With Scott in the Antarctic

by Isobel E Williams

  At the Norwegians’ most southerly camp, Polheim (Pole-base), they found a small tent with Norwegian and Fram flags flying, discarded gear and a note to say that five Norwegians had arrived a month earlier, Scott thought 15 December, and had spent some days determining the Pole’s precise location. There was another note for Scott to forward to the Norwegian king, King Haakon. Wilson made pencil sketches of the tent and a nearby black flag attached to a sledge runner which he found had a note attached saying that this was the Norwegians’ final Pole position. He took some silk strips from the tent seams, the black flag, the note with Amundsen’s signature and a piece of the sledge-runner as souvenirs.59 Although he and Bowers were sanguine (Bowers wrote to his mother about them being a most congenial party and five being a pleasant little crowd),60 Scott wrote ‘Well, we have turned our back on the goal of our ambition and must face our 800 miles of solid slogging and good-bye to most of the day dreams’.61 Had they got home, they would have been feted, but then probably lost from popular interest as the unfolding drama of the First World War progressed. As it was they marched to death and posterity.

  They had to start by pulling up a rise. The Pole is lower than the highest part of the plateau, which had to be climbed before the descent to the Beardmore Glacier. The snow surface around the Pole was uneven. Snow blew in snow-drifts, which covered their tracks from the southbound journey. Visibility was bad enough to make the picking up of the cairns difficult. Evans’ fingertips were badly blistered.62 Scott wrote that Wilson had discovered that Evans’ nose was also frostbitten and that Evans was very annoyed with himself. Scott thought that this was a bad sign.

  On 29 January Wilson wrote that he had a nasty bruise on his shin, in his tibialis anterior muscle, after more than nineteen miles of difficult skiing. The front of his left leg was swollen and tight, the skin red. It was initially so painful that he could not ski and gave his skis to Bowers. Scott was worried that he would hold up the party. The pain grew less after three days, though the shin was still badly swollen and he could not ski for more than a week.63 Wilson’s description of the injury is considered to be the first record of a condition known as a ‘compartment syndrome’. This syndrome is due to a compromised blood supply to the shin muscle. This causes swelling in the muscle and raises the pressure within the rigid bony-fibrous compartment that surrounds it, so causing more pain. The injury can follow strenuous activity or injury and is now a well-recognised phenomenon occurring in high-performance athletes.64, 65

  On 31 January they reached Three Degree, the last depot on the Plateau. They picked up a note from Lieutenant Evans, Bowers’ skis and a week’s provisions. They plodded on north. Wilson wrote that Edgar Evan’s fingers were in a very bad state, his cut hand a festering mess and both hands raw, the fingernails falling off leaving suppurating sores. Evans was losing heart. Wilson dressed the fingers with boric vaseline and on 4 February wrote that they were ‘still sweet’ (not gangrenous).66 On that day Evans and Scott fell into a crevasse (Scott said it was the second fall for Evans). Evans fell in to his waist, but it is possible that he jerked his head. He was deteriorating rapidly from his usual self-confident extrovert self to a mumbling incoherent wreck, unable to help with camp work. Because he was deteriorating so badly the men scaled down the distances to be covered each day. Scott wrote, ‘the party is not improving in condition, especially Evans who is becoming rather dull and incapable. Thank the Lord we have good food at each meal but we get hungrier in spite of it’. They were all weakening. Scott was worried about the easy way that Oates, as well as Evans, got frostbitten; about a shoulder injury he himself had had after a fall; and about Wilson’s painful leg, which was better but which ‘might easily get bad again’. ‘Three out of five injured’.67 The polar party had been going for more than ninety days and would have lost much of the body fat they needed for insulation.68 They were fatigued. They were famished. Evans, the man who had been chosen for his strength was now holding up the marches. But in spite of his deterioration they still managed thirteen miles and sometimes more and they got down the Beardmore Glacier in a day less than they had taken to get up. They would have needed all their strength for this; they had to control the sledge on the icy slopes and avoid crevasses. Above all was the lurking fear that they would miss their next depot. (Wilson, to their immense relief, spotted the flag on 13 February). But even under these circumstances Wilson’s serenity did not desert him. He carefully studied the geology and took samples from the Upper Glacier Depot and recorded his findings: he found sandstone, dolorite and quartz boulders.69

  On 16 February, Edgar Evans collapsed with sickness and giddiness. He could not walk and camp was made early. Scott wrote that Evans had stopped the march on some trivial excuse.70 On 17 February, ‘a very terrible day’, Evans had difficulty keeping his ski shoes on. Possibly he could not tie his laces with his infected hands; possibly he was in an unrecognised confused state. Whatever the reason, he could not pull effectively. He was ordered to unhitch, to sort himself out and rejoin, but he trailed well behind his companions. After their lunch they went back for him; he was dishevelled, on his knees, unable to stand. He was comatose by the time he was carried to the tent. He died at 10p.m. They left his body at the base of the Beardmore Glacier. His companions did not show much understanding of Evans’ deterioration. In discussion with his religious mother Wilson had accepted the concept of ‘the healing power of sickness’, taking the view that the lack of previous suffering made a patient less able to withstand illness. As late as 16 February, he wrote that Evans’ collapse had ‘much to with the fact that he had never been sick in his life and is now helpless with his hands frostbitten’,71 implying, with no evidence, a psychosomatic cause for Evans’ collapse. These uncharacteristically unsympathetic comments were made at a time when he himself was greatly debilitated. The fact that Evans struggled to cooperate (he said, as he always did, that he was well when the group started out) up to the day he died makes depression and withdrawal unlikely.

  When the four survivors went over Evans’ problems they thought that he had begun to deteriorate well before they reached the Pole, but they also thought, reasonably, that his downward path had been accelerated by his frostbitten fingers and falls. The latter, they thought, could have caused an injury to the brain. While this may be so, Evans’ death was clearly due partially to the compounding general problems common to them all: malnutrition with loss of fat reserves, vitamin deficiency, dehydration and the effects of altitude and fatigue. In addition, he had problems specific to himself; for example, infection could have played a significant part in his death. Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterium present on the skin and in the nose. It is not eliminated by Antarctic temperatures72 and is a likely cause of his hand becoming infected. Abscess formation occurs typically seven days after a wound infection with this organism, as happened to Evans. By February his frostbitten fingers were suppurating and his nose was very bad and rotten looking. A possible sequence is: nasal carriage resulting in wound infection and following this, invasion of the blood stream, probably repeated.73 There need have been no signs in the arm; the bacteraemia could have silently gained ascendancy. The final picture can be interpreted as collapse due to low blood pressure caused by infection. Another explanation for his odd behaviour and collapse is that the staphylococci could have gained direct entry to Evans’ brain from his ‘rotten-looking’ nose resulting in a brain abscess or an infected thrombus extending into the brain. Others have discounted a brain abscess but it remains a possibility.74 Dehydration would increase this risk.

  A repeated suggestion has been brain damage following a minor head injury when Evans fell into the crevasse, related particularly to vitamin C deficiency. Although by this time the men’s diet had been deficient in vitamin C for more than fourteen weeks, this seems unlikely. It is accepted that the earliest signs of scurvy (which caused Lieutenant Teddy Evans to collapse when he returned from the plateau with his two companions) are skin thickening and small skin
haemorrhages from capillary leaks, which appear after about four months of deficiency and which precede other signs. Problems with bleeding, such as cuts not healing, come later.75 Wilson, a careful observer and well versed in the early signs of scurvy, reported no early signs in Evans. This makes it less likely that Evans’ death, some days after minor trauma, was due to blood leaking around the brain secondary to a low vitamin C level.76

  The remaining four struggled on probably hoping and believing that they would get on better without Evans. Their chances of survival critically depended on them doing a minimum distance each day. Although the depots contained, Bowers calculated, sufficient food and fuel to last them to the next one, they were by now hugely deficient in their total calorie intake. They knew, all too well, that their chances would be seriously prejudiced if any of them could not keep going. Hunger was always with them, but they were buoyed up by the knowledge that the string of depots stretching out in front of them had food for five men in each of them. In Shambles Camp on 18 February they split Evans’ rations and had ‘a fine supper’ with plenty of horsemeat. ‘New life seems to come with greater food almost immediately’.77 But the odds were against them; the Barrier surface was very bad, the sun was shining on it so its covering of soft loose snow was like sand to pull through. The men pulled wearily on the sledge tracks stretching for miles behind them, like ploughed furrows. Progress was erratic, sometimes pitifully below what was needed: fourteen miles with ski and sail on 15 February, but five and a half miles on 19 February. In spite of apparent good meals, excellent ‘pony hoosh’, they would be getting weaker daily. Having lost so much insulation they were completely vulnerable to the temperatures. Wilson frequently could not see to sketch or track-find.78 His fingers were raw. At the end of February, instead of a southerly wind which would have allowed them to use a sail, they pulled against no wind or winds from the north. The temperature was minus 37°F.

  As the situation became desperate Wilson continued to man-haul, to cook and sketch when his eyes allowed, to help his colleagues. But clearly something was seriously amiss. He, who had kept up his diary for most of his life, stopped making entries. His last entry was on 27 February, three weeks before Scott’s and just over three weeks after Bowers. There is no hint of anxiety, no hint that he would not continue, ‘Overcast all forenoon and cleared to splendid clear afternoon. Good march on 12.2m ski. Some fair breeze. Turned in at −37.’79

  Misfortunes multiplied: at Mid Barrier on 2 March their fuel was found to have evaporated leaving insufficient to get to the next depot. This meant that they could not melt their drinking water. The weather turned worse, the temperature was again minus 40°F. And here Oates showed his companions his frostbitten, black, gangrenous feet. They may not have been his only problem. The thigh wound that he had suffered in the Boer War could also have been breaking down secondary to low vitamin C (and other vitamin) levels. Old wounds can break down even in the absence of overt signs of scurvy.80 Wilson could do precious little but his energies would have been concentrated on helping Oates. All of them would know that the gangrene was likely to spread up the leg and that that there was no hope of recovery. They knew also that they had not only lost Evans’ pulling power but that now Oates’ input would lessen. Scott, Wilson and Bowers, barely able to pull the sledge themselves, faced the likelihood of their burden being increased by their having to pull Oates too. By the time Oates revealed his problems his condition was well advanced. He had mentioned his black toe in his diary more than six weeks before and Wilson had commented on Oates’ black toe and yellow nose and cheeks more than three weeks previously.81 Hopes of survival for any of them were irredeemably compromised. They were more than 100 miles from One Ton Depot, and more than seventy from their small depot at Mount Hooper.

  Wilson would never abandon a sickening colleague. This would be against his entire ethos. He would make it his business to help and comfort as best he might, though with few practical options. He dressed Oates’ feet and he was his companion, probably sacrificing any residual strength to do so; Scott wrote of Wilson’s ‘self-sacrificing devotion’. Oates, lying helpless and suffering, must have thought bitterly about his disagreement with Scott the previous year when Scott had decided to save the ponies and deposit One Ton Camp short of the original plans. Scott wrote, ‘We are in a very queer street since there is no doubt we cannot do the extra marches and feel the cold horribly’.82 He wrote on 3 March, ‘Amongst ourselves we are unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart I can only guess’.83

  By now each day was increasingly dangerous. They could not melt much snow for fluid. It took them over an hour to put on their boots. They managed variable distances: ten miles on 2 March, just over four on 3 March in spite of a now strong wind and full sail, but with a snow surface covered in woolly crystals. But in spite of these misfortunes they did not retreat into sullen, hopeless resentment even though Scott wrote, ‘God help us indeed. We are in a very bad way’.84 Though the crisis for Oates was approaching he never complained but grew more and more silent. Wilson’s feet were also giving trouble, but they still remained cheerful.

  By 6 March Oates sat on the sledge, his black feet hugely swollen and his enfeebled, famished colleagues hoisted him slowly and painfully over the icy surface. Scott, who managed entries in his diary until 29 March wrote, ‘If we were all fit I should have hopes of getting through, but the poor Soldier [Oates] has become a terrible hindrance, though he does his utmost and suffers much I fear’.85 Four days later Oates asked Wilson if there was any chance that he could pull through, and Wilson, avoiding the truth, replied that he did not know. There was in fact, no hope and by now Oates took so long to get going in the morning that he was vitally prejudicing any hope for his companions’ survival.86 Scott ordered Wilson, who was strongly against suicide, to give each of them enough tablets to allow each man to make an end of his suffering. Under protest Wilson gave thirty opium tablets to Oates (who probably could not have put them in his mouth himself because of his frostbitten hands), Scott and Bowers, and kept a vial of morphine for himself. On 16 March, Oates hoped he would die in his sleep. When death was not merciful and he woke on 17 March he said, ‘I am just going outside and may be some time’.87 He crawled out of the tent, whose flaps must have been opened, into a blizzard and temperatures of minus 40°F. He would have lapsed into unconsciousness quickly. He died on his thirty-second birthday, near the spot where One Ton Depot had originally been planned the year before.

  Oates’ sacrifice was not unexpected. The moral issues of holding up colleagues had been discussed repeatedly. Lieutenant Teddy Evans wrote after the expedition that he had suffered so badly with scurvy on his return to base, that he told his two companions to leave him in his sleeping bag and go on without him. He said afterwards that it was the only occasion in his naval career that he had been disobeyed.88 In allowing Oates to crawl out, Wilson would not have worried about his own survival, but he must have decided that if Oates continued with them then Bowers and Scott would definitely die. If Oates sacrificed himself, the slightest chance still remained for his companions.

  Wilson, Scott and Bowers grimly continued to trudge northwards but Scott’s right foot was now gangrenous. On 19 March they had food for two days but scarcely any fuel. In the face of apparent common sense, they clung to the rock specimens from the Beardmore Glacier. This decision has been criticised, but all of the three and particularly Wilson, were passionately involved in the advancement of science and this was one small advance that might be salvaged from the disaster. In fact the rocks were of immense scientific interest. They contained traces of fossils and vegetation that proved conclusively that Antarctica had once been part of a warmer environment.

  The doomed trio continued for a few more days. On 21?March they pitched their tent only eleven miles short of One Ton Camp. Here they faced death calmly though Wilson and Bowers had fleeting hopes that they might still get to One Ton Depot and get fuel and food. Whilst they were planning
this Wilson wrote his farewell to his wife. He wrote, ‘To-day may be the last effort. Birdie and I are going to try and reach the Depot 11 miles north of us and return to this tent where Captain Scott is lying with a frozen foot’. He continued, saying that if he did not make it

  I shall simply fall and go to sleep in the snow and I have your little books, (the testament and prayer book) with me in my breast pocket. … Don’t be unhappy – all is for the best. We are playing a good part in the great scheme arranged by God himself and all is well. … I am only sorry I couldn’t have seen your loving letters and Mother’s and Dad’s and the Smiths’ and all the happy news I had hoped to see – but all these things are easily seen later, I expect. … God be with you – my love is as living for you as ever. … we will all meet after death and death had no terrors … my own dear wife, good-bye for the present. … I do not cease to pray for you, – to the very last. ….89