[Illustration: Frontispiece]
THE WORST JOURNEY
IN THE WORLD
ANTARCTIC
1910-1913
BY
APSLEY CHERRY-GARRARD
WITH PANORAMAS, MAPS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE LATE
DOCTOR EDWARD A. WILSON AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE EXPEDITION
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME ONE
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY SYDNEY
_First published 1922_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
This volume is a narrative of Scott's Last Expedition from its departure
from England in 1910 to its return to New Zealand in 1913.
It does not, however, include the story of subsidiary parties except
where their adventures touch the history of the Main Party.
It is hoped later to publish an appendix volume with an account of the
two Geological Journeys, and such other information concerning the
equipment of, and lessons learned by, this Expedition as may be of use to
the future explorer.
APSLEY CHERRY-GARRARD.
PREFACE
This post-war business is inartistic, for it is seldom that any one does
anything well for the sake of doing it well; and it is un-Christian, if
you value Christianity, for men are out to hurt and not to help--can you
wonder, when the Ten Commandments were hurled straight from the pulpit
through good stained glass. It is all very interesting and uncomfortable,
and it has been a great relief to wander back in one's thoughts and
correspondence and personal dealings to an age in geological time, so
many hundred years ago, when we were artistic Christians, doing our jobs
as well as we were able just because we wished to do them well, helping
one another with all our strength, and (I speak with personal humility)
living a life of co-operation, in the face of hardships and dangers,
which has seldom been surpassed.
The mutual conquest of difficulties is the cement of friendship, as it is
the only lasting cement of matrimony. We had plenty of difficulties; we
sometimes failed, we sometimes won; we always faced them--we had to.
Consequently we have some friends who are better than all the wives in
Mahomet's paradise, and when I have asked for help in the making of this
book I have never never asked in vain. Talk of ex-soldiers: give me
ex-antarcticists, unsoured and with their ideals intact: they could sweep
the world.
The trouble is that they are inclined to lose their ideals in this
complicated atmosphere of civilization. They run one another down like
the deuce, and it is quite time that stopped. What is the use of A
running down Scott because he served with Shackleton, or B going for
Amundsen because he served with Scott? They have all done good work;
within their limits, the best work to date. There are jobs for which, if
I had to do them, I would like to serve under Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton
and Wilson--each to his part. For a joint scientific and geographical
piece of organization, give me Scott; for a Winter Journey, Wilson; for a
dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen: and if I am in the devil of
a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time. They
will all go down in polar history as leaders, these men. I believe Bowers
would also have made a great name for himself if he had lived, and few
polar ships have been commanded as capably as was the Terra Nova, by
Pennell.
In a way this book is a sequel to the friendship which there was between
Wilson, Bowers and myself, which, having stood the strain of the Winter
Journey, could never have been broken. Between the three of us we had a
share in all the big journeys and bad times which came to Scott's main
landing party, and what follows is, particularly, our unpublished
diaries, letters and illustrations. I, we, have tried to show how good
the whole thing was--and how bad. I have had a freer hand than many in
this, because much of the dull routine has been recorded already and can
be found if wanted: also because, not being the leader of the expedition,
I had no duty to fulfil in cataloguing my followers' achievements. But
there was plenty of work left for me. It has been no mere gleaning of the
polar field. Not half the story had been told, nor even all the most
interesting documents. Among these, I have had from Mrs. Bowers her son's
letters home, and from Lashly his diary of the Last Return Party on the
Polar Journey. Mrs. Wilson has given her husband's diary of the Polar
Journey: this is especially valuable because it is the only detailed
account in existence from 87° 32´ to the Pole and after, with the
exception of Scott's Diary already published. Lady Scott has given with
both hands any records I wanted and could find. No one of my companions
in the South has failed to help. They include Atkinson, Wright,
Priestley, Simpson, Lillie and Debenham.
To all these good friends I can do no more than express my very sincere
thanks.
I determined that the first object of the illustrations should be
descriptive of the text: Wright and Debenham have photographs, sledging
and otherwise, which do this admirably. Mrs. Wilson has allowed me to
have any of her husband's sketches and drawings reproduced that I wished,
and there are many hundreds from which to make a selection. In addition
to the six water-colours, which I have chosen for their beauty, I have
taken a number of sketches because they illustrate typical incidents in
our lives. They are just unfinished sketches, no more: and had Bill been
alive he would have finished them before he allowed them to be published.
Then I have had reproduced nearly all the sketches and panoramas drawn by
him on the Polar Journey and found with him where he died. The half-tone
process does not do them justice: I wish I could have had them reproduced
in photogravure, but the cost is prohibitive.
As to production, after a good deal of experience, I was convinced that I
could trust a commercial firm to do its worst save when it gave them less
trouble to do better. I acknowledge my mistake. In a wilderness of firms
in whom nothing was first class except their names and their prices, I
have dealt with R. & R. Clark, who have printed this book, and Emery
Walker, who has illustrated it. The fact that Emery Walker is not only
alive, but full of vitality, indicates why most of the other firms are
millionaires.
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 that they say nothing is too often due to the
fact that they have nothing to say, or are too idle or too busy to learn
how to say it. Every one who has been through such an extraordinary
experience has much to say, and ought to say it if he has any faculty
that way. There is after the event a good deal of criticism, of
stock-taking, of checking of supplies and distances and so forth that
cannot really be done without first-hand experience. Out there we knew
what was happening to us too well; but we did not and could not measure
its full significance. When I was asked to write a book by the Antarctic
Committee I discovered that, without knowing it, I had intended to write
one ever since I had realized my own experiences. Once started, I enjoyed
the process. My own writing is my own despair, but it is better than it
was, and this is directly due to Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Shaw. At the age of
thirty-five I am delighted to acknowledge that my education has at last
begun.
APSLEY CHERRY-GARRARD.
Lamer, Wheathampstead,
1921.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xvii
CHAPTER I FROM ENGLAND TO SOUTH AFRICA 1
CHAPTER II MAKING OUR EASTING DOWN 24
CHAPTER III SOUTHWARD 48
CHAPTER IV LAND 79
CHAPTER V THE DEPÔT JOURNEY 104
CHAPTER VI THE FIRST WINTER 178
CHAPTER VII THE WINTER JOURNEY 230
ILLUSTRATIONS
McMurdo Sound from Arrival Heights in Autumn. The sun
is sinking below the Western Mountains. _Frontispiece_
_From a water-colour drawing by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
FACING PAGE
The Last of the Dogs. Scott's Southern Journey 1903. xxxvi
_From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
The Rookery of Emperor Penguins under the Cliffs of the
Great Ice Barrier: looking east from Cape Crozier. xlii
_From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
Raymond Priestley and Victor Campbell. liv
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
Sunrise behind South Trinidad Island. July 26, 1910. 12
_From a water-colour drawing by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
The Roaring Forties. 32
_From a water-colour drawing by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
Pack-ice in the Ross Sea. Midnight, January 1911. 62
_From a water-colour drawing by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
A Sea Leopard. 66
A Weddell Seal. 66
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
The Terra Nova in the pack. Men watering Ship. 74
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
Taking a Sounding. 84
_From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
Krisravitza. 84
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
Mount Erebus showing Steam Cloud, the Ramp, and the
Hut at Cape Evans. 96
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
Dog-skin outer Mitts showing lampwick Lashings for slinging
over the Shoulders. 114
Sledging Spoon, Pannikin and Cup, which pack into the inner
Cooker. 114
_From sketches by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
Hut Point from the bottom of Observation Hill, showing the
Bay in which the Discovery lay, the Discovery Hut,
Vince's Cross, the frozen sea and the Western Mountains. 158
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
Seals. 162
From the Sea. 162
_From sketches by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
Winter Quarters at Cape Evans. Notice the Whale-back clouds
on Erebus, the débris cones on the Ramp, and the anemometer
pipes which had to be cleared during blizzard by way
of the ladder at the end of the Hut. 172
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
A Cornice of Snow formed upon a Cliff by wind and drift. 176
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
PLATE I. A panoramic view over Cape Evans, and McMurdo
Sound from the Ramp. 184
_From photographs by F. Debenham._
The sea's fringe of Ice growing outwards from the Land. 198
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
Leading Ponies on the Barrier. November 20, 1911. 206
_From a sketch for a water-colour drawing by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
Frozen sea and cliffs of Ice: the snout of the Barne Glacier in
North Bay. 212
_From a photograph by C. S. Wright._
Erebus and Land's End from the Sea-ice. 224
_From a photograph by C. S. Wright._
Erebus from Great Razorback Island. 224
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
Two Emperor Penguins. 234
_From a photograph by C. S. Wright._
PLATE II. A panoramic view of Ross Island from Crater Hill,
looking along the Hut Point Peninsula, showing some of
the topography of the Winter Journey. 236
_From photographs by F. Debenham._
Camping after Dark. 246
_From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
Camp work in a Blizzard: passing the cooker into the tent. 256
_From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
A procession of Emperor Penguins. 264
_From a photograph by C. S. Wright._
The Knoll behind the Cliffs of Cape Crozier. 264
_From a photograph by F. Debenham._
The Barrier pressure at Cape Crozier, with the Knoll. Part of
the bay in which the Emperor Penguins lay their eggs is
visible. 266
_From a photograph by C. S. Wright._
The Emperor Penguins nursing their Chicks on the Sea-ice,
with the cliffs of the Barrier behind. 268
_From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
Mount Erebus and detail of Ice-pressure. 280
_From photographs by C. S. Wright._
Down a Crevasse. 290
_From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._
MAPS
From New Zealand to the South Pole. lxiv
Hut Point. From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson. 128
Cape Evans and McMurdo Sound. 194
The Winter Journey. 294
INTRODUCTION
Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having
a bad time which has been devised. It is the only form of adventure in
which you put on your clothes at Michaelmas and keep them on until
Christmas, and, save for a layer of the natural grease of the body, find
them as clean as though they were new. It is more lonely than London,
more secluded than any monastery, and the post comes but once a year. As
men will compare the hardships of France, Palestine, or Mesopotamia, so
it would be interesting to contrast the rival claims of the Antarctic as
a medium of discomfort. A member of Campbell's party tells me that the
trenches at Ypres were a comparative picnic. But until somebody can
evolve a standard of endurance I am unable to see how it can be done.
Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time
than an Emperor penguin.
Even now the Antarctic is to the rest of the earth as the Abode of the
Gods was to the ancient Chaldees, a precipitous and mammoth land lying
far beyond the seas which encircled man's habitation, and nothing is more
striking about the exploration of the Southern Polar regions than its
absence, for when King Alfred reigned in England the Vikings were
navigating the ice-fields of the North; yet when Wellington fought the
battle of Waterloo there was still an undiscovered continent in the
South.
For those who wish to read an account of the history of Antarctic
exploration there is an excellent chapter in Scott's Voyage of the
Discovery and elsewhere. I do not propose to give any general survey of
this kind here, but complaints have been made to me that Scott's Last
Expedition plunges the general reader into a neighbourhood which he is
supposed to know all about, while actually he is lost, having no idea
what the Discovery was, or where Castle Rock or Hut Point stand. For the
better understanding of the references to particular expeditions, to the
lands discovered by them and the traces left by them, which must occur in
this book I give the following brief introduction.
From the earliest days of the making of maps of the Southern Hemisphere
it was supposed that there was a great continent called Terra Australis.
As explorers penetrated round the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, and
found nothing but stormy oceans beyond, and as, later, they discovered
Australia and New Zealand, the belief in this continent weakened, but was
not abandoned. During the latter half of the eighteenth century eagerness
for scientific knowledge was added to the former striving after
individual or State aggrandizement.
Cook, Ross and Scott: these are the aristocrats of the South.
It was the great English navigator James Cook who laid the foundations of
our knowledge. In 1772 he sailed from Deptford in the Resolution, 462
tons, and the Adventure, 336 tons, ships which had been built at Whitby
for the coal trade. He was, like Nansen, a believer in a varied diet as
one of the preventives of scurvy, and mentions that he had among his
provisions "besides Saur Krout, Portable Broth, Marmalade of Carrots and
Suspissated juice of Wort and Beer." Medals were struck "to be given to
the natives of new discovered countries, and left there as testimonies of
our being the first discoverers."[1] It would be interesting to know
whether any exist now.
After calling at the Cape of Good Hope Cook started to make his Easting
down to New Zealand, purposing to sail as far south as possible in search
of a southern continent. He sighted his first 'ice island' or iceberg in
lat. 50° 40´ S., long. 2° 0´ E., on December 10, 1772. The next day he
"saw some white birds about the size of pigeons, with blackish bills and
feet. I never saw any such before."[2] These must have been Snowy Petrel.
Passing through many bergs, where he notices how the albatross left them
and penguins appeared, he was brought up by thick pack ice along which he
coasted. Under the supposition that this ice was formed in bays and
rivers Cook was led to believe that land was not far distant.
Incidentally he remarks that in order to enable his men to support the
colder weather he "caused the sleeves of their jackets (which were so
short as to expose their arms) to be lengthened with baize; and had a cap
made for each man of the same stuff, together with canvas; which proved
of great service to them."[3]
For more than a month Cook sailed the Southern Ocean, always among bergs
and often among pack. The weather was consistently bad and generally
thick; he mentions that he had only seen the moon once since leaving the
Cape.
It was on Sunday, January 17, 1773, that the Antarctic Circle was crossed
for the first time, in longitude 39° 35´ E. After proceeding to latitude
67° 15´ S. he was stopped by an immense field of pack. From this point he
turned back and made his way to New Zealand.
Leaving New Zealand at the end of 1773 without his second ship, the
Adventure, from which he had been parted, he judged from the great swell
that "there can be no land to the southward, under the meridian of New
Zealand, but what must lie very far to the south." In latitude 62° 10´ S.
he sighted the first ice island on December 12, and was stopped by thick
pack ice three days later. On the 20th he again crossed the Antarctic
Circle in longitude 147° 46´ W. and penetrated in this neighbourhood to a
latitude of 67° 31´ S. Here he found a drift towards the north-east.
On January 26, 1774, in longitude 109° 31´ W., he crossed the Antarctic
Circle for the third time, after meeting no pack and only a few icebergs.
In latitude 71° 10´ S. he was finally turned back by an immense field of
pack, and wrote:
"I will not say it was impossible anywhere to get farther to the south;
but the attempting it would have been a dangerous and rash enterprise,
and what, I believe, no man in my situation would have thought of. It
was, indeed, my opinion, as well as the opinion of most on board, that
this ice extended quite to the Pole, or perhaps joined to some land, to
which it had been fixed from the earliest time; and that it is here, that
is to the south of this parallel, where all the ice we find scattered up
and down to the north is first formed, and afterwards broken off by gales
of wind, or other causes, and brought to the north by the currents, which
are always found to set in that direction in the high latitudes. As we
drew near this ice some penguins were heard, but none seen; and but few
other birds, or any other thing that could induce us to think any land
was near. And yet I think there must be some to the south beyond this
ice; but if there is it can afford no better retreat for birds, or any
other animals, than the ice itself, with which it must be wholly covered.
I, who had ambition not only to go farther than any one had been before,
but as far as it was possible for man to go, was not sorry at meeting
with this interruption; as it, in some measure, relieved us; at least,
shortened the dangers and hardships inseparable from the navigation of
the Southern Polar regions."[4]
And so he turned northwards, when, being "taken ill of the bilious
colic," a favourite dog belonging to one of the officers (Mr. Forster,
after whom Aptenodytes forsteri, the Emperor penguin, is named) "fell a
sacrifice to my tender stomach.... Thus I received nourishment and
strength, from food which would have made most people in Europe sick: so
true it is that necessity is governed by no law."[5]
"Once and for all the idea of a populous fertile southern continent was
proved to be a myth, and it was clearly shown that whatever land might
exist to the South must be a region of desolation hidden beneath a mantle
of ice and snow. The vast extent of the tempestuous southern seas was
revealed, and the limits of the habitable globe were made known.
Incidentally it may be remarked that Cook was the first to describe the
peculiarities of the Antarctic icebergs and floe-ice."[6]
A Russian expedition under Bellingshausen discovered the first certain
land in the Antarctic in 1819, and called it Alexander Land, which lies
nearly due south of Cape Horn.
Whatever may have been the rule in other parts of the world, the flag
followed trade in the southern seas during the first part of the
nineteenth century. The discovery of large numbers of seals and whales
attracted many hundreds of ships, and it is to the enlightened
instructions of such firms as Messrs. Enderby, and to the pluck and
enterprise of such commanders as Weddell, Biscoe and Balleny, that we owe
much of our small knowledge of the outline of the Antarctic continent.
"In the smallest and craziest ships they plunged boldly into stormy
ice-strewn seas; again and again they narrowly missed disaster; their
vessels were racked and strained and leaked badly, their crews were worn
out with unceasing toil and decimated with scurvy. Yet in spite of
inconceivable discomforts they struggled on, and it does not appear that
any one of them ever turned his course until he was driven to do so by
hard necessity. One cannot read the simple, unaffected narratives of
these voyages without being assured of their veracity, and without being
struck by the wonderful pertinacity and courage which they display."[7]
The position in 1840 was that the Antarctic land had been sighted at a
few points all round its coasts. On the whole the boundaries which had
been seen lay on or close to the Antarctic Circle, and it appeared
probable that the continent, if continent it was, consisted of a great
circular mass of land with the South Pole at its centre, and its coasts
more or less equidistant from this point.
Two exceptions only to this had been found. Cook and Bellingshausen had
indicated a dip towards the Pole south of the Pacific; Weddell a still
more pronounced dip to the south of the Atlantic, having sailed to a
latitude of 74° 15´ S. in longitude 34° 16´ W.
Had there been a Tetrahedronal Theory in those days, some one might have
suggested the probability of a third indentation beneath the Indian
Ocean, probably to be laughed at for his pains. When James Clark Ross
started from England in 1839 there was no particular reason for him to
suppose that the Antarctic coast-line in the region of the magnetic Pole,
which he was to try to reach, did not continue to follow the Antarctic
Circle.
Ross left England in September 1839 under instructions from the
Admiralty. He had under his command two of Her Majesty's sailing ships,
the Erebus, 370 tons, and the Terror, 340 tons. Arriving in Hobart,
Tasmania, in August 1840, he was met by news of discoveries made during
the previous summer by the French Expedition under Dumont D'Urville and
the United States Expedition under Charles Wilkes. The former had coasted
along Adélie Land, and for sixty miles of ice cliff to the west of it. He
brought back an egg now at Drayton which Scott's Discovery Expedition
definitely proved to be that of an Emperor penguin.
All these discoveries were somewhere about the latitude of the Antarctic
Circle (66° 32´ S.) and roughly in that part of the world which lies to
the south of Australia. Ross, "impressed with the feeling that England
had ever _led_ the way of discovery in the southern as well as in the
northern region, ... resolved at once to avoid all interference with
their discoveries, and selected a much more easterly meridian (170° E.),
on which to penetrate to the southward, and if possible reach the
magnetic Pole."[8]
The outlines of the expedition in which an unknown and unexpected sea was
found, stretching 500 miles southwards towards the Pole, are well known
to students of Antarctic history. After passing through the pack he stood
towards the supposed position of the magnetic Pole, "steering as nearly
south by the compass as the wind admitted," and on January 11, 1841, in
latitude 71° 15´ S., he sighted, the white peaks of Mount Sabine and
shortly afterwards Cape Adare. Foiled by the presence of land from
gaining the magnetic Pole, he turned southwards (true) into what is now
called the Ross Sea, and, after spending many days in travelling down
this coast-line with the mountains on his right hand, the Ross Sea on his
left, he discovered and named the great line of mountains which here for
some five hundred miles divides the sea from the Antarctic plateau. On
January 27, "with a favourable breeze and very clear weather, we stood to
the southward, close to some land which had been in sight since the
preceding noon, and which we then called the High Island; it proved to be
a mountain twelve thousand four hundred feet of elevation above the level
of the sea, emitting flame and smoke in great profusion; at first the
smoke appeared like snowdrift, but as we drew nearer its true character
became manifest.... I named it Mount Erebus, and an extinct volcano to
the eastward, little inferior in height, being by measurement ten
thousand nine hundred feet high, was called Mount Terror." That is the
first we hear of our two old friends, and Ross Island is the land upon
which they stand.
"As we approached the land under all studding-sails we perceived a low
white line extending from its eastern extreme point as far as the eye
could discern to the eastward. It presented an extraordinary appearance,
gradually increasing in height as we got nearer to it, and proving at
length to be a perpendicular cliff of ice, between one hundred and fifty
and two hundred feet above the level of the sea, perfectly flat and level
at the top, and without any fissures or promontories on its even seaward
face."[9]
Ross coasted along the Barrier for some 250 miles from Cape Crozier, as
he called the eastern extremity of Ross Island, after the commander of
the Terror. This point where land, sea and moving Barrier meet will be
constantly mentioned in this narrative. Returning, he looked into the
Sound which divides Ross Island from the western mountains. On February
16 "Mount Erebus was seen at 2.30 A.M., and, the weather becoming very
clear, we had a splendid view of the whole line of coast, to all
appearance connecting it with the main land, which we had not before
suspected to be the case." The reader will understand that Ross makes a
mistake here, since Mounts Erebus and Terror are upon an island connected
to the mainland only by a sheet of ice. He continues: "A very deep bight
was observed to extend far to the south-west from Cape Bird [Bird was the
senior lieutenant of the Erebus], in which a line of low land might be
seen; but its determination was too uncertain to be left unexplored; and
as the wind blowing feebly from the west prevented our making any way in
that direction through the young ice that now covered the surface of the
ocean in every part, as far as we could see from the mast-head, I
determined to steer towards the bight to give it a closer examination,
and to learn with more certainty its continuity or otherwise. At noon we
were in latitude 76° 32´ S., longitude 166° 12´ E., dip 88° 24´ and
variation 107° 18´ E.
"During the afternoon we were nearly becalmed, and witnessed some
magnificent eruptions of Mount Erebus, the flame and smoke being
projected to a great height; but we could not, as on a former occasion,
discover any lava issuing from the crater; although the exhibitions of
to-day were upon a much grander scale....
"Soon after midnight (February 16-17) a breeze sprang up from the
eastward and we made all sail to the southward until 4 A.M., although we
had an hour before distinctly traced the land entirely round the bay
connecting Mount Erebus with the mainland. I named it McMurdo Bay, after
the senior lieutenant of the Terror, a compliment that his zeal and skill
well merited."[10] It is now called McMurdo Sound.
In making the mistake of connecting Erebus with the mainland Ross was
looking at a distance upon the Hut Point Peninsula running out from the
S.W. corner of Erebus towards the west. He probably saw Minna Bluff,
which juts out from the mainland towards the east. Between them, and in
front of the Bluff, lie White Island, Black Island and Brown Island. To
suppose them to be part of a line of continuous land was a very natural
mistake.
Ross broke through the pack ice into an unknown sea: he laid down many
hundreds of miles of mountainous coast-line, and (with further work
completed in 1842) some 400 miles of the Great Ice Barrier: he penetrated
in his ships to the extraordinarily high latitude of 78° 11´ S., four
degrees farther than Weddell. The scientific work of his expedition was
no less worthy of praise. The South Magnetic Pole was fixed with
comparative accuracy, though Ross was disappointed in his natural but
"perhaps too ambitious hope I had so long cherished of being permitted to
plant the flag of my country on both the magnetic Poles of our globe."
Before all things he was at great pains to be accurate, both in his
geographical and scientific observations, and his records of meteorology,
water temperatures, soundings, as also those concerning the life in the
oceans through which he passed, were not only frequent but trustworthy.
When Ross returned to England in 1843 it was impossible not to believe
that the case of those who advocated the existence of a South Polar
continent was considerably strengthened. At the same time there was no
proof that the various blocks of land which had been discovered were
connected with one another. Even now in 1921, after twenty years of
determined exploration aided by the most modern appliances, the interior
of this supposed continent is entirely unknown and uncharted except in
the Ross Sea area, while the fringes of the land are only discovered in
perhaps a dozen places on a circumference of about eleven thousand miles.
In his Life of Sir Joseph Hooker, Dr. Leonard Huxley has given us some
interesting sidelights on this expedition under Ross. Hooker was the
botanist of the expedition and assistant surgeon to the Erebus, being 22
years old when he left England in 1839. Natural history came off very
badly in the matter of equipment from the Government, who provided
twenty-five reams of paper, two botanizing vascula and two cases for
bringing home live plants: that was all, not an instrument, nor a book,
nor a bottle, and rum from the ship's stores was the only preservative.
And when they returned, the rich collections which they brought back were
never fully worked out. Ross's special branch of science was terrestrial
magnetism, but he was greatly interested in Natural History, and gave up
part of his cabin for Hooker to work in. "Almost every day I draw,
sometimes all day long and till two and three in the morning, the Captain
directing me; he sits on one side of the table, writing and figuring at
night, and I on the other, drawing. Every now and then he breaks off and
comes to my side, to see what I am after ..." and, "as you may suppose,
we have had one or two little tiffs, neither of us perhaps being helped
by the best of tempers; but nothing can exceed the liberality with which
he has thrown open his cabin to me and made it my workroom at no little
inconvenience to himself."
Another extract from Hooker's letters after the first voyage runs as
follows:
"The success of the Expedition in Geographical discovery is really
wonderful, and only shows what a little perseverance will do, for we have
been in no dangerous predicaments, and have suffered no hardships
whatever: there has been a sort of freemasonry among Polar voyagers to
keep up the credit they have acquired as having done wonders, and
accordingly, such of us as were new to the ice made up our minds for
frost-bites, and attached a most undue importance to the simple operation
of boring packs, etc., which have now vanished, though I am not going to
tell everybody so; I do not here refer to travellers, who do indeed
undergo unheard-of hardships, but to voyagers who have a snug ship, a
little knowledge of the Ice, and due caution is all that is required."
In the light of Scott's leading of the expedition of which I am about to
tell, and the extraordinary scientific activity of Pennell in command of
the Terra Nova after Scott was landed, Hooker would have to qualify a
later extract, "nor is it probable that any future collector will have a
Captain so devoted to the cause of Marine Zoology, and so constantly on
the alert to snatch the most trifling opportunities of adding to the
collection...."
Finally, we have a picture of the secrecy which was imposed upon all with
regard to the news they should write home and the precautions against any
leakage of scientific results. And we see Hooker jumping down the main
hatch with a penguin skin in his hand which he was preparing for himself,
when Ross came up the after hatch unexpectedly. That _has_ happened on
the Terra Nova!
Ross had a cold reception on his return, and Scott wrote to Hooker in
1905:
"At first it seems inexplicable when one considers how highly his work is
now appreciated. From the point of view of the general public, however, I
have always thought that Ross was neglected, and as you once said he is
very far from doing himself justice in his book. I did not know that
Barrow was the bête noire who did so much to discount Ross's results. It
is an interesting sidelight on such a venture."[11]
In discussing and urging the importance of the Antarctic Expedition which
was finally sent under Scott in the Discovery, Hooker urged the
importance of work in the South Polar Ocean, which swarms with animal and
vegetable life. Commenting upon the fact that the large collections made
chiefly by himself had never been worked out, except the diatoms, he
writes:
"A better fate, I trust, awaits the treasures that the hoped-for
Expedition will bring back, for so prolific is the ocean that the
naturalist need never be idle, no, not even for one of the twenty-four
hours of daylight during a whole Antarctic summer, and I look to the
results of a comparison of the oceanic life of the Arctic and Antarctic
regions as the heralding of an epoch in the history of biology."[12]
When Ross went to the Antarctic it was generally thought that there was
neither food nor oxygen nor light in the depths of the ocean, and that
therefore there was no life. Among other things the investigations of
Ross gave ground for thinking this was not the case. Later still, in
1873, the possibility of laying submarine cables made it necessary to
investigate the nature of the abyssal depths, and the Challenger proved
that not only does life, and in quite high forms, exist there, but that
there are fish which can see. It is now almost certain that there is a
great oxidized northward-creeping current which flows out of the
Antarctic Ocean and under the waters of the other great oceans of the
world.
It was the good fortune of Ross, at a time when the fringes of the great
Antarctic continent were being discovered in comparatively low latitudes
of 66° and thereabouts, sometimes not even within the Antarctic Circle,
to find to the south of New Zealand a deep inlet in which he could sail
to the high latitude of 78°. This inlet, which is now known as the Ross
Sea, has formed the starting-place of all sledging parties which have
approached the South Pole. I have dwelt upon this description of the
lands he discovered because they will come very intimately into this
history. I have also emphasized his importance in the history of
Antarctic exploration because Ross having done what it was possible to do
by sea, penetrating so far south and making such memorable discoveries,
the next necessary step in Antarctic exploration was that another
traveller should follow up his work on land. It is an amazing thing that
sixty years were allowed to elapse before that traveller appeared. When
he appeared he was Scott. In the sixty years which elapsed between Ross
and Scott the map of the Antarctic remained practically unaltered. Scott
tackled the land, and Scott is the Father of Antarctic sledge travelling.
This period of time saw a great increase in the interest taken in science
both pure and applied, and it had been pointed out in 1893 that "we knew
more about the planet Mars than about a large area of our own globe." The
Challenger Expedition of 1874 had spent three weeks within the Antarctic
Circle, and the specimens brought home by her from the depths of these
cold seas had aroused curiosity. Meanwhile Borchgrevink (1897) landed at
Cape Adare, and built a hut which still stands and which afforded our
Cape Adare party valuable assistance. Here he lived during the first
winter which men spent in the Antarctic.
Meanwhile, in the Arctic, brave work was being done. The names of Parry,
M'Clintock, Franklin, Markham, Nares, Greely and De Long are but a few of
the many which suggest themselves of those who have fought their way mile
by mile over rough ice and open leads with appliances which now seem to
be primitive and with an addition to knowledge which often seemed hardly
commensurate with the hardships suffered and the disasters which
sometimes overtook them. To those whose fortune it has been to serve
under Scott the Franklin Expedition has more than ordinary interest, for
it was the same ships, the Erebus and Terror, which discovered Ross
Island, that were crushed in the northern ice after Franklin himself had
died, and it was Captain Crozier (the same Crozier who was Ross's captain
in the South and after whom Cape Crozier is named) who then took command
and led that most ghastly journey in all the history of exploration: more
we shall never know, for none survived to tell the tale. Now, with the
noise and racket of London all round them, a statue of Scott looks across
to one of Franklin and his men of the Erebus and Terror, and surely they
have some thoughts in common.
Englishmen had led the way in the North, but it must be admitted that the
finest journey of all was made by the Norwegian Nansen in 1893-1896.
Believing in a drift from the neighbourhood of the New Siberian Islands
westwards over the Pole, a theory which obtained confirmation by the
discovery off the coast of Greenland of certain remains of a ship called
the Jeannette which had been crushed in the ice off these islands, his
bold project was to be frozen in with his ship and allow the current to
take him over, or as near as possible to, the Pole. For this purpose the
most famous of Arctic ships was built, called the Fram. She was designed
by Colin Archer, and was saucer-shaped, with a breadth one-third of her
total length. With most of the expert Arctic opinion against him, Nansen
believed that this ship would rise and sit on the top of the ice when
pressed, instead of being crushed. Of her wonderful voyage with her
thirteen men, of how she was frozen into the ice in September 1893 in the
north of Siberia (79° N.) and of the heaving and trembling of the ship
amidst the roar of the ice pressure, of how the Fram rose to the occasion
as she was built to do, the story has still, after twenty-eight years,
the thrill of novelty. She drifted over the eightieth degree on February
2, 1894. During the first winter Nansen was already getting restive: the
drift was so slow, and sometimes it was backwards: it was not until the
second autumn that the eighty-second degree arrived. So he decided that
he would make an attempt to penetrate northwards by sledging during the
following spring. As Nansen has told me, he felt that the ship would do
her job in any case. Could not something more be done also?
This was one of the bravest decisions a polar explorer has ever taken. It
meant leaving a drifting ship which could not be regained: it meant a
return journey over drifting ice to land; the nearest known land was
nearly five hundred miles south of the point from which he started
northwards; and the journey would include travelling both by sea and by
ice.
Undoubtedly there was more risk in leaving the Fram than in remaining in
her. It is a laughable absurdity to say, as Greely did after Nansen's
almost miraculous return, that he had deserted his men in an ice-beset
ship, and deserved to be censured for doing so.[13] The ship was left in
the command of Sverdrup. Johansen was chosen to be Nansen's one
companion, and we shall hear of him again in the Fram, this time with
Amundsen in his voyage to the South.
The polar traveller is so interested in the adventure and hardships of
Nansen's sledge journey that his equipment, which is the most important
side of his expedition to us who have gone South, is liable to be
overlooked. The modern side of polar travel begins with Nansen. It was
Nansen who first used a light sledge based upon the ski sledge of Norway,
in place of the old English heavy sledge which was based upon the Eskimo
type. Cooking apparatus, food, tents, clothing and the thousand and one
details of equipment without which no journey nowadays stands much chance
of success, all date back to Nansen in the immediate past, though beyond
him of course is the experience of centuries of travellers. As Nansen
himself wrote of the English polar men: "How well was their equipment
thought out and arranged with the means they had at their disposal!
Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. Most of what I prided myself
upon, and what I thought to be new, I find they had anticipated.
M'Clintock used the same things forty years ago. It was not their fault
that they were born in a country where the use of snowshoes is
unknown...."[14]
All the more honour to the men who dared so much and travelled so far
with the limited equipment of the past. The real point for us is that,
just as Scott is the Father of Antarctic sledge travelling, so Nansen may
be considered the modern Father of it all.
Nansen and Johansen started on March 14 when the Fram was in latitude 84°
4´ N., and the sun had only returned a few days before, with three
sledges (two of which carried kayaks) and 28 dogs. They reached their
northern-most camp on April 8, which Nansen has given in his book as
being in latitude 86° 13.6´ N. But Nansen tells me that Professor
Geelmuyden, who had his astronomical results and his diary, reckoned that
owing to refraction the horizon was lifted, and if so the observation had
to be reduced accordingly. Nansen therefore gave the reduced latitude in
his book, but he considers that his horizon was very clear when he took
that observation, and believes that his latitude was higher than that
given. He used a sextant and the natural horizon.
They turned, and travelling back round pressed-up ice and open leads they
failed to find the land they had been led to expect in latitude 83°,
which indeed was proved to be non-existent. At the end of June they
started using the kayaks, which needed many repairs after their rough
passage, to cross the open leads. They waited long in camp, that the
travelling conditions might improve, and all the time Nansen saw a white
spot he thought was cloud. At last, on July 24, land was in sight, which
proved to be that white spot. Fourteen days later they reached it to find
that it consisted of a series of islands. These they left behind them
and, unable to say what land they had reached, for their watches had run
down, they coasted on westwards and southwards until winter approached.
They built a hut of moss and stones and snow, and roofed it with walrus
skins cut from the animals while they lay in the sea, for they were too
heavy for two men to drag on to the ice. When I met Nansen he had
forgotten all about this, and would not believe that it had happened
until he saw it in his own book. They lay in their old clothes that
winter, so soaked with blubber that the only way to clean their shirts
was to scrape them. They made themselves new clothes from blankets, and
sleeping-bags from the skins of the bears which they ate, and started
again in May of the following year to make Spitzbergen. They had been
travelling a long month, during which time they had at least two very
narrow escapes--the first due to their kayaks floating away, when Nansen
swam out into the icy sea and reached them just before he sank, and
Johansen passed the worst moments of his life watching from the shore;
the second caused by the attack of a walrus which went for Nansen's kayak
with tusks and flippers. And then one morning, as he looked round at the
cold glaciers and naked cliffs, not knowing where he was, he heard a dog
bark. Intensely excited, he started towards the sound, to be met by the
leader of the English Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition whose party was
wintering there, and who first gave him the definite news that he was on
Franz Josef Land. Nansen and Johansen were finally landed at Vardo in the
north of Norway, to learn that no tidings had yet been heard of the Fram.
That very day she cleared the ice which had imprisoned her for nearly
three years.
I cannot go into the Fram's journey save to say that she had drifted as
far north as 85° 55´ N., only eighteen geographical miles south of
Nansen's farthest north. But the sledge journey and the winter spent by
the two men has many points in common with the experience of our own
Northern Party, and often and often during the long winter of 1912 our
thoughts turned with hope to Nansen's winter, for we said if it had been
done once why should it not be done again, and Campbell and his men
survive.
Before Nansen started, the spirit of adventure, which has always led men
into the unknown, combined with the increased interest in knowledge for
its own sake to turn the thoughts of the civilized world southwards. It
was becoming plain that a continent of the extent and climate which this
polar land probably possessed might have an overwhelming influence upon
the weather conditions of the whole Southern Hemisphere. The importance
of magnetism was only rivalled by the mystery in which the whole subject
was shrouded: and the region which surrounded the Southern Magnetic Pole
of the earth offered a promising field of experiment and observation. The
past history, through the ages, of this land was of obvious importance to
the geological story of the earth, whilst the survey of land formations
and ice action in the Antarctic was more useful perhaps to the
physiographer than that of any other country in the world, seeing that he
found here in daily and even hourly operation the conditions which he
knew had existed in the ice ages of the past over the whole world, but
which he could only infer from vestigial remains. The biological
importance of the Antarctic might be of the first magnitude in view of
the significance which attaches to the life of the sea in the
evolutionary problem.
And it was with these objects and ideals that Scott's first expedition,
known officially as the British Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1904, but
more familiarly as 'The Discovery Expedition,' from the name of the ship
which carried it, was organized by the Royal Society and the Royal
Geographical Society, backed by the active support of the British
Government. The executive officers and crew were Royal Navy almost
without exception, whilst the scientific purposes of the expedition were
served in addition by five scientists. These latter were not naval
officers.
The Discovery left New Zealand on Christmas Eve 1901, and entered the
belt of pack ice which always has to be penetrated in order to reach the
comparatively open sea beyond, when just past the Antarctic Circle. But a
little more than four days saw her through, in which she was lucky, as we
now know. Scott landed at Cape Adare and then coasted down the western
coast of Victoria Land just as Ross had done sixty years before. As he
voyaged south he began to look for safe winter quarters for the ship, and
when he pushed into McMurdo Sound on January 21, 1902, it seemed that
here he might find both a sheltered bay into which the ship could be
frozen, and a road to the southland beyond.
The open season which still remained before the freezing of the sea made
progress impossible was spent in surveying the 500 miles of cliff which
marks the northern limit of the Great Ice Barrier. Passing the extreme
eastward position reached by Ross in 1842, they sailed on into an unknown
world, and discovered a deep bay, called Balloon Bight, where the rounded
snow-covered slopes undoubtedly were land and not, as heretofore,
floating ice. Farther east, as they sailed, shallow soundings and gentle
snow slopes gave place to steeper and more broken ridges, until at last
small black patches in the snow gave undoubted evidence of rock; and an
undiscovered land, now known as King Edward VII.'s Land, rose to a height
of several thousand feet. The presence of thick pack ahead, and the
advance of the season, led Scott to return to McMurdo Sound, where he
anchored the Discovery in a little bay at the end of the tongue of land
now known as the Hut Point Peninsula, and built the hut which, though
little used in the Discovery days, was to figure so largely in the story
of this his last expedition.
The first autumn was spent in various short journeys of
discovery--discovery not only of the surrounding land but of many
mistakes in sledging equipment and routine. It is amazing to one who
looks back upon these first efforts of the Discovery Expedition that the
results were not more disastrous than was actually the case. When one
reads of dog-teams which refused to start, of pemmican which was
considered to be too rich to eat, of two officers discussing the ascent
of Erebus and back in one day, and of sledging parties which knew neither
how to use their cookers or lamp, nor how to put up their tents, nor even
how to put on their clothes, then one begins to wonder that the process
of education was gained at so small a price. "Not a single article of the
outfit had been tested; and amid the general ignorance that prevailed the
lack of system was painfully apparent in everything."[15]
This led to a tragedy. A returning sledge party of men was overtaken by a
blizzard on the top of the Peninsula near Castle Rock. They quite
properly camped, and should have been perfectly comfortable lying in
their sleeping-bags after a hot meal. But the primus lamps could not be
lighted, and as they sat in leather boots and inadequate clothing being
continually frost-bitten they decided to leave the tent and make their
way to the ship--sheer madness as we now know. As they groped their way
in the howling snow-drift the majority of the party either slipped or
rolled down a steep slippery snow slope some thousand feet high ending in
a precipitous ice-cliff, below which lay the open sea. It is a nasty
place on a calm summer day: in a blizzard it must be ghastly. Yet only
one man, named Vince, shot down the slope and over the precipice into the
sea below. How the others got back heaven knows. One seaman called Hare,
who separated from the others and lay down under a rock, awoke after
thirty-six hours, covered with snow but in full possession of his
faculties and free from frost-bites. The little cross at Hut Point
commemorates the death of Vince. One of this party was a seaman called
Wild, who came to the front and took the lead of five of the survivors
after the death of Vince. He was to take the lead often in future
expeditions under Shackleton and Mawson, and there are few men living
who have so proved themselves as polar travellers.
I have dwelt upon this side of the early sledging deficiencies of the
Discovery to show the importance of experience in Antarctic land
travelling, whether it be at first or second hand. Scott and his men in
1902 were pioneers. They bought their experience at a price which might
easily have been higher; and each expedition which has followed has added
to the fund. The really important thing is that nothing of what is gained
should be lost. It is one of the main objects of this book to hand on as
complete a record as possible of the methods, equipment, food and weights
used by Scott's Last Expedition for the use of future explorers. "The
first object of writing an account of a Polar voyage is the guidance of
future voyagers: the first duty of the writer is to his successors."[16]
The adaptability, invention and resource of the men of the Discovery when
they set to work after the failures of the autumn to prepare for the
successes of the two following summers showed that they could rise to
their difficulties. Scott admitted that "food, clothing, everything was
wrong, the whole system was bad."[17] In determining to profit by his
mistakes, and working out a complete system of Antarctic travel, he was
at his best; and it was after a winter of drastic reorganization that he
started on November 2, 1902, on his first southern journey with two
companions, Wilson and Shackleton.
It is no part of my job to give an account of this journey. The dogs
failed badly: probably the Norwegian stock-fish which had been brought
through the tropics to feed them was tainted: at any rate they sickened;
and before the journey was done all the dogs had to be killed or had
died. A fortnight after starting, the party was relaying--that is, taking
on part of their load and returning for the rest; and this had to be
continued for thirty-one days.
[Illustration: THE LAST OF THE DOGS--E. A. Wilson, del.]
The ration of food was inadequate and they became very hungry as time
went on; but it was not until December 21 that Wilson disclosed to
Scott that Shackleton had signs of scurvy which had been present for some
time. On December 30, in latitude 82° 16´ S., they decided to return. By
the middle of January the scurvy signs were largely increased and
Shackleton was seriously ill and spitting blood. His condition became
more and more alarming, and he collapsed on January 18, but revived
afterwards. Sometimes walking by the sledge, sometimes being carried upon
it, Shackleton survived: Scott and Wilson saved his life. The three men
reached the ship on February 3, after covering 960 statute miles in 93
days. Scott and Wilson were both extremely exhausted and seriously
affected by scurvy. It was a fine journey, the geographical results of
which comprised the survey of some three hundred miles of new coast-line,
and a further knowledge of the Barrier upon which they travelled.
While Scott was away southwards an organized attempt was made to discover
the nature of the mountains and glaciers which lay across the Sound to
the west. This party actually reached the plateau which lay beyond, and
attained a height of 8900 feet, when "as far as they could see in every
direction to the westward of them there extended a level plateau, to the
south and north could be seen isolated nunataks, and behind them showed
the high mountains which they had passed": a practicable road to the west
had been found.
I need note no more than these two most important of the many journeys
carried out this season: nor is it necessary for me to give any account
of the continuous and fertile scientific work which was accomplished in
this virgin land. In the meantime a relief ship, the Morning, had
arrived. It was intended that the Discovery should return this year as
soon as the sea-ice in which she was imprisoned should break up and set
her free. As February passed, however, it became increasingly plain that
the ice conditions were altogether different from those of the previous
year. On the 8th the Morning was still separated from the Discovery by
eight miles of fast ice. March 2 was fully late for a low-powered ship to
remain in the Sound, and on this date the Morning left. By March 13 all
hope of the Discovery being freed that year was abandoned.
The second winter passed much as the first, and as soon as spring arrived
sledging was continued. These spring journeys on the Barrier, with
sunlight only by day and low temperatures at all times, entailed great
discomfort and, perhaps worse, want of sleep, frost-bites, and a fast
accumulation of moisture in all one's clothing and in the sleeping-bags,
which resulted in masses of ice which had to be thawed out by the heat of
one's body before any degree of comfort could be gained. A fortnight was
considered about the extreme limit of time for such a journey, and
generally parties were not absent so long; for at this time a spring
journey was considered a dreadful experience. "Wait till you've had a
spring journey" was the threat of the old stagers to us. A winter journey
lasting nearly three times as long as a spring journey was not imagined.
I advise explorers to be content with imagining it in the future.
The hardest journey of this year was carried out by Scott with two seamen
of whom much will be written in this history. Their names are Edgar Evans
and Lashly. The object of the journey was to explore westwards into the
interior of the plateau. By way of the Ferrar Glacier they reached the
ice-cap after considerable troubles, not the least of which was the loss
of the data necessary for navigation contained in an excellent
publication called Hints to Travellers, which was blown away. Then for
the first time it was seen what additional difficulties are created by
the climate and position of this lofty plateau, which we now know extends
over the Pole and probably reaches over the greater part of the Antarctic
continent. It was the beginning of November: that is, the beginning of
summer; but the conditions of work were much the same as those found
during the spring journeys on the Barrier. The temperature dropped into
the minus forties; but the worst feature of all was a continuous
head-wind blowing from west to east which combined with the low
temperature and rarefied air to make the conditions of sledging
extremely laborious. The supporting party returned, and the three men
continued alone, pulling out westwards into an unknown waste of snow with
no landmarks to vary the rough monotony. They turned homewards on
December 1, but found the pulling very heavy; and their difficulties were
increased by their ignorance of their exact position. The few glimpses of
the land which they obtained as they approached it in the thick weather
which prevailed only left them in horrible uncertainty as to their
whereabouts. Owing to want of food it was impossible to wait for the
weather to clear: there was nothing to be done but to continue their
eastward march. Threading their way amidst the ice disturbances which
mark the head of the glaciers, the party pushed blindly forward in air
which was becoming thick with snow-drift. Suddenly Lashly slipped: in a
moment the whole party was flying downwards with increasing speed. They
ceased to slide smoothly; they were hurled into the air and descended
with great force on to a gradual snow incline. Rising they looked round
them to find above them an ice-fall 300 feet high down which they had
fallen: above it the snow was still drifting, but where they stood there
was peace and blue sky. They recognized now for the first time their own
glacier and the well-remembered landmark, and far away in the distance
was the smoking summit of Mount Erebus. It was a miracle.
Excellent subsidiary journeys were also made of which space allows no
mention here: nor do they bear directly upon this last expedition. But in
view of the Winter Journey undertaken by us, if not for the interest of
the subject itself, some account must be given of those most aristocratic
inhabitants of the Antarctic, the Emperor penguins, with whom Wilson and
his companions in the Discovery now became familiar.
There are two kinds of Antarctic penguins--the little Adélie with his
blue-black coat and his white shirt-front, weighing 16 lbs., an object of
endless pleasure and amusement, and the great dignified Emperor with long
curved beak, bright orange head-wear and powerful flippers, a
personality of 6½ stones. Science singles out the Emperor as being the
more interesting bird because he is more primitive, possibly the most
primitive of all birds. Previous to the Discovery Expedition nothing was
known of him save that he existed in the pack and on the fringes of the
continent.
We have heard of Cape Crozier as being the eastern extremity of Ross
Island, discovered by Ross and named after the captain of the Terror. It
is here that with immense pressures and rendings the moving sheet of the
Barrier piles itself up against the mountain. It is here also that the
great ice-cliff which runs for hundreds of miles to the east, with the
Barrier behind it and the Ross Sea beating into its crevasses and caves,
joins the basalt precipice which bounds the Knoll, as the two-knobbed
saddle which forms Cape Crozier is called. Altogether it is the kind of
place where giants have had a good time in their childhood, playing with
ice instead of mud--so much cleaner too!
But the slopes of Mount Terror do not all end in precipices. Farther to
the west they slope quietly into the sea, and the Adélie penguins have
taken advantage of this to found here one of their largest and most
smelly rookeries. When the Discovery arrived off this rookery she sent a
boat ashore and set up a post with a record upon it to guide the relief
ship in the following year. The post still stands. Later it became
desirable to bring the record left here more up to date, and so one of
the first sledging parties went to try and find a way by the Barrier to
this spot.
They were prevented from reaching the record by a series of most violent
blizzards, and indeed Cape Crozier is one of the windiest places on
earth, but they proved beyond doubt that a back-door to the Adélie
penguins' rookery existed by way of the slopes of Mount Terror behind the
Knoll. Early the next year another party reached the record all right,
and while exploring the neighbourhood looked down over the 800-feet
precipice which forms the snout of Cape Crozier. The sea was frozen over,
and in a small bay of ice formed by the cliffs of the Barrier below were
numerous little dots which resolved themselves into Emperor penguins.
Could this be the breeding-place of these wonderful birds? If so, they
must nurse their eggs in mid-winter, in unimagined cold and darkness.
Five days more elapsed before further investigation could be made, for a
violent blizzard kept the party in their tents. On October 18 they set
out to climb the high pressure ridges which lie between the level barrier
and the sea. They found that their conjectures were right: there was the
colony of Emperors. Several were nursing chicks, but all the ice in the
Ross Sea was gone; only the small bay of ice remained. The number of
adult birds was estimated at four hundred, the number of living chicks
was thirty, and there were some eighty dead ones. No eggs were found.[18]
Several more journeys were made to this spot while the Discovery was in
the south, generally in the spring; and the sum total of the information
gained came to something like this. The Emperor is a bird which cannot
fly, lives on fish which it catches in the sea, and never steps on land
even to breed. For a reason which was not then understood it lays its
eggs upon the bare ice some time during the winter and carries out the
whole process of incubation on the sea ice, resting the egg upon its feet
pressed closely to a patch of bare skin in the lower abdomen, and
protected from the intense cold by a loose falling lappet of skin and
feathers. By September 12, the earliest date upon which a party arrived,
all the eggs which were not broken or addled were hatched, and there were
then about a thousand adult Emperors in the rookery. Arriving again on
October 19, a party experienced a ten days' blizzard which confined them
during seven days to their tents, but during their windy visit they saw
one of the most interesting scenes in natural history. The story must be
told by Wilson, who was there:
"The day before the storm broke we were on an old outlying cone of Mount
Terror, about 1300 feet above the sea. Below us lay the Emperor penguin
rookery on the bay ice, and Ross Sea, completely frozen over, was a
plain of firm white ice to the horizon. There was not even the lane of
open water which usually runs along the Barrier cliff stretching away as
it does like a winding thread to the east and out of sight. No space or
crack could be seen with open water. Nevertheless the Emperors were
unsettled owing, there can be no doubt, to the knowledge that bad weather
was impending. The mere fact that the usual canal of open water was not
to be seen along the face of the Barrier meant that the ice in Ross Sea
had a southerly drift. This in itself was unusual, and was caused by a
northerly wind with snow, the precursor here of a storm from the
south-west. The sky looked black and threatening, the barometer began to
fall, and before long down came snowflakes on the upper heights of Mount
Terror.
"All these warnings were an open book to the Emperor penguins, and if one
knew the truth there probably were many others too. They were in
consequence unsettled, and although the ice had not yet started moving
the Emperor penguins had; a long file was moving out from the bay to the
open ice, where a pack of some one or two hundred had already collected
about two miles out at the edge of a refrozen crack. For an hour or more
that afternoon we watched this exodus proceeding, and returned to camp,
more than ever convinced that bad weather might be expected. Nor were we
disappointed, for on the next day we woke to a southerly gale and smother
of snow and drift, which effectually prevented any one of us from leaving
our camp at all. This continued without intermission all day and night
till the following morning, when the weather cleared sufficiently to
allow us to reach the edge of the cliff which overlooked the rookery.
[Illustration: THE EMPERORS ROOKERY]
"The change here was immense. Ross Sea was open water for nearly thirty
miles; a long line of white pack ice was just visible on the horizon from
where we stood, some 800 to 900 feet above the sea. Large sheets of ice
were still going out and drifting to the north, and the migration of the
Emperors was in full swing. There were again two companies waiting on
the ice at the actual water's edge, with some hundred more tailing out in
single file to join them. The birds were waiting far out at the edge of
the open water, as far as it was possible for them to walk, on a
projecting piece of ice, the very next piece that would break away and
drift to the north. The line of tracks in the snow along which the birds
had gone the day before was now cut off short at the edge of the open
water, showing that they had gone, and under the ice-cliffs there was an
appreciable diminution in the number of Emperors left, hardly more than
half remaining of all that we had seen there six days before."[19]
Two days later the emigration was still in full swing, but only the
unemployed seemed to have gone as yet. Those who were nursing chicks were
still huddled under the ice-cliffs, sheltered as much as possible from
the storm. Three days later (October 28) no ice was to be seen in the
Ross Sea: the little bay of ice was gradually being eaten away: the same
exodus was in progress and only a remnant of penguins was still left.
Of the conditions under which the Emperor lays her eggs, the darkness and
cold and blighting winds, of the excessive mothering instinct implanted
in the heart of every bird, male and female, of the mortality and gallant
struggles against almost inconceivable odds, and the final survival of
some 26 per cent of the eggs, I hope to tell in the account of our Winter
Journey, the object of which was to throw light upon the development of
the embryo of this remarkable bird, and through it upon the history of
their ancestors. As Wilson wrote:
"The possibility that we have in the Emperor penguin the nearest approach
to a primitive form not only of a penguin but of a bird makes the future
working out of its embryology a matter of the greatest possible
importance. It was a great disappointment to us that although we
discovered their breeding-ground, and although we were able to bring home
a number of deserted eggs and chicks, we were not able to procure a
series of early embryos by which alone the points of particular interest
can be worked out. To have done this in a proper manner from the spot at
which the Discovery wintered in McMurdo Sound would have involved us in
endless difficulties, for it would have entailed the risks of sledge
travelling in mid-winter with an almost total absence of light. It would
at any time require that a party of three at least, with full camp
equipment, should traverse about a hundred miles of the Barrier surface
in the dark and should, by moonlight, cross over with rope and axe the
immense pressure ridges which form a chaos of crevasses at Cape Crozier.
These ridges, moreover, which have taken a party as much as two hours of
careful work to cross by daylight, must be crossed and re-crossed at
every visit to the breeding site in the bay. There is no possibility even
by daylight of conveying over them the sledge or camping kit, and in the
darkness of mid-winter the impracticability is still more obvious. Cape
Crozier is a focus for wind and storm, where every breath is converted,
by the configuration of Mounts Erebus and Terror, into a regular drifting
blizzard full of snow. It is here, as I have already stated, that on one
journey or another we have had to lie patiently in sodden sleeping-bags
for as many as five and seven days on end, waiting for the weather to
change and make it possible for us to leave our tents at all. If,
however, these dangers were overcome there would still be the difficulty
of making the needful preparations from the eggs. The party would have to
be on the scene at any rate early in July. Supposing that no eggs were
found upon arrival, it would be well to spend the time in labelling the
most likely birds, those for example that have taken up their stations
close underneath the ice-cliffs. And if this were done it would be easier
then to examine them daily by moonlight, if it and the weather generally
were suitable: conditions, I must confess, not always easily obtained at
Cape Crozier. But if by good luck things happened to go well, it would by
this time be useful to have a shelter built of snow blocks on the sea-ice
in which to work with the cooking lamp to prevent the freezing of the egg
before the embryo was cut out, and in order that fluid solutions might
be handy for the various stages of its preparation; for it must be borne
in mind that the temperature all the while may be anything between zero
and -50° F. The whole work no doubt would be full of difficulty, but it
would not be quite impossible, and it is with a view to helping those to
whom the opportunity may occur in future that this outline has been added
of the difficulties that would surely beset their path."[20]
We shall meet the Emperor penguins again, but now we must go back to the
Discovery, lying off Hut Point, with the season advancing and twenty
miles of ice between her and the open sea. The prospects of getting out
this year seeming almost less promising than those of the last year, an
abortive attempt was made to saw a channel from a half-way point. Still,
life to Scott and Wilson in a tent at Cape Royds was very pleasant after
sledging, and the view of the blue sea framed in the tent door was very
beautiful on a morning in January when two ships sailed into the frame.
Why two? One was of course the Morning; the second proved to be the Terra
Nova.
It seemed that the authorities at home had been alarmed at the reports
brought back the previous year by the relief ship of the detention of the
Discovery and certain outbreaks of scurvy which had occurred both on the
ship and on sledge journeys. To make sure of relief two ships had been
sent. That was nothing to worry about, but the orders they brought were
staggering to sailors who had come to love their ship "with a depth of
sentiment which cannot be surprising when it is remembered what we had
been through in her and what a comfortable home she had proved."[21]
Scott was ordered to abandon the Discovery if she could not be freed in
time to accompany the relief ships to the north. For weeks there was
little or no daily change. They started to transport the specimens and
make the other necessary preparations. They almost despaired of freedom.
Explosions in the ice were started in the beginning of February with
little effect. But suddenly there came a change, and on the 11th, amidst
intense excitement, the ice was breaking up fast. The next day the relief
ships were but four miles away. On the 14th a shout of "The ships are
coming, sir!" brought out all the men racing to the slopes above Arrival
Bay. Scott wrote:
"The ice was breaking up right across the Strait, and with a rapidity
which we had not thought possible. No sooner was one great floe borne
away than a dark streak cut its way into the solid sheet that remained,
and carved out another, to feed the broad stream of pack which was
hurrying away to the north-west.
"I have never witnessed a more impressive sight; the sun was low behind
us, the surface of the ice-sheet in front was intensely white, and in
contrast the distant sea and its leads looked almost black. The wind had
fallen to a calm, and not a sound disturbed the stillness about us.
"Yet in the midst of this peaceful silence was an awful unseen agency
rending that great ice-sheet as though it had been naught but the
thinnest paper. We knew well by this time the nature of our prison bars;
we had not plodded again and again over those long dreary miles of snow
without realizing the formidable strength of the great barrier which held
us bound; we knew that the heaviest battle-ship would have shattered
itself ineffectually against it, and we had seen a million-ton iceberg
brought to rest at its edge. For weeks we had been struggling with this
mighty obstacle ... but now without a word, without an effort on our
part, it was all melting away, and we knew that in an hour or two not a
vestige of it would be left, and that the open sea would be lapping on
the black rocks of Hut Point."[22]
Almost more dramatic was the grounding of the Discovery off the shoal at
Hut Point owing to the rise of a blizzard immediately after her release
from the ice. Hour after hour she lay pounding on the shore, and when it
seemed most certain that she had been freed only to be destroyed, and
when all hope was nearly gone, the wind lulled, and the waters of the
Sound, driven out by the force of the wind, returned and the Discovery
floated off with little damage. The whole story of the release from the
ice and subsequent grounding of the Discovery is wonderfully told by
Scott in his book.
Some years after this I met Wilson in a shooting lodge in Scotland. He
was working upon grouse disease for the Royal Commission which had been
appointed, and I saw then for the first time something of his magnetic
personality and glimpses also of his methods of work. He and Scott both
meant to go back and finish the job, and I then settled that when they
went I would go too if wishing could do anything. Meanwhile Shackleton
was either in the South or making his preparations to go there.
He left England in 1908, and in the following Antarctic summer two
wonderful journeys were made. The first, led by Shackleton himself,
consisted of four men and four ponies. Leaving Cape Royds, where the
expedition wintered in a hut, in November, they marched due south on the
Barrier outside Scott's track until they were stopped by the eastward
trend of the range of mountains, and by the chaotic pressure caused by
the discharge of a Brobdingnagian glacier.
But away from the main stream of the glacier, and separated from it by
land now known as Hope Island, was a narrow and steep snow slope forming
a gateway which opened on to the main glacier stream. Boldly plunging
through this, the party made its way up the Beardmore Glacier, a giant of
its kind, being more than twice as large as any other known. The history
of their adventures will make anybody's flesh creep. From the top they
travelled due south toward the Pole under the trying conditions of the
plateau and reached the high latitude of 88° 23´ S. before they were
forced to turn by lack of food.
While Shackleton was essaying the geographical Pole another party of
three men under Professor David reached the magnetic Pole, travelling a
distance of 1260 miles, of which 740 miles were relay work, relying
entirely on man-haulage, and with no additional help. This was a very
wonderful journey, and when Shackleton returned in 1909 he and his
expedition had made good. During the same year the North Pole was reached
by Peary after some twelve years of travelling in Arctic regions.
Scott published the plans of his second expedition in 1909. This
expedition is the subject of the present history.
The Terra Nova sailed from the West India Dock, London, on June 1, 1910,
and from Cardiff on June 15. She made her way to New Zealand, refitted
and restowed her cargo, took on board ponies, dogs, motor sledges,
certain further provisions and equipment, as well as such members of her
executive officers and scientists as had not travelled out in her, and
left finally for the South on November 29, 1910. She arrived in McMurdo
Sound on January 4, 1911, and our hut had been built on Cape Evans and
all stores landed in less than a fortnight. Shortly afterwards the ship
sailed. The party which was left at Cape Evans under Scott is known as
the Main Party.
But the scientific objects of the expedition included the landing of a
second but much smaller party under Campbell on King Edward VII.'s Land.
While returning from an abortive attempt to land here they found a
Norwegian expedition under Captain Roald Amundsen in Nansen's old ship
the Fram in the Bay of Whales: reference to this expedition will be found
elsewhere.[23] One member of Amundsen's party was Johansen, the only
companion of Nansen on his famous Arctic sledge journey, of which a brief
outline has been given above.[24] Campbell and his five companions were
finally landed at Cape Adare, and built their hut close to
Borchgrevinck's old winter quarters.[25] The ship returned to New Zealand
under Pennell: came back to the Antarctic a year later with further
equipment and provisions, and again two years later to bring back to
civilization the survivors of the expedition.
The adventures and journeyings of the various members of the Main Party
are so numerous and simultaneous that I believe it will help the reader
who approaches this book without previous knowledge of the history of
the expedition to give here a brief summary of the course of events.
Those who are familiar already with these facts can easily skip a page or
two.
Two parties were sent out during the first autumn: the one under Scott to
lay a large depôt on the Barrier for the Polar Journey, and this is
called the Depôt Journey; the other to carry out geological work among
the Western Mountains, so called because they form the western side of
McMurdo Sound: this is called the First Geological Journey, and another
similar journey during the following summer is called the Second
Geological Journey.
Both parties joined up at the old Discovery Hut at Hut Point in March
1911, and here waited for the sea to freeze a passage northwards to Cape
Evans. Meanwhile the men left at Cape Evans were continuing the complex
scientific work of the station. All the members of the Main Party were
not gathered together at Cape Evans for the winter until May 12. During
the latter half of the winter a journey was made by three men led by
Wilson to Cape Crozier to investigate the embryology of the Emperor
penguin: this is called the Winter Journey.
The journey to the South Pole absorbed the energies of most of the
sledging members during the following summer of 1911-12. The motor party
turned back on the Barrier; the dog party at the bottom of the Beardmore
Glacier. From this point twelve men went forward. Four of these men under
Atkinson returned from the top of the glacier in latitude 85° 3´ S.: they
are known as the First Return Party. A fortnight later in latitude 87°
32´ S. three more men returned under Lieutenant Evans: these are the
Second Return Party. Five men went forward, Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates
and Seaman Evans. They reached the Pole on January 17 to find that
Amundsen had reached it thirty-four days earlier. They returned 721
statute miles and perished 177 miles from their winter quarters.
The supporting parties got back safely, but Lieutenant Evans was very
seriously ill with scurvy. The food necessary for the return of the Polar
Party from One Ton Camp had not been taken out at the end of February
1912. Evans' illness caused a hurried reorganization of plans, and I was
ordered to take out this food with one lad and two dog-teams. This was
done, and the journey may be called the Dog Journey to One Ton Camp.
We must now go back to the six men led by Campbell who were landed at
Cape Adare in the beginning of 1911. They were much disappointed by the
small amount of sledge work which they were able to do in the summer of
1911-1912, for the sea-ice in front of them was blown out early in the
year, and they were unable to find a way up through the mountains behind
them on to the plateau. Therefore, when the Terra Nova appeared on
January 4, it was decided that she should land them with six weeks'
sledging rations and some extra biscuits, pemmican and general food near
Mount Melbourne at Evans Coves, some 250 geographical miles south of Cape
Adare, and some 200 geographical miles from our Winter Quarters at Cape
Evans. Late on the night of January 8, 1912, they were camped in this
spot and saw the last of the ship steaming out of the bay. They had
arranged to be picked up again on February 18.
Let us return to McMurdo Sound. My two dog-teams arrived at Hut Point
from One Ton Depôt on March 16 exhausted. The sea-ice was still in from
the Barrier to Hut Point, but from there onwards was open water, and
therefore no communication was possible with Cape Evans. Atkinson, with
one seaman, was at Hut Point and the situation which he outlined to me on
arrival was something as follows:
The ship had left and there was now no possibility of her returning owing
to the lateness of the season, and she carried in her Lieut. Evans, sick
with scurvy, and five other officers and three men who were returning
home this year. This left only four officers and four men at Cape Evans,
in addition to the four of us at Hut Point.
The serious part of the news was that owing to a heavy pack the ship had
been absolutely unable to reach Campbell's party at Evans Coves. Attempt
after attempt had made without success. Would Campbell winter where he
was? Would he try to sledge down the coast?
In the absence of Scott the command of the expedition under the
extraordinarily difficult circumstances which arose, both now and during
the coming year, would naturally have devolved upon Lieutenant Evans. But
Evans, very sick, was on his way to England. The task fell to Atkinson,
and I hope that these pages will show how difficult it was, and how well
he tackled it.
There were now, that is since the arrival of the dog-teams four of us at
Hut Point; and no help could be got from Cape Evans owing to the open
water which intervened. Two of us were useless for further sledging and
the dogs were absolutely done. As time went on anxiety concerning the
non-arrival of the Polar Party was added to the alarm we already felt
about Campbell and his men; winter was fast closing down, and the weather
was bad. So little could be done by two men. What was to be done? When
was it to be done with the greatest possible chance of success? Added to
all his greater anxieties Atkinson had me on his hands--and I was pretty
ill.
In the end he made two attempts.
The first with one seaman, Keohane, to sledge out on to the Barrier,
leaving on March 26. They found the conditions very bad, but reached a
point a few miles south of Corner Camp and returned. Soon after we knew
the Southern Party must be dead.
Nothing more could be done until communication was effected with Winter
Quarters at Cape Evans. This was done by a sledge journey over the newly
frozen ice in the bays on April 10. Help arrived at Hut Point on April
14.
The second attempt was then made, and this consisted of a party of four
men who tried to sledge up the Western Coast in order to meet and help
Campbell if he was trying to sledge to us. This plucky attempt failed, as
indeed it was practically certain it would.
The story of the winter that followed will be told, and of the decision
which had to be taken to abandon either the search for the Polar Party
(who must be dead) and their records, or Campbell and his men (who might
be alive). There were not enough men left to do both. We believed that
the Polar Party had come to grief through scurvy, or through falling into
a crevasse--the true solution never occurred to us, for we felt sure that
except for accident or disease they could find their way home without
difficulty. We decided to leave Campbell to find his way unaided down the
coast, and to try and find the Polar Party's records. To our amazement we
found their snowed-up tent some 140 geographical miles from Hut Point,
only 11 geographical miles from One Ton Camp. They had arrived there on
March 19. Inside the tent were the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers.
Oates had willingly walked out to his death some eighteen miles before in
a blizzard. Seaman Evans lay dead at the bottom of the Beardmore Glacier.
* * * * *
Having found the bodies and the records the Search Party returned,
proposing to make their way up the Western Coast in search of Campbell.
On arrival at Hut Point with the dog-teams, I must have gone to open the
hut door and found pinned on to it a note in Campbell's handwriting; but
my recollection of this apparently memorable incident is extraordinarily
vague. It was many long months since we had had good news. This was their
story.
When Campbell originally landed at Evans Coves he brought with him
sledging provisions for six weeks, in addition to two weeks' provisions
for six men, 56 lbs. sugar, 24 lbs. cocoa, 36 lbs. chocolate and 210 lbs.
of biscuit, some Oxo and spare clothing. In short, after the sledge work
which they proposed, and actually carried out, the men were left with
skeleton rations for four weeks. They had also a spare tent and an extra
sleeping-bag. It was not seriously anticipated that the ship would have
great difficulty in picking them up in the latter half of February.
Campbell's party had carried out successful sledging and useful
geological work in the region of Evans Coves. They had then camped on the
beach and looked for the ship to relieve them. There was open water
lashed to fury by the wind so far as they could see, and yet she did not
come. They concluded that she must have been wrecked. The actual fact was
that thick pack ice lay beyond their vision through which Pennell was
trying to drive his ship time after time, until he had either to go or to
be frozen in. He never succeeded in approaching nearer than 27 miles.
It was now that a blizzard wind started to blow down from the plateau
behind them out into the continually open sea in front. The situation was
bad enough already, but of course such weather conditions made it
infinitely worse. Evans Coves is paved with boulders over which all
journeys had to be fought leaning against the wind as it blew: when a
lull came the luckless traveller fell forward on to his face. Under these
circumstances it was decided that preparations must be made to winter
where they were, and to sledge down the coast to Cape Evans in the
following spring. The alternative of sledging down the coast in March and
April never seems to have been seriously considered. At Hut Point, of
course, we were entirely in the dark as to what the party would do, hence
Atkinson's journey over to the western side in April 1912.
Meanwhile the stranded men divided into two parties of three men each.
The first under Campbell sank a shaft six feet down into a large
snow-drift and thence, with pick and shovel, excavated a passage and at
the end of it a cave, twelve feet by nine feet, and five feet six inches
high. The second under Levick sought out and killed all the seal and
penguin they could find, but their supply was pitifully small, and the
men never had a full meal until mid-winter night. One man always had to
be left to look after the tents, which were already so worn and damaged
that it was unsafe to leave them in the wind.
By March 17 the cave was sufficiently advanced for three men to move in.
Priestley must tell how this was done, but it should not be supposed that
the weather conditions were in any way abnormal on what they afterwards
called Inexpressible Island:
"March 17. 7 P.M. Strong south-west breeze all day, freshening to a full
gale at night. We have had an awful day, but have managed to shift
enough gear into the cave to live there temporarily. Our tempers have
never been so tried during the whole of our life together, but they have
stood the strain pretty successfully.... May I never have such another
three trips as were those to-day. Every time the wind lulled a little I
fell over to windward, and at every gust I was pitched to leeward, while
a dozen times or more I was taken off my feet and dashed against the
ground or against unfriendly boulders. The other two had equally bad
times. Dickason hurt his knee and ankle and lost his sheath knife, and
Campbell lost a compass and some revolver cartridges in the two trips
they made. Altogether it was lucky we got across at all."[26]
It was a fortunate thing that this wind often blew quite clear without
snowfall or drift. Two days later in the same gale the tent of the other
three men collapsed on top of them at 8 A.M. At 4 P.M. the sun was going
down and they settled to make their way across to their comrades. Levick
tells the story as follows:
"Having done this [securing the remains of the tent, etc.], we started on
our journey. This lay, first of all, across half a mile of clear blue
ice, swept by the unbroken wind, which met us almost straight in the
face. We could never stand up, so had to scramble the whole distance on
'all fours,' lying flat on our bellies in the gusts. By the time we had
reached the other side we had had enough. Our faces had been rather badly
bitten, and I have a very strong recollection of the men's countenances,
which were a leaden blue, streaked with white patches of frost-bite. Once
across, however, we reached the shelter of some large boulders on the
shore of the island, and waited here long enough to thaw out our noses,
ears, and cheeks. A scramble of another six hundred yards brought us to
the half-finished igloo, into which we found that the rest of the party
had barricaded themselves, and, after a little shouting, they came and
let us in, giving us a warm welcome, and about the most welcome hot meal
that I think any of us had ever eaten."
[Illustration: PRIESTLEY AND CAMPBELL]
Priestley continues:
"After the arrival of the evicted party we made hoosh, and as we warmed
up from the meal, we cheered up and had one of the most successful
sing-songs we had ever had forgetting all our troubles for an hour or
two. It is a pleasing picture to look back upon now, and, if I close my
eyes, I can see again the little cave cut out in snow and ice with the
tent flapping in the doorway, barely secured by ice-axe and shovel
arranged crosswise against the side of the shaft. The cave is lighted up
with three or four small blubber lamps, which give a soft yellow light.
At one end lie Campbell, Dickason and myself in our sleeping-bags,
resting after the day's work, and, opposite to us, on a raised dais
formed by a portion of the floor not yet levelled, Levick, Browning and
Abbott sit discussing their seal hoosh, while the primus hums cheerily
under the cooker containing the coloured water which served with us
instead of cocoa. As the diners warm up jests begin to fly between the
rival tents and the interchange is brisk, though we have the upper hand
to-day, having an inexhaustible subject in the recent disaster to their
tent, and their forced abandonment of their household gods. Suddenly some
one starts a song with a chorus, and the noise from the primus is dwarfed
immediately. One by one we go through our favourites, and the concert
lasts for a couple of hours. By this time the lamps are getting low, and
gradually the cold begins to overcome the effects of the hoosh and the
cocoa. One after another the singers begin to shiver, and all thoughts of
song disappear as we realize what we are in for. A night with one one-man
bag between two men! There is a whole world of discomfort in the very
thought, and no one feels inclined to jest about that for the moment.
Those jests will come all right to-morrow when the night is safely past,
but this evening it is anything but a cheery subject of contemplation.
There is no help for it, however, and each of us prepares to take another
man in so far as he can."[27]
In such spirit and under very similar conditions this dauntless party
set about passing through one of the most horrible winters which God has
invented. They were very hungry, for the wind which kept the sea open
also made the shore almost impossible for seals. There were red-letter
days, however, such as when Browning found and killed a seal, and in its
stomach, "not too far digested to be still eatable," were thirty-six
fish. And what visions of joy for the future. "We never again found a
seal with an eatable meal inside him, but we were always hoping to do so,
and a kill was, therefore, always a gamble. Whenever a seal was sighted
in future, some one said, 'Fish!' and there was always a scramble to
search the beast first."[28]
They ate blubber, cooked with blubber, had blubber lamps. Their clothes
and gear were soaked with blubber, and the soot blackened them, their
sleeping-bags, cookers, walls and roof, choked their throats and inflamed
their eyes. Blubbery clothes are cold, and theirs were soon so torn as to
afford little protection against the wind, and so stiff with blubber that
they would stand up by themselves, in spite of frequent scrapings with
knives and rubbings with penguin skins, and always there were underfoot
the great granite boulders which made walking difficult even in daylight
and calm weather. As Levick said, "the road to hell might be paved with
good intentions, but it seemed probable that hell itself would be paved
something after the style of Inexpressible Island."
But there were consolations; the long-waited-for lump of sugar: the
sing-songs--and about these there hangs a story. When Campbell's Party
and the remains of the Main Party forgathered at Cape Evans in November
1912, Campbell would give out the hymns for Church. The first Sunday we
had 'Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore Him,' and the second, and the
third. We suggested a change, to which Campbell asked, "Why?" We said it
got a bit monotonous. "Oh no," said Campbell, "we always sang it on
Inexpressible Island." It was also about the only one he knew. Apart from
this I do not know whether 'Old King Cole' or the Te Deum was more
popular. For reading they had David Copperfield, the Decameron, the Life
of Stevenson and a New Testament. And they did Swedish drill, and they
gave lectures.
Their worst difficulties were scurvy[29] and ptomaine poisoning, for
which the enforced diet was responsible. From the first they decided to
keep nearly all their unused rations for sledging down the coast in the
following spring, and this meant that they must live till then on the
seal and penguin which they could kill. The first dysentery was early in
the winter, and was caused by using the salt from the sea-water. They had
some Cerebos salt, however, in their sledging rations, and used it for a
week, which stopped the disorder and they gradually got used to the
sea-ice salt. Browning, however, who had had enteric fever in the past,
had dysentery almost continually right through the winter. Had he not
been the plucky, cheerful man he is, he would have died.
In June again there was another bad attack of dysentery. Another thing
which worried them somewhat was the 'igloo back,' a semi-permanent kink
caused by seldom being able to stand upright.
Then, in the beginning of September, they had ptomaine poisoning from
meat which had been too long in what they called the oven, which was a
biscuit box, hung over the blubber stove, into which they placed the
frozen meat to thaw it out. This oven was found to be not quite level,
and in a corner a pool of old blood, water and scraps of meat had
collected. This and a tainted hoosh which they did not have the strength
of mind to throw away in their hungry condition, seems to have caused the
outbreak, which was severe. Browning and Dickason were especially bad.
They had their bad days: those first days of realization that they would
not be relieved: days of depression, disease and hunger, all at once:
when the seal seemed as if they would give out and they were thinking
they would have to travel down the coast in the winter--but Abbott killed
two seals with a greasy knife, losing the use of three fingers in the
process, and saved the situation.
But they also had their good, or less-bad, days: such was mid-winter
night when they held food in their hands and did not want to eat it, for
they were full: or when they got through the Te Deum without a hitch: or
when they killed some penguins; or got a ration of mustard plaster from
the medical stores.
Never was a more cheerful or good-tempered party. They set out to see the
humorous side of everything, and, if they could not do so one day, at any
rate they determined to see to it the next. What is more they succeeded,
and I have never seen a company of better welded men than that which
joined us for those last two months in McMurdo Sound.
On September 30 they started home--so they called it. This meant a sledge
journey of some two hundred miles along the coast, and its possibility
depended upon the presence of sea-ice, which we have seen to have been
absent at Evans Coves. It also meant crossing the Drygalski Ice Tongue,
an obstacle which bulked very formidably in their imaginations during the
winter. They reached the last rise of this glacier in the evening of
October 10, and then saw Erebus, one hundred and fifty miles off. The
igloo and the past were behind: Cape Evans and the future were in
front--and the sea-ice was in as far as they could see.
Dickason was half crippled with dysentery when they started, but
improved. Browning, however, was still very ill, but now they were able
to eat a ration of four biscuits a day and a small amount of pemmican and
cocoa which gave him a better chance than the continual meat. As they
neared Granite Harbour, a month after starting, his condition was so
serious that they discussed leaving him there with Levick until they
could get medicine and suitable food from Cape Evans.
But their troubles were nearly over, for on reaching Cape Roberts they
suddenly sighted the depôt left by Taylor in the previous year. They
searched round, like dogs, scratching in the drifts, and found--a whole
case of biscuits: and there were butter and raisins and lard. Day and
night merged into one long lingering feast, and when they started on
again their mouths were sore[30] with eating biscuits. More, there is
little doubt that the change of diet saved Browning's life. As they moved
down the coast they found another depôt, and yet another. They reached
Hut Point on November 5.
The story of this, our Northern Party, has been told in full by the two
men most able to tell it: by Campbell in the second volume of Scott's
book, by Priestley in a separate volume called Antarctic Adventure.[31] I
have added only these few pages because, save in so far as their
adventures touch the Main Party or the Ship, it is better that I should
refer the reader to these two accounts than that I should try and write
again at second hand what has been already twice told. I will only say
here that the history of what these men did and suffered has been
overshadowed by the more tragic tale of the Polar Party. They are not men
who wish for public applause, but that is no reason why the story of a
great adventure should not be known; indeed, it is all the more reason
why it should be known. To those who have not read it I recommend
Priestley's book mentioned above, or Campbell's equally modest account in
Scott's Last Expedition.[32]
The Terra Nova arrived at Cape Evans on January 18, 1913, just as we had
started to prepare for another year. And so the remains of the expedition
came home that spring. Scott's book was published in the autumn.
The story of Scott's Last Expedition of 1910-13 is a book of two volumes,
the first volume of which is Scott's personal diary of the expedition,
written from day to day before he turned into his sleeping-bag for the
night when sledging, or in the intervals of the many details of
organization and preparation in the hut, when at Winter Quarters. The
readers of this book will probably have read that diary and the accounts
of the Winter Journey, the last year, the adventures of Campbell's Party
and the travels of the Terra Nova which follow. With an object which I
will explain presently I quote a review of Scott's book from the pen of
one of Mr. Punch's staff:[33]
"There is courage and strength and loyalty and love shining out of the
second volume no less than out of the first; there were gallant gentlemen
who lived as well as gallant gentlemen who died; but it is the story of
Scott, told by himself, which will give the book a place among the great
books of the world. That story begins in November 1910, and ends on March
29, 1912, and it is because when you come to the end, you will have lived
with Scott for sixteen months, that you will not be able to read the last
pages without tears. That message to the public was heartrending enough
when it first came to us, but it was as the story of how a great hero
fell that we read it; now it is just the tale of how a dear friend died.
To have read this book is to have known Scott; and if I were asked to
describe him, I think I should use some such words as those which, six
months before he died, he used of the gallant gentleman who went with
him, 'Bill' Wilson. 'Words must always fail when I talk of him,' he
wrote; 'I believe he is the finest character I ever met--the closer one
gets to him the more there is to admire. Every quality is so solid and
dependable. Whatever the matter, one knows Bill will be sound, shrewdly
practical, intensely loyal, and quite unselfish.' That is true of Wilson,
if Scott says so, for he knew men; but most of it is also true of Scott
himself. I have never met a more beautiful character than that which is
revealed unconsciously in these journals. His humanity, his courage, his
faith, his steadfastness, above all, his simplicity, mark him as a man
among men. It is because of his simplicity that his last message, the
last entries in his diary, his last letters, are of such undying beauty.
The letter of consolation (and almost of apology) which, on the verge of
death, he wrote to Mrs. Wilson, wife of the man dying at his side, may
well be Scott's monument. He could have no finer. And he has raised a
monument for those other gallant gentlemen who died--Wilson, Oates,
Bowers, Evans. They are all drawn for us clearly by him in these pages;
they stand out unmistakably. They, too, come to be friends of ours, their
death is as noble and as heartbreaking. And there were gallant gentlemen,
I said, who lived--you may read amazing stories of them. Indeed, it is a
wonderful tale of manliness that these two volumes tell us. I put them
down now; but I have been for a few days in the company of the brave ...
and every hour with them has made me more proud for those that died and
more humble for myself."
I have quoted this review at length, because it gives the atmosphere of
hero-worship into which we were plunged on our return. That atmosphere
was very agreeable; but it was a refracting medium through which the
expedition could not be seen with scientific accuracy--and the expedition
was nothing if not scientific. Whilst we knew what we had suffered and
risked better than any one else, we also knew that science takes no
account of such things; that a man is no better for having made the worst
journey in the world; and that whether he returns alive or drops by the
way will be all the same a hundred years hence if his records and
specimens come safely to hand.
In addition to Scott's Last Expedition and Priestley's Antarctic
Adventures, Griffith Taylor, who was physiographer to the Main Party, has
written an account of the two geological journeys of which he was the
leader, and of the domestic life of the expedition at Hut Point and at
Cape Evans, up to February 1912, in a book called With Scott: The Silver
Lining. This book gives a true glimpse into the more boisterous side of
our life, with much useful information about the scientific part.
Though it bears little upon this book I cannot refrain from drawing the
reader's attention to, and earning some of his thanks for, a little book
called Antarctic Penguins, written by Levick, the Surgeon of Campbell's
Party. It is almost entirely about Adélie penguins. The author spent the
greater part of a summer living, as it were, upon sufferance, in the
middle of one of the largest penguin rookeries in the world. He has
described the story of their crowded life with a humour with which,
perhaps, we hardly credited him, and with a simplicity which many writers
of children's stories might envy. If you think your own life hard, and
would like to leave it for a short hour I recommend you to beg, borrow or
steal this tale, and read and see how the penguins live. It is all quite
true.
So there is already a considerable literature about the expedition, but
no connected account of it as a whole. Scott's diary, had he lived, would
merely have formed the basis of the book he would have written. As his
personal diary it has an interest which no other book could have had. But
a diary in this life is one of the only ways in which a man can blow off
steam, and so it is that Scott's book accentuates the depression which
used to come over him sometimes.
We have seen the importance which must attach to the proper record of
improvements, weights and methods of each and every expedition. We have
seen how Scott took the system developed by the Arctic Explorers at the
point of development to which it had been brought by Nansen, and applied
it for the first time to Antarctic sledge travelling. Scott's Voyage of
the Discovery gives a vivid picture of mistakes rectified, and of
improvements of every kind. Shackleton applied the knowledge they gained
in his first expedition, Scott in this, his second and last. On the whole
I believe this expedition was the best equipped there has ever been, when
the double purpose, exploratory and scientific, for which it was
organized, is taken into consideration. It is comparatively easy to put
all your eggs into one basket, to organize your material and to equip and
choose your men entirely for one object, whether it be the attainment of
the Pole, or the running of a perfect series of scientific observations.
Your difficulties increase many-fold directly you combine the one with
the other, as was done in this case. Neither Scott nor the men with him
would have gone for the Pole alone. Yet they considered the Pole to be an
achievement worthy of a great attempt, and "We took risks, we knew we
took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no
cause for complaint...."
It is, it must be, of the first importance that a system, I will not say
perfected, but developed, to a pitch of high excellence at such a cost
should be handed down as completely as possible to those who are to
follow. I want to so tell this story that the leader of some future
Antarctic expedition, perhaps more than one, will be able to take it up
and say: "I have here the material from which I can order the articles
and quantities which will be wanted for so many men for such and such a
time; I have also a record of how this material was used by Scott, of the
plans of his journeys and how his plans worked out, and of the
improvements which his parties were able to make on the spot or suggest
for the future. I don't agree with such and such, but this is a
foundation and will save me many months of work in preparation, and give
me useful knowledge for the actual work of my expedition." If this book
can guide the future explorer by the light of the past, it will not have
been written in vain.
But this was not my main object in writing this book. When I undertook in
1913 to write, for the Antarctic Committee, an Official Narrative on
condition that I was given a free hand, what I wanted to do above all
things was to show what work was done; who did it; to whom the credit of
the work was due; who took the responsibility; who did the hard sledging;
and who pulled us through that last and most ghastly year when two
parties were adrift, and God only knew what was best to be done; when,
had things gone on much longer, men would undoubtedly have gone mad.
There is no record of these things, though perhaps the world thinks there
is. Generally as a mere follower, without much responsibility, and often
scared out of my wits, I was in the thick of it all, and I know.
Unfortunately I could not reconcile a sincere personal confession with
the decorous obliquity of an Official Narrative; and I found that I had
put the Antarctic Committee in a difficulty from which I could rescue
them only by taking the book off their hands; for it was clear that what
I had written was not what is expected from a Committee, even though no
member may disapprove of a word of it. A proper Official Narrative
presented itself to our imaginations and sense of propriety as a quarto
volume, uniform with the scientific reports, dustily invisible on Museum
shelves, and replete with--in the words of my Commission--"times of
starting, hours of march, ground and weather conditions," not very useful
as material for future Antarcticists, and in no wise effecting any
catharsis of the writer's conscience. I could not pretend that I had
fulfilled these conditions; and so I decided to take the undivided
responsibility on my own shoulders. None the less the Committee, having
given me access to its information, is entitled to all the credit of a
formal Official Narrative, without the least responsibility for the
passages which I have studied to make as personal in style as possible,
so that no greater authority may be attached to them than I deserve.
I need hardly add that the nine years' delay in the appearance of my book
was caused by the war. Before I had recovered from the heavy overdraft
made on my strength by the expedition I found myself in Flanders looking
after a fleet of armoured cars. A war is like the Antarctic in one
respect. There is no getting out of it with honour as long as you can put
one foot before the other. I came back badly invalided; and the book had
to wait accordingly.
[Illustration: FROM NEW ZEALAND TO THE SOUTH POLE--Apsley Cherry-Garrard,
del.--Emery Walker Ltd., Collotypers.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cook, _A Voyage towards the South Pole_, Introduction.
[2] Cook, _A Voyage towards the South Pole_, vol. i. p. 23.
[3] Ibid. p. 28.
[4] Cook, _A Voyage towards the South Pole_, vol. i. p. 268.
[5] Ibid. p. 275.
[6] Scott, _Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. i. p. 9.
[7] Ibid. p. 14.
[8] Ross, _Voyage to the Southern Seas_, vol. i. p. 117.
[9] Ross, _Voyage to the Southern Seas_, vol. i. pp. 216-218.
[10] Ross, _Voyage to the Southern Seas_, vol. i. pp. 244-245.
[11] Leonard Huxley, _Life of Sir J. D. Hooker_, vol. ii. p. 443.
[12] Ibid. p. 441.
[13] Nansen, _Farthest North_, vol. i. p. 52.
[14] Nansen, _Farthest North_, vol. ii. pp. 19-20.
[15] Scott, _Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. i. p. 229.
[16] Scott, _Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. i. p. vii.
[17] Ibid. p. 273.
[18] See Scott, _Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. ii. pp. 5, 6, 490.
[19] Wilson, _Nat. Ant. Exp., 1901-1904_, "Zoology," Part ii. pp.
8-9.
[20] Wilson, _Nat. Ant. Exp., 1901-1904_, "Zoology," Part ii. p.
31.
[21] Scott, _Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. ii. p. 327.
[22] Scott, _The Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. ii. pp. 347-348.
[23] See pp. 128-134.
[24] See pp. xxxi-xxxii.
[25] See p. xxviii.
[26] Priestley, _Antarctic Adventure_, pp. 232-233.
[27] Priestley, _Antarctic Adventure_, pp. 236-237.
[28] Priestley, _Antarctic Adventure_, p. 243.
[29] Atkinson has no doubt that the symptoms of the Northern Party
were those of early scurvy. Conditions of temperature in the
igloo allowed of decomposition occurring in seal meat. Fresh
seal meat brought in from outside reduced the scurvy
symptoms.
[30] This tenderness of gums and tongue is additional evidence of
scurvy.
[31] Published by Fisher Unwin, 1914.
[32] Vol. ii., Narrative of the Northern Party.
[33] A. A. Milne.
CHAPTER I
FROM ENGLAND TO SOUTH AFRICA
Take a bowsy short leave of your nymphs on the shore,
And silence their mourning with vows of returning,
Though never intending to visit them more.
_Dido and Aeneas._
Scott used to say that the worst part of an expedition was over when the
preparation was finished. So no doubt it was with a sigh of relief that
he saw the Terra Nova out from Cardiff into the Atlantic on June 15,
1910. Cardiff had given the expedition a most generous and enthusiastic
send-off, and Scott announced that it should be his first port on
returning to England. Just three years more and the Terra Nova, worked
back from New Zealand by Pennell, reached Cardiff again on June 14, 1913,
and paid off there.
From the first everything was informal and most pleasant, and those who
had the good fortune to help in working the ship out to New Zealand,
under steam or sail, must, in spite of five months of considerable
discomfort and very hard work, look back upon the voyage as one of the
very happiest times of the expedition. To some of us perhaps the voyage
out, the three weeks in the pack ice going South, and the Robinson Crusoe
life at Hut Point are the pleasantest of many happy memories.
Scott made a great point that so far as was possible the personnel of the
expedition must go out with the Terra Nova. Possibly he gave
instructions that they were to be worked hard, and no doubt it was a good
opportunity of testing our mettle. We had been chosen out of 8000
volunteers, executive officers, scientific staff, crew, and all.
We differed entirely from the crew of an ordinary merchant ship both in
our personnel and in our methods of working. The executive officers were
drawn from the Navy, as were also the crew. In addition there was the
scientific staff, including one doctor who was not a naval surgeon, but
who was also a scientist, and two others called by Scott 'adaptable
helpers,' namely Oates and myself. The scientific staff of the expedition
numbered twelve members all told, but only six were on board: the
remainder were to join the ship at Lyttelton, New Zealand, when we made
our final embarcation for the South. Of those on the ship Wilson was
chief of the scientific staff, and united in himself the various
functions of vertebral zoologist, doctor, artist, and, as this book will
soon show, the unfailing friend-in-need of all on board. Lieutenant Evans
was in command, with Campbell as first officer. Watches were of course
assigned immediately to the executive officers. The crew was divided into
a port and starboard watch, and the ordinary routine of a sailing ship
with auxiliary steam was followed. Beyond this no work was definitely
assigned to any individual on board. How the custom of the ship arose I
do not know, but in effect most things were done by volunteer labour. It
was recognized that every one whose work allowed turned to immediately on
any job which was wanted, but it was an absolutely voluntary
duty--Volunteers to shorten sail? To coal? To shift cargo? To pump? To
paint or wash down paintwork? They were constant calls--some of them
almost hourly calls, day and night--and there was never any failure to
respond fully. This applied not only to the scientific staff but also,
whenever their regular duties allowed, to the executive officers. There
wasn't an officer on the ship who did not shift coal till he was sick of
the sight of it, but I heard no complaints. Such a system soon singles
out the real willing workers, but it is apt to put an undue strain upon
them. Meanwhile most of the executive officers as well as the scientific
staff had their own work to do, which they were left to fit in as most
convenient.
The first days out from England were spent in such hard and crowded work
that we shook down very quickly. I then noticed for the first time
Wilson's great gift of tact, and how quick he was to see the small things
which make so much difference. At the same time his passion for work set
a high standard. Pennell was another glutton.
We dropped anchor in Funchal Harbour, Madeira, about 4 P.M. on June 23,
eight days out. The ship had already been running under sail and steam,
the decks were as clear as possible, there was some paintwork to show,
and with a good harbour stow she looked thoroughly workmanlike and neat.
Some scientific work, in particular tow netting and magnetic
observations, had already been done. But even as early as this we had
spent hours on the pumps, and it was evident that these pumps were going
to be a constant nightmare.
In Madeira, as everywhere, we were given freely of such things as we
required. We left in the early morning of June 26, after Pennell had done
some hours' magnetic work with the Lloyd Creak and Barrow Dip Circle.
On June 29 (noon position lat. 27° 10´ N., long. 20° 21´ W.) it was
possible to write: "A fortnight out to-day, and from the general
appearance of the wardroom we might have been out a year."
We were to a great extent strangers to one another when we left England,
but officers and crew settled down to their jobs quickly, and when men
live as close as we did they settle down or quarrel before very long. Let
us walk into the cabins which surround the small wardroom aft. The first
on the left is that of Scott and Lieutenant Evans, but Scott is not on
board, and Wilson has taken his place. In the next cabin to them is
Drake, the secretary. On the starboard side of the screw are Oates,
Atkinson and Levick, the two latter being doctors, and on the port side
Campbell and Pennell, who is navigator. Then Rennick and Bowers, the
latter just home from the Persian Gulf--both of these are watchkeepers.
In the next cabin are Simpson, meteorologist, back from Simla, with
Nelson and Lillie, marine biologists. In the last cabin, the Nursery, are
the youngest, and necessarily the best behaved, of this community,
Wright, the physicist and chemist, Gran the Norwegian ski-expert, and
myself, Wilson's helper and assistant zoologist. It is difficult to put a
man down as performing any special job where each did so many, but that
is roughly what we were.
Certain men already began to stand out. Wilson, with an apparently
inexhaustible stock of knowledge on little things and big; always ready
to give help, and always ready with sympathy and insight, a tremendous
worker, and as unselfish as possible; a universal adviser. Pennell, as
happy as the day was long, working out sights, taking his watch on the
bridge, or if not on watch full of energy aloft, trimming coal, or any
other job that came along; withal spending hours a day on magnetic work,
which he did as a hobby, and not in any way as his job. Bowers was
proving himself the best seaman on board, with an exact knowledge of the
whereabouts and contents of every case, box and bale, and with a supreme
contempt for heat or cold. Simpson was obviously a first-class scientist,
devoted to his work, in which Wright gave him very great and unselfish
help, while at the same time doing much of the ship's work. Oates and
Atkinson generally worked together in a solid, dependable and somewhat
humorous way.
Evans, who will always be called Lieutenant Evans in this book to
distinguish him from Seaman Evans, was in charge of the ship, and did
much to cement together the rough material into a nucleus which was
capable of standing without any friction the strains of nearly three
years of crowded, isolated and difficult life, ably seconded by Victor
Campbell, first officer, commonly called The Mate, in whose hands the
routine and discipline of the ship was most efficiently maintained. I was
very frightened of Campbell.
Scott himself was unable to travel all the way out to New Zealand in the
Terra Nova owing to the business affairs of the expedition, but he
joined the ship from Simon's Bay to Melbourne.
The voyage itself on the sailing track from Madeira to the Cape was at
first uneventful. We soon got into hot weather, and at night every
available bit of deck space was used on which to sleep. The more
particular slung hammocks, but generally men used such deck space as they
could find, such as the top of the icehouse, where they were free from
the running tackle, and rolled themselves into their blankets. So long as
we had a wind we ran under sail alone, and on those days men would bathe
over the side in the morning, but when the engines were going we could
get the hose in the morning, which was preferred, especially after a
shark was seen making for Bowers' red breast as he swam.
The scene on deck in the early morning was always interesting. All hands
were roused before six and turned on to the pumps, for the ship was
leaking considerably. Normally, the well showed about ten inches of water
when the ship was dry. Before pumping, the sinker would show anything
over two feet. The ship was generally dry after an hour to an hour and a
half's pumping, and by that time we had had quite enough of it. As soon
as the officer of the watch had given the order, "Vast pumping," the
first thing to do was to strip, and the deck was dotted with men trying
to get the maximum amount of water from the sea in a small bucket let
down on a line from the moving ship. First efforts in this direction
would have been amusing had it not been for the caustic eye of the 'Mate'
on the bridge. If the reader ever gets the chance to try the experiment,
especially in a swell, he will soon find himself with neither bucket nor
water. The poor Mate was annoyed by the loss of his buckets.
Everybody was working very hard during these days; shifting coal, reefing
and furling sail aloft, hauling on the ropes on deck, together with
magnetic and meteorological observations, tow-netting, collecting and
making skins and so forth. During the first weeks there was more cargo
stowing and paintwork than at other times, otherwise the work ran in
very much the same lines all the way out--a period of nearly five months.
On July 1 we were overhauled by the only ship we ever saw, so far as I
can remember, during all that time, the Inverclyde, a barque out from
Glasgow to Buenos Ayres. It was an oily, calm day with a sea like glass,
and she looked, as Wilson quoted, "like a painted ship upon a painted
ocean," as she lay with all sail set.
We picked up the N.E. Trade two days later, being then north of the Cape
Verde Islands (lat. 22° 28´ N., long. 23° 5´ W. at noon). It was a
Sunday, and there was a general 'make and mend' throughout the ship, the
first since we sailed. During the day we ran from deep clear blue water
into a darkish and thick green sea. This remarkable change of colour,
which was observed by the Discovery Expedition in much the same place,
was supposed to be due to a large mass of pelagic fauna called plankton.
The plankton, which drifts upon the surface of the sea, is distinct from
the nekton, which swims submerged. The Terra Nova was fitted with tow
nets with very fine meshes for collecting these inhabitants of the open
sea, together with the algae, or minute plant organisms, which afford
them an abundant food supply.
The plankton nets can be lowered when the ship is running at full speed,
and a great many such hauls were made during the expedition.
July 5 had an unpleasant surprise in store. At 10.30 A.M. the ship's bell
rang and there was a sudden cry of "Fire quarters." Two Minimax fire
extinguishers finished the fire, which was in the lazarette, and was
caused by a lighted lamp which was upset by the roll of the ship. The
result was a good deal of smoke, a certain amount of water below, and
some singed paper, but we realized that a fire on such an old wooden ship
would be a very serious matter, and greater care was taken after this.
Such a voyage shows Nature in her most attractive form, and always there
was a man close by whose special knowledge was in the whales, porpoises,
dolphins, fish, birds, parasites, plankton, radium and other things which
we watched through microscopes or field-glasses. Nelson caught a
Portuguese man-of-war (Arethusa) as it sailed past us close under the
counter. These animals are common, but few can realize how beautiful they
are until they see them, fresh-coloured from the deep sea, floating and
sailing in a big glass bowl. It vainly tried to sail out, and vigorously
tried to sting all who touched it. Wilson painted it.
From first to last the study of life of all kinds was of absorbing
interest to all on board, and, when we landed in the Antarctic, as well
as on the ship, everybody worked and was genuinely interested in all that
lived and had its being on the fringe of that great sterile continent.
Not only did officers who had no direct interest in anything but their
own particular work or scientific subject spend a large part of their
time in helping, making notes and keeping observations, but the seamen
also had a large share in the specimens and data of all descriptions
which have been brought back. Several of them became good pupils for
skinning birds.
Meanwhile, perhaps the constant cries of "Whale, whale!" or "New bird!"
or "Dolphins!" sometimes found the biologist concerned less eager to
leave his meal than the observers were to call him forth. Good
opportunities of studying the life of sea birds, whales, dolphins and
other forms of life in the sea, even those comparatively few forms which
are visible from the surface, are not too common. A modern liner moves so
quickly that it does not attract life to it in the same way as a
slow-moving ship like the Terra Nova, and when specimens are seen they
are gone almost as soon as they are observed. Those who wish to study sea
life--and there is much to be done in this field--should travel by tramp
steamers, or, better still, sailing vessels.
Dolphins were constantly playing under the bows of the ship, giving a
very good chance for identification, and whales were also frequently
sighted, and would sometimes follow the ship, as did also hundreds of sea
birds, petrels, shearwaters and albatross. It says much for the interest
and keenness of the officers on board that a complete hourly log was
kept from beginning to end of the numbers and species which were seen,
generally with the most complete notes as to any peculiarity or habit
which was noticed. It is to be hoped that full use will be made, by those
in charge of the working out of these results, of these logs which were
kept so thoroughly and sometimes under such difficult circumstances and
conditions of weather and sea. Though many helped, this log was largely
the work of Pennell, who was an untiring and exact observer.
We lost the N.E. Trade about July 7, and ran into the Doldrums. On the
whole we could not complain of the weather. We never had a gale or big
sea until after leaving South Trinidad, and though an old ship with no
modern ventilation is bound to be stuffy in the tropics, we lived and
slept on deck so long as it was not raining. If it rained at night, as it
frequently does in this part of the world, a number of rolled-up forms
could be heard discussing as to whether it was best to stick it above or
face the heat below; and if the rain persisted, sleepy and somewhat
snappy individuals were to be seen trying to force themselves and a
maximum amount of damp bedding down the wardroom gangway. At the same
time a thick wooden ship will keep fairly cool in the not severe heat
through which we passed.
One want which was unavoidable was the lack of fresh water. There was
none to wash in, though a glass of water was allowed for shaving! With an
unlimited amount of sea water this may not seem much of a hardship; nor
is it unless you have very dirty work to do. But inasmuch as some of the
officers were coaling almost daily, they found that any amount of cold
sea water, even with a euphemistically named 'sea-water soap,' had no
very great effect in removing the coal dust. The alternative was to make
friends with the engine-room authorities and draw some water from the
boilers.
Perhaps therefore it was not with purely disinterested motives that some
of us undertook to do the stoking during the morning watch, and also
later in the day during our passage through the tropics, since the
engine-room staff was reduced by sickness. A very short time will
convince anybody that the ease with which men accustomed to this work get
through their watch is mainly due to custom and method. The ship had no
forced draught nor modern ventilating apparatus. Four hours in the
boiling fiery furnace which the Terra Nova's stokehold formed in the
tropics, unless there was a good wind to blow down the one canvas shaft,
was a real test of staying power, and the actual shovelling of the coal
into the furnaces, one after the other, was as child's play to handling
the 'devil,' as the weighty instrument used for breaking up the clinker
and shaping the fire was called. The boilers were cylindrical marine or
return tube boilers, the furnaces being six feet long by three feet wide,
slightly lower at the back than at the front. The fire on the bars was
kept wedge-shape, that is, some nine inches high at the back, tapering to
about six inches in front against the furnace doors. The furnaces were
corrugated for strength. We were supposed to keep the pressure on the
gauge between 70 and 80, but it wanted some doing. For the most part it
was done.
We did, however, get uncomfortable days with the rain sluicing down and a
high temperature--everything wet on deck and below. But it had its
advantages in the fresh water it produced. Every bucket was on duty, and
the ship's company stripped naked and ran about the decks or sat in the
stream between the laboratories and wardroom skylight and washed their
very dirty clothes. The stream came through into our bunks, and no amount
of caulking ever stopped it. To sleep with a constant drip of water
falling upon you is a real trial. These hot, wet days were more trying to
the nerves than the months of wet, rough but cooler weather to come, and
it says much for the good spirit which prevailed that there was no
friction, though we were crowded together like sardines in a tin.
July 12 was a typical day (lat. 4° 57´ N., long. 22° 4´ W.). A very hot,
rainy night, followed by a squall which struck us while we were having
breakfast, so we went up and set all sail, which took until about 9.30
A.M. We then sat in the water on the deck and washed clothes until just
before mid-day, when the wind dropped, though the rain continued. So we
went up and furled all sail, a tedious business when the sails are wet
and heavy. Then work on cargo or coal till 7 P.M., supper, and glad to
get to sleep.
On July 15 (lat. 0° 40´ N., long. 21° 56´ W.) we crossed the Line with
all pomp and ceremony. At 1.15 P.M. Neptune in the person of Seaman Evans
hailed and stopped the ship. He came on board with his motley company,
who solemnly paced aft to the break of the poop, where he was met by
Lieutenant Evans. His wife (Browning), a doctor (Paton), barber
(Cheetham), two policemen and four bears, of whom Atkinson and Oates were
two, grouped themselves round him while the barrister (Abbott) read an
address to the captain, and then the procession moved round to the bath,
a sail full of water slung in the break of the poop on the starboard
side.
Nelson was the first victim. He was examined, then overhauled by the
doctor, given a pill and a dose, and handed over to the barber, who
lathered him with a black mixture consisting of soot, flour and water,
was shaved by Cheetham with a great wooden razor, and then the policemen
tipped him backwards into the bath where the bears were waiting. As he
was being pushed in he seized the barber and took him with him.
Wright, Lillie, Simpson and Levick followed, with about six of the crew.
Finally Gran, the Norwegian, was caught as an extra--never having been
across the Line in a British ship. But he threw the pill-distributing
doctor over his head into the bath, after which he was lathered very
gingerly, and Cheetham having been in once, refused to shave him at all,
so they tipped him in and wished they had never caught him.
The procession re-formed, and Neptune presented certificates to those who
had been initiated. The proceedings closed with a sing-song in the
evening.
These sing-songs were of very frequent occurrence. The expedition was
very fond of singing, though there was hardly anybody in it who could
sing. The usual custom at this time was that every one had to contribute
a song in turn all round the table after supper. If he could not sing he
had to compose a limerick. If he could not compose a limerick he had to
contribute a fine towards the wine fund, which was to make some
much-discussed purchases when we reached Cape Town. At other times we
played the most childish games--there was one called 'The Priest of the
Parish has lost his Cap,' over which we laughed till we cried, and much
money was added to the wine fund.
As always happens, certain songs became conspicuous for a time. One of
these I am sure that Campbell, who was always at work and upon whom the
routine of the ship depended, will never forget. I do not know who it was
that started singing
"Everybody works but Father,
That poor old man,"
but Campbell, who was the only father on board and whose hair was
popularly supposed to be getting thin on the top of his head, may
remember.
We began to make preparations for a run ashore--a real adventure on an
uninhabited and unknown island. The sailing track of ships from England
round the Cape of Good Hope lies out towards the coast of Brazil, and not
far from the mysterious island of South Trinidad, 680 miles east of
Brazil, in 20° 30´ S. and 29° 30´ W.
This island is difficult of access, owing to its steep rocky coast and
the big Atlantic swell which seldom ceases. It has therefore been little
visited, and as it is infested with land crabs the stay of the few
parties which have been there has been short. But scientifically it is of
interest, not only for the number of new species which may be obtained
there, but also for the extraordinary attitude of wild sea birds towards
human beings whom they have never learnt to fear. Before we left England
it had been decided to attempt a landing and spend a day there if we
should pass sufficiently near to it.
Those who have visited it in the past include the astronomer Halley, who
occupied it, in 1700. Sir James Ross, outward bound for the Antarctic in
1839, spent a day there, landing "in a small cove a short distance to
the northward of the Nine Pin Rock of Halley, the surf on all other parts
being too great to admit of it without hazarding the destruction of our
boats." Ross also writes that "Horsburgh mentions ... 'that the island
abounds with wild pig and goats; one of the latter was seen. With the
view to add somewhat to the stock of useful creatures, a cock and two
hens were put on shore; they seemed to enjoy the change, and, I have no
doubt, in so unfrequented a situation, and so delightful a climate, will
quickly increase in numbers.' I am afraid we did not find any of their
descendants, nor those of the pig and goats."[34] I doubt whether fowls
would survive the land crabs very long. There are many wild birds on the
island, however, which may feed the shipwrecked, and also a depôt left by
the Government for that purpose. Another visitor was Knight, who wrote a
book called The Cruise of the Falcon, concerning his efforts to discover
the treasure which is said to have been left there. Scott also visited it
in the Discovery in 1901, when a new petrel was found which was
afterwards called 'Oestrelata wilsoni,' after the same 'Uncle Bill' who
was zoologist of both Scott's Expeditions.
And so it came about that on the evening of July 25 we furled sail and
lay five miles from South Trinidad with all our preparations made for a
very thorough search of this island of treasure. Everything was to be
captured, alive or dead, animal, vegetable or mineral.
At half-past five the next morning we were steaming slowly towards what
looked like a quite impregnable face of rock, with bare cliffs standing
straight out of the water, which, luckily for us, was comparatively
smooth. As we coasted to try and find a landing-place the sun was rising
behind the island, which reaches to a height of two thousand feet, and
the jagged cliffs stood up finely against the rosy sky.
[Illustration: SOUTH TRINIDAD--E. A. Wilson, del.]
We dropped our anchor to the south of the island and a boat's crew left
to prospect for a landing-place, whilst Wilson seized the opportunity to
shoot some birds as specimens, including two species of frigate bird,
and the seamen caught some of the multitudinous fish. We also fired shots
at the sharks which soon thronged round the ship, and about which we were
to think more before the day was done.
The boat came back with the news that a possible landing-place had been
found, and the landing parties got off about 8.30. The landing was very
bad--a ledge of rock weathered out of the cliff to our right formed, as
it were, a staging along which it was possible to pass on to a steeply
shelving talus slope in front of us. The sea being comparatively smooth,
everybody was landed dry, with their guns and collecting gear.
The best account of South Trinidad is contained in a letter written by
Bowers to his mother, which is printed here. But some brief notes which I
jotted down at the time may also be of interest, since they give an
account of a different part of the island:
"Having made a small depôt of cartridges, together with a little fluffy
tern and a tern's egg, which Wilson found on the rocks, we climbed
westward, round and up, to a point from which we could see into the East
Bay. This was our first stand, and we shot several white-breasted petrel
(Oestrelata trinitatis), and also black-breasted petrel (Oestrelata
arminjoniana). Later on we got over the brow of a cliff where the petrel
were nesting. We took two nests, on each of which a white-breasted and a
black-breasted petrel were paired. Wilson caught one in his hands and I
caught another on its nest; it really did not know whether it ought to
fly away or not. This gives rise to an interesting problem, since these
two birds have been classified as different species, and it now looks as
though they are the same.
"The gannets and terns were quite extraordinary, like all the living
things there. If you stay still enough the terns perch on your head. In
any case they will not fly off the rocks till you are two or three feet
away. Several gannets were caught in the men's hands. All the fish which
the biologist collected to-day can travel quite fast on land. When the
Discovery was here Wilson saw a fish come out of the sea, seize a land
crab about eighteen inches away and take it back into the water.
"The land crabs were all over the place in thousands; it seems probable
that their chief enemies are themselves. They are regular cannibals.
"Then we did a real long climb northwards, over rocks and tufty grass
till 1.30 P.M. From the point we had reached we could see both sides of
the island, and the little Martin Vas islands in the distance.
"We found lots of little tern and terns' eggs, lying out on the bare rock
with no nest at all. Hooper also brought us two little gannets--all
fluffy, but even at this age larger than a rook. As we got further up we
began to come across the fossilized trees for which the island is well
known.
"Four or five Captain biscuits made an excellent lunch, and afterwards we
started to the real top of the island, a hill rising to the west of us.
It was covered with a high scrubby bush and rocks, and was quite thick;
in fact there was more vegetation here than on all the rest we had seen,
and in making our way through it we had to keep calling in order to keep
touch with one another.
"The tree ferns were numerous, but stunted. The gannets were sleeping on
the tops of the bushes, and some of the crabs had climbed up the bushes
and were sunning themselves on the top. These crabs were round us in
thousands--I counted seven watching me out of one crack between two
rocks.
"We sat down under the lee of the summit, and thought it would not be bad
to be thrown away on a desert island, little thinking how near we were to
being stranded, for a time at any rate.
"The crabs gathered round us in a circle, with their eyes turning towards
us--as if they were waiting for us to die to come and eat us. One big
fellow left his place in the circle and waddled up to my feet and
examined my boots. First with one claw and then with the other he took a
taste of my boot. He went away obviously disgusted: one could almost see
him shake his head.
"We collected, as well as our birds and eggs, some spiders, very large
grasshoppers, wood-lice, cockchafers, with big and small centipedes. In
fact, the place teemed with insect life. I should add that their names
are given rather from the general appearance of the animals than from
their true scientific classes.
"We had a big and fast scramble down, and about half way, when we could
watch the sea breaking on the rocks far below, we saw that there was a
bigger swell running. It was getting late, and we made our way down as
fast as we could--denting our guns as we slipped on the rocks.
"The lower we got the bigger the sea which had risen in our absence
appeared to be. No doubt it was the swell of a big disturbance far away,
and when we reached the débris slope where we had landed, flanked by big
cliffs, we found everybody gathered there and the boats lying off--it
being quite impossible for them to get near the shore.
"They had just got a life-line ashore on a buoy. Bowers went out on to
the rocks and secured it. We put our guns and specimens into a pile, out
of reach, as we thought, of any possible sea. But just afterwards two
very large waves took us--we were hauling in the rope, and must have been
a good thirty feet above the base of the wave. It hit us hard and knocked
us all over the place, and wetted the guns and specimens above us through
and through.
"We then stowed all gear and specimens well out of the reach of the seas,
and then went out through the surf one by one, passing ourselves out on
the line. It was ticklish work, but Hooper was the only one who really
had a bad time. He did not get far enough out among the rocks which
fringed the steep slope from which he started as a wave began to roll
back. The next wave caught him and crashed him back, and he let go of the
line. He was under quite a long time, and as the waves washed back all
that we could do was to try and get the line to him. Luckily he succeeded
in finding the slack of the line and got out.
"When we first got down to the shore and things were looking nasty,
Wilson sat down on the top of a rock and ate a biscuit in the coolest
possible manner. It was an example to avoid all panicking, for he did
not want the biscuit.
"He remarked afterwards to me, apropos to Hooper, that it was a curious
thing that a number of men, knowing that there was nothing they could do,
could quietly watch a man fighting for his life, and he did not think
that any but the British temperament could do so. I also found out later
that he and I had both had a touch of cramp while waiting for our turn to
swim out through the surf."
The following is Bowers' letter:
"_Sunday, 31st July._
"The past week has been so crowded with incident, really, that I
don't know where to start. Getting to land made me long for the
mails from you, which are such a feature of getting to port.
However, the strange uninhabited island which we visited will
have to make up for my disappointment till we get to Capetown--or
rather Simon's Town. Campbell and I sighted S. Trinidad from the
fore yardarm on 25th, and on 26th, at first thing in the morning,
we crept up to an anchorage in a sea of glass. The S.E. Trades,
making a considerable sea, were beating on the eastern sides,
while the western was like a mill-pond. The great rocks and hills
to over 2000 feet towered above us as we went in very close in
order to get our anchor down, as the water is very deep to quite
a short distance from the shore. West Bay was our selection, and
so clear was the water that we could see the anchor at the bottom
in 15 fathoms. A number of sharks and other fish appeared at once
and several birds. Evans wanted to explore, so Oates, Rennick,
Atkinson and myself went away with him--pulling the boat. We
examined the various landings and found them all rocky and
dangerous. There was a slight surf although the sea looked like a
mill-pond. We finally decided on a previously unused place, which
was a little inlet among the rocks.
"There was nothing but rock, but there was a little nook where we
decided to try and land. We returned to breakfast and found that
Wilson and Cherry-Garrard had shot several Frigate and other
birds from the ship, the little Norwegian boat--called a
Pram--being used to pick them up. By way of explanation I may say
that Wilson is a specialist in birds and is making a collection
for the British Museum.
"We all landed as soon as possible. Wilson and Garrard with their
guns for birds: Oates with the dogs, and Atkinson with a small
rifle: Lillie after plants and geological specimens: Nelson and
Simpson along the shore after sea beasts, etc.: and last but not
least came the entomological party, under yours truly, with
Wright and, later, Evans, as assistants. Pennell joined up with
Wilson, so altogether we were ready to 'do' the island. I have
taken over the collection of insects for the expedition, as the
other scientists all have so much to do that they were only too
glad to shove the small beasts on me. Atkinson is a specialist in
parasites: it is called 'Helminthology.' I never heard that name
before. He turns out the interior of every beast that is killed,
and being also a surgeon, I suppose the subject must be
interesting. White terns abounded on the island. They were
ghost-like and so tame that they would sit on one's hat. They
laid their eggs on pinnacles of rock without a vestige of nest,
and singly. They looked just like stones. I suppose this was a
protection from the land-crabs, about which you will have heard.
The land-crabs of Trinidad are a byword and they certainly
deserve the name, as they abound from sea-level to the top of the
island. The higher up the bigger they were. The surface of the
hills and valleys was covered with loose boulders, and the whole
island being of volcanic origin, coarse grass is everywhere, and
at about 1500 feet is an area of tree ferns and subtropical
vegetation, extending up to nearly the highest parts. The
withered trees of a former forest are everywhere and their
existence unexplained, though Lillie had many ingenious theories.
The island has been in our hands, the Germans', and is now
Brazilian. Nobody has been able to settle there permanently,
owing to the land-crabs. These also exclude mammal life. Captain
Kidd made a treasure depôt there, and some five years ago a chap
named Knight lived on the island for six months with a party of
Newcastle miners--trying to get at it. He had the place all
right, but a huge landslide has covered up three-quarters of a
million of the pirate's gold. The land-crabs are little short of
a nightmare. They peep out at you from every nook and boulder.
Their dead staring eyes follow your every step as if to say, 'If
only you will drop down we will do the rest.' To lie down and
sleep on any part of the island would be suicidal. Of course,
Knight had a specially cleared place with all sorts of
precautions, otherwise he would never have survived these beasts,
which even tried to nibble your boots as you stood--staring hard
at you the whole time. One feature that would soon send a lonely
man off his chump is that no matter how many are in sight they
are all looking at you, and they follow step by step with a
sickly deliberation. They are all yellow and pink, and next to
spiders seem the most loathsome creatures on God's earth. Talking
about spiders [Bowers always had the greatest horror of
spiders]--I have to collect them as well as insects. Needless to
say I caught them with a butterfly net, and never touched one.
Only five species were known before, and I found fifteen or
more--at any rate I have fifteen for certain. Others helped me to
catch them, of course. Another interesting item to science is the
fact that I caught a moth hitherto unknown to exist on the
island, also various flies, ants, etc. Altogether it was a most
successful day. Wilson got dozens of birds, and Lillie plants,
etc. On our return to the landing-place we found to our horror
that a southerly swell was rolling in, and great breakers were
bursting on the beach. About five P.M. we all collected and
looked at the whaler and pram on one side of the rollers and
ourselves on the other. First it was impossible to take off the
guns and specimens, so we made them all up to leave for the
morrow. Second, a sick man had come ashore for exercise, and he
could not be got off: finally, Atkinson stayed ashore with him.
The breakers made the most awe-inspiring cauldron in our little
nook, and it meant a tough swim for all of us. Three of us swam
out first and took a line to the pram, and finally we got a good
rope from the whaler, which had anchored well out, to the shore.
I then manoeuvred the pram, and everybody plunged into the surf
and hauled himself out with the rope. All well, but minus our
belongings, and got back to the ship; very wet and ravenous was a
mild way to put it. During my 12 to 4 watch that night the surf
roared like thunder, and the ship herself was rolling like
anything, and looked horribly close to the shore. Of course she
was quite safe really. It transpired that Atkinson and the seaman
had a horrible night with salt water soaked food, and the crabs
and white terns which sat and watched them all night, squawking
in chorus whenever they moved. It must have been horrible, though
I would like to have stayed, and had I known anybody was staying
would have volunteered. This with the noise of the surf and the
cold made it pretty rotten for them. In the morning, Evans,
Rennick, Oates and I, with two seamen and Gran, took the whaler
and pram in to rescue the maroons. At first we thought we would
do it by a rocket line to the end of the sheer cliff. The
impossibility of such an idea was at once evident, so Gran and I
went in close in the pram, and hove them lines to get off the
gear first. I found the spoon-shaped pram a wonderful boat to
handle. You could go in to the very edge of the breaking surf,
lifted like a cork on top of the waves, and as long as you kept
head to sea and kept your own head, you need never have got on
the rocks, as the tremendous back-swish took you out like a shot
every time. It was quite exciting, however, as we would slip in
close in a lull, and the chaps in the whaler would yell, 'Look
out!' if a big wave passed them, in which case you would pull out
for dear life. Our first lines carried away, and then, with
others, Rennick and I this time took the pram while Atkinson got
as near the edge as safe to throw us the gear. I was pulling, and
by watching our chances we rescued the cameras and glasses, once
being carried over 12 feet above the rocks and only escaping by
the back-swish. Then the luckiest incident of the day occurred,
when in a lull we got our sick man down, and I jumped out, and he
in, as I steadied the boat's stern. The next minute the boat
flew out on the back-wash with the seaman absolutely dry, and I
was of course enveloped in foam and blackness two seconds later
by a following wave. Twice the day before this had happened, but
this time for a moment I thought, 'Where will my head strike?' as
I was like a feather in a breeze in that swirl. When I banked it
was about 15 feet above, and, very scratched and winded, I clung
on with my nails and scrambled up higher. The next wave, a bigger
one, nearly had me, but I was just too high to be sucked back.
Atkinson and I then started getting the gear down, Evans having
taken my place in the pram. By running down between waves we hove
some items into the boat, including the guns and rifles, which I
went right down to throw. These were caught and put into the
boat, but Evans was too keen to save a bunch of boots that
Atkinson threw down, and the next minute the pram passed over my
head and landed high and dry, like a bridge, over the rocks
between which I was wedged. I then scrambled out as the next wave
washed her still higher, right over and over, with Evans and
Rennick just out in time. The next wave--a huge one--picked her
up, and out she bumped over the rocks and out to sea she went,
water-logged, with the guns, fortunately, jammed under the
thwarts. She was rescued by the whaler, baled out, and then Gran
and one of the seamen manned her battered remains again, and we,
unable to save the gear otherwise, lashed it to life-buoys, threw
it into the sea and let it drift out with the back-wash to be
picked up by the pram.
"Clothes, watches and ancient guns, rifles, ammunition, birds
(dead) and all specimens were, with the basket of crockery and
food, soaked with salt water. However, the choice was between
that or leaving them altogether, as anybody would have said had
they seen the huge rollers breaking among the rocks and washing
30 to 40 feet up with the spray; in fact, we were often knocked
over and submerged for a time, clinging hard to some rock or one
of the ropes for dear life. Evans swam off first. Then I was
about half an hour trying to rescue a hawser and some lines
entangled among the rocks. It was an amusing job. I would wait
for a lull, run down and haul away, staying under for smaller
waves and running up the rocks like a hare when the warning came
from the boat that a series of big ones were coming in. I finally
rescued most of it--had to cut off some and got it to the place
opposite the boat, and with Rennick secured it and sent it out to
sea to be picked up. My pair of brown tennis shoes (old ones) had
been washed off my feet in one of the scrambles, so I was wearing
a pair of sea-boots--Nelson's, I found--which, fortunately for
him, was one of the few pairs saved. The pram came in, and
waiting for a back-wash Rennick swam off. I ran down after the
following wave, and securing my green hat, which by the bye is a
most useful asset, struck out through the boiling, and grabbed
the pram safely as we were lifted on the crest of an immense
roller. However, we were just beyond its breaking-point, so all
was well, and we arrived aboard after eight hours' wash and
wetness, and none the worse, except for a few scratches, and
yours truly in high spirits. We stayed there that night, and the
following, Thursday, morning left. Winds are not too favourable
so far, as we dropped the S.E. Trades almost immediately, and
these are the variables between the Trades and the Westerlies.
Still 2500 miles off our destination. Evans has therefore decided
to steer straight for Simon's Town and miss out the other
islands. It is a pity, but as it is winter down here, and the
worst month of the year for storms at Tristan Da Cunha, it is
perhaps just as well. I am longing to get to the Cape to have
your letters and hear all about you. Except for the absence of
news, life aboard is much to be desired. I simply love it, and
enjoy every day of my existence here. Time flies like anything,
and though it must have been long to you, to us it goes like the
wind--so different to that fortnight on the passage home from
India."[35]
After the return of the boat's crew we left South Trinidad, and the
zoologists had a busy time trying to save as many as possible of the bird
skins which had been procured. They skinned on all through the following
night, and, considering that the birds had been lying out in the tropics
for twenty-four hours soaked with sea-water and had been finally capsized
in the overturned boat, the result was not so disappointing as was
expected. But the eggs and many other articles were lost. Since the
black-breasted and white-breasted petrels were seen flying and nesting
paired together, it is reasonable to suppose that their former
classification as two separate species will have to be revised.
Soon after leaving South Trinidad we picked up our first big long swell,
logged at 8, and began to learn that the Terra Nova can roll as few ships
can. This was followed by a stiff gale on our port beam, and we took over
our first green seas. Bowers wrote home as follows:
_August 7th, Sunday._
"All chances of going to Tristan are over, and we are at last booming
along with strong Westerlies with the enormous Southern rollers lifting
us like a cork on their crests. We have had a stiff gale and a very high
sea, which is now over, though it is still blowing a moderate gale, and
the usual crowd of Albatross, Mollymawks, Cape Hens, Cape Pigeons, etc.,
are following us. These will be our companions down to the South.
Wilson's idea is that, as the prevailing winds round the forties are
Westerlies, these birds simply fly round and round the world--via Cape
Horn, New Zealand and the Cape of Good Hope. We have had a really good
opportunity now of testing the ship's behaviour, having been becalmed
with a huge beam swell rolling 35° each way, and having stood out a heavy
gale with a high sea. In both she has turned up trumps, and really I
think a better little sea boat never floated. Compared to the Loch
Torridon--which was always awash in bad weather--we are as dry as a cork,
and never once shipped a really heavy sea. Of course a wooden ship has
some buoyancy of herself, and we are no exception. We are certainly an
exception for general seaworthiness--if not for speed--and a safer,
sounder ship there could not be. The weather is now cool too--cold, some
people call it. I am still comfortable in cotton shirts and whites, while
some are wearing Shetland gear. Nearly everybody is provided with
Shetland things. I am glad you have marked mine, as they are all so much
alike. I am certainly as well provided with private gear as anybody, and
far better than most, so, being as well a generator of heat in myself, I
should be O.K. in any temperature. By the bye Evans and Wilson are very
keen on my being in the Western Party, while Campbell wants me with him
in the Eastern Party. I have not asked to go ashore, but am keen on
anything and am ready to do anything. In fact there is so much going on
that I feel I should like to be in all three places at once--East, West
and Ship."
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Ross, _Voyage to the Southern Seas_, vol. i. pp. 22-24.
[35] Bowers' letter.