With Scott in the Antarctic

by Isobel E Williams

  After four days he was off again. He went with Armitage and Seaman Heald to the western side of the strait for a fortnight’s exploration of the geology and ice formation at the foot of Mount Discovery. They took an eleven-foot sledge and three weeks’ food. This expedition too had its problems. On 30 November the snow surface was too bad for pulling and even after dividing the load they made a mile only after five hours’ struggle.38 In the fortnight however they managed to collect rocks, examine the glacial bed and complete a topological survey. As they returned to the ship on 12 December Wilson saw a little black cross – the second emperor penguin, brought back from Cape Crozier, had died.

  With Scott away on an expedition Armitage organised the attempts to break up the ice incarcerating Discovery so that she could escape to the sea. Scott had decided that a path should be cut in from the sea edge and that sawing should begin soon after 12 December. Crew, scientists and officers were divided into three shifts and work went on around the clock. A tent city, ‘Saw Camp’, was erected close to the work. Officers and men were separated in the tent; three crew-men sleeping together and officers in separate sleeping bags. Wilson describes his shift from midnight to 4a.m.: two hours sawing and two hours using gun-cotton explosive to try and break up the ice, then back to his tent until 10a.m. to start again. No washing, no change of clothes, sleeping bags and the other watches eating and talking all around the sleepers.39 The teams only managed to loosen about forty feet of ice in their four-hour shift and Wilson, and others, saw that the whole process was a complete waste of time. But he wrote, ‘there never was a healthier crowd of ruffians than the thirty unwashed, unshaven, sleepless, swearing, grumbling, laughing, joking reprobates than lived in that smoky Saw-Camp’.40 The ice was seven to eight feet deep and it was calculated that it would take approximately 220 days to open up the miles of ice between ship and the water, that is, through the remainder of the summer and through the remaining winter.41 The official reports sent back to the ship indicated that all was going well and Scott, back from and exhausted by a two-month expedition to the western summit, remained on the ship for a week before going to see the progress for himself. When he visited on 31 December he saw the futility of it all and he gave all hands New Year’s Day off. Scott had a small tent and Wilson slept with him. No doubt they discussed the situation. Work was resumed for a short while and then finally abandoned.

  On New Year’s Day Scott asked Wilson to go with him to a small camp on Cape Royds so that he, who was suffering badly with indigestion, could rest away from the ship and Wilson could study the Adéle rookery nearby. They had much to consider: the ship had only fifty tons of coal left in addition to a little oil and acetylene,42 the ice showed no signs of breaking up and the possibility of a third winter in the Antarctic, with its attendant financial implications for the expedition, must have weighed on Scott’s mind. At Cape Royds Scott asked Wilson if he would stay on for another winter unless news from home made this impossible and Wilson agreed. On 5 January, when the two were sitting in their tent looking out to the distant sea, Scott suddenly saw a ship. He thought it was the whaler Morning (it was actually another ship, Terra Nova). Soon Wilson saw another.43 They did not know what this meant; they could not guess that the saga of the relief expedition had reached a point that stripped Sir Clements and Scott of the control of the Discovery expedition.

  Because Morning had not got through to Discovery in 1902 a further attempt was needed in 1903. Demands for yet more money were not enthusiastically received although Sir Clements argued that the Discovery expedition was a national endeavour and that Parliament, representing the nation, was responsible for her relief. After considerable behind-the-scenes bargaining, His Majesty’s Government came to the expedition’s aid, but at the price of taking control of the relief expedition and the ownership of Morning. Sir Clements was furious, but with no alternative financial backing he had to agree ‘under protest’. He had worked and schemed for the expedition for years and this was a terrible blow to his authority.

  A naval committee bought a second ship to go to the Antarctic along with Morning. This ship was Terra Nova, a whaling ship that was to carry Scott and Wilson back to Antarctica in 1910. Instructions were that all personnel were to be brought back to England. If Discovery could not be freed, the men and equipment were to be transferred to the rescue ships and Discovery abandoned to the mercies of the Antarctic.

  When Wilson and Scott saw the ships they reasoned that they could at least be sure of sufficient provisions for another winter. The thought of abandoning Discovery had not been seriously considered. They crossed to the ships together. Wilson wrote that the whaling men on Terra Nova ‘spoke such perfect Dundee that we could hardly understand a word they said for a bit’.44 The sailors too probably had difficulty in recognising the unwashed, unshaven duo as officers. On board Scott came to understand the details of his orders. He was dumfounded; he said he could scarcely grasp their true meaning.45 When he addressed the crew, he had tears in his eyes. Armitage wrote that he was confident that there was not a single man on board who, given the chance of staying another two years on Discovery ice-bound, or of deserting her to return safe home, would not have chosen the former course.46

  Morning carried mail. Since Oriana was in New Zealand, Wilson had her news at once. He went back to Cape Royds to relish her letters slowly in addition to a year’s family and general news. He hated the thought of abandoning Discovery but since neither explosives, sawing nor Terra Nova’s ramming of the ice helped, he did not waste time bemoaning his fate but calmly collected more geological specimens, made observations on the tide using a tide pole and killed a male sea elephant, the first seen in the Antarctic. He wrote:

  We took guns knives and cameras. … He was in the same spot and asleep … when we had to show ourselves on the sandy beach, he woke at once and raised himself on his flippers showing a hideous great muzzle. He was about as ugly a beast to walk close up to as I had ever seen outside a cage, but I wanted to get him … I fired both barrels at the back of his head and he rushed into the water … the next charge turned him over dead.47

  It took six men to haul the enormous animal up the beach and Wilson was proud of the catch. The sea elephant was twelve feet long and ten feet in girth around the shoulders with an enormous head and neck. It was covered in two or three inches of blubber.48

  When the relief ships arrived, Discovery was encased in solid ice ten miles from the sea edge. The barrier had been much less the previous year but impossible to escape from, so Scott prepared to abandon ship. He arranged for his officers, crew and scientific equipment to transfer to Morning and Terra Nova so that ships could leave by late February. But such are the vagaries of nature that in 1904 the ice did break up. By 3 February Wilson wrote that only seven miles separated Discovery and Morning. On the 11 February the ice was breaking up rapidly and yielding to the combined onslaughts of the ongoing blasting and ramming. There was only four miles between Discovery and open sea. By 14 February the relief ships could approach rapidly; they rammed the ice again and again until at last they broke through to the Hut Point basin.49 On 16 February the last gun-cotton charge freed Discovery. She shuddered and floated free for the first time in nearly two years. The crews of all three ships went wild with excitement, cheering, all round congratulations and rejoicing that Discovery had avoided a ghastly and ghostly end in the Antarctic.

  But nothing was easy. Wilson recorded 17 February as a day ‘we shall none of us forget as long as we live’.50 As Discovery moved out into the water, strong winds forced her onto the shore at Hut Point Bay where she stayed, grounded by wind, waves and tide for more than eight hours. Her timbers creaked loudly; bits of keel were ripped off and drifted to the surface. It was heartbreaking. Wilson thought the ship could not survive such strains. Scott had told him that he thought the ship was done for; she was so badly grounded that she would not get off even if she survived until the wind dropped. Wilson wrote: ‘at dinner we were as glum a party
as could well be got together’.51 Finally the tide changed and the wind dropped. The engines were started full steam and Discovery against expectation, backed off the shoal into deep water. She was afloat again.

  Discovery crossed the Antarctic Circle after an interval of two years and sixty-two days, on 5 March 2004. Wilson skinned birds all day. By now he was absolutely sick of this occupation and said that he sometimes skinned birds all night in his sleep. He had however seen or preserved a significant collection of birds: falcons, a parson bird or tui, bellbirds, white-eyes, yellow breasted tits, groundlarks, a parakeet, terns, sheerwaters, petrels, cormorants, penguins, ducks and blackbirds. Also, he had seen and described gulls, giant petrels and cape pigeons, and killed a sea elephant. On 7 March they saw the last iceberg, ‘Thank God’. Discovery continued to roll like a thing possessed and there were some wonderful crashes; one man got a bowl of sugar, a plate of stewed plums, a glass of port and a pot of coffee in his lap.52 But soon all reminders of the Antarctic faded as Discovery arrived at Auckland Island, a beautiful sight, covered with russet scrubland bathed by warm breezes, and, a novelty, bluebottle flies which were soon buzzing around the wardroom.53 Here the ship was prepared for her return to civilisation. A government ship was also there, searching the islands for shipwrecks, and when their crew came on board the explorers would have heard more details of things that had happened in their absence: Edward VII had been acclaimed Emperor of India, Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst had set up a militant feminist movement and Marie Curie had become the first woman to win the Nobel Prize.

  When they reached New Zealand on 31 March, Discovery remained off shore so that all three ships could enter port Lyttleton together, but Oriana got onto the ship by tug. She was first on board ‘looking not a day older than when I left her and far more beautiful’.54 She had been woken with the news of the ship’s arrival and rushed for four miles to get to the harbour. ‘When Ted at last appeared beaming and I was helped on board, then indeed all was well’.55 ‘What a day it was, a brilliant sunshine and as still as possible. What a day indeed! We both felt it’.56

  The ships tied up in the dock to the strains of ‘Home Sweet Home’, and an enthusiastic reception from the Christchurch residents ‘who treated the men like relatives’.57 No one was sorry to be back. They had arrived on Good Friday ‘and a very good Friday indeed’.58 Discovery stayed in New Zealand for more than two months and for Wilson and Oriana their honeymoon proper began. Their concentrated steady regard and love for each other had not faltered, the harmony of their partnership continued. They stayed with Oriana’s aunt and then with the hospitable Dr Jennings in Christchurch. They visited and stayed with friends, good friends like Sir Joseph and Lady Kinsey whom Oriana had stayed with whilst waiting for her husband, a couple who shared their passion for the natural sciences. They attended official functions; Wilson worked on his specimens. They took a boat to Wellington and toured the hot lake districts of North Island. These had a huge effect on Wilson who was unendingly impressed with the enormous possibilities of the country as an untapped source of scientific and naturalistic possibilities and conscious that many aspects of the life were rapidly disappearing. He wrote to his father:

  New Zealand hasn’t woken up to the fact that it is a ready-made world’s Sanatorium, with the most astounding variety of springs at all temperatures and of all chemical combinations, all handy and workable. I had no notion of the wealth of this country from the therapeutic point of view. … In a century or less, all or most of this unique flora and fauna will be extinct – they are dying out before one’s eyes. I could spend a few years here with advantage on a really classic piece of work.59

  After he had left New Zealand he wrote to Kinsey emphasising his enthusiasm to return,

  if only your blessed government would take the hint and give a willing worker a chance of doing a job that really wants doing, for the opportunity will be clean gone forever before long. The more I think of what there is to do out there the more keen I am to come out and do it only they must give me enough to live on – that’s all. I know it can’t be a paying job but it must be enough for bed and breakfast.60

  He also wrote to Sir Joseph Ward to request that he be considered for the post of caretaker of the Sanctuary Islands. His ambitions were to remain unfulfilled. No funds were forthcoming.

  After a short stay in Wellington they returned to Christchurch for a ball given by the officers for the people of the city. Oriana and Scott received the guests for Discovery. Wilson wrote home, ‘I could only stand in the crowd and admire her and wonder how the deuce such a girl came to give herself to me’.61

  The last few days were spent with the Kinseys, packing rocks, bones, skulls and ferns and attending a farewell dinner for the officers at which each man had to speak. Wilson’s was said to be the ‘speech of the evening’ because he had them all laughing. Then he and Oriana were set for home: he on Discovery, she on a cruise-liner. As he thought of home, anticipation grew. He wrote to his father:

  I think that few men have stepped into life with a better all-round education than you have given me. I don’t mean so much my year at Clifton though that was worthy a mint of money to me, nor the Public School nor even the University though I realise their value, nor even the Hospital and you know how I value that; but what I marvel most at now is that you saw the reasons for giving me those walking tours in Wales before I left school, do you remember? And all that bird-nesting regardless of schoolwork, Sundays or even meals …62

  The last part of the journey home was stormier than ever. Sheep, a final gift from the people of New Zealand, were drowned. The ship flew through the water

  now on her beam ends, now coming up to windward with a roar, now plunging into a hollow depth of darkness to drown the fo’c’sle in a green sea, now lifting with a twist that throws one off one’s feet in a half circle and help the man who tries to move without hanging onto something.63

  The sea-elephant skin survived these traumas and was forgotten until the ship arrived in the tropics when it began to smell overwhelmingly; as Scott remarked ‘shift it from place to place as you would, it made its presence felt everywhere’.64

  When names for the landmarks in Antarctica were suggested Wilson put in a plea for Cambridge to be given something, as there were Cambridge men on the expedition. Scott agreed to mention this and also informed him that the elusive cape on the southern journey was to be named after him.

  On 10 September 1904, thirty-seven months after leaving Southsea, Discovery docked. The Wilson family was well represented in the happy welcoming groups. Parents, brothers, sisters and Uncle Sir Charles were there to greet him.65 The voyage of Discovery had ended.

  10

  The Grouse Challenge

  The Discovery expedition could claim success in terms of magnetic research, geology, biology and meteorology; the scientists had gathered a large body of material about Antarctica. Although the official report, published later in 1908, contained criticisms of the meteorological observations – potentially damaging at a time when Scott was seeking financial backing for a second expedition – in 1904, Sir Clements could rightfully state that the expedition had resulted in greater understanding and knowledge about the Great Ice Barrier, the vastness of the inland of East Antarctica and the discovery of King Edward VII Land. The extraordinary mountains and skies had been recorded and photographed for all to see and Wilson had recorded them for posterity in his sketches and paintings.

  British experiences in the Boer War had produced, at least temporarily, a sense of diminishing national greatness and the nation was ready for heroes. Scott’s officers and men were regarded with an awe that amounted to reverence when details of their daring, endurance and courage became generally known. Shackleton was one of the first to greet the Discovery men. He had already created enormous interest in the expedition and its achievements and the ship’s return was a public relations success that not even Sir Clements could have anticipated.

  The months that fo
llowed the return were full of activity for Wilson and Oriana. There was no further talk of him returning to a medical career; his ambition was to be a writer and illustrator of wildlife. If only he could have gone back to New Zealand as a government scientist or a warden in one of the wildlife sanctuaries, he thought, he could have produced a classic piece of work that very few others could have achieved.

  It is a pretty ghastly fact that from a luxuriant sub-tropical forest-clad country with as unique a flora and fauna as any country in the world, New Zealand is being turned into a beastly, uniformly grass-covered, sheep-run with a mixture of the commonest birds in Britain, Australia, India and other countries and a travesty of Spring and Autumn faked up out of British introductions in the way of deciduous trees. Isn’t there work for anyone who will take it up?1

  He wrote, ‘I look on things in this way, that now while one has health and activity and can stand roughing and travelling one should be collecting ‘copy’ so to speak for oneself, not settling down to collect copy that other people are collecting’.2 Meanwhile he worked in the British Museum’s History Department for four days a week and, predictably, he undertook a daunting amount of other work: copying his Antarctic pictures, illustration of Scott’s book in colour, work on Armitage’s report (for which he produced fifty pen-and-ink drawings), work on The South Polar Times, lantern slides for Royds and collaboration with Skelton on a publication for the Royal Society. The public had an insatiable interest for all things Antarctic and he received a flood of requests for lectures to scientific societies, his medical school and public schools. There were also many invitations to social engagements; the festivities began with a lunch party for more than 150 guests including Wilson and his father at the East India Dock on 16 September. The lunch, hosted by Sir Clements Markham, boasted representatives from no less than fifteen newspapers including the Daily Mail, Standard and Daily News. Wilson also had the doubtful joy of being the ‘hero of the moment’ at a dinner in Cheltenham.3 His greatest energy and interest however was focused on his scientific papers. His report on mammals and birds was to be published by the Natural History Department and he wanted his report on emperor penguins to be a classic.4 There were other scientific papers. His father read them and made suggestions.