Wilson’s immediate superior, Dr Reginald Koettlitz (1861–1916), was a graduate of Guy’s Hospital, London. Six feet tall, with a drooping moustache, and thirty-nine at the time of his appointment in 1900, he had also survived Arctic conditions in Franz-Josef Land. This experience had given him the wanderlust and before he joined Discovery he had travelled widely. Sir Clements wrote that he was zealous and painstaking, but that ‘his mind perhaps works rather slowly and he has no sense of humour but, on the other hand he is thorough and perseveering’.39 Koettlitz’s previous experience allowed him to help with the sourcing of purchases at competitive prices, including tobacco (two shillings a pound) and boots.40 As it was assumed that his medical duties would be light, he was also the ship’s botanist. His views on scurvy were absolutely in line, however, with notable medical authorities of the time41 and he wrote in the Guy’s Hospital Gazette that scurvy ‘would not be cured by seeking for substances that have ignorantly been called ‘antiscorbutic’ and that lime juice had ‘no useful effect against scurvy’.42 His opinion was not just based on theory. On the Franz-Josef expedition the crew had been given lime juice every day as well as eating tinned meat. In spite of the lime juice, all the crew developed scurvy and two died. We now know that this was not because lime juice is ineffective but due to problems with the preparation of the citrus fruits doled out on the expedition. Lime juice is less potent against scurvy than lemon juice and its properties were further diminshed during transportation from the West Indies to England. But Koettlitz could not know this and his experiences in Franz-Joseph Land focussed his attention forcibly on the erroneous ‘tainted meat’ theory. Although he was aware of the benefits of eating freshly-killed animals, his emphasis in the early part of the 1901–4 expedition was on avoiding bad tinned meat rather than insisting that fresh meat was eaten daily.
These were the officers who, along with three scientists (the physicist and magnetic observer Louis Bernacchi (1876–1942), who joined in New Zealand; the biologist Thomas Hodgson (1864–1926), ‘Muggins’ to the crew; and the geologist Hartley Ferrar (1879–1932)), sailed with high hopes, bound together in an expedition and adventure which they hoped would bring scientific, geographic and material gain.
Naval discipline, rules and regulations were immediately imposed. In-keeping with the class distinctions of the time, officers and scientists were housed separately from the warrant-officers and the sailors. Wilson would not have had much close contact with the crew members, although after the expedition he gave much help to Able Seaman James Dell, who suffered from an infection in his arm on the expedition and was unable to work for years. Dell eventually went on to serve in the First World War and outlived Wilson by more than fifty-five years. Pay was an obvious divide. Scott received an annual salary of £500 (£41 13s 4d per month),43 plus his naval salary, which made his appointment financially attractive. Armitage received £450 annually, Koettlitz £400 and Wilson £200.44 The seamen received £27 7s, plus their naval pay of just over £28.45
Within a few days afloat, routines were quickly established that remained much the same throughout the voyage. On weekdays officers took watches, performed their naval duties and made scientific observations. Scientists used the tow net and performed water salinity testing and meteorology work. On Saturdays the ship was cleaned. On Sundays Scott inspected the ship and took the weekly Divine Service. Wilson worked hard from the start. He organised the stores and equipment in the sick bay. He sketched continuously despite the pitch and roll of the ship that made his work difficult. He wrote to his father:
Painting a bird that is swinging through 30 degrees every few seconds is trying, things won’t stay as you put them. Your water is hung on a hook, your paper is pinned on a board and you hold your paint box: you yourself are wedged into the bunk cupboard and kept there by a boot on the chest of drawers opposite. You put your paint-box down to settle a wing for the thirtieth time and down it rattles and the paint goes all over the cabin. You jump to save the paint box and the corner of the board tilts the water tin off the hook and it empties into a drawer full of clean drawing paper; while a running drip takes the opportunity of coming from the skylight on to your painting.… It’s a strange life teeming with quiet fun and everyone thoroughly enjoys it all.46
Really he was in his element. As resident artist he was often called to record birds and specimens caught by the scientists. In painting he could capture an image that was too obscure or fleeting for the camera. He was ‘precise and deft in all that he touched’.47 He loved to spend time on the bridge with Royds, Barne or Shackleton, a welcome change from work below deck. Familiarity with Shackleton made him increasingly appreciate the Lieutenant’s good qualities; Shackleton looked out for him and would call him whenever there were interesting specimens or a lovely sunrise to be seen. His particular charm for Wilson lay in his encyclopaedic knowledge of poetry, particularly Browning and Swinburn. ‘He knows every bit of poetry that has ever been written and is always ready to quote it.’48 Shackleton was to become one of Wilson’s best friends, a friendship which lasted until Shackleton’s own expedition in 1908 when, in Wilson’s opinion, he did not behave well towards Scott and Wilson broke off the friendship.49
It took a week for Discovery to sail from England to Madeira. This gave the officers and crew time to know the vagaries of the ship and to start to forge themselves into a team. The scientists tested and used their oceanographic and other scientific equipment. Wilson was able to attempt to capture the beauties of the sea in his paintings. Other officers were busy with their duties; Skelton was fully occupied, in the engine room. When Discovery arrived in Madeira on 15 August coal replacements were needed because of the excessive consumption: a filthy backbreaking job and Skelton’s temper was further strained because of pain from a tooth abscess. Presumably he had missed the dental check organised by Scott before the voyage.
Madeira entranced Wilson. He had never seen anything as exuberant and picturesque: the lush vegetation, the brilliant colours, the exotic birds. He explored the island and set to work with his paints. His was reassured by Oriana’s unselfish letters, which freed him to take full advantage of all the expedition had to offer. ‘Dear Ory, I knew you would turn out trumps and never give way to despair and sorrow at our parting’.50 He was so anxious to capture everything that he was still busy sketching the harbour when the ship got under way.
6
To the Polar Ice
Discovery sailed from Madeira on 16 August. Since conservation of coal was such a concern, she progressed by sail as much as was possible. To use sail, Scott had to follow the Atlantic currents and winds south-westward to South Trinidad, relatively near to the coast of South America, and thereafter, south-east to Cape Town, New Zealand and the Antarctic. Progress was slower than planned and the engines often had to be fired up so as to try to keep to the schedule. Scott stuck to his plans to miss out Australia and to limit the oceanographic stops. The important date in his calendar was to be in New Zealand by mid-November so that Discovery would be on time to push through the Antarctic ice-pack in the Antarctic summer.
Now they were a few weeks into the expedition, the officers and crew were more accustomed to their routine and duties. Wilson remained in his element, his strength recharged by the life at sea. He reported to his family that he was well and that he had put on weight. He took part in everything that was going on. He made sketches of his fellow-officers; he worked. Apart from medical duties, his zoological expertise was needed. He trapped different species of birds and sketched the flying fish that rushed past, sometimes ‘flying’ onto the deck, and was soon very fully occupied with skinning and preserving. This smelly task took hours and hours and had to be done quickly on a ship that rolled and pitched tirelessly. At temperatures of 90°F, the carcasses could deteriorate so quickly that he sometimes had to put them straight into formalin because they ‘were stinking by the evening’.1 He taught his skills to Petty-Officer Jacob Cross who also became an expert at skinning. The
days after leaving Madeira were taken up with medical duties, skinning and painting.
On board, the organised routine continued: naval and scientific work during the week, religious observance on Sunday. For recreation officers and scientists passed the hours with chess, discussions, deck games, listening to Royds (a talented player) on the piano and reading. Each officer in turns became mess president. His duties were to maintain acceptable standards of behaviour. Fines were levied (usually a round of drinks), if the president decided that there had been a lapse in etiquette. Regular slide lectures were started early in the voyage. Wilson’s opinion of Shackleton grew steadily. He appreciated Shackleton’s friendly help and admired the way that he worked so hard. Hard work was always a passport to Wilson’s good opinion, so he was unenthusiastic about his immediate superior Koettlitz, who he thought did less work than anyone on the ship. His admiration for Scott continued. ‘The Captain turns to with all of us and shirks nothing not even the dirtiest work’.2 He wrote approvingly that Scott was very definite about everything he did, nothing was left vague or indeterminate, and that Scott had a really balanced head on his shoulders, was thoughtful, performed little kindnesses and was ready to listen.3
The early part of the voyage was important to Wilson for several reasons: he recorded what was thought to be a new species of a bird, a petrel, in South Trinidad. This bird was distinguished from the other (numerous) petrels, by being brown and nesting earlier and higher on the cliffs than pale-bellied petrels. It was named after him, Aestralata wilsoni, a real honour for the young naturalist (years later it was reclassified as a sub-species of the Trinidad or Herald Petrel). Secondly, he had to make use of the anaesthetic skills learned in the Cheltenham Hospital. Engineer Reginald Skelton’s toothache became intolerable, the tooth needed to be removed. A makeshift operating table (a carpenter’s bench) was rigged up, Wilson gave Skelton the ether anaesthetic and Koettlitz removed the rotten tooth plus a few bone splinters. The procedure was successful though the doctors must have reflected with relief on the ninety-plus teeth that had been removed before the voyage as well as the innumerable fillings. As he came round from the anaesthetic, Skelton’s singing and swearing gave them all something to write home about.
The ‘Dundee leak’ soon affected the whole complement. Men and officers took turns to pump tons of water out of the ship at least once a day. The builders had hopefully predicted that because of the layers of planking used in her construction Discovery would not leak, so no flooring had been put in the holds to lift the crates off the bottom of the boat.4 Water flooded into the hold, the crates were covered with slime and many of the tins were rusty. Shackleton was given the unenviable job of unloading, re-packing and restoring the crates, and Wilson and Barne were roped in to help. Work went on round the clock. All the stores had to be carried up to the top deck. Wilson said it was a ‘slimy, stinking, filthy job’ (Scott said he was conspicuous for his energy) made worse by the fact that the stevedores in the East India Dock had thrown half-eaten tins back into the store. The stench was so overwhelming that they had to make a ventilation hole. Although a floor was built for the crates and the situation in regard to the provisions improved, the leak continued to be a problem throughout the expedition, a problem made worse, conversely, by the layers of planking used in the ship’s construction, which made it difficult to localise where the water was entering the ship and practically guaranteed that water seeped through the inner skin at quite a different place from its entry through the outer skin.
When any ship crossed ‘the Line’ (the equator), Neptune, dressed in seaweed, appeared by tradition to greet and initiate anyone crossing for the first time. The ceremony was officially fun but was also an excellent opportunity for the crew to enjoy the officers’ and each other’s humiliations. It could be a hazardous business. In 1901 on 31 August, crewmembers dressed as Father Neptune, his Queen and attendants (Tritons) held court on a platform twelve feet above a large canvas, seawater bath. The initiates were Wilson, Ferrar, Hodgson and eight crewmen who were to be introduced to ‘His Majesty’ in turn, blindfolded, seated on the platform and shaved with a soot and tallow mixture by the ‘barber’. The barber’s assistant’s role was to stuff soap pills into their mouths after examining their teeth with a screwdriver. After the ‘doctor’ had completed his examination, the victims were dropped down into the bath and ‘half drowned’ by sailors who sat on them. The ritual astonished Wilson. He thought it was barbarous and recorded it in detail in his diary.5 He was lucky though; he was the first initiate and managed to fall backwards into the christening bath before the plastering began. Koettlitz managed to avoid the initiation for a week and was eventually let off. He was probably frightened for his dignity. After the officers, it was the sailors’ turn. Eventually Neptune’s Queen fell repeatedly into the salty bath and the ceremony ended with the men going to their mess with a couple of bottles of whisky to round off the evening. Scott said there was an orgy6 which turned into a drunken diatribe against the officers and quartermasters.7 Alcohol was a grumbling problem throughout the early part of the voyage. Wilson said that the crew sometimes played games with the daily rum ration; one man would drink the entire ration and so be ‘comfortably fuddled’ once a week. Sometimes they saved their rum tots until they had enough to get really drunk.8
After crossing the Line Discovery moved by sail but she sailed badly, pulling to the west. Scott writes that they got comparatively close to South America.9 The engines had to be fired so that Discovery could travel southwards to South Trinidad Island (approximately 500 miles east of South America). She arrived at the island on 13 September. Wilson saw a small inhospitable volcanic island, of scientific interest but visited rarely. The land, covered with pale yellowish-grey craggy rock, rose steeply from the shoreline towards peaks topped with fern and scrub.10 Huge numbers of crabs contributed to the surrealistic, nightmarish feel of the place: the shoreline was alive with crabs. There were large red and green ones with black staring eyes which glared bulbously at their visitors and which could run up and down a rock face and jump five or six inches; and land-crabs, anaemic looking and globular, like black-eyed apples on legs, quick to bite and hidden in every cranny and crack. Thousands of birds circled round and round as Scott, his officers and scientists landed to explore and collect specimens and climb to the fern line more than 1,000 feet above sea level. The visit was propitious. Scott had arranged the exploration with care: in all, sixteen types of birds were found, including Wilson’s Aestrelata wilsoni. The birds were preserved and identified and the results, along with Wilson’s illustrations, were presented later to the Royal Geographical Society.11 Skelton, having recovered from his operation, began photographing in earnest. He also became increasingly interested in the scientific programme and learnt to help Wilson with the skinning.
Discovery moved on to South Africa by sail as much as possible. The days were busy with the scientists examining and preserving their new treasures. Wilson was hard at it, painting up his fish and bird sketches and endlessly skinning and preparing specimens, an occupation he thought very good practice for his temper and patience. His day began in the early morning and continued until 10p.m. on a ship that rolled so much that everything had to be tied down. Scott continued to be agreeably impressed with his new officer and wrote to Sir Clements that Wilson had the keenest intellect on board and a marvellous capacity for work. Scott said that one minute Wilson would be sketching the sunrise, the next a new bird and the next sketching something down the microscope.12 But, in spite of all this activity, as at medical school, Wilson retained his ‘inner voice’. Each Sunday he had a private Communion after the morning service and continued to trust in God’s beneficial influence in his life. He did not forget Oriana’s birthday on the nineteenth of September (she was twenty-seven) and he longed for her letters in Cape Town. When he got them they were numerous and long ‘but then mine’s a special sort of wife’.13
Discovery reached South Africa on 3 October. In spite
of Scott’s efforts to limit scientific stops and use sail whenever possible, she was nine days behind schedule and had only thirty tons of coal. Wilson wrote that the entry into Table Bay was memorable for the ‘table cloth of cloud’ dappling the peaks on Table Mountain.14
In South Africa, the Boer War continued and martial law was in place in Cape Town. Afrikaner guerrillas were close by but, in spite of this anxiety, the British community received Discovery with warm interest and enthusiasm; a visit of this nature was definitely a novel experience. Entertainment was provided separately for officers and men. Warrant Officer Ford, delegated to make a speech of thanks, said that ‘whatever the future held, he dreaded more the half-hour before he made his speech’. He told his audience that all aboard were volunteers motivated by ‘that love of adventure and carelessness about danger, which is the birthright of any Englishman’.15 Wilson was entranced by the varieties of birds and made careful notes: gannets, cormorants, gulls and albatross. He climbed Table Mountain and fairly revelled in the flowers: irises, lilies and orchids – a new surprise every few yards. In Cape Town Discovery took on coal and then sailed to the other side of the cape to the naval base of Simonstown. Here full facilities were offered and seaman Gilbert Scott wrote that here he could finally get his clothes washed.16 During the short journey between the two docks a heavy swell coming from the Atlantic demonstrated Discovery’s remarkable ability to roll, frequently more than forty degrees.17
A patriotic welcome awaited Discovery in Simonstown also. In spite of the martial law, which meant that the crew had to have passes, the British Admiral made every effort to give assistance. The ship was extensively refitted, the engine overhauled and the rigging reset, all at no cost to the expedition, and a further inspection was made of the hull in the hope of tracing the cursed Dundee leak. The deck was scraped free of splinters and pitch, further provisions were supplied and hundreds of pounds of unaccounted goods and services were given. In fact the Admiral supplied Scott with virtually all his listed needs including, despite the war situation, three seamen. The men, employed for 1s 6d per day, brought the crew to full strength. One of them, George Vince, was to be the only man to die in the Antarctic on the expedition.
With Scott in the Antarctic Page 9