Their progress to the Beardmore Glacier (more than 300 miles between Corner Camp and the Lower Glacier Camp) was calculated to take the heart out of men and beasts. The snow surface was ‘abominable’.15 Soft snow built up inch by inch and Scott wrote that a worse set of conditions for the ponies could scarcely be imagined; the crock (ponies) had had enough at nine and a half miles.16 They would have been more disheartened if they had known that by 13 November Amundsen’s men were ascending onto the plateau via a steep route up a glacier, the Axel Heiberg Glacier, which they had found by sheer good fortune south of the Bay of Whales. The glacier was sixty miles south of the Beardmore. The Norwegians had left twelve days in front of the British party and were now some 300 miles further south.17
The British reached One Ton Depot, on the Barrier and 150 statute miles from Cape Evans, on 15 November. Here they rested and lightened the pony loads, dropping off bundles of seal liver to eat on the return trip. On 21 November, Wilson’s party caught up with Lieutenant Evans’ motor party at a prearranged rendezvous. Teddy Evans and his three companions had pulled so hard after abandoning their motor sledges that they had arrived six days earlier and passed the time by building a fifteen-foot cairn and, says Wilson, reading Pickwick through.18 They were very hungry, demonstrating, if this was needed, that rations sufficient for men leading ponies are insufficient for men doing hard pulling work.
They left the depot in five little groups: first the man-haulers, then the three pony groups, then the dogs. Scott’s aim was to keep pace with Shackleton’s 1908 progress. If he could do this, he felt, there was a chance of success. But they were soon several days behind schedule. The ponies were needed for a last ‘push’ at the glacier but they were failing in spite of 10 lbs of oats and 3 lbs of oil cake per day. Wilson wrote that they did not plan to shoot any pony until they had passed the distance that Shackleton’s first horse had been shot. When they passed this milestone on 24 November, Oates dispatched the first pony, Jehu; the dogs devoured the fresh meat eagerly. Jehu made four days’ rations for twenty dogs.19
On the same day the first two men turned back as arranged, leaving three parties of four men to go on. Wilson was in a group with Scott, Cherry-Garrard and Chief Stoker Lashly. He sent his letter to Ory with the men going back. He said that the teams were getting on well, everyone was fit and that he hoped to be chosen to go to the Pole, ‘just for your sake’.20 When they set off the three teams pushed on grimly through a blank white expanse of fog but Wilson also recorded a fine solar corona, a series of coloured rings around the sun, formed by the low fog. They moved on from Mid Barrier Depot on 26 November towards the foot of the Beardmore Glacier passing, finally in glorious sunshine, on 30 November, the ‘best south’ set by Wilson, Scott and Shackleton in 1902. Wilson wrote that he could see Cape Wilson, the snow-covered rocky cape that had been named after him in 1902, from time to time. Now they only had Shackleton’s record ahead of them, but they were behind his schedule and the going was hard. The horses were tiring rapidly; as each failed it was shot and made into good, sweet ‘pony hoosh’. The meat would have contained next to nothing in the way of vitamin C,21 although raisins in the hoosh would have had a little. Eventually the Beardmore Glacier loomed in front of them, spilling onto the Barrier in heavily-crevassed waves and Wilson made a series of beautiful pencil sketches of the scene. To get onto the glacier the men needed to follow Shackleton’s approach of 1908, called ‘the Gateway’. This required good visibility; a huge chasm separated the Barrier from the mountains. But they could not go on. On 3 December they woke to a blizzard, thick drift and heavy snowfall. Scott thought that their luck with the weather was ‘preposterous’ and Birdie Bowers wrote that he was glad that Wilson was in a tent with Scott, ‘there is something so reassuring about Bill – he comes out best in adversity’.22 The gale, their fifth, was to last for four days and to hold them up at an important time. It raged ‘such as one might expect to be driven at us by all the powers of darkness’23 at a time when only one more march would have got them onto the Beardmore itself. The unlooked-for delay meant that they had to start on their summit rations. As they camped with no visibility, the living ponies buried in snowdrift and dug out periodically, the temperature rose to above freezing. The men lay in their sleeping bags encased in slushy snow, rather than ice. Wilson writes that everything was soaking wet: the sleeping bags were sodden, the tent dripping, clothes sopping wet and their tobacco juice running in a brown stream out of the gear bag.24 He read Tennyson and his pocket Testament and Prayer Book, ‘What a perfect piece of faith and hope and religion it is, makes me feel that if the end comes to me here or hereabouts there will be no great time for O. to sorrow. All will be as it was meant to be’.25 He did not seek death, but his trust in God was such that he did not fear death either, if this was God’s will. The surprising feature is that he did not seem to worry unduly about Oriana’s future; he imagined that she would be sustained by the same convictions as him and feel that all would be for the best if it were left in God’s hands.
The teams finally got on the move on 9 December and crossed the Gateway ramp. The man-hauling party went first to make a track in the deep soft snow for the ponies, which had to be flogged on as they floundered, belly-deep in snow. They had now completed their duties and Wilson’s pony, Nobby, after ‘a mere apology for a ration’, was shot along with all the other ponies that night. Wilson ‘thanked God that the horses were done with and they could begin the heavier work themselves’.26 He had given his pony his own supper biscuits as a parting gift. With no apparent soul-searching he then spent several hours at his butcher’s work, cutting and skinning the ponies up for food. Afterwards he ‘slept like a log’.27 They called the site ‘Shambles Camp’.
They made a cache, the Lower Glacier Depot, at the base of the glacier and at the top of the Gateway’s snow ramp. They raised a cairn on it with a black flag and black bunting. Here, Meares and Dimitri took the (fit) dog teams back on 11 December carrying another letter from Wilson:
All is well with us and as for me I was never stronger or fitter in my life … I am as fit as can be and I just thrive on it. We shall have another party returning in ten or twelve day’s time reducing us then to eight. I expect to be one of the eight at any rate: but whether I shall have the good fortune to be considered strong enough to be one of the final 4 or not – why, I don’t know. No one knows yet who they will be – but I do hope to be one of them for your dear sake …28
The twelve men looked up with awe at the fearsome glacier they had to climb: an ascent of more than 120 crevasse-ridden miles, to the plateau at 9,000 feet. Each party of four were man-hauling 600 lbs over ice ridges of nearly thirty feet. Sometimes they could use their skis, sometimes they could not. Slowly they toiled up, making depots at mid-glacier on 17 December and upper glacier on 21 December. Wilson wrote that their ascent was very difficult; they had to pull their sledges through soft, heavy snow in contrast to Shackleton’s ice and they gasped for breath as they sunk knee-deep in the snow or took ten or more desperate jerks to get the sledge even started. When the sledge ran they had to strain ‘every muscle and fibre’ to keep it going. Scott felt nothing could replace the four days lost in the blizzard. On the ascent, Wilson made a further panoramic series of sketches of the glorious surroundings, the sketches unfolding page after page. He did this in spite of his inflamed, painful eyes which streamed continuously, marginally helped by repeated zinc sulphate eye drops, but preventing any hope of sleep. As the team struggled up the glacier, still more than 300 miles from the Pole, Amundsen reached it with his four companions on 14 December. He later reported that the approach to the Pole had been in fine sunny weather, across a vast and apparently endless plain.
At the Upper Glacier Depot Scott made his selection of the eight men who were to continue southwards and the four who were to return. He chose Wilson, Bowers, Petty Officer Edgar Evans, Oates, Lieutenant Evans, Seaman Crean and Seaman Lashly to go on. Dr Atkinson, Cherry-Garrard, Wright and th
e third seaman, Keohane, were to return. Wilson sent back letters at every opportunity. Now he wrote to Oriana ‘from Upper Glacier Depot by Mount Darwin’, saying that they were less than 300 miles from the Pole and well in hand for time. He wondered if his grouse work had been well received (or slated), but said that come what may, it was the best piece of work that he could have produced.29 He wrote to Reginald Smith saying that they should reach the Pole but if they did not then he and Cherry-Garrard would probably remain in the Antarctic and make another attempt between October 1912 and March 1913. If, however, they reached the Pole in 1911–12 and Scott went home, Wilson and Cherry-Garrard would return with him.30
Christmas Day was, ‘a real good and happy one,’ only marred by the ever-present menace of crevasses. Seaman Lashly tumbled into one fifty-footer, dropping down the whole length of his harness. He wrote in his diary that the crevasse was ‘rather a ghastly sight while dangling in one’s harness’.31 The men celebrated with ‘a magnificent lunch: three biscuits, one and a half pannikins (containers) of tea, a spoonful of raisins, a whack of butter, and a stick of chocolate. For supper, an amazing mess of extra pemmican (horse meat, onion, curry powder and biscuit), a pannikin of cocoa and sugar and a large slice of plum pudding followed by caramel, ginger pieces and a biscuit.’32
By the last day of December they had caught up with Shackleton’s dates. Scott laid the first plateau cache, Three Degree Depot. They were now at 10,000 feet and 180 miles from the Pole. From here speed and light loads were essential. In the interests of greater speed, Petty-Officers Crean and Evans were ordered to dismantle the twelve-foot sledges and refashion them as ten-footers. As they did the work, Scott described Petty-Officer Evans as a most valuable asset,33 but in fact the alterations were to have important consequences. Edgar Evans cut his hand as he worked and this injury was to cause an ongoing problem, though it was probably only minor initially and Evans did not mention it. He was strong. Like all of them he hoped to be chosen for the Pole assault. At a time when things were going comparatively well, they all dreamed of success. Being a member of the first group to reach the Pole would bring Evans national fame. In relation to the weights on the sledges, to keep these at a minimum Wilson wrote that although he, Oates, Petty Officer Evans and Scott were to continue with skis, sticks and shoes,34 the other men were to leave their skis behind and go forward on foot.
On 3 January, within 150 miles of the Pole, Scott announced his final plans. Lieutenant Evans and Seamen Lashly and Crean were to be sent back. Scott had decided unexpectedly to take a five-man party south. Lieutenant Evans later said that Scott had come into his tent and said that he had decided that five men would be best to reach the Pole. He asked Evans if he was prepared to make the return journey short-handed and ‘of course [Evans later recorded in his lecture in the Albert Hall] we consented’.35 Scott merely says that he had decided to reorganise.36 Bowers moved into the now five-man tent with Wilson, Scott, Oates and Seaman Evans. It has been suggested that the five-man option had been planned for some time. One of Wilson’s watercolours, given to his godson, illustrates five men, all on skis, hauling a loaded sledge,37 and Wilson is renowned for his accurate representations. However the expedition’s supplies, equipment, food and oil had all been planned around teams of four, as had the food depots for the returning men. Also, Bowers’ skis had been left at Three Degree Depot and he was on foot. Wilson does not comment on this change of plan. He merely wrote:
To-morrow … the last supporting party returns to the winter quarters and they will take this note home, arriving probably in time to catch the ship. I am one of the five to go on to the Pole. So this may be the last you hear from me for another whole year … only I am glad for your sake I am one of the five … all fit and strong and well and only 148 more miles to go. … It seems too good to be true that this long journey to the Pole should be realising itself – we ought to be there in less than a fortnight now…
He continues:
you know my love for you – it’s just myself, and all I do and all I pray for is your good. Be strong in hope and in faith if you hear no more of me after this till next year… I believe firmly that we have a lot to do together when we meet again …38
As the last supporting party prepared for the long march home, they gave three huge cheers for the polar party group disappearing into a tiny black speck on the southern horizon. The little group, marching into legend, were never to be seen alive again. Initially, they made good marches over the plateau; Scott and Wilson pulled in front, Oates and Petty Officer Evans behind, Bowers on foot between the four. But the surfaces were variable and when he was confronted by ‘a sea of fish-hook waves’ Wilson wrote that they left the skis behind ‘as the surface is too much cut up for them and we think it continues so’. After a few miles, when the surface improved, they returned to pick up them up again losing more than an hour.39
By 9 January, Scott could write ‘RECORD’ in his diary. They were beyond Shackleton’s furthest south at 88.25°, ‘All is new ahead’.40 But Wilson does not even mention this; he knew they were still ninety-five miles from the Pole. Retrospectively, by this date, their attempt was beginning to unravel for several unrelated reasons. Their haul up the Beardmore Glacier had taken its toll; Scott wrote, ‘It’s going to be a stiff pull both ways apparently’ and ‘none of us ever had such hard work before’.41 Cooking caused unexpected problems. They had food for a month for five men, but to do the cooking took an extra half hour each day. They felt the cold badly at this stage, though the temperatures were not really low (minus 7°F at midday, minus 3°F later). Camping conditions were worse with five; the teepee-shaped tent made it difficult for more than one person to stand at a time and the floor-covering (not fixed to the tent) left the two on the outside lying partially on snow when they crawled into their sleeping bags. Apart from problems with cold, sleeplessness, weakness and hunger, they were to be at an altitude of 10,000 feet for seven weeks. This level can cause altitude sickness. Ranulph Fiennes states that virtually every year, one scientist based at the south polar station has to be evacuated back to sea level because of altitude problems. Severe cases can get cerebral oedema (swelling of the brain).42 On the plateau in 1912 the men were regularly to experience temperatures in the minus-twenty range. This extreme cold reduces the barometric pressure which exaggerates the effects of altitude and means that the men were experiencing the physiological effects that they would have experienced at much higher altitudes on equatorial mountains, such as the Andes.43 The men would have had to hyperventilate in the dry conditions to maintain an adequate oxygen level in the ‘thinner’ dry air. This causes dehydration. Every movement would have been an effort; jerking the sledges to start the run and pulling them over the uneven surface was a daily endurance test.
It is now known that their problems were increased by poor nutrition. Their summit rations, consisting of butter, pemmican, biscuit, cocoa, sugar and tea44 provided approximately 4,500 calories per day though this eventually became less on the return journey because of failing supplies. Even this large intake was not nearly sufficient for man-hauling, which can use up more than 7,000 calories per day.45 Over the weeks they would have built up a big calorie deficit. In addition the diet was deficient in the vitamin B complex46 and ascorbic acid (vitamin C). These deficiencies would result in loss of muscle as well as insulating body fat. The men were voraciously hungry. The slow marches with extra halts, the muscle loss, the dehydration, their increased susceptibility to cold and consequent poor coordination for performing the simplest actions, would have compounded their exhaustion.
They had hard and heavy marches and were held up by a summit blizzard on 8 January, but by the 14 January they were just over forty miles from the Pole, and on the next day, twelve miles less.
It is wonderful to think that two long marches would land us at the Pole. We left our depot to day with nine days provisions, so that it ought to be a certain thing now and the only appalling possibility the sight of the Norweg
ian flag forestalling ours. … Only twenty-seven miles from the Pole. We ought to do it now.47
On 16 January they started off in high spirits. They were sure they had a good chance of ‘bagging the Pole’ first. Then, ‘The worst has happened, or nearly the worst’.48 On the afternoon march the sharp-eyed Bowers saw a black speck in the distance. As they struggled towards it, it took the shape of a ragged black flag, near the remains of a camp with sledge, ski and dog tracks. This told them the whole story. They had been beaten. The flag was frayed at the edges and the British estimated it had been there for several weeks.49 Wilson wrote simply, ‘The Norwegians came up evidently by another glacier’.50 He made no further comment in his diary. Scott wrote, ‘The Norwegians have forestalled us and are first at the Pole. It is a terrible disappointment and I am very sorry for my loyal companions’.51 Oates commented in his usual laconic fashion, ‘We are not a very happy party tonight’.52 Bowers wrote to his mother:
Well, here I really am and very glad to be here too. It is a bleak spot – what a place to strive so hard to reach. … It is sad that we have been forestalled by the Norwegians, but I am glad we have done it by good British man-haulage. That is the traditional British sledging method and this is the greatest journey done by man since we left our transport at the foot of the glacier.53
The following day the British made their own line for the Pole, marching in cutting winds of over force four and temperatures of minus 30°F, ‘the coldest march I ever remember’.54 They camped on what Wilson wrote was the Pole itself on Wednesday 17 January at 6.30p.m. and tried to console themselves with a double hoosh, some last bits of chocolate and some cigarettes given by Wilson’s brother Bernard, ‘a queer taste’.55 The following day, after careful measurements, they decided that they were three and a half miles away from the Pole and marched to their calculated spot. Here they built a cairn and took photographs of themselves with the Queen Mother’s Union Jack and all their other flags. As expected, Wilson looks drawn in the photographs. The British accepted Amundsen’s claim to the Pole. They had arrived, but in very different circumstances to those that they had hoped for and expected. Rarely has such endeavour been met by such an anticlimax. They were frostbitten, they were cold and Scott already wondered if they would make it back.56 ‘Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority’.57 But Wilson’s inner voice and convictions held. He barely comments on the disappointment, but wrote that they (the British), had done what they had come for and as their programme had dictated. Amundsen had beaten them in so far as he had made a race of it. ‘We have done what we came for all the same and as our programme was made out’.58 This was enough for him.
With Scott in the Antarctic Page 27