A First Rate Tragedy Read online

  The party struggled up the Ferrar Glacier to an altitude of some 7,000 feet to pitch their tents in a place they aptly named ‘Desolation Camp’. Here they endured a week of blizzards where Scott’s frustration was not assuaged by reading soothing passages from Darwin’s Cruise of the Beagle. At the time he called this the most miserable experience of his life. Getting away at last they climbed a further 2,000 feet to the summit. Their reward was to find themselves on a great Polar plateau with Mount Lister and the Royal Society Range away to the south-east. It was a cheerless prospect but it offered the fascination of the unknown. The geological party led by young Ferrar now turned aside to carry out research, leaving Scott with Evans, Lashly and three others, Skelton, Feather and Handsley, to struggle westward across the plateau in the teeth of a bitter wind.

  The surface was so bad they had to resort to relaying, which Scott hated. By 22 November he had decided that the latter three, though ‘lion-hearted’, were not pulling as hard as was necessary and he sent them back. Skelton’s diary revealed how demanding Scott could be, impatient at delay and determined to push himself and his men to their physical and mental limits. Skelton wrote: ‘I can’t agree with forcing men to such work, all the time one is at the highest strain, & it is that, that I don’t like to see, – something might snap.’2

  Scott was now alone with two men whose names would also become synonymous with his Polar journeys. Leading Stoker William Lashly would be one of the Last Supporting Party who would watch Scott set off on the final leg to the South Pole, while Petty Officer Edgar Evans would be marching with him. Both men had remained supremely fit (or ‘hard’ in Scott’s terminology) since arriving in Antarctica, and Scott was convinced that they had the character and spirit for successful sledging. They now manhauled across the vast lifeless plateau facing temperatures which dropped at night to the -40s and which seldom rose above -25 degrees Fahrenheit in the day. They found it hard to catch their breath in the rarefied air. The plain was uneven and the surface varied from silkily smooth to the treacherous corrugations of ‘sastrugi’ or frozen snow waves that capsized the sledge. Scott felt they were like a small boat at sea ‘at one moment appearing to stand still to climb some wave, and at the next diving down into a hollow’. He reflected with satisfaction on the strength of his two companions, describing how with them behind him ‘our sledge seemed to become a living thing, and the days of slow progress were numbered’.

  However, they found no end to the desolate plateau. In his diaries Scott wrote of the daily difficulties of sledging and camp life: ‘The worst time for sledging is the coldest time . . . the human body is always giving off moisture . . . much issuing through the pores of the skin . . . a small quantity will remain as ice on one’s garments . . . accumulating until one is completely enclosed in it . . . all these things which on board the ship were so caressingly soft to the touch will have become as hard as boards. Worse still, this ice will be found plastered as thickly on everything that makes for comfort at night: sleeping-bag . . . night foot-gear will have grown equally hard and chill.’ The only way of unthawing frozen sleeping bags at night and frozen boots in the morning was by inserting limbs into them until they thawed a little with body warmth and as they did so, pushing the limbs, often painfully sensitive from frostbite, progressively further into them while occasionally pulling them out and rubbing them to prevent them getting too frozen.

  Scott had resolved to turn back by the end of November and their final march westward took them up a slope steeper than usual. He was optimistic, hoping they would glimpse some new and exciting feature after the monotony of the plateau, perhaps a range of mountains forming a western coast of Victoria Land, but there was nothing but the plain, ‘a scene so wildly and awfully desolate that it cannot fail to impress one with gloomy thoughts . . .’ Scott described how they had reached the end of their tether – ‘. . . all we have done is to show the immensity of this vast plain’. It was an awful desert over which ‘we, little human insects . . . are now bent on crawling back again’. He needed the ‘unfailing courage and cheerfulness’ of his companions to pull him through what he would remember as ‘some vivid but evil dream’.

  Their behaviour during the journey had convinced Scott that there was ‘no class of men so eminently adapted by training to cope with the troubles and tricks of sledging life as sailors’. Not only were they tough, resourceful and brave but they obeyed orders, knew their place, and adhered to strict naval discipline. Scott, shy and introspective, felt at ease and unthreatened in their company and drew comfort from it. ‘Few of our camping hours go by without a laugh from Evans and a song from Lashly. I have not quite penetrated the latter yet; there is only one verse, which is about the plucking of a rose. It can scarcely be called a finished musical performance, but I should miss it much if it ceased.’ What innuendos lay behind that verse for men devoid of women’s company for so many months can only be guessed at.

  Yet despite this companionship, the responsibilities of leadership and navigation, and thus of their safety, rested squarely on Scott and it must have been a psychological burden. He could not let them guess his anxiety. They in turn probably made it a point of honour to show him a brave face. All alone on the great ice sheet they discussed who would follow in their footsteps. In fact it was to be three men making for the South Magnetic Pole during Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition of 1907–9.

  On 1 December 1903 they turned and began their long journey back to the Discovery under a leaden sky. Within a few days Scott was worrying about the perennial problem of running out of food if they were delayed. He had been feeling guilty for some time that he was eating the same rations as Lashly and Evans, though considerably lighter, but knew that he could not help himself. He was also still worrying about how to find the way. The optimism of his companions became even more necessary to him – he noted that they could always find something to joke about. ‘Taff’ Evans was known for his fund of anecdotes and picturesque curses such as ‘May the Curse of the Seven Blind Witches of Egypt be upon you!’

  Of course, their mutual affection for the navy provided an inexhaustible topic of conversation – ‘In the evenings we have long arguments about naval matters, and generally agree that we could rule that Service a great deal better than any Board of Admiralty.’ The other dominant topic was food. Edgar Evans rhapsodized about pork while Lashly talked of vegetables and apples and Scott of Devonshire cream. Despite the discomforts and the dangers it was an example of true comradeship. Discipline, respect and obedience remained but at the end of a hard day’s sledging they could laugh and all squeeze companionably into their three-man sleeping bag. Scott always used ‘we’ in his writings about this journey in tribute to the remarkable team spirit.

  The conditions remained atrocious. A sharp wind bit at them and the surface was so heavy they felt as if they were dragging the sledge through sand. They could only manage a mile an hour and it was back-breaking work for men who were increasingly hungry and plagued by frostbite. Evans was suffering particularly badly with his nose. Scott discovered they were short of fuel oil partly due to seepage – a problem that he failed to investigate fully and discover the cause of and which he would face again on his Polar journey with far more serious consequences – and so increased their daily marching time. On 10 December Evans’s sharp eyes espied land beyond the edge of the plateau, but the question now was how to find their way back down. Could they identify the Ferrar Glacier up which they had toiled from the many which flowed down from the plateau? The mountain tops which would have given them a clue were shrouded in mist. By his own admission Scott was travelling ‘by rule of thumb’. Slowly, carefully, they began to descend trusting to luck, as Scott often seemed to do, as much as to their own sense of direction.

  14 December brought them close to disaster. Manoeuvring the sledge around hummocks of ice and across evil-looking crevasses, they emerged onto a smooth slope. Scott was guiding the sledge in front, with Evans and Lashly holding it at the rear
when Lashly lost his footing. In an instant he went hurtling down on his back. Evans was similarly thrown off his feet and before Scott realized what was happening the two men and the sledge had shot past him. Scott braced himself to stop them but might just as well have tried to stop an express train. Whipped off his legs he joined the mad career. He described ‘a sort of vague wonder as to what would happen next’ and then became aware that they had stopped sliding smoothly and were now bouncing over a much rougher surface. He was sure they were going to break their arms and legs when suddenly they flew right up into the air and landed with an almighty thump on a patch of hard snow. They were badly bruised and shaken but to their great surprise no one was seriously injured. Looking upwards they saw that they had tumbled some 300 feet down one of the ice cascades of the very glacier they had been searching for. In the distance was the comforting sight of the smoke-capped summit of Mount Erebus. This was either luck again or else their improvised methods of navigating had been remarkably successful.

  However, the danger was not over yet. Further down the glacier both Scott and Evans suddenly fell the full length of their harness down a crevasse with walls of icy blue. Lashly was left on the top with the task of trying to rescue his companions while preventing the sledge, precariously balanced over the abyss, from following them. Slowly and carefully he secured the sledge with two skis over the crevasse. Meanwhile Scott removed his goggles and by dint of swinging backwards and forwards in his harness managed to find a spur of ice to stand on. He then helped Evans, who had responded to his call ‘in his usual calm, matter-of-fact tones’, to manoeuvre into a similar position. At least they were no longer dangling over the chasm but they were some twelve feet beneath the surface. The cold from the surrounding ice was intense, numbing their faces and fingers. While Lashly held grimly on to the sledge Scott struggled up out of the abyss to be greeted by a heartfelt ‘Thank God!’ from Lashly. Then he and Lashly helped Evans scramble to the surface.

  The loquacious Welshman was rather lost for words. As Scott described: ‘For a minute or two we could only look at one another, then Evans said, “Well I’m blowed”; it was the first sign of astonishment he had shown.’ Later that day at their camp he kept referring to their narrow squeak. ‘With his sock half on he would . . . say suddenly, “Well, sir, but what about that snow bridge?” or if so-and-so hadn’t happened “where should we be now?” and then the soliloquy would end with “My word, but it was a close call!”’ Scott found it touching and amusing. He was also more than ever convinced that he had chosen the right sledging companions. They had shown neither fear nor panic but had acted coolly. That night as Evans continued to shake his head in amazement Lashly sang a cheerful ditty over the cooking pot. Events had also shown Scott the utter unpredictability of Antarctic travel. All the planning in the world could not protect a sledging team from tumbling into a crevasse or down a glacier. He and his companions had been very lucky to survive. Scott’s belief in fate was reinforced.

  Arriving back at the Discovery on Christmas Eve Scott was disappointed to find her still fast in the ice. However, he now gave his time to writing up the achievements of the western journey. He calculated that they had averaged nearly fourteen and a half miles a day during their fifty-nine-day journey, sledging some 700 miles. This confirmed Scott’s view that men were better than dogs. The distances compared well with the agonizingly slow progress made on the journey south when the average was only around ten miles a day. Scott was also able to record a number of important geological discoveries arising from his journey, including one of the glacier’s tributaries where they found a deep moraine of mud that struck the vegetable-loving Lashly as ‘a splendid place for growing spuds’ and a steep dry valley, one of the three forming the McMurdo oasis, the largest ice-free area in Antarctica.

  During his absence a number of other trips had gone well. Scott knew that the expedition would be returning to England with some useful scientific information under its belt. Royds, Bernacchi and a party had sledged for thirty-one days south-east over the Barrier proving that it continued level and Bernacchi had made a number of observations yielding useful data about the region’s magnetic conditions. He also left a more down-to-earth account of sledging, describing some of the problems not addressed in Scott’s loftier and more dignified accounts. In particular he described ‘one of the nightmares of sledging in Antarctica’ – going to the loo in sub-zero temperatures. Explaining that there was no room for facilities in the tiny tents, that latrines took too long to dig and that temporary shelters were an impossibility in the whirling snow, he described how:

  Feeling like a ham in a sack, you go through various preparatory antics of loosening garments – preferably within the tent, and prowl around some distance away facing always the biting wind, and watchfully awaiting a temporary lull. The rest is a matter of speed and dexterity, but invariably the nether garments are filled instantly with masses of surface-drifting snow, which you must take along with you and suffer the discomforts of extreme wetness for hours.

  Later less inhibited explorers have also commented that few Polar travellers avoid piles, the agony of which can all too easily be imagined in a rushed evacuation.

  Mulock, who had joined the Discovery from the Morning in place of Shackleton, had fixed the position and heights of over 200 mountains. Armitage, Wilson and Heald had surveyed the Koettlitz Glacier to the south-west. Armitage had wanted to sledge south but Scott, after consulting Wilson, had ruled that there was no point going over old ground. It would be more productive to explore somewhere new. A reasonable proposition, but Armitage interpreted it as Scott’s desire to keep the record for farthest south for himself. Wilson had been able to make another visit to the emperor penguin rookery at Cape Crozier, and had solved the mystery of how the young birds, still downy and unable to swim, were able to leave the Cape. He had watched them float serenely out to sea with their parents on the ice floes.

  However, all the parties were now safely back on board the Discovery in relative warmth and security. Lashly and Evans were tucking into some fine dishes created by Ford, who had taken over as cook and took his inspiration from a copy of Mrs Beeton, and were fast regaining their strength and lost weight. Indeed Scott observed that Evans was assuming gigantic proportions. He himself was suffering from his recurring problem of dyspepsia, perhaps stress-related, and could not indulge quite so freely. His condition was not helped by worry over whether the Discovery could be freed from the ice in time to sail from McMurdo Sound when the relief vessel joined them. Psychologically and emotionally the Discovery meant a great deal to Scott. She was the symbol of everything that had been achieved during their stay in Antarctica and she had been their home and their refuge. She was also his first independent command and abandoning her would be very difficult for him.

  By early January twenty miles of solid ice still separated the Discovery from the open sea. The sawing camp which Armitage had set up on Scott’s orders to try and cut a channel was achieving little and Scott ordered the work to stop. He faced a real possibility of yet another winter in McMurdo Sound and ordered his men to lay in a stock of penguin meat. Meanwhile he and Wilson made a journey northwards. Scott was watching for signs that the ice was breaking up. Wilson was studying penguins. They enjoyed a relaxed couple of days breakfasting off fried penguin liver and seal kidneys and resting and chatting in their tent. Then Scott looked out and saw the relief ship Morning barely three miles out to sea. And she was not alone. ‘Lo and behold, there before us lay a second ship . . .’ This was the whaler Terra Nova. Scott and Wilson were looking at the ship that would take them back to Antarctica for their race to the Pole.

  For the moment Scott’s chief concern was to understand what was going on. ‘Sun scorched, unwashed, unshaven and in rags’,3 Wilson and Scott hurried on board the Morning to learn that, because of the wranglings of the two societies, the government had felt obliged to undertake the relief of the Discovery itself. The Admiralty had accordingly despatch
ed the Morning and the Terra Nova, considered a more powerful ship. Shackleton, by then fit and well again, had been asked to go as chief officer of the Terra Nova but had, perhaps wisely, refused. The orders brought for Scott were unequivocal. If the Discovery could not be freed in time to leave with the relief ships she must be abandoned.

  Scott was deeply upset at being put in ‘a very cruel position’ and his men shared his sentiments, greeting the Admiralty’s orders with a ‘stony silence’. However, he had to obey. There seemed a real prospect that the ice would not break up in time and so he began to arrange the transfer of equipment from the Discovery across the ice to the relief ships. He had not abandoned all hope and ordered the ice to be blasted at various strategic points but this had only limited success. If the ice broke up it would be of its own volition and at last this began to happen. By 12 February there was only two and a half miles of solid ice between the Discovery and freedom. Would it break up in time?

  14 February brought what might have seemed to a religious man to be a miracle but to the agnostic, fatalistic Scott may have seemed the smile of fortune. A combination of sea swell and firing charges finally broke open the way. Captain Colbeck of the Morning left an astute description of Scott’s joy: ‘Scott was terribly excited. He came on board as soon as I got alongside the ice face and could scarcely speak. It meant all the difference of complete and comparative success to him and there was not a happier man living than Scott on that night.’4 The news had been broken on the Discovery by a shout of ‘The ships are coming, Sir!’ during dinner. In a moment the men were racing for Hut Point from where they could see the ice breaking up. Scott described how no sooner was one great floe borne away when a dark streak cut its way into the solid sheet which remained and carved out another: ‘Our small community in their nondescript, tattered garments stood breathlessly watching this wonderful scene. For long intervals we remained almost spellbound, and then a burst of frenzied cheering broke out . . .’ The Terra Nova and the Morning raced for the distinction of being the first to reach the Discovery and at about half past ten the Terra Nova broke through amid scenes of huge excitement. The men on Hut Point ran up their silken Union Jack in celebration.