A First Rate Tragedy (35 page)

Out on the Barrier Oates’s crisis was approaching. On 10 March he ‘asked Wilson if he had a chance this morning, and of course Bill had to say he didn’t know. In point of fact he has none,’ Scott wrote, staring reality in the face. ‘Apart from him, if he went under now, I doubt whether we could get through.’ The next day Scott wrote:

Titus Oates is very near the end, one feels. What we or he will do, God only knows. We discussed the matter after breakfast; he is a brave fine fellow and
understands the situation, but he practically asked for advice. Nothing could be said but to urge him to march as long as he could. One satisfactory result to the discussion; I practically ordered Wilson to hand over the means of ending our troubles to us . . . We have 30 opium tabloids apiece and he is left with a tube of morphine. So far the tragical side of our story.

What bleak thoughts were now playing across their minds? They would have agreed with Cherry-Garrard that: ‘Practically any man who undertakes big Polar journeys must face the possibility of having to commit suicide to save his companions.’
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On the Winter Journey even the indomitable Bowers had ‘had a scheme of doing himself in with a pick-axe if necessity arose, though how he could have accomplished it I don’t know: or, as he said, there might be a crevasse and at any rate there was the medical case.’
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However, Scott had not abandoned hope and was still making frantic calculations. They had seven days’ food left and were about fifty-five miles from One Ton Camp. Averaging about six miles a day, the limit of their endurance, they would be just thirteen miles short of the depot when their food ran out. Could they get through?

On 12 March they managed a further few miles at terrible cost. ‘The surface remains awful, the cold intense, and our physical condition running down. God help us!’ They awoke the next day to a strong northerly wind and a temperature of -37° which they simply could not face. They stayed in camp till afternoon when they managed just over five miles. The next day brought even lower temperatures of -43° at midday. Wilson was so horribly cold he could not even take off his skis for some time and ‘poor
Oates got it again in the foot’. Scott wrote, ‘It must be near the end, but a pretty merciful end.’ Under the pressure of ‘tragedy all along the line’ Scott was now beginning to lose track of dates and, instead of writing his diary at lunchtime and again at night, was simply making notes at midday. That he kept writing at all is remarkable.

On 16 or 17 March Oates decided he could go on no longer and asked to be left in his sleeping bag. Wilson had been reading Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’ earlier on the journey. It contained lines which could have been written for the broken cavalry officer: ‘This year I slept and woke with pain, I almost wished no more to wake.’ His comrades persuaded him to continue and he hobbled gamely on but at night his condition was so bad it was clear he could go no further. Scott recorded his end:

Should this be found I want these facts recorded. Oates’s last thoughts were of his Mother, but immediately before he took pride in thinking that his regiment would be pleased with the bold way in which he met his death. We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint . . . He did not – would not – give up hope to the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning – yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since . . . We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman. We all hope to meet
the end with a similar spirit, and assuredly the end is not far.

March 17 was Oates’s birthday. He was thirty-two.

The forlorn trio marched onward. They had jettisoned their theodolite, Oates’s sleeping bag and a camera, but were still dragging their geological specimens ‘at Wilson’s special request’.
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Bowers was now the fittest. Both he and Wilson continued to talk of winning through but, Scott wondered, could they really believe it? They were all suffering frostbitten feet and Scott’s right foot was so bad that amputation was the least he could fear. However, this seemed increasingly academic – he had begun to write his farewell letters.

By 19 March they were only eleven miles from One Ton Camp but the next day a severe blizzard descended. It was decided that Wilson and Bowers would try to battle through to the depot to fetch fuel, but Wilson’s letter to Oriana suggests it was a forlorn hope: ‘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 . . . I shall simply fall and go to sleep in the snow . . . Don’t be unhappy – all is for the best.’
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Bowers’s last letter to his mother is in similar vein: ‘God alone knows what will be the outcome of the 22 miles march we have to make but my trust is still in Him and in the abounding Grace of my Lord . . . There will be no shame however and you will know that I have struggled to the end . . . you will know that for me the end was peaceful as it is only sleep in the cold.’ It was his firm belief that ‘nothing that happens to our bodies really matters’. A sad little postscript added, ‘My gear that is not on the ship is at Mrs. Hatfield’s, Marine Hotel, Sumner, New Zealand.’
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However, malign fate again took a hand. The blizzard was too
thick for any such attempt and their plan changed. They decided they would all march for the depot when the blizzard lifted and die in their tracks if necessary. Yet even this was denied them. The blizzard seems to have continued to blow and their lives ebbed away with it. Perhaps, as he lay there, Scott reflected on the ill luck during the depot journey and his sensitivity to the ponies’ suffering, which had resulted in One Ton Depot being laid thirty miles further north than he had originally intended. Perhaps he still hoped against hope to hear the yapping of dog teams loping through the snowstorm to their rescue. Yet in his heart he must have known it was the end.

He completed his letters. In his message to Oriana Wilson he paid tribute to Bill and also revealed his sense of guilt: ‘I should like you to know how splendid he was at the end – everlastingly cheerful and ready to sacrifice himself for others, never a word of blame to me for leading him into this mess.’ To Bowers’s mother he wrote of her son’s ‘dauntless spirit’ and that ‘he has remained cheerful, hopeful, and indomitable to the end’. He asked Barrie to help his own wife and child but also appealed for others: ‘Wilson leaves a widow, and Edgar Evans also a widow in humble circumstances. Do what you can to get their claims recognized.’ He also wrote to a number of those involved with the expedition including the treasurer Sir Edgar Speyer and his agent Mr Kinsey. His ‘Message to the Public’ justified the decisions he had taken, aware that in death, as in life, there would be those to criticize him. He did not write directly to Markham, telling Kathleen: ‘I haven’t time to write to Sir Clements, tell him I thought much of him, and never regretted his putting me in command of the
Discovery
.’

Of course, Scott’s deepest thoughts and feelings were reserved for his ‘dear, dear’ mother and for Kathleen. As he confessed to Hannah Scott: ‘For myself I am not unhappy, but for Kathleen,
you and the rest of the family my heart is very sore.’ In a letter addressed ‘To my Widow’ he wrote: ‘What lots and lots I could tell you of this journey. How much better has it been than lounging in too great comfort at home. What tales you would have for the boy. But what a price to pay.’ Inspired perhaps by the faith of his two companions he urged Kathleen to try and make their son believe in a God because ‘it is comforting’. He also told her to guard their son against indolence. In his dying hours perhaps he thought back to his own boyhood, to the little daydreamer they had called ‘Old Mooney’ and to the hardship caused by his father’s fecklessness. He urged Kathleen to ‘make the boy interested in natural history’ and encouraged her to remarry: ‘When the right man comes to help you in life you ought to be your happy self again – I wasn’t a very good husband but I hope I shall be a good memory.’ In fact as he lay dying Kathleen was giving a party in London, hoping hourly for news of him. Her brother Rosslyn was there and saw the strain she was under but he also noted that ‘a new beam of courage has grown into her face’.
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On 29 March, believed to be the day of his death but by no means certain, Scott made one last entry in his diary, recounting the bitter frustration of their final days as each morning they had prepared to march for ‘our depot
11 miles
away’ only to find that ‘outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift’. He was now looking death in the eye: ‘I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R. Scott.’ The diary ends with a raggedly written appeal: ‘For God’s sake look after our people.’ This has a bitter pathos. Ever since early adulthood Scott had carried the burden of responsibility for others, with all the concomitant feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Now he was leaving
mother, wife and child alone as well as the loved ones of those who had followed him unquestioningly to the Pole.

As they lay frozen and starving in their small tent out on the Barrier, Scott, Wilson and Bowers must have wondered whether the outside world would ever learn their fate – their tent was neatly pitched along the line of cairns between the depots but would soon be shrouded by drifting snow. In fact it would be eight months before their bodies would be discovered and their stricken comrades would find their letters and diaries and read Scott’s spirited ‘Message to the Public’: ‘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. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.’

17

‘We Have Got To Face It Now’

Meanwhile at McMurdo Sound the other members of the expedition watched and waited. The first supporting party consisting of Atkinson, Cherry-Garrard, Wright and Keohane reached Hut Point safely on 26 January though a ravenous Atkinson had so gorged himself on supplies at One Ton Depot that he was not at all well during the final leg of the journey. The first clue that all might not be well with the Polar party came about three weeks later. At 3.30 a.m. on 19 February the dogs began barking and an exhausted Crean staggered into Hut Point. He had walked thirty miles across crevassed ice to bring news that Teddy Evans was lying dangerously ill with scurvy near Corner Camp with Lashly to nurse him. It was pure chance that Atkinson and Dimitri happened to be there with the dog teams. Aghast at the news they hastily prepared to go to Evans’s aid but a thick blizzard descended within half an hour of Crean’s arrival and delayed their departure. In the afternoon they made a dash over the ice and Dimitri spotted the black cloth Lashly had fixed to the sledge to attract attention.

Evans, Lashly and Crean were, of course, the men of the
Last Supporting Party. They had bidden farewell to Scott and the Polar team on 4 January, less than 150 miles from the Pole, and had faced a return journey of nearly 700 miles. Like Scott, they had had an appalling time navigating down the Beardmore Glacier, which shook even the phlegmatic Lashly: ‘We have today experienced what none of us ever wants to be our lot again. I cannot describe the maze we got into and the hairbreadth escapes we have had to pass through today . . . The more we tried to get clear the worse the pressure got; at times it seemed almost impossible for us to get along, and when we had got over the places it was more than we could face to try and retreat.’ He wrote of fathomless pits and deep crevasses ‘where it was possible to drop the biggest ship afloat in and lose her’.
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Teddy Evans removed his goggles to help find the way and suffered agonies of snowblindness which left him unable to pull. He could only walk helplessly beside the sledge, hoping a poultice of used tea leaves would bring some relief. The strain took its toll. Evans felt despondent and guilty to have led his men into such a mess. He later wrote of his feelings at seeing silhouetted against the sun ‘two tiny disconsolate figures, one sitting, one standing’ patiently waiting for him to find a way out of the maze.

On 22 January they escaped the toils of the glacier but on this very day Evans began to display symptoms of scurvy, complaining of a stiffness behind the knees. Lashly guessed at once what it was: ‘Tonight I watched his gums, and I am convinced he is on the point of something anyhow . . . It seems we are in for more trouble now, but let’s hope for the best.’ However, the best did not happen. As the month drew on Evans began to suffer bowel problems. On 29 January Lashly was writing: ‘His legs are getting worse and we are quite certain he is suffering from scurvy, at least he is turning black and blue and several other colours as well.’
By early February Evans was in great pain. Unable to lift his legs, he had to be strapped on his skis. By the middle of the month he was passing blood and increasingly helpless. As well as his physical weakening he later admitted to some mental anguish: ‘The disappointment of not being included in the Polar party had not helped me much.’ Though he hid it from the men, his morale had suffered in much the same way as the Polar party’s had done on finding that Amundsen had beaten them. Bowers had written on 1 January: ‘Teddy was fearfully upset at not going to the Pole – he had set his heart on it so . . . I am sure it was for his wife’s sake he wanted to go.’

Evans fainted on the march: ‘Crean and Lashly picked me up, and Crean thought I was dead. His hot tears fell on my face, and as I came to I gave a weak kind of laugh.’ Their progress was becoming worryingly slow in the low temperatures and Lashly and Crean decided the only solution was to carry Evans on the sledge. They jettisoned everything but the essentials and laid him carefully on it. He asked them to leave him behind but as Lashly wrote: ‘this we could not think of’. By now Lashly was suffering from a frostbitten foot and Evans suggested he place it on his stomach to warm it up. Lashly reluctantly agreed and it worked. He paid tribute to their mutual care for each other in his diary: ‘I think we could go to any length of trouble to assist one another.’ He did not know of Evans’s later wry comment that: ‘there is something objectionable about a man’s frostbitten clammy foot thrust against one’s belly in the middle of the Great Ice Barrier with the thermometer at fifty below.’
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