A First Rate Tragedy (39 page)

All these expeditions avoided the mutinies which beset some 19th century Arctic expeditions, particularly the American expeditions of Charles Hall in the early 1870s and Major Adolphus Greely, who led an American Army expedition in the early 1880s. There are strong grounds for believing Hall was murdered by an expedition member. He died from a violent sudden illness just after drinking a warming cup of coffee on returning from a sledging expedition. When his body was disinterred in 1968, tests showed that Hall had ingested arsenic just before he died. His expedition had suffered disunity before his death and there were more violent arguments and outright mutiny against his second-in-command after it. Greely’s expedition got into difficulties and morale plummeted so far that he felt compelled to court-martial and execute one of his men for pilfering. When survivors were eventually rescued, concealed evidence of cannibalism was found on the bodies of some expedition members who had died.

The morale of the
Terra Nova
expedition can also be compared with more modern expeditions. Roger Mear and Robert Swan’s account of a journey ‘in the footsteps of Scott’ in the mid 1980s refers frequently to antagonism and intolerance and stress within the party. They found it all too easy to understand the pressures:

Imagine the frustration when, returning from the Pole, short of food and time, Scott’s party hauled their single sledge across the snows of the Polar Plateau. First,
Bowers has to stop and pull up a sock that is causing trouble, then, ten minutes later, Wilson needs to pee, and Scott who is steering their course has to halt repeatedly to check their bearing, and each time their progress is delayed. Imagine the brewing suspicions that the others are not pulling as hard as they might.
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Ranulph Fiennes’s account of leading the Transglobe expedition – the first Pole to Pole circumnavigation of the world – is equally frank:

Human beings are not ideally designed for getting on with each other – especially in close quarters . . . On many expeditions there is no way out, no means of transport, so a situation of forced togetherness exists that breeds dissension and often hatred between individuals or groups.
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On the
Discovery
expedition even the mild Edward Wilson noted in his diary that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’.
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Fiennes confessed to feeling ‘positive hatred’ towards members of his team for some petty and irrational reason and to being hurt at the critical comments made about his leadership in a colleague’s diaries. Thor Heyerdahl pinpointed some of the same problems:

The most insidious danger on any expedition where men have to rub shoulders for weeks is a mental sickness which might be called ‘expedition fever’ – a psychological condition which makes even the most peaceful person irritable, angry, furious, absolutely desperate . . . until he sees only his companions’ faults . . .’
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At a more mundane level, even those of us who have spent a wet weekend hiking and camping in a small tent with our nearest and dearest can appreciate how quickly tensions and exasperations can mount, leading to things being said that were better left unspoken.

Fiennes also gives an interesting sidelight on charges that Scott failed to consult, commenting that he himself steered clear of asking advice or seeking suggestions with one of his groups because ‘to do otherwise mostly encouraged them to offer further advice when it wasn’t wanted’.
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Scott had to be a leader; neither the navy nor a Polar expedition can be run as a democracy. Against this background, Scott’s leadership of the
Terra Nova
expedition and the general harmony look remarkable.

Yet though the
Terra Nova
expedition was a comradely one, it was, as Scott himself claimed, not particularly fortunate, even leaving aside the question of the weather. Constant worries about funding the expedition distracted him throughout the planning phase and dogged him even in Antarctica. Instead of being free to work on the detailed arrangements Scott was unfortunate that he had to concentrate on fund-raising and seeking sponsorship – time which would have been better spent evaluating sledging clothing and equipment, training and studying cold weather technique, all things Scott has been criticized for failing to do thoroughly enough. Scott was also unlucky in being unable to obtain the
Discovery
for the expedition. She was a quicker, more fuel-efficient vessel than the
Terra Nova
and might have helped him reach Antarctica more quickly. Amundsen in the
Fram
took ten weeks less to reach Antarctica, albeit with fewer ports of call. The
Terra Nova
was twenty-two days behind her own schedule for reaching Cape Town. The problem was compounded because Scott encountered the pack ice much farther north than he had anticipated. Consequently, the journey through the pack took
twenty days compared with four on the
Discovery
. His late arrival significantly delayed the depot-laying journey. Had it started earlier, One Ton Depot might have been laid farther south.

However, perhaps the crowning piece of bad luck, at least from a psychological point of view, was Amundsen’s intervention and the manner in which he made it. From the moment Scott heard the news that the Norwegian was going south he was under pressure. How should he react? According to his lights his rival had acted in a sly, ungentlemanly way. Should he alter his plans? What if Amundsen’s approach proved superior? What would the world say of him if he were beaten by Amundsen? His hopes of fame and honours seemed suddenly to rest on slender foundations. The discovery of Amundsen in the Bay of Whales must have destroyed Scott’s peace of mind in the months before the Polar party set out, whatever brave front he may have assumed. And then there was the horrible discovery at the Pole. Scott was not exaggerating when he wrote that ‘the worst had happened’. Exhausted, malnourished and facing a gruelling return journey, the disappointment must have been tremendous. After all those years of struggle and effort there was only the dubious consolation prize of being first back with the news.

It was a devastating blow to Scott personally. He would not return a conquering hero to the wife whom he regarded with such awe and who had encouraged him to go south. As he wrote in his last letter to her: ‘. . . you urged me to be leader . . . I have taken my place throughout, haven’t I?’ Oates had astutely commented much earlier: ‘If [Amundsen] gets to the Pole first we shall come home with our tails between our legs and no mistake. I must say we made far too much noise about ourselves, all that photographing, cheering, steaming through the fleet etc.’
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As Scott trudged northwards again such thoughts must have taken their physical and mental toll. He was by his own admission given
to introspection and depression. He probably also suffered from stress, hence the attacks of dyspepsia on the
Discovery
expedition and at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier which made him fear he could not go to the Pole. These characteristics probably became more pronounced on the retreat from the Pole. His diaries show how he gamely tried to take solace from the cheerfulness of Bowers and Wilson but hint at a terrible heaviness of heart.

Edgar Evans was also bitterly disappointed. Devoted to Scott since
Discovery
days, the failure at the Pole may have shaken his confidence in his captain and thus weakened his mental resistance to his physical collapse. Of course this physical weakening in turn played a part in the disaster. Not only was it unnerving to see the big Welshman decline to a state of helplessness, but it also delayed the others. There is honest relief in Scott’s diary about the natural death of Evans. Some suggest that Evans would have been under stress as the only member of the lower deck in a party of officers. However, against this is that Evans knew Scott well – he had shared a sleeping bag with him on the
Discovery
expedition and had been able to persuade Scott not to banish him from the
Terra Nova
expedition because of his drinking bout in New Zealand. He was also noted in several diaries for his general affability and the easy way he mixed with scientists and officers at Cape Evans. What did have a bearing, however, was that perhaps out of loyalty to Scott and ambition to go to the Pole, Evans did not disclose how badly he had injured his hand while adjusting the sledges.

The personalities of the other members of the Polar party also contributed. Captain Oates personified the laconic Edwardian officer. He would probably have been relieved to have been asked to return with the Last Supporting Party. His war wound in his left leg was perhaps troubling him. He had already recorded problems with the tendons at the back of his other knee – the right – before
the choice of the final party was made. The unbalancing effect of his shortened left leg would have placed a heavy, distorting, strain on his right leg as well as his spine and pelvis after walking and skiing so many miles.

Oates did not share the others’ passionate devotion to Scott. If anything he, far more than Edgar Evans, was the odd man out – a military man from a different social stratum who had little to prove or to gain from being in the Polar party. However, he was conscious of the honour of his regiment and of the army and like others of his generation had a profound sense of duty. It would never have occurred to him to ask to return with either Atkinson or Evans. Nevertheless, his sense of duty was unfortunate. Had he disclosed his weakening, he would not have gone to the Pole. Oates’s collapse, like Evans’s, significantly delayed his comrades. Unfortunately Wilson, who had not been a practising doctor since the
Discovery
expedition, did not spot the problems with Oates or Evans. Had he given his colleagues even a rudimentary medical at the turning-back point, despite the cold, he might have discovered the seriousness of Evans’s wounded hand and Oates’s foot, perhaps, in turn, influencing Scott’s choice of the Polar party. Scott had made his own views on those who concealed medical problems clear in an excised diary entry when Atkinson failed to report his injured foot during the depot journey: ‘He might have wrecked it. Surely, small consideration ought to suggest to anyone that they risk others’ lives beside their own in concealing ailments in this way’.
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As already discussed in an earlier chapter, Scott’s chances of survival might have been appreciably better had he taken Lashly and/or Crean in place of Edgar Evans and Oates.

Wilson’s and Bowers’s physical and mental stamina and devotion to Scott were a counterbalance to the decline of Evans and Oates and a source of strength to Scott. However, Wilson and
Bowers were perhaps too loyal and unquestioning towards their leader. Bowers had earlier written: ‘I am Captain Scott’s man and I shall stick to him right through.’ They seldom, if ever, challenged his spur of the moment and sometimes illogical decisions or probed his indecision. Paradoxically, this may have put an additional onus on Scott as leader, contributing to his isolation and feelings of guilt and responsibility. Their loyalty also made it difficult for them to leave him at the end and try to break through to One Ton Depot. Bowers and – to a lesser extent – Wilson were in better shape than Scott, crippled by frostbite, and might have pressed on. Bowers wrote in his last letter to his mother: ‘I am still strong and hope to reach [One Ton] depot.’

It is not clear from the diaries why they did not try to. No one will ever know what really happened in that cold green tent. The weather may simply have been too bad – though, according to Susan Solomon’s meteorological research, it is unlikely that the white-out persisted the whole time they lay in the tent.
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There is no evidence that Scott tried to dissuade them. Equally, there are no hints that Scott attempted to replicate the sacrifice of Captain Oates to make the decision easier for them. Even if he had they would probably not have allowed it. Whatever options they may have discussed, they may have chosen to lie down beside their leader and wait for death. Of course, as well as being deeply loyal to Scott, both Wilson and Bowers were deeply religious and inclined to see God’s hand in everything. This gave them a calm acceptance of their fate and both met death serenely. Not so Scott, who appeared to have struggled in his dying moments, perhaps trying to free himself from his sleeping bag to allow the cold to hasten his end. If, as often said, he was the last to die, it must have been truly dreadful for a sensitive agnostic such as him to lie waiting for death by the bodies of his companions.

What were the physical causes of the deaths of the Polar party? The most likely explanation for Edgar Evans’s collapse was that starvation aggravated by scurvy weakened his blood vessels and that the blow to his head when he fell down a crevasse triggered a brain haemorrhage. At the end he was probably also suffering from hypothermia – staggering and fainting are recognized symptoms of exposure.
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An alternative thesis is that his death resulted from cerebral oedema and other effects of dehydration at high altitude, which a descent to lower levels had not improved.
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A third but less likely theory is that he contracted anthrax from contact with the ponies or their equipment or from spores on the leather and skins with which he worked to make the sleeping bags.
³³

Captain Oates was the victim of severe frostbite in his foot. The pain must have been intolerable and his ability to march severely restricted, hence the decision to walk out into the snow and seek death. The frostbite was probably exacerbated by problems with his circulation caused by his old war wound, which may itself have been reopened by incipient scurvy. Scott, Wilson and Bowers died of starvation and exposure. The food and fuel simply ran out.