With Scott in the Antarctic

by Isobel E Williams

  On 21 December, after a service led by the Bishop of Christchurch, Discovery left Lyttleton to sail to Port Chalmers for coaling. Wilson said goodbye to a Dr Jennings, a general practitioner, with whom he had become friendly and who invited Wilson to return to his home after the expedition and suggested that Oriana make her home with his family when she came to New Zealand. The departure from Christchurch was another media event. Crowded steamers sailing beside Discovery hooted. A marine band on board one of them played ‘Say Au Revoir, but not Goodbye’ and followed them out of the harbour.52 Thousands cheered and roared, their shouting mingling with the bleating and barking of the animals. Gilbert Scott said he ‘had never seen anything like it’.53 Luckily Discovery was clear of the harbour when Charles Bonner, a very popular crewmember, fell off the mainmast, dying instantly as his brains splashed over the deck. Wilson wrote that some of the men wept like children. Although drink was not mentioned in the coroner’s report, engineer Skelton saw the accident as an object lesson for those who had been drinking too much ashore.54 Seaman Robert Sinclair, who had apparently given Bonner the whisky bottle he was waving when aloft, stole away at Port Chalmers.

  Forty-seven officers and men left the wharf at Port Chalmers on 24 December 1901. A cable was wired to the crew’s relatives. Wilson wrote that they were all fit and well and that the men were almost without exception, an exceedingly nice lot. Discovery left for an unknown future in the unexplored Antarctic. Although Scott hoped for success in the exploration and for new scientific developments, his private fears were that the expedition’s successes could be handicapped by inexperience. As the ship departed, he wrote ‘The last view of civilisation, the last sight of fields and trees and flowers, had come and gone on Christmas Eve 1901 and as the night fell, the blue outline of friendly New Zealand was lost to us in the northern twilight’.55 Wilson wrote, ‘Now, neck or nothing, we are fairly started, thank God, and by His grace we shall do something worth the doing before we sight New Zealand and civilisation again’.56

  Discovery was now totally isolated. She headed, in thick fog, towards an uncharted region barely visited. She had no wireless communication (Marconi had only recently sent the first transatlantic communication from Cornwall to Newfoundland); the long silence had begun. As Wilson sailed south, his father gave a paper to the Cheltenham Natural Science Society outlining the plans, questions and conjectures of the current phase of Antarctic exploration. Although anxious on his son’s behalf, Dr Wilson was extremely proud that he had been chosen to go. But Dr Wilson and all the family knew only too well that whatever happened, even in the most fortunate circumstances, they could not hope to hear from their explorer for many months.

  Discovery’s instructions were firstly to get further south than previous expeditions, to explore and chart the coastline and as much of the land as possible and to find a suitable base from which exploration and scientific work could take place. After leaving New Zealand the ship proceeded south under sail whenever possible, or by steam; rolling, rocking and creaking in the waves. After eight days, thirteen sheep had died. Skelton hoped that the remainder would last until they could be killed and frozen, so that mutton could be enjoyed in the Antarctic winter. The huskies, so untamed that Armitage’s Samoyed dog Vinka would not go near them,57 did better; each dog had a man assigned to look after it. For the human crew discipline remained strict: when two men complained about the food (seal meat was strong with an unpleasant dark mahogany colour after cooking and had to have every scrap of blubber removed to make it palatable),58 Scott paraded the offenders before the ship’s company and stopped their grog and tobacco indefinitely. Christmas celebrations, apart from a religious service, were postponed because of Bonner’s death, although a few gifts were opened. New Year’s Eve was celebrated, however, with a whisky punch that was laced with too much lemon essence, but well received. Officers and scientists joined hands, sang Auld Lang Syne and became comfortably merry. Wilson reflected on the year past, full of happiness, and the year that would now have to pass before he could have any news of what was dearest to him. He wrote that they ‘must feed their happiness with hopes and recollections and trust God. I well know that three weeks with my Ory is food enough for three years’ hope and three years’ happiness. God Keep her’.59

  For some days Discovery progressed in thick fog. This caused Scott a feeling of isolation. No birds were visible through the pall and he was fearful that some monster iceberg would loom up.60 When the fog lifted, they did indeed see their first icebergs, tabular with flat tops and sides, about a hundred feet high and several hundred feet in length. The ones they saw at first seemed impressive but were to prove small compared with the vast ice blocks that they were to see later. These were several miles long and coloured white and turquoise. On the Discovery expedition the largest iceberg seen was approximately seven miles long and 200 feet high.

  On 3 January Discovery crossed the Antarctic Circle. Captain James Cook first crossed this geographical landmark in 1773. It is approximately 66.33° S and is the northern limit of the region where the sun is visible for twenty-four hours in the summer solstice. On that day Discovery nosed into the loose ice pack, her engines rumbling as she advanced cautiously through alternate open strips of water and ice, vibrating as the ironclad prow forced an advance. She got through the ice pack in less than a week, occasionally stopping to catch seals for the specimen collection and for the larder. The scientists recorded their soundings; the water depth was recorded as 2,040 fathoms.61 Dredging was not successful; the lines got tangled and Skelton thought that the scientists might be good at looking down microscopes and making theories but that they were devilish poor at the practical work, or getting their specimens.62 Wilson enjoyed escaping onto the ice on the halts. His artist’s eye absorbed the huge variety of ice shapes and their colours, blue, green and orange, and he sketched as many records as he could, which he worked up later. Meanwhile each stop produced more dead animals. The deck became littered and gory with skinned seals and penguins, which hung with the Lyttleton sheep on the freezing rigging. By now Wilson could remove skin and blubber in one go and separate them afterwards to prevent rancid meat and a deteriorating skin. He was covered in blood from head to foot. The stench on board became progressively worse.

  Christmas was celebrated on 5 Jan 1902. Interestingly in relation to the later development of scurvy, seal liver was eaten for breakfast and seal kidney for lunch. This offal contains vitamin C. Wilson provided the cake, the holly, the crackers and cards. To mark the day Discovery pulled against a berg and skiing was attempted for the first time. The skis were long wooden planks and the skiers used a single stick, Nordic style, grasping the stick with both hands. Wilson thought it great fun to see to see all the men staggering around in all directions. No great urgency was put into mastering the technique. Scott had received conflicting advice on the subject and was a novice himself. After this expedition Scott realised the importance of skis in the Antarctic and took an experienced skier on his next Antarctic expedition.

  After the Christmas celebrations Discovery pushed on through the floe, stopping intermittently to water the ship. Snowstorms limited visibility,63 while ice ground the ship’s sides and crashed against her bows. Shackleton spied a Leopard seal – a rare prize – and he, Wilson, Skelton and others caught the huge animal. It was eleven foot long, with a mouth full of dangerous looking teeth, a head bigger than a Polar Bear and weighing nearly a ton. Inside its stomach was an emperor penguin, swallowed nearly whole.64

  By 8 January they had pushed through the pack ice and into clear water. The crew had their first view of the blue outline of Victoria Land Mountains. Wilson felt that a more glorious sight than the midnight sun was impossible to imagine.65 The high snow peaks were covered in golden clouds and flooded with sunlight, ‘a sight to remember’. The next day they were at Cape Adare, the north-west extremity of the Ross Sea. For the crew, arrival at the Antarctic was an amazing event. Many on board must have wondered if they would
ever get this far.

  7

  Entering Antarctica

  To grasp Wilson’s experiences in the next months it is important to have some understanding of Antarctica. It is the coldest, windiest and most remote place on earth, a vast continent, a tenth of the world’s landmass, spanning fourteen million square kilometres. In Wilson’s time this was unknown, the continent unexplored. Although we now know that it contains most of the world’s ice and water, has very little rain (less than in the Sahara Desert) and is covered by an ice cap that (Scott’s scientists later discovered) flows slowly towards the coastline, this was all challengingly mysterious in 1902. The Discovery crew were soon to experience the freezing blizzards, the winds that can reach up to 200 miles per hour which sweep down from the Pole to the coast and the piercingly low temperatures. They were to learn that Antarctica places huge physical demands on its explorers who battle against cold, wind, dehydration, physical fatigue and in the interior, altitude problems. Nutritional science was in its infancy in 1902.

  Discovery reached the coast via the Ross Sea, named after Captain (later Admiral, Sir) James Clarke Ross (1800–62), the nineteenth-century English naval explorer. This approach from New Zealand is frequently taken today, although many cruise ships reach Antarctica by the shorter route from South America, arriving at the South Shetland Islands and the Weddell Sea. The Ross Sea is bounded by the Great Ice Barrier, which (as was deduced on the Discovery expedition) is a huge floating shelf of ice between continent and sea. Although by 1902 men had landed, the interior had not been explored and the land and coastline had only been charted to a limited extent.

  His first sight of the mainland moved Wilson. It was a glorious sight. Bathed in midnight sun, the blue outline of the high mountain peaks of Victoria Land, to the south-east of the Ross Sea, stretched back for miles, tall peaks jumbled with golden clouds. He drew the perpendicular cliffs, the drifting ice packs and the icebergs ‘in all stages of perfection and decay and demolition’.1 He was to go on to make an important panoramic sketch of the coastline, later reproduced by the Royal Society.2

  The ship anchored off the peninsula, Cape Adare. This was a familiar name to the crew; in 1896 Discovery’s own physicist, Bernacchi, had wintered there on the Southern Cross expedition. The 9 January 1902 was a day that Wilson would always remember; he landed on Cape Adare with Bernacchi and others. They had instructions to lay the first of a series of canisters that would show their route and their plans to a relief ship. Nothing illustrates the isolation of the early explorers better than their arrangements for communication. On Cape Adare the men left two cylinders, one containing official letters, the other private correspondence. These cylinders, at their pre-arranged message points, were a sort of life-saving paperchase and remarkably, these first cylinders were actually found by the relief ship the following year.3 Bernacchi and Wilson had to manoeuvre their whaler through long stretches of drifting ice pack to get to the coast and eventually they landed on a pebbly beach backed by dark hills that rose steeply to 1,000 feet. This was the beach where the Southern Cross expedition had been based and that expedition’s hut, surrounded by its messy remains and supplies, was still there. Wilson was fascinated by the ‘millions’ of Adélie penguins and their rookery: ‘Such a sight.’ These energetic little birds, named after the wife of a French explorer, d’Urville, nested on the beach and high up onto the hillside. The shore was the colour of anchovy paste from their guano, the place ‘stunk like hell’ and the noise was deafening.4 Light brown Skua gulls circled and swooped on any unfortunate chick that had strayed from its parent. The scenery was captivating to an artistic eye: the brilliant sun, the calm sea dotted with bright white pack ice, the sparkling summits of the Admiralty Range. The hut that the Southern Cross expedition had left behind was in good condition and Scott opined that it would last for years in the Antarctic climate.5 The hut still contained items that were useful to them: coal, Bovril, lime juice and dynamite.

  From Cape Adare the coastline winds southwards past numerous islands and bays into McMurdo Bay, which was to be their eventual base, and eastwards along the sheer front of the Great Ice Barrier. Discovery’s instructions were to sail to the eastern end of the Barrier, claiming for Britain any landmasses found.

  After depositing the mail, Discovery moved on from Cape Adare, sailing south towards McMurdo Sound. Plans to find a clear channel close to the coast and to identify likely harbours were thwarted as the sea conditions changed rapidly. For the first time the crew faced the dangers of the ice pack. A thrusting tide encircled the ship with ice before avoiding action could be taken. Although full steam was applied, Discovery was in real danger as the combined forces of tide and pack ice carried her, seemingly inevitably, towards a chain of icebergs. Eventually, as the tide slackened and gaps opened in the ice, she escaped into open seas. Armitage, the ice-master, showed ‘admirable patience’ throughout.6 The experience was unforgettable. Once in the open sea, Discovery moved on slowly southwards, the crew recording a coastline that had been completely unknown.

  A hundred miles south, Discovery weathered another battle with the elements. On 13 January a furious gale, which reached force eleven on the Beaufort scale, blew up. Wilson said that there was nothing they could do but shelter in the lee of a volcanic rock island, Coulman Island, with the engines going as hard as possible to prevent Discovery being wrenched from her mooring. The wind raged, the rigging was encrusted with ice, as the ship strained to keep her position.7 Wilson seemed to feel no fear; everything had God in it and was part of God’s plan. He saw the storm with artistic eyes as the wind sent sheets of spray in every direction and waves dashed themselves into white clouds over the bergs. ‘A wonderful sight, this heavy wind with a clear sky, no snow, but sunshine’.8 But though he was content to entrust his fate to his maker, he understood nevertheless the baptism that Scott and the naval officers were going through. When the storm finally burnt itself out, Scott and the geologist Ferrar managed to land on the island to leave the second of the canisters for the relief ship; this time a red container lashed to a post high above the sea, placed on a red-painted rock.

  On this occasion Wilson did not include any messages; he thought it was likely that the containers would stay undiscovered, for years. His time was spent painting and preparing specimens. So little was known about the Antarctic that this was a unique opportunity for him to show to the waiting world, through his paintings, the awful, still beauty of the place: how the rocky cliffs, their heads bathed in a benediction of sunlight, dropped into the sea; how crevasses looked pale pure blue and green against the white surface snow; how the water looked green in the sunlight. But although he wanted to enthuse and stimulate, he wanted above all for his recordings to be accurate. He used his well-tested method of colour memorisation to record the scenes, noting the colours on his pencil sketches and painting them up later, a form of colour shorthand. This was an ideal technique for the challenging conditions. As well as drawing he collected new specimens of seals, albatrosses, penguins and whatever came to hand. He used an empty coalbunker for his skinning work, getting into the bunker by dropping down the coal shoot. He stored the skins in an old packing case; not a very successful arrangement because coal dust got into them.9 He wrote of his ‘beastly butchers work, a duty much against the grain’,10 but he never seems to have questioned this role. He seems to have had a consistently objective and scientific approach towards the necessity of animal slaughter for mans’ benefit.

  The early days had their excitements. He saw thousands of emperor penguins in big colonies. On 15 January, he, Ferrar and two seamen went to collect a number of these birds that they had already killed, but left on a floe that was drifting away from the ship. The men got to the birds by jumping across the water from floe to floe and hauled the catch back onto a bigger floe. When this broke away, the four found that they too were drifting away from the ship. Before help arrived they had to keep themselves alive in the low temperature by running about and chasin
g a few remaining live penguins. They were stuck for more than five hours; a near disaster that earned the watch officer a serious reprimand.11

  Discovery advanced southwards along the coast of Ross Island. On 19 January in the ‘most perfect weather on earth’ Wilson set eyes on one of the domineering landmarks of the area, Mount Erebus, the world’s most southern active volcano. Its smoking crater towered to 12,000 feet. It was an ‘immense table mountain bigger than that of Cape Town … no such glorious sight could be seen anywhere in the world’ and to cap it all he was seeing it on a Sunday.12 He sketched on deck all day. Discovery reached McMurdo Bay on 21 January. Scott had hoped that the McMurdo was actually a strait that cut off Erebus and her sister mountain, Terror, on islands. If this had been the case Discovery could have sailed past them and claimed to have achieved the most southern sea journey. But McMurdo was a bay and, Wilson wrote, the dream was short-lived.13 So Discovery turned north again and then east to reach the Barrier. On her way she passed Cape Crozier. This Cape was to become a famous landmark in Wilson’s story, but now it was just another of the pre-arranged message points. Here he, with Royds and Scott, rowed between lethally teetering icebergs to make a landing, leaving their two red cylinders, full of letters in a conspicuous spot in the centre of a penguin rookery. As they rowed, the swell ‘broke into the caves and arches and tunnels of the bergs with appalling force and thunderous noises’. Wilson wrote that the water was full of penguins, popping in and out like black rabbits and also dotted about the bergs. He and Scott climbed a nearby mountain and from this vantage point they had a view that had never been seen before: the open sea with its streams of pack ice and then the cliff of the Ice Barrier, stretching away as far as they could see with, behind it, miles and miles and miles of ice plain, smooth under a glorious setting sun, its long undulations stretching southwards into infinity.14 He brought back an albino penguin, which he planned to present to the British Museum. The crew were by now interested in penguins. Gilbert Scott described this one as pinky-brown with a white throat.15