even at this late stage. There was no guarantee that he could even pay his men their modest salaries beyond the outward voyage.

  If Scott regretted that he could not be with his men, Kathleen also had regrets. She was determined to accompany her husband as far as she was able but it meant leaving behind her beloved Peter. She described the pain of it: ‘I can think of nothing that hurt more hideously than unlocking the sturdy fingers that clung round mine as I left the laughing, tawny-haired baby Hercules for four months . . .’ Gritting her teeth she set sail with Scott on the tramp steamer Saxon. Shackleton was among those who came to see them off from Waterloo, and they had as travelling companions Oriana Wilson and Teddy Evans’s wife Hilda.

  Meanwhile the deeply laden Terra Nova lumbered on her way. Oates said gloomily that she appeared to have only two speeds – slow and slower. Dropping anchor at South Trinidad, a small volcanic island in the South Atlantic, some of the men found themselves cut off from the ship by the thunderous surf and were forced to spend the night on the shore observed by leery giant land crabs. The arachnophobic Birdie Bowers wrote home, ‘it must have been horrible’.1 Such experiences helped the men to bond and Cherry-Garrard gave much of the credit for this to Teddy Evans who managed to beat down the natural suspicion between the scientist and sailor, ‘doing much to cement together the rough material into a nucleus which was capable of standing without any friction the strains of nearly three years’.2 However, credit was also due to Scott who, according to Griffith Taylor made a point of selecting men who liked one another. Deep friendships began to form – Bowers decided Wilson was the finest man he had ever met; Wilson in turn thought Bowers tremendously hard-working and unselfish.

  High spirits sometimes spilled over. Ted
dy Evans’s ‘taste for rowdyism and skylarking’ set the tone.3 Wilfred Bruce viewed him as a kind of Peter Pan and Simpson described how:

  Sometimes, especially at dinner, our spirits run so high that we should be taken for a party of school boys rather than a party of men engaged on work which has the attention of the whole of England. The usual form of our madness is the singing of songs & choruses at the top of our voices followed by cheering and other meaningless noises.4

  Sometimes there would be mock fights and even Oates, fast acquiring a reputation for ‘amused taciturnity’,5 would join in, writing:

  We shout and yell at meals just as we like and we have a game which consists in tearing off each others shirts. I wonder what some of the people at home would think if they saw the whole of the afterguard with the exception of the officer of the watch struggling yelling and tearing off each others’ clothes, the ship rolling and the whole place a regular pandemonium.6

  He doesn’t say what he thought about the verse composed by Teddy Evans to the tune of Cock Robin:

  Who doesn’t like women?

  I, said Captain Oates,

  I prefer goats.

  However, Evans was actually deeply impressed with Oates, particularly his appetite for hard work and his ability to get on with the seamen, and wrote that he was more popular with them than any other officer.

  A close camaraderie developed between this somewhat odd assortment of individuals. It was not long before most had nicknames. Scott was the ‘Owner’ and Teddy Evans the ‘Skipper’ – properly respectful names. Campbell, an eccentric but gifted Etonian who frightened the living daylights out of Cherry-Garrard, was nicknamed ‘the wicked mate’. Then imagination ran riot. Pennell was ‘Penelope’ or ‘Pennylope’, Bowers was of course ‘Birdie’, Oates and Atkinson, by now inseparable, were called ‘Max and Climax’, Wilson was again ‘Uncle Bill’, Wright was ‘Jules Verne’ and the quiet George Simpson ‘Sunny Jim’.