The Dangerous Book of Heroes (51 page)

Much has been written about why Scott took five men rather than four, but there's no evidence that he had originally decided upon four. Four was often the sledging format employed, but not always: three men sledged south in the
Discovery
expedition. There is a sketch made by Wilson at Cape Evans of a five-man team, and it's possible that is what Scott had always planned. A five-man team from the last depot to the pole and back makes a lot of sense. The sledge weight would remain essentially the same but for fuel and a sleeping bag, yet there would be another man hauling. In addition, five men is safest for crossing crevasses.

Scott's last order to Teddy Evans was for the dog teams to meet the five returning men between 83° and 82° south, between the Southern Barrier and Middle Barrier depots, fifty to ninety miles from the Beardmore.

Southward the five sledged. They passed Shackleton's farthest-south point on January 6. At 10,500 feet, they had to cross a sea of difficult fishhook ice waves, or sastrugi, and resorted to walking. They were back on skis by the tenth when the temperature plum
meted. By noon of the sixteenth they were approaching the South Pole, a featureless white plain with a long downhill slope. They saw mock suns with long horizontal halos. At around 4
P.M
. Bowers saw something ahead—a black speck, perhaps a cairn, perhaps a reflection from the sastrugi.

As they approached, the object grew into a black mark, then larger until they could see that it was a flag and an abandoned campsite. In the disturbed snow they saw sledge, ski, and paw marks. “The Norwegians have forestalled us and are first at the Pole,” wrote Scott. “It is a terrible disappointment, and I am very sorry for my loyal companions.”

 

Scott continued, navigating his own path to the southernmost point on earth and checking his position with sun sights. They camped and on January 17 marched outward on different bearings—“the coldest march I ever remembered,” wrote Wilson. With the sextants of the time, it was impossible to establish the exact location of the pole. Even the best of them were accurate only to about a quarter of a mile. Compasses were completely useless and spun wildly.

With the final set of sun sights, Scott and his men established their position at latitude 89° 59′ 14″ south, within three-quarters of a mile of the most southerly point on earth. They planted the United Kingdom flag.

Amundsen had been less painstaking with his sun sights. Wilson noted: “From Amundsen's direction of tracks he has probably hit a point about 3 miles off…but in any case we are all agreed that he can claim prior right to the Pole itself.” In the Norwegian tent were the details and a letter for Scott from Amundsen. He had arrived on December 14, 1911, four weeks and five days before. Scott's scientific exploration had taken twenty days longer to reach the pole than Amundsen's racing expedition, which had left earlier.

“Great God, this is an awful place,” Scott famously wrote. It still is.

 

On the return journey, there was disappointment but no depression, observed Dr. Wilson. However, Scott noted on January 23 that Taff
Evans was not well—“There is no doubt that Evans is a good deal run down”—but no one knew what was wrong with the powerful man. Back across the sastrugi, some skied while others walked, but none slowed the others and they still covered twenty miles on such days. They found all their depots and reached the top of Beardmore with no trouble. They had food and fuel and were on schedule to return to Cape Evans before the end of March, the end of summer.

On February 8 Evans was unable to haul, yet that was not yet alarming. There were good and bad days for all of them, and at the same place in 1909, Shackleton had had to stop hauling. Evans skied behind to resume hauling the following day.

The scientific programs continued. While descending the mountains, Wilson and Bowers uncovered rocks containing fossilized leaves, coal, and other minerals, with important discoveries at Mount Darwin and Mount Buckley cliffs. They collected thirty-five pounds of specimens. These discoveries established that Antarctica was once a warm-climate continent, and the Permian period leaf fossils led to the realization that it was once part of the ancient supercontinent “Gondwana,” with Australasia, India, Africa, and South America. Was carrying the thirty-five-pound samples critical? No. Such a small weight did not make any difference. What caused their later problems was something else entirely.

By February 16 the team was approaching the base of the Beardmore when Evans collapsed in the sledge harness. Dr. Wilson described Evans as “sick and giddy and unable to walk even by the sledge on ski, so we camped.” Scott recorded: “Evans has nearly broken down in brain we think.” Something catastrophic had happened to Evans, but no one knew what it was or how to treat it.

They were ten miles from the next depot. After a short rest, four men hauled the sledge while Evans skied behind as he'd done before. He had troubles with his ski bindings and stopped at least twice to adjust them—a slow and bitterly painful business with sore and frostbitten hands. Gradually, he fell behind the others. At the next halt he was out of sight, so the four immediately went back to him.

Scott wrote: “I was the first to reach the poor man and shocked at his appearance, he was on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frostbitten, and a wild look in his eyes. Asked what was the matter, he replied with a slow speech that he didn't know…. He showed every sign of complete collapse.” By the time they got him into the tent he was comatose. He died quietly at 12:30
A.M
. without regaining consciousness.

There is only guesswork still about Taff Evans's condition. Of the likely causes for his death, Dr. Wilson thought it might have been a brain hemorrhage caused by a fall into a crevasse two weeks before. In his “Message to the Public,” Scott put his death as “concussion to the brain.” Yet Scott actually recorded the beginning of Evans's deterioration on January 23, before the fall. Wilson makes no mention of scurvy, and he would have known, being familiar with the disease. Scurvy takes three to four months to present itself, and it was only two and a half months since Evans and the others had eaten fresh meat. A recent theory is that Evans was suffering from cerebral edema. This condition of fluid on the brain was unknown in 1912, but it can cause sudden clinical deterioration of the body. It can be caused by infection, a blockage, a fall, even a minor stroke, and can be exacerbated by altitude.

Anti-Scott biographers point to Petty Officer Evans being spiritually alone, cut off by his “social superiors,” which hastened his decline. There's no evidence for this; it's mere invention. In fact, Taff Evans was an extrovert. He swapped yarns with Scott, Wilson, and Bowers. He'd sailed with Scott in the navy, sledged with him many times, and cheerfully shared three-man sleeping bags with Scott and others. There was no class divide. Scott was the son of a Plymouth brewer, while Wilson and Bowers chatted with anyone.

A few hours later Scott, Wilson, Bowers, and Oates reached the depot. The next day they crossed the ice joint onto the barrier and reached the first pony camp, where they dug fresh meat out of the ice. They were ten thousand feet lower than the plateau, and the temperature was appreciably warmer. The dog teams should have been
approaching from the north, and there was a line of depots all the way to Cape Evans. They had fresh meat, extra rations and fuel, a new sledge left for them, and only four hundred miles of the sixteen-hundred-mile journey remained. They set out and reached the Southern Barrier depot on the twenty-second, to find that some cooking fuel had evaporated from the sealed cans. Away from the mountains, though, their speed increased and they averaged fifteen miles per day.

Without warning, the weather changed. On the twenty-fifth, the temperature dropped to -20° F, on the twenty-seventh it was -30, and by March 2 it had reached a vicious -40, which is the same in both centigrade and Fahrenheit. Yet it wasn't the cold itself that threatened disaster—it was the change the temperature made to the ice and snow underfoot. The surface turned crystalline. This created immense friction, anchoring the sledges to the ice, dragging at the runners like thick mud.

Although Wilson and Bowers still recorded their scientific data, Scott was by then the only one keeping a diary. On March 2 they reached the Middle Barrier depot. Again they found that fuel had evaporated from the sealed cans. The wind was blowing unseasonably into their faces, and Oates's feet were frostbitten: “Titus Oates disclosed his feet, the toes showing very bad indeed, evidently bitten by the late temperatures.” He continued hauling with the others.

On the third they traveled ten miles, on the fourth, nine, on the fifth, eight. On March 6 they made only six and a half miles, and Scott recorded that they “feel the cold terribly. The surface…is coated with a thin layer of woolly crystals…. These are too firmly fixed to be removed by the wind and cause impossible friction on the runners. Amongst ourselves we are unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart I can only guess.”

Elsewhere on the sixth, the
Fram
arrived in Australia and Amundsen telegrammed the world that he was first to the South Pole. Publicly Nansen congratulated Amundsen; in his diary he recorded his disappointment.

In Scott's team, Bowers maintained his meteorological log until March 19, and from this and subsequent weather records it's now understood what happened. Scott planned the polar journey with meteorologist George Simpson, later director of the Meteorological Office of the United Kingdom. Simpson's weather predictions were based upon all known information. Yet 1912 was an abnormal year—a rogue year. In late February and March was the worst weather ever recorded on the ice barrier. Scott experienced temperatures ten to twenty degrees colder than average. The conditions were ferocious, the ice under the sledges like glue. From going very well, suddenly they were in desperate trouble. Where were the dog teams?

Dog food had not been taken to One Ton Depot as ordered. There is no apparent explanation for this. Teddy Evans had passed Scott's second order to Meares and Gerof for the dog teams to meet Scott ninety to fifty miles from Beardmore. By then, though, Evans was near death. He hadn't eaten his meat rations and had contracted scurvy on top of severe exhaustion. Dr. Atkinson assumed command and saved Evans's life, but Scott's orders were not carried out. Meares's father had died in Britain, and Meares left Cape Evans in late February by the resupply voyage of the
Terra Nova,
in which Evans also left.

Only then did Atkinson order Gerof, Cherry-Garrard, and one dog sledge to One Ton Depot. They reached it, a quarter of the way across the barrier, on March 3. More food for the polar party was deposited but still no dog food, and they camped. One hundred three miles south, the exhausted polar party skied toward them.

On the seventh Scott wrote: “We are 16 miles from our depot [Lower Barrier]. We hope against hope that the dogs have been to Mt. Hooper [Lower Barrier]; then we might pull through.” They reached the depot on the ninth. There is no diary entry that day.

On the tenth he wrote: “Yesterday we marched up to the depot…. Cold comfort. Shortage on our allowance all round. I don't know that anyone is to blame. The dogs which would have been our salvation have evidently failed. Meares had a bad trip home I suppose.” As well
as fuel evaporation, discovered later to be from faulty can manufacture, there was less food than ordered. Scott reported: “Oates' foot worse. He has rare pluck and must know that he can never get through. 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. The weather conditions are awful.”

They left Hooper on the tenth, but a blizzard struck after only a few hundred yards and they were forced to camp again. On the eleventh they sledged six miles. All were frostbitten and Oates was near the end, unable by then to use his fingers. Although still hauling, he was slowing the others' progress through the time he took to prepare himself each day.

At One Ton Depot in the same freak weather, Cherry-Garrard was in anguish over what to do. Atkinson had said that if Scott had not arrived at the depot before him, he was to judge what action to take. On the tenth, Cherry-Garrard and Gerof returned to Hut Point and telephoned Atkinson at Cape Evans.

Scott made no entry for the twelfth, but it was probably then that he distributed the opium tablets to Bowers, Oates, and himself, leaving Wilson the morphine. Each man was thus able to make his own decision about his life. On the thirteenth they were blizzard-bound. On the fourteenth they pushed on. It took all morning to prepare Oates, the three cumbersomely dressing him. At noon, in -42° F, they sledged northward a few more miles before the weather deteriorated and they were forced to camp again.

On the morning of March 16, blizzard-bound in their tent, Oates awoke and dragged himself out of his sleeping bag. He said: “I am just going outside and may be some time.” Scott wrote: “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.”

Some biographers have belittled Oates's gesture as suicide. Dr. Wilson, a devout Christian and in the tent, wrote to Mrs. Oates: “This is a sad ending to our undertaking. Your son died a very noble
death, God knows. I have never seen or heard of such courage as he showed from the first to last with his feet both badly frostbitten—never a word of complaint or of the pain. He was a great example.” Oates knew that his frostbite was destroying his companions' chances of survival, that because of his slowness they might never reach the next depot. He also knew that they would not leave him. Twice he asked and twice they refused. Suicide? The Bible states it more clearly: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”