A First Rate Tragedy Read online

  DIANA PRESTON is a writer and historian who read Modern History at Oxford. Her book, Before the Fall-Out – From Marie Curie to Hiroshima, won the Los Angeles Times 2006 Prize for Science and Technology.

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

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  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 1997

  Copyright © Diana Preston, 1997

  This edition published by Constable, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2011

  The right of Diana Preston to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

  Data is available from the British Library

  UK ISBN: 978-1-84901-724-4

  eISBN: 978-1-78033-081-5

  Printed and bound in the UK

  To my husband

  Michael

  Contents

  Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Explanatory Note

  Maps

  Introduction

  1 The Early Heats of the Great Race

  2 Scott – The Early Days

  3 ‘Ready, Aye, Ready’

  4 ‘Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came’

  5 ‘Poor Old Shackleton’

  6 ‘Little Human Insects’

  7 The Reluctant Celebrity

  8 Captain Scott in Love

  9 A Matter of Honour

  10 ‘Am Going South, Amundsen’

  11 Stewed Penguin Breast and Plum Pudding

  12 Winter

  13 ‘Miserable, Utterly Miserable’

  14 ‘What Castles One Builds’

  15 ‘God Help Us’

  16 ‘Had We Lived . . .’

  17 ‘We Have Got To Face It Now’

  18 The Reason Why

  Epilogue

  Sources and References

  Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  First aerial ascent in Antarctica (Royal Society)

  The Discovery caught in the ice at McMurdo Sound (Royal Society)

  The Discovery at Dundee (M. Preston)

  Announcement of Scott’s marriage, The Tatler, 1908

  The Royal Hotel, Cardiff (M. Preston)

  Captain Scott and Kathleen Scott aboard the Terra Nova (H. Ponting)

  Captain Oates tending the ponies on the Terra Nova (H. Ponting)

  Captain Scott at work in the hut at Cape Evans (H. Ponting)

  Captain Scott’s ‘den’ in the hut at Cape Evans today (P. Chaplin, New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust)

  Captain Scott’s last birthday dinner (H. Ponting)

  Wilson at work at Cape Evans (H. Ponting)

  A page from the South Polar Times

  Edgar Evans in outdoor clothes at Cape Evans (H. Ponting)

  Captain Oates (H. Ponting)

  Life in ‘the tenements’ in the hut at Cape Evans (H. Ponting)

  The end of the Winter Journey (H. Ponting)

  Kathleen Scott and Peter

  Petty Officer Evans and Crean mending sleeping bags (H. Ponting)

  Camping near the Polar Plateau, December 1911 (H. R. Bowers)

  Amundsen’s tent at the South Pole (H. R. Bowers)

  Roald Amundsen (Mansell Collection)

  Captain Oates walking to his death (Mansell Collection)

  Monument to Captain Scott, Cape Town, South Africa (M. Preston)

  Monument to Captain Scott, Christchurch, New Zealand (M. Preston)

  Acknowledgements

  At South Hampstead High School for Girls, a quotation written in large Gothic script and framed in oak used to catch my eye as I hurried between the classes: ‘Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman – R.F. Scott.’ Many years later I decided to tell that tale both for its innate power and enduring poignancy and for what it says about the British character and our perception of what constitutes a hero. While researching, I learned that South Hampstead was one of the many schools to be stirred by Scott’s 1910 expedition and to respond to his appeal for dogs and ponies. The reason why his words were still displayed so prominently fifty years after his death became clear at last.

  I am indebted once again to my husband Michael for help and advice throughout and for the considerable amount of research and editing he undertook. I am also grateful to Lord Kennet for his kindness in allowing me access to the Kennet Family Papers, lodged in the Cambridge University Library; to Elspeth Huxley for her insight into the personalities of some of the chief players; to Bob Headland, Shirley Sawtell and Philippa Hogg of the Scott Polar Research Institute for their help with consulting the original sources held by the Institute; to the London Library for their efficiency and patience in supplying me with many of the most important published sources; to Clive Bunyan, Assistant Curator Aeronautics Collection, the Science Museum, for advice about developments in aviation in the early years of the century; to Deirdre Sheppard of Antarctica New Zealand, Paul Chaplin of the Antarctic Heritage Trust and Baden Norris, Antarctic Curator, the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand for insight into Scott’s visits to New Zealand and into the condition and preservation of Scott’s huts at McMurdo Sound; to my agent Michael Thomas for his encouragement; to Vera Faith for her research among the newspapers of the time; to Kim Lewison for constructive criticism and advice at a crucial stage; to the Cunard Line for enabling me to visit Cape Town, as Scott did, by sea to carry out research; to Air New Zealand and Mount Cook Airlines for helping with flights to New Zealand’s South Island to enable us to join up with an Antarctic expedition, and finally to Southern Heritage Expeditions Ltd, Christchurch, New Zealand, for making possible an attempt by my husband and myself to visit Scott’s and Shackleton’s huts on McMurdo Sound.

  In revising this book in 2009, I am grateful in particular to Susan Solomon for discussing her work on weather conditions, to David Crane for invaluable insights into the character of Scott, to Lady Kennet for renewed access to the correspondence between Captain Scott and his wife Kathleen, to David Wilson for information about his great-uncle Edward Wilson, to Wendy Driver of the Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute for help and information and to the staff at the Institute for access to the manuscript collection. I am once again grateful to my husband Michael who took a major part in the revision. I am also indebted to Hapag Lloyd and to Quark Expeditions for finally making it possible for me to visit the Ross Sea and Scott’s huts. Last but not least I would like to thank my editor at Constable, Leo Hollis, as well as of course Bill Hamilton and Charlie Brotherstone at A.M. Heath

  Explanatory Note

  Unless otherwise stated all distances are given in geographical, i.e. nautical, miles. One geographical mile is equivalent to 1 statute miles.

  Introduction

  And so this hero of heroes said, ‘I am going to find the South Pole. It will be a big adventure.’

  From ‘Like English Gentlemen’ – Anon.

  ‘It has happened! We have found what we sought! Good God, what a twist of fate.’ So the young Norwegian Tryggve Gran recorded a grim discovery on 12 November 1912 by a search party trekking across the blinding whiteness of Antar
ctica’s great Ice Barrier. They had found the snow-covered tent containing the bodies of Captain Scott and his two companions Edward Wilson and ‘Birdie’ Bowers. They had died just eleven miles from the depot of food and fuel that might have saved them. Of the two other members of the Polar party, Captain Oates and Petty Officer Edgar Evans, there was no sign. However, Scott’s diaries and letters, by his body, recounted their terrible fate. It was a story that would resonate throughout the world and make heroes of them all.

  Scott and his four comrades had set out over a year before from Cape Evans on McMurdo Sound to plant the British flag at the South Pole and should have returned no later than early April 1912. Yet for some weeks afterwards the party back at Cape Evans had continued to hope. In Antarctica the strange light effects play tricks on the eyes. Sometimes the watchers thought they could see distant specks on the horizon, men with sledges moving purposefully forward, only to find that it was a mirage or a party of seals lolloping over the ice. Sometimes the sledge dogs would begin to howl as if in greeting and the men would rush outside, shouting out to the cook to get moving, that the Polar party was back, that someone should put a record of the national anthem on the gramophone. On 24 April the sunless Antarctic winter with its ‘nightmares of the darkness’1 descended, extinguishing any lingering hope.

  The question now was how had Scott and his comrades perished? Had they ever reached the Pole? Had they fallen into a crevasse taking their secrets with them? When the sun returned the other members of the expedition felt it was their duty to discover the truth. The search party found their answer just 148 miles from their base. A dark patch revealed itself to be the top of a tent. It was several hours before they could bring themselves to enter and the task fell to the senior officer, Dr Atkinson. What met his eyes was a truly Arthurian scene: the dead hero, Captain Scott, lying frozen in his reindeer-fur sleeping bag, his arm flung out towards Wilson as if seeking comfort. Bowers and Wilson lay on either side of him like faithful acolytes.

  However, in November 1912 the wider world guessed nothing of the disaster. The expedition’s only means of contact with the outside world, their ship the Terra Nova, had departed for New Zealand in March before there was any reason to fear that Captain Scott had come to grief. What the world did, however, know was that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had reached the South Pole and had beaten Scott. The news that Scott and his four companions had also reached the Pole but died during their return did not break until early February 1913.

  When it did, the story was rendered even more poignant because Scott’s widow, Kathleen, was then sailing to New Zealand to be reunited, or so she thought, with her husband, unaware, as the newspapers were quick to point out, that she had been a widow for nearly a year. Neither was she aware of the great memorial service held in St Paul’s Cathedral on 14 February, just two days after the news had been announced. Crowds jostled to join a congregation headed by the King himself.

  The tragedy had a profound effect. Scott immediately became and remained a far greater hero than if he had survived. But why? What was it in the achievements of a man who all his life had felt himself caught in the machine ‘that grinds small’,2 a man who never felt quite master of his own destiny, who believed himself to be inherently unlucky, and who ultimately failed, that so caught at the British soul?

  Partly, of course, heroes who die at the apex of their achievement such as Nelson or Wolfe cannot by their later actions fall from grace. Partly, the British have always loved plucky losers and heroic failures, even in Scott’s day. Though Britain dominated the 1908 Olympic Games, held at London’s White City, outclassing the Americans, the public took their triumph for granted and reserved their admiration for an Italian marathon runner who collapsed near the finishing line, while leading, and was disqualified for receiving help across the line. Queen Alexandra presented him with a gold cup and he was inundated with offers to appear in the music halls.

  However, one of the key reasons was the context of the times. The Britain of 1913 was increasingly unsure of her place in the world. H.G. Wells, looking back from 1914, described the ripples of uncertainty and self-doubt that were troubling the nation: ‘The first decade of the twentieth century was for the English a decade of badly strained optimism. Our Empire was nearly beaten by a handful of farmers [the Boers of South Africa] amidst the jeering contempt of the whole world – and we felt it acutely for several years . . .’3 The dismay and self-doubt at the loss of the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic in April 1912 exemplified the nation’s waning self-confidence. At the same time, the heroism of the men who calmly loaded their wives and children into the insufficient lifeboats knowing that they themselves would go down with the ship seemed the very apotheosis of noble self-sacrifice.

  This was a period when old and new ideas were colliding with some force. In parliament the Liberal Party was locked in a struggle with the Lords over Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’. The army and the navy were each engaged in soul-searching arguments about how to modernize their methods and equipment. This was the era of the Dreadnought and the machine gun. The capability of the submarine and the aeroplane were hotly debated. Other difficult issues clouded the scene – Home Rule for Ireland, confrontation between unions and employers, the increasingly stormy suffragette battle. Moral values and the established social order were under increasing challenge as the certainties of Victoria’s golden age faded away. Marie Stopes was advocating birth control. D.H. Lawrence was working on his first book, The White Peacock. As Balfour put it, Victoria’s death ‘affects us not merely because we have lost a great personality, but because we feel that the end of a great epoch has come upon us’.4

  The novelist Elinor Glyn, she of ‘Would you like to sin with Elinor Glyn on a tiger skin’, wrote that in observing Victoria’s funeral cortège she was witnessing ‘the funeral procession of England’s greatness and glory’.5 Comparisons were increasingly made between the decadence and decline of the Roman Empire and Britain’s position. People like Baden-Powell worried over signs of physical degeneracy in the British, warning that one cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire was the fact that the soldiers ‘fell away from the standard of their forefathers in bodily strength’.6 Scott’s last letter to his wife, addressed unsentimentally to ‘my widow’, reflected that distaste of growing ‘soft’: ‘How much better has it been than lounging in too great comfort at home.’

  Britain’s sense of security, of her ability to fill her rightful pre-eminent place in the world was faltering before new threats and challenges. The greatest threat of all was war with Germany. Before he set out in 1910, Scott asked the editor of the Daily Mail when he thought that war might break out. With surprising accuracy he advised Scott to complete his expedition by August 1914! A Scottish traveller, Campbell MacKellar, recorded with concern that ‘an impudent native’ had approached him in Java and said: ‘All German man now. Englishman no good now.’ The traveller mused over how this idea had spread so quickly but concluded that it was partly ‘because it was true!’7

  Against this background there was much about Scott’s Antarctic odyssey that struck a reassuring note. It was brave and daring to venture into the unknown continent where British men would prove that the old values of courage in adversity, cheerfulness, persistence, loyalty and self-sacrifice had not died. Scott’s letters and diaries were greeted with deep emotion because they showed that he and his colleagues had held true to these ideals until the end. ‘My companions are unendingly cheerful,’ he wrote, ‘but we are all on the verge of serious frostbites, and though we constantly talk of fetching through I don’t think any one of us believes it in his heart.’

  The very language in which they were couched – and Scott had considerable literary talent – could not fail to appeal to the heart of a nation that was losing confidence. ‘Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman’ was his message from the grave. The account of Captain Oates, tortured by frostbite, stagg
ering out to his death in the blizzard to save his friends, with merely the terse comment that he might be ‘gone for some time’, could have come from the pages of Boy’s Own. Here was the very epitome of the English officer and gentleman doing his duty without fuss.

  Apart from the heroism there was the human interest. Through Scott’s diaries the public, then as now, could relive the details of moving events as they unfolded. They could share the awful disappointment and psychological effect of reaching the Pole only to find that Amundsen had stolen the prize; the frustration at the weather conditions which held up the party’s dash to safety; the shock and surprise at the weakening of the first and supposedly strongest member of the party, Petty Officer Edgar Evans; the dismay at finding that some of the vital supplies of fuel, carefully depoted, had evaporated; the pain of living with gnawing starvation and frostbitten limbs; the pathetic deterioration of Captain Oates; the tantalizing knowledge that at their final camp they were only eleven miles from a large depot of food and fuel but prevented from reaching it by violent blizzards; the wistful hope that a search party would find them in time; the picture of men lying helpless in their tent hoping above the shrieking of the blizzard to catch the eerie barking of the sledge dogs that would mean salvation; their strong desire to survive, coupled with the knowledge that they would not. If Scott and his party had vanished without trace, if there had been no diaries and letters and messages, he might perhaps have faded from memory.

  Another important factor was Amundsen. Here, in the eyes of many at the time, was the villain and foil to Scott, the British hero. Foreigner, interloper and rival he was the man who had sneaked out of Norway in the Fram, ‘the Viking ship of the Twentieth Century’ as another Norwegian Antarctic explorer Borchgrevink called her, concealing his intention to go south rather than north, until Scott was already on his way down to Antarctica. He was the man who turned reaching the South Pole into a race, the ‘professional’ who, by superior technique with skis and dogs and better luck and preparation, pipped Scott, the ‘gifted amateur’, at the post and stole the prize. Indeed, Amundsen himself called his journey ‘a sporting stunt’.