A First Rate Tragedy

by Diana Preston

  They parted after one last great march together when Scott pushed on like a man possessed. He was ‘fairly wound up’ in Lashly’s words,24 and Teddy Evans and Atkinson fell the length of their harness down a crevasse before camp was made at 85°S and the Upper Glacier Depot was laid at 7,000 feet. Before they parted Scott instructed Atkinson orally to bring the dog teams south to meet the returning Polar party if Meares had gone back with the ship. Scott also gave the returning party a letter for Kathleen. He told her that they were almost at the top of the glacier and had sufficient provisions. ‘We ought to get through,’ he wrote.25

  14

  ‘What Castles One Builds’

  The outlook seemed brighter now in every sense. Sunlight danced over sparkling fields of ice and the Beardmore Glacier had been conquered. They were also closing the gap with Shackleton’s performance. A more cheerful Scott opened a fresh volume in his journal and inscribed on the flyleaf the names and ages of himself, forty-three, Wilson, thirty-nine, Petty Officer Evans, thirty-seven, Oates, thirty-two, and Bowers, twenty-eight – the very men who would go to the Pole. This gave, he noted carefully, an average age of thirty-six. The entry suggests that Scott had at least decided who was in contention to go to the Pole. Perhaps he had even taken the controversial decision that the final party would consist of five men, not four as originally planned. Whatever the case, he does not seem to have shared these thoughts with anyone, not even with Wilson, whom he cared for and trusted the most. Wilson had sent a letter back for Ory which simply said: ‘I am as fit and strong as a horse and have great hopes of being one of the final party.’1

  For the moment the eight men hauled away across the plateau that would rise to over 10,000 feet. They were divided into two teams, each pulling a sledge carrying twelve weeks’ supply of food and fuel. Scott’s party consisted, as before, of Wilson, Oates and Petty Officer Evans. Bowers marched with Teddy Evans, Lashly and Crean. They had to concentrate on avoiding treacherous crevasses as wide as Regent Street. Wilson described how: ‘Twice we had greenhouse ice with a false bottom – very disagreeable to go over. We have also crossed many wide crevasses bridged well, but sunk and with very rotten lower edges . . .’ Nevertheless, they were making good progress and Scott was satisfied that he had ‘weeded the weak spots’. On 23 December the surface hardened and the horizon levelled out. A more confident Scott wrote: ‘To me for the first time our goal seems really in sight.’

  Christmas Eve saw them cover 14 miles. On Christmas Day, Lashly’s forty-fourth birthday, Scott coaxed an extra mile out of his men. They covered 15 miles and even Bowers felt the pace. Lashly fell into a crevasse but, as Scott observed, he was tough as nails and relatively unperturbed to find himself dangling in a void 50 feet deep. Lashly wrote: ‘It was not of course a very nice sensation, especially on Christmas Day and being my birthday as well. While spinning around in space like I was it took me a few seconds to gather together my thoughts . . . It certainly was not a fairy’s palace.’2 Teddy Evans, Bowers and Crean hauled him out and the latter wished him many happy returns of the day. Lashly’s reply was said to be unprintable.

  They celebrated Christmas with what Wilson called ‘a magnificent lunch’ of biscuits, raisins, butter and chocolate. Dinner was ‘a regular tightener’ with a spectacular hoosh made of pemmican, pony meat, onion powder and curry powder and biscuit crumbs, a pannikin of cocoa, a large piece of plum pudding, five caramels and five pieces of ginger. They had reached the stage where food was becoming an obsession. Teddy Evans described their anxiety as they watched Birdie cook it: ‘Had he put too much pepper in? Would he upset it? How many pieces of pony meat would we get each? But the careful little Bowers neither burnt nor upset the hoosh: it was up to our wildest expectations.’ However, Bowers himself had noticed some days earlier that ‘in spite of all this [food] we are getting noticeably thinner’.

  Afterwards they lay contentedly in their sleeping bags and read. Scott was almost too replete to move and recorded with obvious regret that he and Wilson had been unable to finish their plum pudding. That night a sentimental Bowers said to Teddy Evans: ‘If all goes well next Christmas, Teddy, we’ll get hold of all the poor children we can and just stuff them full of nice things. Won’t we?’3 Their camp (on what they called ‘King Edward VII Plateau’, though unknown to them it had already been named after King Haakon VII of Norway, courtesy of Amundsen) was a tiny oasis of humanity in that vast frozen emptiness. Evans described their two tiny green tents, ‘the only objects that broke the monotony of the great white glittering waste that stretches from the Beardmore Glacier Head to the South Pole’.

  They were now at some 8,000 feet and the weather continued fine though the surface was undulating and the manhauling strenuous. As Scott wrote, ‘everyone sweated, especially the second team, which had great difficulty keeping up’. Poor Bowers, who set such store by his physical prowess, fretted: ‘. . . it is fairly heart-breaking to know you are putting your life out hour after hour while they go along with little apparent effort.’ His diary also reflected the awful effects of the weather: ‘I could not tell if I had a frostbite on my face now, as it is all scales, so are my lips and nose. A considerable amount of red hair is endeavouring to cover up matters.’

  They experimented with changing the loading, swapping the sledges between the two teams. This led Scott to conclude that ‘the sledge is the cause of the trouble and taking it out I found that all is due to want of care. The runners are excellent but the structure has been distorted by bad strapping. Bad loading etc.’ He continued irritably: ‘The party are not done, and I have told them plainly that they must wrestle with the trouble and get it right for themselves. There is no possible reason why they should not get along as easily as we do.’ Scott does not appear to have seen what Teddy Evans had noticed – that everyone was losing their springy step. Evans wrote that: ‘A man trained to watch over men’s health . . . would have seen something amiss,’ but Wilson apparently did not. He had not practised medicine since the Discovery expedition. The low temperatures – Scott and his men experienced a mean temperature of -19°F on the plateau – were sapping their stamina. They were also suffering from dehydration. They did not have sufficient fuel to melt enough ice to drink and yet, at altitude and in low temperatures, the body quickly loses moisture through perspiration.

  Scott was feeling the pressure and the isolation of leadership. ‘Steering the party is no light task. One cannot allow one’s thoughts to wander as others do, and when, as this afternoon, one gets amongst disturbances, I find it is very worrying and tiring.’ Other more recent leaders of Antarctic expeditions such as Roger Mear have described similar exhaustion caused by having continually to motivate and lead.4 Bowers had earlier let his watch lose time by failing to attend promptly to the nightly instruction of ‘wind watches’. An accurate watch was essential to identify noon and thereby to work out longitude by using the sun’s position at this time. Scott’s watch had, however, remained accurate, avoiding major problems. Scott now found that Bowers had broken their only hypsometer, an instrument used to determine altitude, and vented his frustration on him. The little man described ‘an unusual outburst of wrath’, mourning that it was ‘rather sad to get into the dirt tub with one’s leader at this juncture but accidents will happen and this was not carelessness . . .’

  As December drew to a close they had reached over 9,000 feet, but the surface had worsened, making the pulling very heavy. On 29 December Scott recorded his satisfaction that the second party were now managing to keep up, but the very next day was expressing fears that they were tiring. He hoped the situation would improve after depoting some of the equipment so that they could move on with lighter loads. ‘We have caught up Shackleton’s dates. Everything would be cheerful if I could persuade myself that the second party were quite fit to go forward,’ he wrote nervously. On New Year’s Eve the next depot was laid. The two teams also halted for half a day for the sledges to be stripped down and for the 12-foot runners to be rep
laced with 10-foot runners to produce a lighter sledge. Lashly, Crean and Edgar Evans laboured in sub-zero temperatures without a proper carpenter’s bench and made a good job of it. However, in the process Evans cut his hand – an accident that would have great significance in the days that followed.

  The New Year was celebrated with sticks of chocolate and a new camaraderie. Writing two years later in the Strand Magazine Teddy Evans described how Captain Oates opened out for the first time that night.

  He told us all about his home, and his horses . . . He talked on and on, and his big, kind brown eyes sparkled as he recalled little boyish escapades at Eton . . . At length Captain Scott reached out and affectionately seized him in the way that was itself so characteristic of our leader, and said, ‘You funny old thing, you have quite come out of your shell, “Soldier”. Do you know we have all sat here talking for nearly four hours? It’s News Year’s Day and 1 a.m.!’

  This sudden outpouring was perhaps a sign that Oates was yearning for his former existence – the life in India, the pig-sticking and hunting and polo, the comforts of Gestingthorpe. Recreating it for others comforted him in this bleak spot.

  On New Year’s Eve Scott had ordered Teddy Evans’s team to leave their skis at the depot, a strange decision on the face of it. As he himself acknowledged, it was far easier to pull on skis than to plod along. On New Year’s Day Scott was cheerful, observing that prospects seemed to be getting brighter and that there were only 170 miles to the Pole with plenty of food left. Perhaps he was also cheerful because he was about to take his final major decision on the way to the Pole. On 3 January he went to Teddy Evans’s tent. As he entered Crean was coughing. Scott said, ‘You’ve got a bad cold, Crean,’ to which the astute Irishman replied, ‘I understand a half-sung song, sir.’5 Scott told them that he had decided that Teddy Evans’s team should return to Cape Evans. The news probably came as little surprise. Lashly and Teddy Evans had been manhauling the longest and Evans, at least, was worn out. But Scott then ordered everyone except Teddy out of the tent and dropped the real bombshell. He said that he wanted Bowers to join the Polar party and asked for Teddy Evans’s consent. Although it would leave him dangerously short-handed on his return journey, Evans had no option but to agree. Scott was clearly pleased with the outcome, writing in his diary: ‘Bowers is to come into our tent and we proceed as a five-man unit to-morrow. We have 5 1/2 units of food – practically over a month’s allowance for five people – it ought to see us through.’

  Scott’s decision to take five men, not four, to the Pole has never been satisfactorily explained. Debenham believed that Scott wanted as many of his colleagues as possible to share his success, but that is unlikely to be the whole story. Neither are the reasons behind Scott’s choice of those particular companions clear, though Ponting made the interesting observation that Scott picked the four men with the most striking personalities. There seems little doubt that he always intended Wilson and Petty Officer Evans to be with him at the Pole. He had a deep personal regard for the doctor and derived great spiritual strength from him. He also had a special affection for the burly Welshman going back to the days of the Discovery, as well as a high opinion of his strength, endurance and resourcefulness. In The Great White South Ponting wrote: ‘Nobody ever doubted, all through the winter, that Petty Officer Evans would be one of the ones chosen for the Pole.’ There was also the presentational factor that the lower deck must be represented. However, Wilson appears to have had doubts about Evans’s reliability under stress. Before Atkinson had turned back, the two doctors had agreed that of all the seamen Lashly would be the best choice for the Pole. With hindsight Cherry-Garrard also believed that Lashly should have gone, later writing that ‘Lashly was wonderful’.

  As far as Oates was concerned, there was also a presentational point. His presence at the Pole would allow the army a share in the glory – Wilson had told Atkinson that ‘Scott was keen on his going on, he wanted the Army represented’.6 It never occurred to Scott that Oates might be less than keen. However, Oates had told Teddy Evans that his personal ambition was simply to get to the top of the Beardmore. He did not expect to be selected for the southern journey and, though he did not say so, by this stage probably had little desire to go on. Struggling such a distance on foot and on skis with his left leg shorter than his right – the legacy of his Boer War wound – must have been sapping his strength and stamina. His diary had already mentioned problems with the tendons of his right knee as well as with his feet.

  The letter Oates wrote to his mother shows his mixed feelings. He had earlier acknowledged that ‘the regiment and perhaps the whole army would be pleased if I was at the Pole’.7 He now assured her that he was delighted, feeling fit and well and that ‘We shall get to the Pole alright. We are now within 50 miles of Shackleton’s farthest South’.8 However, the letter goes on to dwell with nostalgic longing on his home at Gestingthorpe and improvements there, of clothes he would like sent out for his return and of plans for a filly. He sent his love to his sisters and brother and finished with ‘God bless you and keep you well until I come home’ – the only mention of God in his letters. Among the other things he asked for was tobacco, cigarettes and a large box of caramel creams. He was trying to convince himself that he would come through and the letter is pathetic when seen against Atkinson’s comment when they had parted earlier that Oates ‘knew he was done – his face showed him to be and the way he went along’.9

  But what was Scott’s purpose in taking Bowers? There were no long-standing ties and Bowers had not originally even been a member of the shore party, but he had steadily won Scott’s admiration. For one thing he was very strong. After the Winter Journey to Cape Crozier Scott described him as ‘the hardest traveller that ever undertook a Polar journey, as well as one of the most undaunted’ and referred to his untiring energy and astonishing physique. He also valued Bowers for his organizational abilities, phenomenal hard work but above all, perhaps, for his unswerving loyalty. The latter was a source of practical strength and comfort to Scott in the same way that Wilson gave him inner courage. Certainly, Wilson and Bowers were an impressive combination. As Cherry-Garrard later reminisced, ‘It was easy to be brave when Bill and Birdie were near.’10

  Scott may also have needed Bowers’s skills as a navigator. He had originally considered taking two navigators to the Pole, so important did he consider this to be, and it was certainly an area where he was vulnerable. His own skills were rusty and he was out of practice with using a theodolite, which he had brought in preference to a sextant. Wilson and Oates and Edgar Evans’s talents in that direction were even more limited. Teddy Evans was an experienced navigator, but Scott had not considered taking a man whom he basically considered played out and incompetent to the Pole. Bowers’s abilities were accordingly a welcome addition.

  However, the decision to take Bowers was probably, above all, a decision taken on impulse. Scott’s companions on the Discovery expedition had often observed that he was impulsive, prone to take decisions quickly and without consulting. That would explain why he had allowed Bowers to depot his skis just three days earlier so that henceforward he would have to march on foot while the others skied, an exhausting and unnecessary strain. In just the same way Scott may have decided on impulse that five men would be more desirable than four. Certainly, time would show Scott had not stopped to consider fully the practical implications. He may simply have concluded that the benefits of another man to help pull the sledge would outweigh any logistical disadvantages. Hindsight suggests that if he wanted to take five he would have done better to have taken Crean in place of Oates or Edgar Evans. It was logical that Lashly and Teddy Evans should be sent back – they had after all been manhauling all the way from Corner Camp – but Crean had not and was still immensely strong and capable – he called himself ‘The Wild Man of Borneo’.

  However, Scott had made his choice. On 4 January the Polar party set out and he was in optimistic mood.

  We were na
turally late getting away this morning, the sledge having to be packed and arrangements completed for separation of parties. It is wonderful to see how neatly everything stows on a little sledge, thanks to P.O. Evans. I was anxious to see how we could pull it, and glad to find we went easy enough. Bowers on foot pulls between, but behind, Wilson and myself; he has to keep his own pace and luckily does not throw us out at all.

  Teddy Evans, Crean and Lashly followed in case of accident but, as soon as Scott was confident enough, the two parties stopped, said their farewells and gazed on each other for the last time. They must have been a wild-looking group of men with beards caked with ice, weather-scarred faces and split lips. Scott described the parting: ‘Teddy Evans is terribly disappointed but has taken it very well and behaved like a man. Poor old Crean wept and even Lashly was affected.’

  As well as Wright, both Cherry-Garrard and Bowers had criticized Teddy Evans during the march and before, Bowers on the grounds of Evans’s ‘sedition’ in criticizing Scott before both men and officers. However, being second-in-command on an expedition such as Scott’s is, as history shows, a thankless task and it would be wrong to judge Evans too harshly any more than Scott. Evans later wrote privately that he did not feel Scott treated him well but his published account in the Strand Magazine described how:

  The excitement was intense; it was obvious that with five fit men – the Pole being only one hundred and forty-five miles away – the achievement was merely a matter of ten or eleven days’ good sledging. The last farewell was most touching, Oates being far more affected than any other of the Southern Party . . . I think his last actual remark was, ‘I am afraid, Teddy, you won’t have much of a “slope” going back, but old Christopher is waiting to be eaten on the Barrier when you get there.’