A First Rate Tragedy (31 page)

This sudden outpouring was perhaps a sign that Oates was yearning for his former existence – the life in India, the pig-sticking and hunting and polo, the comforts of Gestingthorpe. Recreating it for others comforted him in this bleak spot.

On New Year’s Eve Scott had ordered Teddy Evans’s team to leave their skis at the depot, a strange decision on the face of it. As he himself acknowledged, it was far easier to pull on skis than to plod along. On New Year’s Day Scott was cheerful, observing that prospects seemed to be getting brighter and that there were only 170 miles to the Pole with plenty of food left. Perhaps he was also cheerful because he was about to take his final major decision on the way to the Pole. On 3 January he went to Teddy Evans’s tent. As he entered Crean was coughing. Scott said, ‘You’ve got a bad cold, Crean,’ to which the astute Irishman replied, ‘I understand a half-sung song, sir.’
⁵
Scott told them that he had decided that Teddy Evans’s team should return to Cape Evans. The news probably came as little surprise. Lashly and Teddy Evans had been manhauling the longest and Evans, at least, was worn out. But Scott then ordered everyone except Teddy out of the tent and dropped the real bombshell. He said that he wanted Bowers to join the Polar party and asked for Teddy Evans’s consent. Although it would leave him dangerously short-handed on his return journey, Evans had no option but to agree. Scott was clearly pleased with the outcome, writing in his diary: ‘Bowers is to come into our tent and we proceed as a five-man unit to-morrow. We have 5 1/2 units of food – practically over a month’s allowance for five people – it ought to see us through.’

Scott’s decision to take five men, not four, to the Pole has never been satisfactorily explained. Debenham believed that Scott wanted as many of his colleagues as possible to share his success, but that is unlikely to be the whole story. Neither are the reasons behind Scott’s choice of those particular companions clear, though Ponting made the interesting observation that Scott picked the four men with the most striking personalities. There seems little doubt that he always intended Wilson and Petty Officer Evans to be with him at the Pole. He had a deep personal regard for the doctor and derived great spiritual strength from him. He also had a special affection for the burly Welshman going back to the days of the
Discovery
, as well as a high opinion of his strength, endurance and resourcefulness. In
The Great White South
Ponting wrote: ‘Nobody ever doubted, all through the winter, that Petty Officer Evans would be one of the ones chosen for the Pole.’ There was also the presentational factor that the lower deck must be represented. However, Wilson appears to have had doubts about Evans’s reliability under stress. Before Atkinson had turned back, the two doctors had agreed that of all the seamen Lashly would be the best choice for the Pole. With hindsight Cherry-Garrard also believed that Lashly should have gone, later writing that ‘Lashly was wonderful’.

As far as Oates was concerned, there was also a presentational point. His presence at the Pole would allow the army a share in the glory – Wilson had told Atkinson that ‘Scott was keen on his going on, he wanted the Army represented’.
⁶
It never occurred to Scott that Oates might be less than keen. However, Oates had told Teddy Evans that his personal ambition was simply to get to the top of the Beardmore. He did not expect to be selected for the southern journey and, though he did not say so, by this stage probably had little desire to go on. Struggling such a distance on
foot and on skis with his left leg shorter than his right – the legacy of his Boer War wound – must have been sapping his strength and stamina. His diary had already mentioned problems with the tendons of his right knee as well as with his feet.

The letter Oates wrote to his mother shows his mixed feelings. He had earlier acknowledged that ‘the regiment and perhaps the whole army would be pleased if I was at the Pole’.
⁷
He now assured her that he was delighted, feeling fit and well and that ‘We shall get to the Pole alright. We are now within 50 miles of Shackleton’s farthest South’.
⁸
However, the letter goes on to dwell with nostalgic longing on his home at Gestingthorpe and improvements there, of clothes he would like sent out for his return and of plans for a filly. He sent his love to his sisters and brother and finished with ‘God bless you and keep you well until I come home’ – the only mention of God in his letters. Among the other things he asked for was tobacco, cigarettes and a large box of caramel creams. He was trying to convince himself that he would come through and the letter is pathetic when seen against Atkinson’s comment when they had parted earlier that Oates ‘knew he was done – his face showed him to be and the way he went along’.
⁹

But what was Scott’s purpose in taking Bowers? There were no long-standing ties and Bowers had not originally even been a member of the shore party, but he had steadily won Scott’s admiration. For one thing he was very strong. After the Winter Journey to Cape Crozier Scott described him as ‘the hardest traveller that ever undertook a Polar journey, as well as one of the most undaunted’ and referred to his untiring energy and astonishing physique. He also valued Bowers for his organizational abilities, phenomenal hard work but above all, perhaps, for his unswerving loyalty. The latter was a source of practical strength and comfort
to Scott in the same way that Wilson gave him inner courage. Certainly, Wilson and Bowers were an impressive combination. As Cherry-Garrard later reminisced, ‘It was easy to be brave when Bill and Birdie were near.’
¹⁰

Scott may also have needed Bowers’s skills as a navigator. He had originally considered taking two navigators to the Pole, so important did he consider this to be, and it was certainly an area where he was vulnerable. His own skills were rusty and he was out of practice with using a theodolite, which he had brought in preference to a sextant. Wilson and Oates and Edgar Evans’s talents in that direction were even more limited. Teddy Evans was an experienced navigator, but Scott had not considered taking a man whom he basically considered played out and incompetent to the Pole. Bowers’s abilities were accordingly a welcome addition.

However, the decision to take Bowers was probably, above all, a decision taken on impulse. Scott’s companions on the
Discovery
expedition had often observed that he was impulsive, prone to take decisions quickly and without consulting. That would explain why he had allowed Bowers to depot his skis just three days earlier so that henceforward he would have to march on foot while the others skied, an exhausting and unnecessary strain. In just the same way Scott may have decided on impulse that five men would be more desirable than four. Certainly, time would show Scott had not stopped to consider fully the practical implications. He may simply have concluded that the benefits of another man to help pull the sledge would outweigh any logistical disadvantages. Hindsight suggests that if he wanted to take five he would have done better to have taken Crean in place of Oates or Edgar Evans. It was logical that Lashly and Teddy Evans should be sent back – they had after all been manhauling all the way
from Corner Camp – but Crean had not and was still immensely strong and capable – he called himself ‘The Wild Man of Borneo’.

However, Scott had made his choice. On 4 January the Polar party set out and he was in optimistic mood.

We were naturally late getting away this morning, the sledge having to be packed and arrangements completed for separation of parties. It is wonderful to see how neatly everything stows on a little sledge, thanks to P.O. Evans. I was anxious to see how we could pull it, and glad to find we went easy enough. Bowers on foot pulls between, but behind, Wilson and myself; he has to keep his own pace and luckily does not throw us out at all.

Teddy Evans, Crean and Lashly followed in case of accident but, as soon as Scott was confident enough, the two parties stopped, said their farewells and gazed on each other for the last time. They must have been a wild-looking group of men with beards caked with ice, weather-scarred faces and split lips. Scott described the parting: ‘Teddy Evans is terribly disappointed but has taken it very well and behaved like a man. Poor old Crean wept and even Lashly was affected.’

As well as Wright, both Cherry-Garrard and Bowers had criticized Teddy Evans during the march and before, Bowers on the grounds of Evans’s ‘sedition’ in criticizing Scott before both men and officers. However, being second-in-command on an expedition such as Scott’s is, as history shows, a thankless task and it would be wrong to judge Evans too harshly any more than Scott. Evans later wrote privately that he did not feel Scott treated him
well but his published account in the
Strand Magazine
described how:

The excitement was intense; it was obvious that with five fit men – the Pole being only one hundred and forty-five miles away – the achievement was merely a matter of ten or eleven days’ good sledging. The last farewell was most touching, Oates being far more affected than any other of the Southern Party . . . I think his last actual remark was, ‘I am afraid, Teddy, you won’t have much of a “slope” going back, but old Christopher is waiting to be eaten on the Barrier when you get there.’

As a tremendous meat eater himself Oates had been dwelling on Christopher with some longing. The Last Supporting Party gave three huge cheers, turned their sledge and began the long march home. Oates, who was pulling at the rear, waved several times. Teddy Evans described how: ‘We frequently looked back until the little group were but a tiny black speck on the southern horizon, and finally they disappeared.’

Evans could not have known that ‘we would be the last to see them alive, that our three cheers on that bleak and lonely plateau summit would be the last appreciation they would ever know’. The Polar party were already marching into legend. Hereafter only their own records would tell their tale.

And so the Last Supporting Party turned north to face dangers of their own. Teddy Evans had given Bowers a little silk flag from his wife to plant at the Pole. In return he was carrying a letter from Scott to Kathleen, telling of his satisfaction with their progress and touching on his favourite themes of strength and
leadership: ‘no man will or can say I wasn’t fit to lead through the last lap.’
¹¹
Evans was also carrying an oral message which would play its part in the disaster ahead. Scott had changed the instructions yet again for the dogs. Meares was to bring the teams out to meet the returning party between 82° and 83°S, towards the middle of February to enable the returning Polar party to be in time for the
Terra Nova
. It is questionable whether these were the most effective arrangements but Scott’s great mistake was to assume that Evans would deliver the message in time. Scott had predicted Evans would make a quick journey back, but he could not have been more wrong. He shared a mistaken belief, common among the expedition members, that the homeward journey must be easier than the outward one.

Scott was cheerful now. He was with men he liked and trusted, there had been no serious mishaps and the Pole seemed within their grasp. ‘What castles one builds now hopefully that the Pole is ours,’ he exulted. Yet the seeds of the coming disaster were already present. As Cherry-Garrard later wrote: ‘We hear of trouble immediately the Last Supporting Party left them: . . . From this time onwards things went wrong.’
¹²
Edgar Evans’s hand, injured while he was adjusting the sledges, was refusing to heal, no doubt the result of vitamin deficiency, and Wilson was having to dress it daily. Bowers was exhausted through having to march on foot, noting in his diary that it was ‘more tiring for me than the others’, something which Scott fully acknowledged.

Oates was worrying privately about the condition of his feet and his old war wound which, as an officer and gentleman of his day, he was loath to admit. The trouble was exacerbated by poor diet. A symptom of scurvy is that scar tissue from old wounds begins to dissolve and wounds open up and it is possible that the party were already beginning to suffer from incipient scurvy. Their diet,
which had been their staple for over a hundred days was based on 16 oz. of special biscuits made by Huntley and Palmer, 0.57 oz. cocoa, 12 oz. pemmican, 2 oz. butter, 3 oz. sugar and 0.7 oz. tea. At the same time it was only producing some 4,500 calories, compared to the more than 6,000 they were probably burning, so they were also beginning to starve.

On the practical side, Scott soon became aware that cooking for five was more difficult than for four. The very day after parting from Evans he was writing that, ‘Cooking for five takes a seriously longer time than cooking for four, perhaps half an hour on the whole day. It is an item I had not considered when re-organizing.’ It also required more fuel. Furthermore, as Cherry-Garrard pointed out in
The Worst Journey
: ‘There was 5 1/2 weeks’ food for four men: five men would eat this in about four weeks’. There was also considerable discomfort as the result of the fifth man. The tents, which were of teepee construction, were about seven feet at the apex so that it was difficult for more than one person to stand. They had been designed for four so that when stretched out for the night the sleeping bags of the two outside men must have been partly off the separate floor cloth (the tent did not have a sewn-in ground sheet) and probably on the snow. The claustrophobia, difficulty of moving and long periods of confinement during blizzards must have been wearing.

The going was becoming increasingly difficult with heavy surfaces, sandy snow and falling crystals. For men already exhausted by manhauling up the Beardmore it was a struggle. There was great satisfaction when on 6 January they passed the site of Shackleton’s most southerly camp, but Scott was becoming preoccupied with the difficult terrain: ‘The vicissitudes of this work are bewildering,’ he wrote in anguish. They were among sastrugi, frozen snow waves caused by the wind, ‘a sea of fish-hook waves’,
some of them barbed with sharp crystals. This made skiing near impossible and Scott decided to abandon the skis. However, after marching for a mile the sastrugi disappeared and they returned to fetch their skis, wasting precious time and energy. A rueful Scott concluded that ‘I must stick to the ski after this’ but his indecision was a symptom of the growing strain he was under. On the same day Wilson was recording the increasingly grim conditions: ‘We get our hairy faces and mouths dreadfully iced up on the march and often one’s hands get very cold indeed holding ski sticks. Evans, who cut his knuckle some days ago at the last depot . . . has a lot of pus in it tonight.’