A First Rate Tragedy (7 page)

Described by his mother as ‘the brightest and jolliest of all our babies’, he apparently already showed an extraordinary talent for
drawing by the time he was three. At just seven he was designing and drawing Christmas cards, a habit he continued throughout his life. His earliest scrapbook contained pictures of Arctic explorers and he made his own midnight sun out of orange paper. His other passion was for collecting – he hoarded shells and fossils, butterflies and dried flowers and at nine announced that he would be a naturalist. Clutching a sovereign he went out and bought skinning and stuffing tools and invested in lessons in taxidermy.

He delighted in being out of doors and close to nature which induced a kind of spiritual rapture in him. Sometimes he would lie out under the stars in the Cotswold hills wrapped in a horse-blanket and listen to the birdsong. Later, when suffering from snowblindness in the Antarctic wastes, the sound of his skis swishing through the snow would make him think of brushing through fat juicy bluebells in his beloved Gloucestershire. So great was his passion for nature that as a student doctor in London he decked his rooms with branches of willow, hazel, alder, fir and birch. Encouraged by his father he took to observing, noting and sketching everything he saw and his observational powers were acute.

At Cheltenham College he did well at sport because of his remarkably strong legs. Though not a brilliant scholar, he was fascinated by science and did well enough to go as an exhibitioner to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to read for the Natural Sciences Tripos and the medical examinations. Foreshadowing his role on the Antarctic expeditions he often found himself a mediator among the turbulent and troublesome set of undergraduates of his year. The result was that he had little time for himself, yet he was, despite his affection for his friends, a lover of solitude. What he really loathed was ‘society’ and throughout his life formal occasions, house parties with unknown people, the bland chit-chat of parties and receptions would set his nerves on
edge and fill his bright blue eyes with panic. Sometimes he would need to sedate himself in order to face the ordeal. Indeed, he was always keen to master his weaknesses and develop self-control, even resorting to self-mortification. As his biographer George Seaver put it: ‘He took out-of-the way means to acquaint himself with the experience of pain, and resolutely set before himself [the] ideal of Christian asceticism . . .’
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Yet despite this austere side to his nature, Wilson played hard too and, cold sober, was always in the middle of any high jinks. He had a cheerful disregard for minor rules, resulting in him being sent down for a few days after sneaking out of college without leave early one morning to catch a trout.

Wilson took his BA degree in 1894, and in 1895 left what he called his butterfly academic existence to join St George’s Hospital in London. Wilson threw himself into his work but he was excited by everything, especially London where he said he felt like a soda-bottle in an oven, primed with enthusiasm for his new life and ready to explode. He still kept close to nature, lying out on Wimbledon Common with supplies of rolls and chocolates listening to the nightingales. He spent as much time as he could working at the Caius College Mission in the slums of Battersea, only to contract TB. He was sent to Switzerland and Norway to recuperate and was so frail that one of his fellow patients later commented that it was the greatest miracle that Wilson managed to reach the South Pole. He was not even considered strong enough to toboggan. Curiously enough his letters showed a distaste for cold conditions. ‘Awful, awful, I cannot abide the snow!’
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Wilson became engaged to a sensible and well-educated young woman, Oriana Souper, in October 1899 and the following year successfully passed his MB examination. It was at about this time that he learned that a junior surgeon and zoologist was being
sought for the National Antarctic Expedition. His natural modesty made him reluctant to apply though he was keenly interested. In 1897 he had heard Nansen speak about the Arctic and had been moved by his account of how the expedition’s dogs had had to be shot. Luckily his uncle, Sir Charles Wilson, lobbied Sir Clements Markham, who was impressed by Wilson’s remarkable artistic talent. Scott duly met him and accepted him there and then, even though Wilson’s arm was in a sling because blood poisoning had given him an abscess in the armpit. At his subsequent interview with the Medical Board he admitted with characteristic honesty that he had had TB and the board predictably rejected him, but Scott now insisted he should come on the expedition. Not only did Wilson have a rare combination of medical and artistic skill but there was something much less tangible which appealed to Scott.

In many ways Wilson was the perfect foil to Scott – optimistic and approachable where Scott was pessimistic and remote; tolerant where Scott could be impatient and critical; cheerful where Scott was quick-tempered and moody. He also believed that things would turn out as they were ordained to, the result of a deep and comforting religious faith. His attitude was live for the day and don’t worry about the future. He wrote: ‘It is no sin to long to die, the sin is in the failure to submit our wills to God to keep us here as long as He wishes.’
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This contradicts some interpretations of Wilson as a natural martyr – an almost saintly, rather passive, individual only too ready to embrace death. He had a huge love of life and the clear conviction that it was God not man who should decide when life should end. This became grimly relevant on the return from the South Pole when his desperate companions would force him to hand over his stock of opium tablets so that they could commit suicide if they chose. He
was also something of a pacifist. Reports of events in the Boer War made him cry like a baby and he said he would far rather shoot himself than anyone else by a long way. He believed that ‘the vilest of sins’ were disguised as ‘the glories of imperialism’.

Religion was the one area where he and Scott disagreed seriously. Scott was agnostic and suffered grave crises of doubt both about himself and about life in general. Moods of ‘black dog’, when he doubted any meaning or purpose in life, would suddenly overtake him. Wilson’s serenity and sense of purpose were like an anchor in the storm. Scott would later describe him as: ‘The life and soul of the party, the organizer of all amusements, the always good-tempered and cheerful one, the ingenious person who could get round all difficulties.’ At the same time Wilson was drawn to Scott’s sincerity and love of justice. Wilson was delighted by his appointment, announcing cheerfully that it would be a case of kill or cure and was soon enmeshed in preparations, including further lessons in taxidermy at London Zoo.

The expedition’s surgeon, Reginald Koettlitz, or ‘Cutlets’ as he was to be nicknamed, had been appointed before Scott. He was thirty-nine years old, rather tall and gangling and Markham thought him a ‘honest good fellow’ but humourless and ‘exceedingly short of common sense’.
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Koettlitz’s views on scurvy, the curse of Polar expeditions, were the conventional ones of his age – that it was caused by poison from tainted food and that the way to guard against it was to keep food pure and tins airtight. He firmly believed that there were no such things as anti-scorbutics. Like many contemporaries, he did not favour the use of lime juice, long distributed amongst British seamen as an anti-scorbutic and so well known that it had caused Americans to call British seamen and then all their countrymen ‘limeys’. Koettlitz also ignored an emerging but as yet unproven view that it was not the presence
of a taint but the absence of some essential element that caused the disease. The true cause, the lack of vitamin C, was not to be properly understood for some years. Nevertheless, others, such as Armitage, with Polar experience recognized the importance of fresh meat in both preventing and curing the disease.

The other scientific posts were awarded to the bald and eager Thomas Vere Hodgson, director of the marine biological laboratories in Plymouth, who became the expedition’s naturalist. The post of geologist was given to Hartley Ferrar, a twenty-two-year-old Cambridge graduate. The Markham verdict on him was that he was ‘very unfledged and rather lazy’ but might be ‘made into a man’.
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Louis Bernacchi, at twenty-five another young man, was appointed physicist. Despite his youth, this Tasmanian was the only member of the expedition to have had any Antarctic, as distinct from Arctic, experience having wintered in Borchgrevink’s hut on Cape Adare. Markham thought him ‘always a grown-up’ and was prepared to overlook his association with Borchgrevink.
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The petty officers and ratings were drawn from the navy after the Admiralty was pressured not to be niggardly and to release three warrant officers and six petty officers. Among the petty officers was a Welshman of towering physique and robust good humour, Edgar Evans, who with Scott and Wilson would take part in the final, fatal journey. He had served with Scott on the
Majestic
but at this stage Scott little realized the bond which would be forged between them.

Evans had a warm, lively personality and an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes. He enjoyed reading Dumas or ‘Dum Ass’ as he called him, but definitely not Kipling or Dickens. He was far removed from the shadowy, flawed giant from the lower decks so often depicted. Evans was born at Rhossili in the beautiful Gower in 1876. He was not a Welsh speaker although he knew
the soft lilting Gower dialect. His father was a ‘Capehorner’, a seaman who sailed from Swansea across the Atlantic and round Cape Horn to the west coast of South America for copper ore. His mother was the daughter of the licensee of the Ship Inn at the pretty little hamlet of Middleton.

The family moved to Swansea when Evans was seven and he grew up ‘a very venturesome boy’ who never complained, according to his mother.
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A photograph taken in 1893 with his sister Annie shows a strong broad-faced youth with a determined set to his face. He left school at thirteen and for a time worked at the Castle Hotel, frequented by the captains of the copper ore barques. Perhaps it was their stories and his father’s tales which sparked his thirst for a life at sea. His mother tried to dissuade him, having seen her husband badly injured when a cargo bale fell on him. His leg was subsequently amputated.

Evans was undeterred. With the impatience of youth he couldn’t even wait until he was the right age and tried to enlist at fourteen, only to be sent away. The second time he was nearly rejected because he had one more decayed tooth than officially allowed. He began his training in
HMS Ganges
, a solid old hulk in Falmouth and a year later, in April 1892, was promoted to Boy Ist Class. He progressed well, helped by his outstanding strength and for a while served as a physical training instructor. In 1899 he began two years’ service in
HMS Majestic
where Scott spotted him.

So the man who signed on with Scott in July 1901 as one of two second-class petty officers, was an impressive individual, toughened by a decade in the navy. He was nearly six foot tall, weighed a little under thirteen stone and was ‘in a hard condition’. At twenty-five he had that great supposed prerequisite for polar travel – youth. His pay was 17s 1d a week at a time when the average wage for a semi-skilled man was around £1 10s 6d
and when a live-in maid could be paid no more than 10s a week. Scott by comparison was paid £10 a week and Shackleton £5. These were reasonable salaries – rents at the time were about 10s a week for a six-bedroom house in respectable Clapham and a house with garden in Balham could be bought for £850 and fully furnished for £150, a third-class return rail ticket from London to Newcastle cost £2 5s 3d, a steak and kidney pudding in a cheap restaurant cost 4d, a bottle of whisky 3s 6d and 25 Wild Woodbine cigarettes 5d.

Scott obtained his ratings by writing to his colleagues in the Channel Squadron seeking volunteers and he had no shortage to choose from. Among the stokers he selected was thirty-three-year-old William Lashly, a strong, powerful teetotaller and non-smoker, reserved, even retiring, but always ready to help a comrade and described by Markham as ‘the best man in the engine room’.
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He also picked Frank Wild, later to accompany Shackleton on all his expeditions. All in all he was well pleased. Although the
Discovery
would not be subject to the Naval Discipline Act he wanted to run his ship as closely as possible along naval lines and now he had the men who would help him to maintain those strict standards.

He could also be confident their teeth would withstand the rigours ahead. Markham noted the following in his personal narrative: ‘Ship’s Company’s Teeth. The teeth were examined by dental surgeons from Guy’s hospital in July 1901. 178 teeth were stopped, and 92 pulled out. Bill £62.4.5. 41 examinations at the rate of 30s a man.’
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A not inexpensive business.

On 21 March 1901 Lady Markham snipped a piece of tape with a pair of golden scissors and the
Discovery
slid gracefully into the Tay. Then she was brought back to the dockside to be fitted with her engines and boilers. After sea trials she left her home
port in June for the East India Docks in the Thames for loading. This was no trivial matter. She would have to carry provisions for forty-seven men for three years. Ample supplies of roast pheasant, roast turkey, whole roast partridges, jugged hare, duck and green peas and rump steak were carried on board, together with such delicacies of the era as wild cherry sauce, celery seed, blackcurrant vinegar, candied orange peel, Stilton and Double Gloucester cheese. Nor were they to go short of drink with 27 gallons of brandy, the same of whisky, 60 cases of port, 36 of sherry, 28 of champagne. They also took 1,800 pounds of tobacco, a great deal of pemmican (a mixture of dried lean beef and lard), raisins, chocolate and onion powder.