On 29 March, believed to be the day of his death but by no means certain, Scott made one last entry in his diary, recounting the bitter frustration of their final days as each morning they had prepared to march for ‘our depot 11 miles away’ only to find that ‘outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift’. He was now looking death in the eye: ‘I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R. Scott.’ The diary ends with a raggedly written appeal: ‘For God’s sake look after our people.’ This has a bitter pathos. Ever since early adulthood Scott had carried the burden of responsibility for others, with all the concomitant feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Now he was leaving mother, wife and child alone as well as the loved ones of those who had followed him unquestioningly to the Pole.
As they lay frozen and starving in their small tent out on the Barrier, Scott, Wilson and Bowers must have wondered whether the outside world would ever learn their fate – their tent was neatly pitched along the line of cairns between the depots but would soon be shrouded by drifting snow. In fact it would be eight months before their bodies would be discovered and their stricken comrades would find their letters and diaries and read Scott’s spirited ‘Message to the Public’: ‘Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.’
17
‘We Have Got To Face It Now’
Meanwhile at McMurdo Sound the other members of the expedition watched and waited. The first supporting party consisting of Atkinson, Cherry-Garrard, Wright and Keohane reached Hut Point safely on 26 January though a ravenous Atkinson had so gorged himself on supplies at One Ton Depot that he was not at all well during the final leg of the journey. The first clue that all might not be well with the Polar party came about three weeks later. At 3.30 a.m. on 19 February the dogs began barking and an exhausted Crean staggered into Hut Point. He had walked thirty miles across crevassed ice to bring news that Teddy Evans was lying dangerously ill with scurvy near Corner Camp with Lashly to nurse him. It was pure chance that Atkinson and Dimitri happened to be there with the dog teams. Aghast at the news they hastily prepared to go to Evans’s aid but a thick blizzard descended within half an hour of Crean’s arrival and delayed their departure. In the afternoon they made a dash over the ice and Dimitri spotted the black cloth Lashly had fixed to the sledge to attract attention.
Evans, Lashly and Crean were, of course, the men of the Last Supporting Party. They had bidden farewell to Scott and the Polar team on 4 January, less than 150 miles from the Pole, and had faced a return journey of nearly 700 miles. Like Scott, they had had an appalling time navigating down the Beardmore Glacier, which shook even the phlegmatic Lashly: ‘We have today experienced what none of us ever wants to be our lot again. I cannot describe the maze we got into and the hairbreadth escapes we have had to pass through today . . . The more we tried to get clear the worse the pressure got; at times it seemed almost impossible for us to get along, and when we had got over the places it was more than we could face to try and retreat.’ He wrote of fathomless pits and deep crevasses ‘where it was possible to drop the biggest ship afloat in and lose her’.1 Teddy Evans removed his goggles to help find the way and suffered agonies of snowblindness which left him unable to pull. He could only walk helplessly beside the sledge, hoping a poultice of used tea leaves would bring some relief. The strain took its toll. Evans felt despondent and guilty to have led his men into such a mess. He later wrote of his feelings at seeing silhouetted against the sun ‘two tiny disconsolate figures, one sitting, one standing’ patiently waiting for him to find a way out of the maze.
On 22 January they escaped the toils of the glacier but on this very day Evans began to display symptoms of scurvy, complaining of a stiffness behind the knees. Lashly guessed at once what it was: ‘Tonight I watched his gums, and I am convinced he is on the point of something anyhow . . . It seems we are in for more trouble now, but let’s hope for the best.’ However, the best did not happen. As the month drew on Evans began to suffer bowel problems. On 29 January Lashly was writing: ‘His legs are getting worse and we are quite certain he is suffering from scurvy, at least he is turning black and blue and several other colours as well.’ By early February Evans was in great pain. Unable to lift his legs, he had to be strapped on his skis. By the middle of the month he was passing blood and increasingly helpless. As well as his physical weakening he later admitted to some mental anguish: ‘The disappointment of not being included in the Polar party had not helped me much.’ Though he hid it from the men, his morale had suffered in much the same way as the Polar party’s had done on finding that Amundsen had beaten them. Bowers had written on 1 January: ‘Teddy was fearfully upset at not going to the Pole – he had set his heart on it so . . . I am sure it was for his wife’s sake he wanted to go.’
Evans fainted on the march: ‘Crean and Lashly picked me up, and Crean thought I was dead. His hot tears fell on my face, and as I came to I gave a weak kind of laugh.’ Their progress was becoming worryingly slow in the low temperatures and Lashly and Crean decided the only solution was to carry Evans on the sledge. They jettisoned everything but the essentials and laid him carefully on it. He asked them to leave him behind but as Lashly wrote: ‘this we could not think of’. By now Lashly was suffering from a frostbitten foot and Evans suggested he place it on his stomach to warm it up. Lashly reluctantly agreed and it worked. He paid tribute to their mutual care for each other in his diary: ‘I think we could go to any length of trouble to assist one another.’ He did not know of Evans’s later wry comment that: ‘there is something objectionable about a man’s frostbitten clammy foot thrust against one’s belly in the middle of the Great Ice Barrier with the thermometer at fifty below.’2
They pressed on, sometimes using a sail to help them along, Evans grinding his teeth with the pain. They were hoping to run into dog teams on their way out to meet the Polar party. On 17 February they thought they spotted a tent in the deceptive light of the Barrier but it turned out to be only a piece of biscuit box. Marching on, they reached one of the abandoned motor sledges which lifted their spirits and they made camp. However, the next morning it was clear that Evans was dying. Crean was almost in tears. They made the wise decision that he should strike out alone to fetch help. He set out with just a little chocolate and a few biscuits, a staunch figure struggling alone and on foot because the skis had been among the equipment jettisoned.
Evans’s account of their wait shows what Scott and his companions must have gone through in their last days: ‘The end had nearly come, and I was past caring; we had no food, except a few paraffin-saturated biscuits, and Lashly in his weakened state without food could never have marched in. He took it very quietly – a noble, steel true man.’ However, on 20 February they heard a sound which made their hearts leap. Lashly described the wonderful moment: ‘Hark! from us both. Yes, it is the dogs near. Relief at last.’ One of the dogs rushed into the tent and slobbered over the prostrate Evans: ‘Perhaps to hide my feelings I kissed his old hairy, Siberian face with the kiss that was meant for Lashly. We were both dreadfully affected at our rescue.’
In fact, the delight which greeted the rescue of the Last Supporting Party, coupled with their news that on parting from Scott he had been marching strongly for the Pole, obscured the significance of what had happened to Teddy Evans. Tryggve Gran, however, hit the nail on the head:
My conversation with Evans had not lasted long, but from what I heard . . . the prospects of our five-man Polar party were not so bright as most of the members of the expedition imagined. Evans’s frightful return journey was a pointer to what Scott and his men would be bound to undergo. There was also another matter which caused me anxiety. Since the Beardmore Glacier’s suitability
for dogs had been established, I took it for granted that Amundsen had reached the Pole before Scott. The consequence would probably be a fall in morale for our Polar party. Of course I kept these dark broodings to myself for . . . my pessimism could only cause damage.3
It was some time before the rest of the party at Cape Evans began to worry seriously about Scott. The main preoccupation was what to do about sending dog teams to meet the Polar party. The various messages sent back by Scott had caused some confusion. There had been plans for Meares and his dog teams to take extra rations for the returning parties and dog biscuit out to One Ton Depot, provided they returned from the Polar trip in the first half of December. However, they did not return to Cape Evans in time. As a result, some of the extra rations but no dog biscuit were manhauled to One Ton Depot by Day, Nelson, Clissold and Hooper. It was not until 13 February that the dog teams set out again, under Atkinson since Meares was returning on the Terra Nova. Their mission was to run further supplies south to One Ton Depot for the returning party. The fateful encounter with Crean at Hut Point meant that Atkinson, as the doctor, was now required to nurse Teddy Evans.
Cherry-Garrard took his place, arriving with Dimitri at One Ton Depot on 3 March. He wondered whether he would find Scott already there. Of course he was not. He was still over a hundred miles away with Oates fast approaching his end. Faced with a lack of dog food and heavy winds Cherry-Garrard decided the best course was to wait at the depot. If he headed south there was every chance he might miss Scott. It never crossed his mind that the Polar party would be running out of food and fuel – as far as he knew adequate provisions had been left at the depots. Also, Atkinson had stressed that the Polar party was not dependent on the dogs to get them home and had reminded him of Scott’s orders that under no circumstances were the dogs to be risked. The only way Cherry-Garrard could take the dogs south was to kill them for dog food as he went. He therefore waited six days until, on 10 March, dwindling supplies and the fact that Dimitri was suffering from the cold, decided him to turn northwards again. As he later learned Scott was just sixty miles away. It was a decision for which he would never forgive himself.
Scott had been expected back at any time from early March and by the end of the month at the latest. The men at Cape Evans waited for a signal from Hut Point to say that they were in. The telephone cable had been washed out to sea so they had agreed that rockets would be fired. However, as the month drew on there was an ominous silence from Hut Point while the storms and blizzards which raged around Cape Evans boded ill for anyone out on the Barrier. As Gran wrote: ‘It can’t be easy to travel on the Barrier in such God-forsaken weather.’4 Sometimes the dogs would ‘sing’, something they often did when a party was approaching. The men in the hut would rush outside only to find that there was nothing. The position became more critical with every day that passed: ‘Atkinson and I look at one another, and he looks, and I feel, quite haggard with anxiety. He says he does not think they have scurvy,’ wrote Cherry-Garrard. Atkinson and Keohane made a sortie out onto the Barrier but could find no trace of any living thing and dared not venture much beyond Corner Camp. Their return to Cape Evans with Dimitri sparked false hopes. As Gran described: ‘I heard someone shout, “The Polar party’s coming.” I rushed into the hut to the gramophone to get out the national anthem to greet Scott. I stood and waited long, but no one came. I went out again, and there stood three men, bearded, and coated with ice, dirty as sweeps.’ A mournful Cherry-Garrard confided to his diary in early April: ‘We have got to face it now. The Pole Party will not in all probability ever get back. And there is no more that we can do.’
Atkinson had taken command as the only naval officer left. Teddy Evans had returned on the Terra Nova, while Campbell and his men were marooned in an igloo at Evans Coves, along the coast from Cape Adare where they had landed after finding Amundsen ensconced at the Bay of Whales. Atkinson now led an abortive attempt to get through to Campbell. However, on 24 April the sun disappeared and with it any realistic hope of rescuing anybody. The members of the expedition tried to keep busy and not fall prey to morbid thoughts. However, it must have been hard faced with the empty bunks of their companions. There was no Scott sitting at his lino-covered table calculating sledging rations with the eager little Birdie, no wise ‘Uncle Bill’ to look up from his sketching and dispense some kind word, no Oates to tease the scientists and indulge in horseplay and no Edgar Evans to roar his way around the mess-deck. The men with the most striking personalities, as Ponting had remarked, were gone for ever.
The dilemma facing Atkinson was whether to devote his resources to rescuing Campbell or to try and discover what fate had overtaken Scott once the sledging season came round again. He had put the question to Cherry-Garrard at the beginning of the winter and his reply had been to go for Campbell: ‘. . . just then it seemed to me unthinkable that we should leave live men to search for those who were dead.’ However, the Terra Nova might have managed to pick up Campbell and his men on her voyage north. Alternatively, if Campbell had not been rescued but had survived the winter, the Terra Nova should be able to reach him on her way back to Cape Evans, although a land party might reach them earlier.
Scott and his companions had undoubtedly perished – the general view was that they had fallen down a crevasse, probably in the hellish labyrinth of the Beardmore, though Lashly and Crean believed they had contracted scurvy. However, dead or alive, there was surely a duty to try to discover what had happened. As Cherry-Garrard observed: ‘The first object of the expedition had been the Pole. If some record was not found, their success or failure would for ever remain uncertain.’ Even if the chance of finding the bodies was remote Scott had been meticulous about leaving notes at the depots. On Midwinter Day in June 1912 Atkinson gathered the whole party round the table and put the arguments. The decision was unanimous. When the weather permitted they would go south and seek the fate of the Polar party. It was a decision that would be vindicated. Campbell and his party returned safely under their own steam in mid-November.
And so it was that towards the end of October the search party set out. On 12 November, eleven miles south of One Ton Depot, they made their grim discovery. Wright saw what he thought was a cairn with something black by its side to his right and veered off towards it. ‘It is the tent,’ he said quietly to the others who had hurried in his wake.5 Someone brushed off an overhanging pile of snow to reveal the green flap of the ventilator. Atkinson crawled in taking Lashly with him because he was the oldest member of the group and the last to have seen Scott and the Polar party. When he came out Lashly did not say a word but tears were rolling from his eyes.
Cherry-Garrard described what they had found:
Bowers and Wilson were sleeping in their bags. Scott had thrown back the flaps of his bag at the end. His left hand stretched over Wilson, his life-long friend. Beneath the head of his bag, beneath the bag and the floor-cloth, was the green wallet in which he carried his diary. The brown books of diary were inside: and on the floor-cloth were some letters.
Scott lay between his two companions whose appearance was serene, as if they had died very quietly, Bowers lying flat, his arms crossed, Wilson half-reclining, his head and upper body against the tent pole, and ‘traces of a sweet smile’ on his lips.6 Scott, with arm outflung towards Wilson, looked as if he had ‘fought hard at the moment of death’.7 Their skin was yellow and glassy and scarred by frostbite. By Scott’s side was a lamp made from a tin where he had burned the remnants of the methylated spirit as he wrote. Some tobacco and a bag of tea lay by his head. The tent itself was well-pitched and ship-shape. No snow had penetrated the inner lining and all their equipment was neatly stowed – pannikins, spare clothing, chronometers, finnesko, socks and a flag as well as more letters, and movingly the ‘chatty little notes’8 the supporting parties had left for Scott as they returned to Cape Evans. There were also detailed records. Despite all the obstacles and hardships, Bowers had kept a meticulous meteorological log until days be
fore their death.
Scott had left instructions on the cover of his diary that the finder was to read it and then bring it home. Atkinson read enough to discover what had happened to the Polar party. He then gathered his comrades around him and read Scott’s ‘Message to the Public’ and the account of Oates’s death which Scott had expressly asked to be made known.
It seemed sacrilege to move the bodies. The months during which they had lain beneath their canopy of snow had made them as one with the white and hostile world on which they had trespassed. Instead, the bamboos of the tent were removed and the tent itself collapsed over them. The men then built a cairn on which they placed a cross made by Lashly from Gran’s skis and Atkinson read the lesson from the Burial Service from Corinthians and other prayers for the dead. Cherry-Garrard was deeply affected and left a description of Arthurian grandeur:
A First Rate Tragedy Page 27