1912 (44 page)

If Wilson's diary entry for the 24 February was partially rubbed out, the most likely candidate is his widow. Oriana Wilson is known to have destroyed some of her husband's correspondence and, given the record of the conversation with Lord Curzon, she probably always intended to remove the
offending statements. But Wilson's and Lashly's diaries were not the only expedition accounts altered.

For some years it has been well known that a number of changes were made to Scott's diary before it was published in 1913. Temperature readings were sometimes altered, derogatory comments about individuals removed. The latter is easy to understand. But some of Scott's text from the final part of the journey was also changed, seemingly to make the ending more dramatic—as if it was not dramatic enough already.

On 17 January, Wilson wrote at Polheim, ‘we start for home and shall do our utmost to get back in time to send the news home.' Curiously, in Scott's published diary there was a similar statement but it was altered, completely changing the meaning. Here the entry read, ‘Now for the run home and a desperate struggle. I wonder if we can do it,' implying Scott was not sure he would be able to get his team home. Although the reader would have known the ending before they began the book, this published version is odd: if Scott thought they might die, he would not have wasted the best part of a day fossicking for geological samples at Buckley Island.

The actual passage for 17 January reads: ‘Now for the run home and a desperate struggle
to get the news through first
. I wonder if we can do it.' (The emphasis is mine.) The edited version gives a completely different view of Scott's thoughts and, unfortunately, continues to misguide people. Yet you still see the edited version trotted out, time and again.

What both Wilson and Scott were saying is: we need to get back to base before the
Terra Nova
leaves, so we can tell the world we reached the pole; in the meantime we are staying in Antarctica to continue the scientific work. For the two men the pole was the means to an end: it was the science that mattered. Communicating their success was essential to attracting the precious funding that would support their research efforts.

It is a shame that the complete, correct text in the sledging diaries is not better known. The nature of the British explorers' deaths and the editing of their final words has for too long created a fixation on the ‘race', rather than the bigger story of how the five expeditions of the era worked towards understanding what made Antarctica tick.

By focusing on the race we do these men a disservice. Scott and his men died for science. I hope that, after a century, we can get the balance right and remember the pioneering work they did. It was all about the science—and it is time we remembered them for that.

Give me ex-Antarcticists, unsoured and with their ideals intact: they could sweep the world.

A
PSLEY
C
HERRY
-G
ARRARD
(1886–1959)

With all the celebrations and mourning over the heroics and losses of 1912, the public lost sight of the huge increase in Antarctic knowledge attained. And yet the stories from this time continue to be re-evaluated, and to inspire. Even though we have never been more familiar with this frigid environment, Antarctica remains exciting, otherworldly. If you are fortunate enough to visit it, the vastness, the sense of scale, the brightness, the merging vista of ice and sky, the silence: they are all a blitz on the senses that cannot be experienced anywhere else. For some people, this sparks a need to beat records made by great past explorers and adventurers; for others, to spend long periods at the bottom end of the world, away from families and friends, making scientific measurements to better understand our planet.

The Antarctic continues to offer scientific insights. Mawson's work from one hundred years ago shows the Southern Ocean is warming at an ever-increasing rate; Filchner's observations
demonstrate that the glaciers on South Georgia have spectacularly retreated; and Scott's collections are providing valuable insights into the changing biology and carbon cycle of the Antarctic. Some of these samples have even forced change in global regulations. Penguin skins collected during the torturous Cape Crozier trip by Wilson, Bowers and Cherry in 1911 showed beyond doubt that by the 1960s the pesticide DDT had even reached as pristine an environment as the Antarctic, leading to a worldwide ban.

Even the endpoint of the so-called race, the South Geographic Pole, long derided as having no scientific value, now has one: the permanent American Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station hosts IceCube, a multimillion-dollar research project funded by the US, Sweden and Germany to investigate the nature of matter itself. A cubic kilometre of ice holds one of the largest instruments in the world, made up of more than five thousand detectors, spread across eighty-six holes drilled down nearly 2.5 kilometres. The South Geographic Pole is an ideal location for trying to detect elusive particles known as neutrinos. Electrically negative, with little mass, neutrinos are one of the building blocks of atoms, created by the sun and supernovae. Most travel through the Earth unimpeded, without any of us even being aware of them. Occasionally, however, they interact with the matter they pass through. Because of its location and the purity of ice, IceCube can detect when a neutrino strikes a water molecule by the small pulse of blue light created. From this, scientists can identify the direction from which the neutrinos came and how much energy they contain, giving insights into their origin in the universe. Only a large detector is capable of picking up these incredibly rare events. The explorers of 1912 would have been impressed.

More importantly, 1912 tells us something special about scientific exploration: how it was funded, undertaken and
communicated so effectively a century ago. I am not sure we manage this so well now. The distinction between science and exploration did not exist then as it does today. When you explored in 1912, you undertook science; the activities were essentially synonymous. And it excited the public. With the latest technology rolled out to help conquer new land came a groundswell of interest.

In 1912 people made history happen when governments were not keen to fully fund an Antarctic venture. Anyone could help their favourite explorer out with a little contribution; small companies, as sponsors, could get their products in the pages of newspapers whether or not an expedition was successful; business people could have a new discovery in Antarctica named after them, buying a slice of immortality. It was an amazing time in which the radical suddenly seemed possible.

It was, too, the dawn of the modern science documentary. All the expeditions of 1912 took film with them, and only the whereabouts of the German movie is unknown. The other expeditions embraced film as a new way of communicating the spoils of their discoveries to an eager public.

Books and newspaper reports also helped. As early as 1830 the founding members of the new Royal Geographic Society recognised that ‘a vast store of geographic information existed in Great Britain, yet it is so scattered and dispersed, either in large books that are not generally accessible, or in the bureaus of the public departments, or in the possession of private individuals, as to be nearly unavailable to the public.' The new society, and its journal, meant new ideas were accessible to anyone with a passing interest in the subject. Newspaper barons' money helped get projects started and guaranteed full news coverage, almost instantly. Even if you were not backed by one of the main players in the industry, an expedition south could garner front-page coverage and help raise funds.

When expedition parties returned home, their stories were written and the books published almost immediately, with science incorporated in the tales. Only later were formal scientific reports written up. The money for exploration depended on capturing the public mood, and speed of delivery was everything. The public craved rattling tales, which meant the authors would sometimes step outside their comfort zones. Cherry wrote tellingly after his return: ‘When I went South, I never meant to write a book: I rather despised those who did so as being of an inferior brand to those who did things and said nothing about them.' But the expedition changed his mind: ‘every one who has been through such an extraordinary experience has much to say and ought to say it.' Even Mawson, a scientist first and foremost, started work on
The Home of the Blizzard
during his enforced winter stay in the south. These early books provided the masses with great entertainment, combining tragedy, excitement, discovery and comradeship.

Returning a hero, however, was sometimes as hazardous as being on the ice. Tales of crew members being mobbed and trophies being taken from expedition vessels were common. Sometimes samples were requested and, if not made available, carried off. As Shackleton's
Nimrod
expedition made its way back, some entrepreneurial sailors decided to collect rocks from the New Zealand shore and sell them as Antarctic souvenirs, making tens of pounds a week from sales.

For the expedition leaders, there never seemed to be enough money. As Thomas Huxley put it, ‘Science in England does everything—but pay. You may earn praise but not pudding.' So much depended on success, and often pre-expedition hyperbole was needed to enthuse the public.

Not everyone liked the way expeditions were pitched, though. Mawson's second-in-command, Davis, commented: ‘Recent expeditions have had to beg for funds. Really useful
work has too often been sacrificed to the purely spectacular. The explorer, who is handicapped by debt, may be tempted to stimulate the public with sensational feats: the temptation is difficult to resist—or justify. To the explorer who has not the money to provide good equipment of every kind, my advice is “Keep out of the Antarctic!”'

Amundsen was of a similar mind, declaring in
The South Pole
that previous claimants of geographical quests were often guilty of ‘romancing rather too bare-facedly'. But we should remember that Heinemann withdrew an offer to publish the Norwegian's book over fears about his ability to communicate the excitement of what he had achieved. No matter how high-minded you wanted to be, spinning a yarn was essential in plugging an idea.

Over time scientific funding was centralised and the public lost sight of what was happening. Governments required outputs, boxes had to be ticked, and communication switched to telling other scientists the results—the story is the same in so many professions. Narratives describing the excitement of scientific exploration became the exception rather than the norm.

Edgeworth David was on to something when he joined Shackleton in 1907: science can compete with sport when working in extreme environments. As David wrote in 1904, ‘Has she [science] not taught men to be fearless in the pursuit of truth—taught them to sacrifice all for the truth?' Although there was little scientific value at the time in making an attempt on the South Geographic Pole, the public loved the thought of the challenge. They wanted to take part as much as possible, supporting the different expeditions in many different ways.

At the time of David's London lecture in 1914 Shackleton was working towards his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, and he made a perceptive point:

A lot of people say ‘Don't go and do spectacular things,' but deep down in the hearts of everyone who goes to the South Pole is the desire to do something which is of interest to their country. When I went out before we intended to reach the South Pole. We didn't do it. Every expedition that has gone out has done so in order to get as near the South Pole as possible. The last thing to be done in the Antarctic is try and cross the continent. This may not be actually scientific. There is sentiment attached to it. Sentiment has been the ruling force in every great work that has ever been done, and I shall be sorry when the day comes when science is divorced from sentiment or sentiment from science.

It was this philosophy—this ability to see science, adventure and communication as one—that drew people to Shackleton's projects.

I fear we've since taken a wrong turn. The scientific work continues to be done, but we don't tell the story in the same way anymore. Scientists have to explain their work to the public; to inspire, to enthuse; to demonstrate the relevance of what they do. In a time of austerity, it is no longer good enough to take public money, keep busy and hide out of sight. The important thing we can learn from 1912 is that scientific work should get the public excited. I don't believe the public has lost interest, but as a scientist I do wonder whether we could do better. Scientists largely communicate with one another through journals few people can afford or understand. As research has become more focused, the language has become more obscure. Research articles are often so specialised that only those in the immediate field can understand what they are about. I believe we can learn
from 1912, and try a different approach to reawaken the public passion for scientific discovery and exploration.