With Scott in the Antarctic

by Isobel E Williams

  The expedition reached the Barrier in three days, having gone to Hut Point which Wilson said had been left ‘in a perfectly filthy condition’88 after being used by the Shackleton expedition, though he was relieved that it could be used if necessary by his expedition on its return. Old familiar landmarks, Terror and Erebus, were welcome sights. The dogs pulled well and the men kept up on skis, now using two ski sticks, rather than the single stick of Discovery days. But the ponies found the Barrier snow surface very heavy going. They moved at a snail’s pace and one or two were lame. Only one pair of snow shoes had been brought for the ponies but Wilson and Meares (the dog handler) could not get back to Cape Evans for more. On 30 January Scott called a halt a few miles in from the Barrier edge, Camp 111, Safety Camp (so called because it was built on old Barrier ice and thought to be safe under any circumstances).89 When the ponies had rested the expedition went on, at first eastward to avoid a crevassed area immediately in the south. Here the men laid another depot they named Corner Camp. After this they were safe to turn south, along 169° E.90

  Thirty miles from Hut Point, the novice Cherry-Garrard had his first taste of Antarctic blizzards when the wind drove the falling snow:

  fight your way a few steps away from the tent and it will be gone. Loose your sense of direction and there is nothing to guide you back. Expose your face and hands to the wind and they will very soon be frostbitten. And this is midsummer. Imagine the added cold of spring and autumn: the cold and darkness of winter.91

  The blizzard lasted three days. When it abated they continued south. The party was split into two and three men returned with the weakest ponies. In ordering this, Scott ignored advice to slaughter them and store their carcasses as food for the following year. Wilson and Meares remained in charge of the dogs. Scott, Cherry-Garrard, Oates, Gran (the pony handler) and Bowers were in charge of the remaining ponies. Progress was slow as the ponies sank deep into the snow. The dogs got out of hand and ‘turned into wolves’ and attacked one.92 The ponies were worn out, hungry and hardly able to pull, in contrast to Wilson’s dogs which pulled 100 lbs of horse fodder, 200 lbs of dog biscuits, a tent, floor cloth, poles, sleeping bag, the boatswain’s bag, rope and a tank full of provisions – about 50 lbs per dog.93

  On 15 February temperatures fell to minus 15°F. The ponies were ‘dreadfully hungry’ and Wilson thought that their compressed fodder was not sufficient food for them (they ate ropes and picketing lines and one ate a cloth puttee).94 Scott abandoned plans to go further south. He wanted to save the ponies for the big trek later in the year. On 17 February final camp was made, One Ton, thirty-one miles north of the planned site (at 79.29° S rather than 80° S). The depot was marked with a flagstaff and a black flag, biscuit boxes and tea tins attached to sledges acted as reflectors, and stacked with more than 2,000 lbs of fuel, food and equipment. Although Wilson makes no record in his diary of any difference of opinion, Oates profoundly disagreed with the decision, arguing for continuing south, killing the ponies as they failed. Scott’s decision was to have important repercussions on his next expedition south. Oates said with some prescience, ‘Sir, I am afraid that you will come to regret not taking my advice’.95

  The return brought many problems. The dog section, Wilson and Meares, set off with Scott and Cherry-Garrard as their passengers. They left Oates, Bowers and Gran to follow with the five exhausted ponies. The journey was eventful. The men pushed the dogs hard and ran beside the sledges in turns, covering twenty-three miles on the first day, then twenty-five, then thirty-three.96 Near Corner Camp, they were aware that they were surrounded by crevasses. On 21 February, as the two sledges sped along, running parallel, Wilson watched helplessly as most of Meares’ dog team disappeared into a crevasse, disappearing one after another through the snow and looking exactly like rats running down a hole.97 Somehow the front dog, the sledge and rear dogs were still on the surface; ten dogs dangled in the abyss. When Wilson peered into the chasm, eight terrified animals dangled helplessly in their harnesses, the other two had slipped out of their restrainers, fallen forty feet onto a ledge and fallen asleep. The men managed to haul up the harnessed dogs but Scott insisted on rescuing the two further down also. His descent was accompanied by a cacophony of snarling and barking as the surface dogs enjoyed a furious fight. Only after the battle had been sorted out could a freezing Scott and the dogs be hauled up.98

  They caught up with Evans at Safety Camp on 22 February. By now two of the weakest ponies had died. But this setback paled into insignificance by comparison with the momentous news in the mailbag. Dr Atkinson, left behind on the outward journey because of his foot infection, had returned to Hut Point and had picked up mail left by the navigator of the Terra Nova. This contained the unwanted information that Fram and Amundsen’s expedition had landed on the Bay of Whales99 across the Barrier, relatively close to Scott’s party but sixty miles south of it.100 Amundsen was not, as the British had imagined, trying to reach the Pole from the other side of the Antarctic. Terra Nova had found the Norwegians when she was returning from a failed attempt to drop a party on King Edward VII Land. Returning via the Bay of Whales, named by Shackleton three years earlier, they found Amundsen’s camp. The British were impressed by Amundsen’s arrangements, which included a sauna and a library as well as quarters for more than a hundred dogs. Fram had sailed straight from Madeira, crossed the pack ice in four days, and reached the Bay of Whales on 14 January. Scott’s frustration was palpable. But again he stuck to his prearranged plans and Wilson supported this. Scott wrote:

  One thing fixes itself definitely in my mind. The proper, as well as the wiser, course for us is to proceed exactly as if this had not happened. To go forward and do our best for the honour of the country without fear or panic. There is no doubt that Amundsen’s plan is a very serious menace to ours. He has a shorter distance to the Pole by 60 miles – I never thought he could have got so many dogs safely to the ice. His plan for running them seems excellent. But above and beyond all, he can start his journey early in the season – an impossible condition with ponies.101

  The ponies could not leave until about three weeks after the dogs and the death of the ponies underlined the inescapable fact that the British attempt at the Pole would have to wait for warmer conditions in the spring.

  Meanwhile the men needed to get to the comparative safety and shelter of Hut Point. They started out with dog and pony teams travelling independently, since dogs could go so much faster than ponies. Meares and Wilson were with dog teams; Bowers, Cherry-Garrard and Petty-Officer Crean followed with the remaining ponies. Their loads were light as Oates had thought it would be better for the ponies to do the full march in one stretch and so have a longer rest.102 Hut Point was only four miles away, but the quickest approach, over sea ice, was risky because the ice could break up. When Wilson was instructed to take his and Meares’ dog teams over the sea ice, he said that he thought the route too dangerous and favoured a more difficult route, which meant hauling his sledges over slippery rocks. He set out on 28 February and wrote, ‘Then began a remarkable chain of incidents which led to the loss of all the remaining ponies, except one, and very nearly to the loss of three lives’, and, incomprehensively, that he ‘firmly believed that the whole train of what looked so like a series of petty mistakes and accidents, was a beautifully prearranged plan in which each one of us took exactly the moves and no others that an Almighty hand intended each of us to take’.103 As he drove his dog sleigh he saw fresh thread-like cracks in the ice caused, he thought, by the sea swell under the ice. He knew that these could open up when the tide turned, so he took his teams back, driving close by Bowers and the horses, thinking that Bowers would follow him. But Bowers went on over the sea ice under the impression that Wilson had misunderstood the orders. When he too reached the ominous cracks, he moved to firmer ice near the Barrier, which he thought would be safe, and made camp. Early the next morning he was woken by a strange noise. When he climbed out of his tent he found himself in a surreali
stic nightmare: he, his tent, his companions and three horses were on a berg in the middle of a floating pack of broken-up ice, heaving up and down with the swell. Long black tongues of water were everywhere. One pony had already disappeared. Crean was sent to get help; he bravely jumped from one piece of ice to another until he reached the Barrier. Wilson said that Crean had had considerable difficulty and ran ‘a pretty good risk’.104 Meanwhile Bowers and Cherry-Garrard forced the ponies towards safe ground, using their sledges and ladders as bridges. The two men and one pony got over the water, two had fallen in. They were bludgeoned to death with pickaxes, apparently a lesser horror than being torn to bits by whales.

  When they finally got to Hut Point the men were marooned in the old Discovery hut for more than six weeks. No approach to Cape Evans (which now seemed like an oasis to their minds) was possible because the sea ice was still broken up. They slept on the floor on reindeer bags, lived in their sledging outfits and cooked on a blubber stove, killing unfortunate seals at their front door. The monotony and frustration must have been considerable, but no irritation creeps into Wilson’s diary; he found a meaning in everything and wrote that the stay with so little to do was a godsend, because colours were at their best and the sunsets were a new challenge every day. Oates thought brandy kept for emergencies might enliven the situation. Told that an epileptic fit would be a definite indication for the need for stimulants he fell into what he hoped was a realistic seizure. Wilson was unmoved and prescribed snow rubbed down his neck.

  When the new ice formed, Scott led eight men north to Cape Evans. They arrived on 13 April, just before the beginning of winter. The first man who saw them there did not recognise them. He thought they were visiting Norwegians. Wilson followed on 21 April. In Cape Evans the men were appreciative of its comfort after their enforced stay at Hut Point: dry clothes, supper and the first wash and change of clothes for three months.

  The winter of 1911 was spent with the men continuing their scientific work, zoology, physics, and geology. Wilson’s winter routine was: up with the cook, a bath of frozen snow, a walk to read the thermometers before breakfast, at his desk all day in bad weather or in reasonable weather walking around the icebergs in the bay, on the hills or on the glacier. In the evenings he would join in with the discussions. He had overall responsibility for the men’s diet and was always on the alert for scurvy; he was called Scorbutic Director or Livery Bill.

  He worked up his sketches, helped prepare Ponting’s lantern slides and prepared sketches for the first edition of The South Polar Times, now edited by Cherry-Garrard and appearing on Midwinter’s Day (22 June). This edition included photographs of seals, Erebus (with penguins) and the Terra Nova in the pack ice by Ponting. Wilson contributed the frontispiece (the arms of The South Polar Times), two paintings, several pictures of sledging flags (Wilson’s family motto was Res non Verba) and a silhouette of Scott. He also did all the small sketches illustrating the text. He contributed greatly to all three editions and his only poem, ‘The Barrier Silence’, eighteen lines long and submitted typewritten so that Cherry-Garrard would not be biased in his favour, appeared in a later edition. He produced scientific pictures of ice crystals and parasites. He gave talks on painting and drawing (using Ruskin as his mentor), on the pigmentation of flying birds (he wondered if the absence of pigment increased the feathers’ insulating properties) and on penguins. In this lecture he postulated, wrongly, that the birds had branched out at a very early stage of bird life, probably coming directly from the lizard bird in the Jurassic age.105 In the evenings he drew, listening to records or to the pianola particularly appreciating ‘A night hymn at sea’ and ‘Tis folly to run away from love’. Scott continued to admire him. After he had listened to one of Wilson’s lectures he wrote:

  There is no member of our party so universally esteemed; only to-night I realise how patiently and consistently he has given time to help the others and so it is all through; he has had a hand in almost every lecture given and has been consulted in almost every effort which has been made towards the solution of the practical or theoretical problems of our Polar world.

  He goes on in words as relevant today as then:

  The achievement of a great result by patient work is the best possible object lesson for struggling humanity, for the results of genius, however admirable can rarely be instructive. The chief of the Scientific Staff sets an example that is more potent than any other factor in maintaining that bond of good fellowship which is the marked and beneficent characteristic of our community.106

  In May Wilson recorded his thoughts on Scott’s lecture plans for the summer work and the attempt at the Pole. He recognised that if the South Pole party did get back, it would be too late to catch the relief ship. He was mostly concerned that he would not be able to reply to his letters or escape from Antarctica for another year ‘however urgent the need may be’.107 Although this sounds as if he assumed that he would be chosen, he could not be at this stage. He just hoped to be included though ‘things always turn out for the best and generally in a different way to what one expects’.108

  Much of his thoughts and time was spent on the preparation for his return to Cape Crozier, a potentially-suicidal journey when made in the middle of winter and in darkness. He planned to take Bowers and Cherry-Garrard. The expedition was specifically to get newly-hatched emperor penguin eggs and study their embryology. He hoped that he and the Terra Nova expedition would make one of the great scientific breakthroughs of the century.

  Ross Island Winter Journey

  12

  The Winter Journey

  The House That Cherry Built

  The good old Blizzard of local fame,

  Compared with which was considered tame,

  The best of the bracing South Winds cool,

  That blew all day (and the next as a rule),

  And cemented the Ice Blocks hard and stout,

  That were placed so carefully round about,

  But failed to secure the Canvas strong,

  That formed a roof about ten feet long,

  To cover the Rocks and Boulders Erratic,

  Composing the Walls, – with lavas “Basic” –

  That stood on the Ridge that topped the Moraine,

  And, somewhat collapsed are all that remain

  With some fragments of Bamboo Poles dejected,

  Of the House of Stone that Cherry erected.

  H.R.Bowers

  The South Polar Times, Vol. III, Part II (Part of poem)

  If it were not for Cherry-Garrard’s realistic and graphic account of the horrors of the 1911 winter journey in his book, The Worst Journey in the World,1 they certainly would not have been appreciated from either Wilson’s or Bower’s descriptions. Wilson described the expedition to Cape Crozier to collect the emperor penguins eggs as ‘the weirdest bird nesting expedition that has been or will ever be’. In a letter to Reginald Smith he concentrated on Cherry-Garrard, unfazed about himself. He wrote:

  He really is splendid. I took him on the midwinter journey to Cape Crozier where we had very low temperatures and dreadful weather and had our hut roof and tent blown away and he stuck it like a brick and said nothing. We were none of us the worse for it, but it was a very trying journey, five weeks in the dark practically.2

  Bowers’ brief account to his mother and sisters gave the impression that the experience was just an exciting adventure; he probably did not want to worry them.3 But Scott was impressed; he wrote lyrically:

  That men should wander forth in the depth of a Polar night to face the most dismal cold and the fiercest gales in darkness is something new; that they should have persisted in this effort in spite of every adversity for full five weeks is heroic. It makes a tale for our generation, which I hope, may not be lost in the telling.4

  Others disagreed; the expedition has been described as ‘a classic example of heroism for heroism’s sake’ and ‘an irrelevance in the context of the expedition’.5 This might be true if exploration was Wils
on’s only goal, but it was not. On this expedition he was entirely motivated by the possibility of scientific advance. He hoped to prove a link between dinosaurs and birds. To get emperor penguin eggs at an early stage of their incubation was imperative if this link was to be made. He would have been reassured also that his little group had gathered new meteorological facts about the Barrier in the depth of winter.

  The Discovery expedition had been a disappointment in relation to the study of penguin embryology. Although the breeding ground was located on Cape Crozier and Wilson now knew that the birds incubated their eggs on the sea ice in winter, he had arrived too late in the penguins’ reproductive cycle to obtain early embryos. In 1911 therefore, the journey to Cape Crozier had to be made in the middle of the Antarctic winter. The emperor ‘quest’ was an important reason for him joining the expedition.

  Scott seems to have promised Wilson that he could take on this potentially-suicidal expedition of more than 100 miles over the Barrier, in darkness and through pressure ridges and crevasses, although, near departure, he does seem to have tried to persuade Wilson against the trip.6 But Wilson was determined and Scott, who knew that Cape Crozier had been the intended base for Terra Nova, would not stop him although he impressed on Wilson the importance of all three returning safely to be ready for the polar attempt.7 There may have been other insidious attractions for Scott: if the theory of ‘development through the ancestors’ could be proved, the expedition would have gained an enormous amount of prestige and it was not beyond of the realms of possibility that the connection could have earned the scientists the hugely-influential Darwinian Prize.8 The expedition was to have other uses: the party were to test the scientific instruments that were to be used by the polar party the following year. The meteorological records that they made were not to be recorded again for seventy years. They experimented with diets to find the best diet to cope with low temperatures, physical work and stress by eating combinations of protein, carbohydrate and fat in their 32 oz daily allowance. They took eiderdown sleeping bags instead of reindeer ones and they took a blubber stove.