One of the oft-repeated questions for which I usually had a ready answer, at the conclusion of the [Nimrod] expedition was, ‘Would you like to go to the Antarctic again?’ In the first flush of the welcome home and for many months, during which the keen edge of pleasure under civilized conditions had not entirely worn away, I was inclined to reply with a somewhat emphatic negative. But, once more a man in the world of men, lulled in the easy repose of routine, and performing the ordinary duties of a workaday world, old emotions awakened, the grand sweet days returned in irresistible glamour, faraway ‘voices’ called …
Douglas Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard
30 March 1909 and three days thereafter, Sydney, home is the sailor
And there he is!
Despite squally weather, a large crowd, of whom a fair bulk are students from the University of Sydney, has been gathered at Circular Quay since the wee hours of the morning to welcome back their chosen hero of the British Antarctic Expedition. A wave of excitement rolls through them as they first recognise the familiar figure. Yes, there is no mistaking the distinctively tall man standing on deck, wearing his celebrated accoutrement, even if he does look a little thinner.
‘I see you’ve got your old brown hat on!’ one of the students calls out.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Tip-top. Jolly well, thanks.’
‘Find it cold here?’
‘I find it jolly hot.’
‘By gad he’s energetic. David’s fame is now magnetic!’1
Only a few hours later, Professor David – whom most, led by the press, have exuberantly mistaken for the expedition leader – is being traditionally welcomed to a special luncheon in his honour at the University of Sydney’s magnificent Great Hall, the most venerable setting in an academic environment in all of Australia. No fewer than 600 enthusiastic students join together with their professors in the unbounded song of praise written in his honour, ‘The Book of Exodus’, sung to the tune of ‘Waiting at the Church’:
David has gone with little sling and stone;
Looking for Goliath at the Pole;
Living on candles and penguin marrow-bone,
Not to mention pyroxene and amphibole … 2
In his own remarks to the throng, however, the Prof is not only gracious but also eager to deflect the glory away from himself towards a more worthy recipient. ‘Just as Shackleton was the general leader, so,’ he says, ‘in all sincerity and without the pride that apes humility, I say that Mawson was the real leader and was the soul of our expedition to the magnetic pole. We really have in him an Australian Nansen, of infinite resource, splendid physique, astonishing indifference to frost.’3
The desire to honour the Prof goes far wider than the University of Sydney. For the sign outside the Town Hall a few days later, where the official reception is about to be held to welcome ‘Tweedy’ home, reads ‘House full’. So pressing are the 3000-strong throng that Professor David’s wife, Cara, not to mention Attorney General Billy Hughes, struggle to gain entry. (Hughes only manages to get in, The Sydney Morning Herald reports, ‘by getting on the back of an alderman, who spoke through a keyhole to an attendant’.)4
‘It was almost as difficult to get into this gathering as it was to work up to the magnetic pole,’ jokes David, in reference to the fact that he himself stood outside the barred entrance for half an hour before someone recognised him.
Having welcomed him, Lord Mayor Allen Arthur Taylor and a jocular Billy Hughes join the crowd in a hearty round of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. And that he is, that he most certainly is! For now, Professor David again warms to the theme that most possesses him since returning.
‘I would like to point out,’ says the Prof, ‘and I say it with great emphasis, that the magnetic pole was not discovered by myself, that it was not located by myself, but that it was fixed by that great scientific man Douglas Mawson.’ (Applause.) ‘He is a man Australia can be proud of, he was educated in New South Wales, was a pupil of old Fort Street School, and a shining light of Sydney University …’5
Not that the academic is being entirely honest, for all that. The Professor is also pleased to report that never once on their journey to the South Magnetic Pole did they have ‘the slightest disagreement’, bar that one minor moment when Dr Mackay expressed some slight disenchantment with Mawson, a good camp cook, having put sugar in their hoosh. Warm applause all round, and a vote of thanks given by the Lord Mayor saying he only wished he had booked the reception for the Domain, where they could have accommodated 30,000 and not the 3000 they have here.
April 1909, Sydney and Adelaide, all hail Mawson
Two weeks later, it is Mawson’s turn to return to new-found fame (though little fortune, as Shackleton has not yet paid him). Once again, it begins with a special luncheon at the University of Sydney, this one in the company of the Prof. Another celebratory dinner is held at Mawson’s alma mater, Fort Street, where the rather bemused geologist again finds himself lionised. Yet both these glorious occasions pale into insignificance against the welcome he receives in his adopted city of Adelaide.
Eyes right, and all hail the conquering hero!
Along with a bevy of University of Adelaide dignitaries, no fewer than 100 of Mawson’s students amass on the central platform at Adelaide Railway Station to welcome home South Australia’s newly adopted favourite son. Alighting from his carriage, Mawson is stunned to see the students rushing towards him, and before he can protest they have placed him on their shoulders and are chairing him towards a waiting truck.
Crowds of cheering students follow in the wake of the vehicle as it makes its way up North Terrace to the university union room, where another 200 or so undergraduates are waiting to give him ‘the tiger’ – their slang for a resounding cheer – before greeting him in song:
Raw feet, raw feet, down a hole,
Rough meat, rough meat, on the Pole;
Seal fat, seal fat, come and see,
Douglas Mawson, DSc!6
Quite overcome and dumbfounded, Mawson thanks not only the crowd for their ‘novel’ welcome but also Providence for allowing him to return again to his old friends in Adelaide. ‘After spending some time in the polar regions the heartiness of this welcome has made me feel quite warm and I should like some of the ice from the South to cool me,’ he jokes, the crowd instantly breaking into yet further applause.7 A tip-top fellow this Dr Mawson clearly is.
14 June 1909, London’s Charing Cross Station, Shackleton and Scott have an odd meeting
There he is! When the great – oh yes, he is – Ernest Shackleton, his wife, Emily (who had travelled to Dover to greet him) and members of his expedition arrive at Charing Cross at precisely ten minutes past five on this delightfully balmy Monday afternoon, they are met by a large gathering of the press and 600 cheering supporters on the platform.
The first to shake Shackleton’s hand and pat him on the back is his father, followed by his five sisters and two children, Raymond and Cicely, who all embrace him. Also among the throng are the president and other office bearers of the Royal Geographical Society, Captain Robert Henry Muirhead Collins, representative of the Australian Government, numerous dignitaries from the exploring community and one other person of great significance …
For there, a little to the edges and patiently waiting his turn to offer Shackleton a welcome home upon his triumphant return from the farthest reaches of the planet, is none other than Captain Robert Falcon Scott.
True, it was not that long ago, on learning of Shackleton’s landing at McMurdo Sound, that Scott wrote a letter to the Royal Geographical Society secretary Keltie, saying that he would never associate with Shackleton again and even branding Shackleton ‘a professed liar’, but now, like so many others, Scott is irresistibly drawn to Shackleton’s limelight.8
But his is a scientific, not personal, excitement, mind. As he wrote to his friend Major Darwin, president of the Royal Geographical Society, three months earlier, ‘the private feeling incurred by past incidents cannot affect my judgement of his work. That excites my interest and admiration and to an extent that can scarcely be felt by those who have no experience of Polar difficulties.’9
One can but wonder at the emotions felt by Shackleton as he graciously takes Scott’s proffered hand, but he could be excused for feeling vindication for having been once referred to by Scott, in public, as ‘our invalid’. Now, it is Scott who seeks an audience with him.
June and July 1909, London, Shackleton and Scott correspond
The following day, when an elaborate lunch is hosted by the Royal Societies Club in honour of Shackleton and his men, Scott is there again! Responding to president Lord Halsbury’s rousing tribute, Shackleton rises to the occasion, doffs his cap to Scott and says, to murmurings of great approval, ‘Every expedition that went out was a pioneer for another expedition.’10
All up, London’s latest hero goes on, it was owing to the knowledge he gained under Captain Scott that he was able to push the British flag a little further south.
The relationship between the men is thus, if not quite repaired, at least a little patched up for public display. Still, it cannot have escaped Shackleton’s attention that despite Scott’s previous proprietorial air towards McMurdo Sound, he still has no compunction in thanking Shackleton for revealing there exists an accessible route to the South Pole in the form of the Beardmore Glacier, at the foot of which lies ‘Shackleton’s Gateway’.
Nor is Scott coy about it. In fact, at the legendarily exclusive Savage Club, in his speech after dinner in honour of Shackleton on 19 June, he concludes, ‘All I have to do now is thank Mr Shackleton for so nobly showing the way.’11 Scott also chooses to make reference to the fact that Shackleton’s team was laid low by exhaustion, snow-blindness and dysentery, and ‘their struggle onward must, it seemed to him, appear to every Englishman as grand’.
In his stride now, he goes on, ‘Polar travel is not founded upon the desire for gain, but upon the desire for knowledge, and polar travellers above all things must be sportsmen. A true sportsman is not jealous of his record, or slow to praise those who surpassed it.’ But to his main point. It is important, he notes, that the Pole must be conquered by an Englishman, and Scott has just the man in mind, an unsurprising selection. ‘Personally,’ he says, ‘I am prepared and have been for the past two years, to go forth in search of that object.’12
Two weeks later, Scott even confides to Shackleton some of his own plans for making a second assault on the South Pole, writing to him in his tight, spare style, while adopting a tone that appears to acknowledge him for the first time as a genuine equal, one who has achieved a glory of his own:
If as I understand it does not cut across any plans of your own, I propose to organise the expedition to the Ross Sea which as you know I have had so long in preparation so as to start next year …
I am sure you will wish me success; but of course I should be glad to have your assurance that I am not disconcerting any plans of your own.13
Shackleton replies shortly thereafter, crisply but politely, that Scott’s plans:
will not interfere with any plans of mine. If I do any further exploration it will not be until I have heard news of your expedition, presuming that you start next year. I wish you every success in your endeavour to penetrate the ice and to land on King Edward VII’s Land and to attain a high latitude from that base.14
If Scott and Shackleton have patched things up to the point where they can at least communicate, the man they both respect so much, Bill Wilson – the third member of their 1902–03 trek towards the South Pole – has no hesitation in writing a strong letter to Shackleton, as part of a process where he formally breaks off the friendship:
I allow that you were in a very difficult position there you know. But I wished to God you had done anything in the whole world other than break the promise you had made, the very making of which showed that you allowed a right to Scott …
But why in the name of fortune did you promise to do the second best thing and then do the very worst!
You took Scott’s job practically out of his hands against his wish and knowing that he has been hoping to finish it … Not one man in a thousand would have treated you [so well] as he has.15
Another man who cannot forgive is the redoubtable Sir Clements Markham, who regards Shackleton as something of a fraud, lionised now because ‘the exaggerated praise of cleverly engineered newspaper articles raised him to the crest of a wave … above his chief’.16
Shackleton does not see it like that at all and hugely enjoys his fame – now at a level far beyond what it was when he returned from the Discovery expedition, and certainly now far beyond that of Scott himself.
Early August 1909, Broken Hill, Mawson returns to the heart of the red continent
It is an exceedingly odd thing to have left the all-white heart of a frozen continent and then just a few months later find yourself not far from the scorched red heart of another, but such are the times, and such is the life of Douglas Mawson.
For the young and now widely celebrated lecturer has no sooner resumed work at the University of Adelaide than he travels to Broken Hill to conduct geological research in the Barrier Ranges for his Doctorate of Science and to deliver a couple of lectures on the Shackleton expedition to the good citizens of that dusty town.
At the time of Mawson’s visit, Francisca ‘Paquita’ Delprat and her sister Leintie are summer-holidaying in Broken Hill with their father, the BHP silver-mine general manager Guillaume Daniel Delprat. The two young women and Mawson are separately invited to dinner at the Boyds’ residence, Mr Boyd being the underground manager of the BHP silver and lead mine in Broken Hill.
Well … hello!
Though not a man given to exclamation marks in either expression or emotions, Mawson is nevertheless extremely impressed with the gorgeous young Paquita from the first. Attractive, self-confident and cultured, she is Dutch-born and lived in Spain before arriving in Australia at the age of seven. At six feet tall, the 17-year-old with long, dark hair and alabaster skin is nothing if not arresting in appearance. What’s more, educated in the sciences of chemistry, biology and particularly geology – which she has studied closely at her school of Tormore House in North Adelaide, in part because of her father’s line of work – she is not only able to speak Mawson’s language, which to the young geologist is no small thing, but also able to speak it in a delightfully alluring and exotic accent, with a lilt here, a tilt there and a rrreally rrriveting way of rrrolling her rrrrs.
Rrrravishing!
For her part, this is not the first time that Paquita has seen the tall, slim Mawson. On a misty day in Adelaide only a few weeks prior, his smile towards a friend down by the sporting fields of Adelaide University, where she is studying, caught the ingénue’s attention.
Mawson, a man not known among his friends for great flights of passion, leaves that evening completely taken with the gorgeous young woman. And Paquita is all but equally smitten. He is clearly a man of pleasing aspect, who has a fine intellect, not to mention a certain fame to rival and even surpass that of her distinguished father. In this evening they have spent together, she has also more than confirmed the attractiveness of his most notable feature. As she would later describe it, ‘He had the most wonderful smile … And he had a very, very fine big mouth and a smiling mouth – what do you call it? – generous mouth, you know? And he could really … he could twinkle, you know?’17
Early September 1909, Shetland Islands, news from the top of the world
It is only a single, brief telegram, with small, spare type, but it generates huge headlines in millions of copies of newspapers around the world:
EXPLORER COOK PLANTS THE STARS AND STRIPES
AT THE NORTH POLE
COOK REACHES THE TOP OF THE WORLD
AMERICAN FIRST TO TOUCH THE NORTH POLE
HUNTED BY ALL NATIONS FOR 400 YEARS18
Filed at Lerwick in the Shetland Islands on 2 September 1909, the telegram carries the staggering news that American explorer Dr Frederick A. Cook – he who first made his fame by virtually taking over the leadership of the Belgica a decade earlier – had, after a ‘prolonged fight with frost and famine’, reached the ‘Great Nail’ of the North on 21 April 1908. So difficult was the return journey, he says, that it took him a year to get back to his base in Annoatok, Greenland, and a further five months to reach north Scotland!
The world at large is thrilled at the news that its top has been claimed, and yet, only a week after it breaks, another American explorer, Robert E. Peary, announces that he reached the pole on 6 April 1909.
COMMANDER PEARY ALSO REACHES NORTH POLE: DID NOT MEET COOK19
With the two explorers both having claimed the North Pole, the press is not long in inveigling that famed explorer Amundsen into the controversy. In response, the intrepid Norwegian maintains that the world is needlessly obsessed with such things, most particularly given that the North Pole is not to be found on terra firma in the first place. No, far more important, Amundsen says, is the contribution the explorers have made to scientific knowledge of the Arctic’s geographical conditions. ‘What work is left will be sufficient for all of us.’20
All of which said, Amundsen still enthusiastically supports the claim of his old friend, Cook. After what happened on the ice-bound Belgica over that terrible winter, Amundsen still feels he owes the doctor his life, and the two have established a friendship born of mutual respect that has lasted and grown through the years.
‘No one doubts Peary,’ comments Amundsen in a newspaper interview. ‘Why doubt Cook? I know both Cook and Peary have been at the Pole. I am not anxious that anyone has been there because I am going there myself next year.’21 He says elsewhere, ‘The possible results for Dr Cook’s achievements will have no influence on my projected expedition. I am not planning to reach the point of the pole. My trip will be for oceanographic investigation.’22
Against that, no sooner has Amundsen learnt of Cook’s claim than he is, quietly, on the next train to Copenhagen, where he knows Cook is being feted by royalty. Amundsen wants to investigate whether or not his own dream is still alive. After the two have spoken, the Norwegian is more firmly convinced than ever that his dream of being the first man to the North Pole is now definitively dead, and he begins to conceive a new plan …
In the meantime, of particular interest to the polar exploring community is that only shortly after Peary makes his claim, rumours circulate that he is preparing afresh for an assault on the South Pole as well! The New York Times goes so far as to print a short article on page one – headlined ‘PEARY TO SEEK SOUTH POLE?’23 – claiming the explorer has ample furs, sledges and other equipment necessary for the expedition.
Bit by bit, the eyes of the polar exploring community have not only turned south, they have also begun to focus.
13 September 1909, London, the British Empire moves on the only bit of land on earth where the sun sets but once a year
On the day that Robert and Kathleen Scott’s first child, Peter, is born – fulfilling Kathleen’s long-held ambition to have a son to a great man – that man himself, Robert Falcon Scott, publicly announces his plans. He is going to try to finish what he started. He is going to mount another expedition to the bottom of the earth: ‘The main object of the expedition is to reach the South Pole and secure for the British Empire the honour of that achievement.’24
Bravo. Bravo. Bravo!
Scott, says the president of the Royal Geographical Society, Leonard Darwin, will ‘prove once again that the manhood of the nation is not dead, and that the characteristics of our ancestors, who won this great empire, still flourish amongst us’.25
It is clear that immortality and enduring honour will rest with the man and the country that gets there first, and the only remaining question is who will it be and which country will have the honour? In fact, there are many contenders from many nations, and Scott surveys them all with a slightly wounded air. After all, though the Antarctic continent is too blessed big to really claim in the name of the British Crown by simply planting a Union Jack upon one small part of it, his own and Shackleton’s expeditions have covered an enormous amount of ground across it and it feels as if it is part of the British Empire, even if it is too cold, with too few obvious treasures, to formally colonise.
At the Shackleton dinner at which he spoke, Scott had stressed that point. The South Pole must be claimed by an Englishman, and Scott presented himself as just the man to ‘go forth in search of that object’.26
And who are these others, apart from the possibility of Peary? From Germany, Lieutenant Wilhelm Filchner, an experienced campaigner, announces that not only will he make an attempt on getting to the South Pole but also he and his team will be the first to march right across the entire Antarctic continent, finishing in McMurdo Sound, while the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Charcot and the Japanese explorer Lieutenant Nobu Shirase have their own plans. One who announces no plans at all is the famed Roald Amundsen – but he is known to be going to the North Pole, which is to the good.
Late September 1909, Australia, Mawson feels obliged to hide his true feelings
By this time, Mawson’s attraction to Antarctica is slowly burgeoning into a full-blown love affair. Lying at the very heart of this love affair are the 2000 miles of largely unexplored Antarctica shoreline, ‘the great span’ of coast stretching east to west directly south of Australia, between Cape Adare, south of New Zealand, and Gaussberg, to the south of the Indian Ocean. Like any other lover, Mawson longs to again catch a glimpse of his ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, to examine it and discern its exact nature. For in his mind, this whole region really might be like the great British patriotic song of that time:
Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet,
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.
However, like many a love affair that is to stand the test of time, near its beginnings he still feels obliged to hide its true contours from passing observers. When frequently asked in the first weeks of being back home whether he might return to the Antarctic, Mawson replies with an almost emphatic ‘No’.
The thing is, he is not yet quite ready to acknowledge to himself, let alone the world, the power of those feelings he experienced while down south. Now that he is returned to the world of mere mortal men and workaday life, though, now that he again has ample time to contemplate things, freed from the daily burden of merely surviving, again and again his feelings – like a whale regularly breaching the water’s surface to blast out and suck in air – naturally return to those ‘grand sweet days’.27
At first a whisper, soon a cry, the voices call:
… from the wilderness, the vast and Godlike spaces,
The stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole.28
Mawson strongly believes that the natural focus of any Australian or Australasian – for he is thinking that New Zealand could also contribute – Antarctic expedition is the part of Antarctica that lies directly beneath the south coast of Australia. It is land that has remained unexplored since Dumont d’Urville named a small part of it some 70 years ago; it is land on which Australia, on behalf of the British Empire, should make good her rightful claim.
7 December 1909 and a week thereafter, from Adelaide to the seven seas, Mawson is on the move
It is a pleasant thing for Mawson to be on SS Mongolia leaving Port Adelaide for England. And it is not just the pleasant sea breeze, the bright sunshine or the lovely vista of the Adelaide Hills falling back behind. It is that, after long consideration, he is taking firm action to fulfil what has become a cherished dream.
With letters of introduction from Professor David, Mawson is ostensibly setting out for the Old Dart to meet prominent Antarctic explorers, including Scott, and their financial backers to assess the lie of the land. Whether he is to mount a purely Australian expedition or, more financially practical, join an already established explorer on his expedition remains to be seen. All Mawson is sure of is that he does want to get back to Antarctica, to that unexplored shore, as soon as possible – and that the best way to get south is to first go north, to England.
Strapped for money as he is – for Shackleton has still not paid him his wages from the Nimrod expedition – Mawson must travel second class, and yet he is fortunate to meet a couple of professors in first class, Warren and Berry, who inform him that Scott has asked Professor David to suggest a geologist for his forthcoming expedition. This sounds perfect. When the Mongolia breaks her journey in Fremantle, Mawson immediately cables Scott to arrange a meeting.
14 December 1909, Buckingham Palace ballroom, Shackleton kneels
It is the climactic moment in the life of the Nimrod expedition, even though the ship herself and members of that expedition have been back in Britain for nearly six months. For it is the day that many of the key members of the expedition are to be honoured with awards in an investiture in Buckingham Palace’s grand ballroom.
Many of them find it odd to see Shackleton himself, whom they will always remember as a commanding figure covered in the polar regalia of Burberry trousers, balaclava and finnesko boots, completely covered in snow and ice to the point that not even his nose is showing, now attired in the full court dress of a single-breasted, black, silk and velvet coat with a stand collar, gauntlet cuffs, the right number of cut steel buttons in all the right places and black jacket with white-lined tails. With it go black britches, black silk stockings, black patent-leather shoes, a dark hat, a steel sword and a black scabbard. His white gloves and white bow tie complete the garb. He looks self-conscious and ill at ease, and for good reason. Within minutes, he will be knighted by none less than the British king.
The other members of the expedition, too, had been asked to turn up in court dress, but mercifully this strict requirement had been eased somewhat after it had been delicately explained to the Lord Chamberlain that many of the recipients simply would not have the wherewithal to muster court dress and it had been agreed they could turn up in ‘blue suits’.29
There is little time to reflect on such things, for at just a few minutes before eleven o’clock an admiral of the fleet, under full sail, with all regalia billowing, strides into the room staring straight ahead, just a few seconds before the room is filled with the sound of blaring trumpets. And then there is His Majesty King Edward VII himself in the full uniform of a field marshal, at the head of members of his court, now walking forward to take his place upon the throne dais, beneath a velvet dome.
At the prompting of aides, members of the Nimrod expedition line up to receive from the king their Polar Medal, to recognise their sterling efforts. Their numbers do not include Douglas Mawson, as he is on the high seas, nor Edgeworth David, as he has been denied leave by the University of Sydney, meaning the only Australian team member there is Bertram Armytage. Oh so proudly, the fastidiously tidy 41-year-old from Victoria, educated at Geelong Grammar and Oxford, stands to attention as King Edward VII pins the coveted Polar Medal to his chest, right beside his other medals from the Boer War. It is undoubtedly the proudest moment of his life.
And now it is Shackleton’s turn.
On knees still hurting a little from his trials in Antarctica, Shackleton kneels before His Majesty, who takes his silver sword and lightly touches him first on the right shoulder and then on the left, at which point the polar explorer lightly kisses the sovereign on the back of the hand. And then …
Arise, Sir Ernest.
Sir Ernest Shackleton does so, before, as previously instructed, backing away from the king so as not to turn his back on the sovereign. It is, to this point, the crowning achievement of Sir Ernest’s life – bestowed an honour by His Majesty not even accorded to Captain Robert Falcon Scott.
Early January 1910, Scott’s offices in London, some key recruits are accepted
Have you heard? Scott is off to the South Pole again, and he is looking for recruits! When word circulates within and without the international polar fraternity that Scott is up for a new expedition, over 800030 applicants are keen for a ‘start’ in the southern ‘show’.31
The hub for all the recruiting activity is Scott’s expedition headquarters at 38 Victoria Street, London, halfway between Westminster Abbey and Victoria Station, where Scott himself is meant to occupy the largest room – but that is only nominally. For if not in the secretary’s office wading through what practically amounts to a snow cairn of applications, as often as not he is to be found elsewhere, in deep conversation with the providores of one patent foodstuff or another.
Meanwhile, in another room nearby, scientists sit cross-legged hearing out inventors of newfangled appliances – see how this stove runs on virtually no fuel? – while in yet another room stands an extremely sturdy, rough sort of Welsh cove sorting out all the sledge gear. Oh, do be careful on your way out that you don’t tread on that there Discovery sledge with your great big clod-hoppers! Through it all, there is a constant scattered flotilla of naval officers coming in and out of the offices, gathering stores and depositing them in colour-coded three-ply Venesta cases.
Scott’s first and most crucial appointment is the chief scientist, his best friend, Edward ‘Bill’ Wilson, who almost eight years earlier had been with Scott and Shackleton when they made their first major push towards the South Pole. The 38-year-old Wilson is a man for all seasons, and most particularly winter: an artist, a doctor, a zoologist, a proved performer in polar climes who has Scott’s complete confidence. Together, they know precisely the kind of man to sign up, as well as who to avoid. They want men who will prosper in such ferociously testing terrain, rather than wither. And they need a lot of them for this major expedition. No fewer than 65 will have to be recruited, of whom 31 are to be left behind after their ship, Terra Nova – one of the two rescue ships of Discovery back in 1904 – returns to lower latitudes of sunnier disposition.
While Wilson appoints the scientists, Scott sets about recruiting the rest of the crew. Together, they decide to accept the applications of five trusted members of Scott’s previous expedition on Discovery. Scott knows well the virtues of petty officers Thomas Williamson, William Heald and Thomas Crean and is happy to have them, together with, most particularly, Chief Stoker William Lashly and Petty Officer ‘Taffy’ Evans.
Six years before, both Lashly and Taffy Evans were with Scott when he sledged up the Ferrar Glacier and onto the Polar Plateau, hauling west across Victoria Land into the unknown for 17 days, and, almost like wartime comrades, there remains a great bond between them. Scott recorded shortly afterwards:
Evans was a man of Herculean strength, very long in the arm with splendidly developed muscles … Lashly had been a teetotaller and a non-smoker all his life, and was never in anything but the hardest condition … With these two men behind me our sledge seemed to become a living thing, and the days of slow progress were numbered.32
Meanwhile, another Evans, Lieutenant Edward Ratcliffe Garth Russell ‘Teddy’ Evans – who first went south on SY Morning, which left to resupply Discovery in December 1902, and again a year later on a relief voyage to evacuate Scott’s party if Discovery could not be freed from the ice – has been in the process of planning his own Antarctic expedition. With support from Sir Clements Markham, he approaches and is accepted by Scott as his second in command.33 For Evans, a qualified navigating officer and of excellent physical fitness – with a ‘wildly beautiful’ wife, Hilda, who is full of ambition for him – it has not been an easy decision to fold his own plans into Scott’s, but the lure of being on such an expedition, on such a patriotic venture, is finally impossible to resist.
In terms of the scientific make-up of the expedition, Wilson decides on three geologists, of whom two are Australians: Griffith Taylor34 and Frank Debenham, the latter being another student of Professor Edgeworth David’s, who had in fact been recommended to Scott by Mawson. The third is the redoubtable Englishman Raymond Priestley, who, along with Edgeworth David and Murray, made many geological, animal and plant discoveries in the land and lakes around Cape Royds while on the Nimrod expedition and went to Australia thereafter to work with the Prof some more. Canadian Charles ‘Silas’ Wright is selected as the physicist along with George Simpson from the Indian Meteorological Service and 28-year-old naval surgeon turned parasitologist Edward Atkinson, who will be one of the expedition’s doctors.
Two non-scientific officers are selected: Bernard Day, the mechanic who worked on the motor vehicle on the Nimrod expedition, and Apsley Cherry-Garrard, graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Classics and Modern History. Initially, the short-sighted Cherry-Garrard is rejected, despite stumping up £1000. However, when he suggests to an impressed Scott that the expedition team can keep the money regardless, the 24-year-old is re-interviewed at expedition headquarters and included as zoological assistant to Wilson. The balance of officers is made up of Royal Naval personnel.
Another significant signing is the enigmatic Cecil Meares, a man who had become fluent in many languages when employed as a British spy, has travelled all over Russia and is familiar with its ways and people. A man’s man, an adventurer with tousled hair, Meares is soon despatched to deepest, darkest eastern Russia to make the critical purchases of the expedition sledge dogs and – more problematically – the ponies.
Without any expertise at all in ponies, Meares must at the outset rely on the one specific instruction Scott has given him as to what kind he wants – as on this point, ‘the Owner’, as Scott is referred to by his men, is most insistent. He wants ponies with white coats. Shackleton clearly stated in his account of the Nimrod expedition, The Heart of the Antarctic, that while his white ponies were the least tractable, they did prove the most hardy.35 And so that is exactly the kind that Scott wants.
From the beginning, Scott is also most particular about the fact that, though he is planning a multi-pronged attack on the Pole involving motor sledges, dogs, ponies and man-hauling, there will be a hierarchy in operation. Scott, like Shackleton, plans to test the motor sledges in Antarctica by transporting cargo from ship to shore, and then in the late summer, all being well and ice conditions permitting, they will greatly assist in the establishment of depots as far south as possible. The following spring, Scott hopes to use them to transport the Pole Party and supplies all the way across the Great Ice Barrier surface to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier.
Now, should the motors break down at some point crossing the Barrier – and, judging by their past performances, that seems more than likely – the ponies, assisted by the dogs, would completely take over hauling the sledges to the bottom of the glacier. At this point, Scott is sure, based on Shackleton’s experience, they would be useless in trying to get up the glacier. So, there at the foot of the glacier, the ponies would be slaughtered and a proportion of their meat cached in a depot to be consumed on the return journey. The important thing, though, is to have enough ponies. Shackleton made do with four, and on his return to New Zealand had been quoted in the press saying that getting to the Pole was simply a matter of having more ponies and more provisions – and Scott had taken note.36
As for the dogs, Scott has no stomach for doing the same to them. Based on his previous experience during the Discovery expedition, he regards them as unreliable and does not think they can negotiate uneven surfaces over any great distance and go all the way to the Pole – certainly not without being driven to death.
As a navy man, Scott possesses limited experience in handling and driving a pack of dogs. Yes, with encouragement from Nansen he will reluctantly include 33 of the canines in his plans, but he does not plan to slaughter them like the ponies or use the weakening ones to feed the stronger ones, as that would be way too cruel. Much better to preserve the lives of the dogs and have them return home safely than use them as ‘pawns in the game, from which the best value is to be got regardless of their lives’.37 No, the dogs will stop at the foot of the glacier and head back to Winter Quarters, ready to bring fresh supplies out to the depots in a few weeks’ time and afterwards come out again to help the South Pole Party get back.
Beyond all other considerations, the truth of it is that Scott is a sledging purist who simply does not believe the use of ponies or dogs on the Polar Plateau quite … proper. He really does believe in man-hauling, pure and simple. For him, it is almost a philosophical thing, and he makes no apology for it. He later writes:
One cannot contemplate the murder of animals which possess such intelligence and individuality, which frequently having such endearing qualities, and which very possibly one has learnt to regard as friends and companions …
In my mind no journey ever made with dogs can approach the height of that fine conception which is realised when a party of men go forth to face hardships, dangers, and difficulties with their own unaided efforts, and by days and weeks of hard physical labour succeed in solving some problem of the great unknown. Surely in this case the conquest is more nobly and splendidly won … 38
This view is very much in keeping with that of his mentor Sir Clements Markham, who is a great believer in the virtues of propulsion by the pure, magnificent power of their bodies alone. According to Sir Clements, an estimated three-month march between McMurdo Sound and the South Magnetic Pole, for example, could easily be covered ‘without the cruelty of killing a team of dogs by overwork and starvation’.39 No, Sir Clements has always been firm: ‘Nothing has been done with them to be compared with what men have achieved without dogs.’40
For now, Scott will have to prepare a complex set of contingency plans should one of the modes of transport fail on the South Pole journey, particularly the motors, as they will be hauling such a large proportion of their supplies.
Scott also hires one Victor Lindsay Arbuthnot Campbell, a straight-backed 35-year-old naval officer from Brighton with a long, lean face and an air of quiet authority, whose job it will be to command a small party making a separate landing on an unexplored part of King Edward VII Land to map it.
Mid-January 1910, London, Douglas Mawson arrives, anxious to meet Scott
For a man such as Mawson, who left English shores at the age of two, over a quarter-century earlier, it is wonderful to return, a scientist on the ascent, to the land of his birth, to experience first-hand the splendour, grandeur and sheer excitement of London, the largest city in the world, the capital of the British Empire.
Though he does very little sightseeing, he does allow his old friend from Nimrod, John King Davis, to show him around the likes of the Tower of London and, particularly, Madame Tussauds, where they delight in viewing the tableau of Sir Ernest Shackleton accompanied by Adams, Marshall and Wild at his farthest south, admiring the detail of Shackleton’s face and the all-too-familiar grey and blizzarding background landscape.
While Mawson also takes time to look up relatives outside London and visit academics in Cambridge and Oxford, he is here on business Antarctic and does not tarry long before arranging his meeting with Scott.
When the two meet at Scott’s offices just north of the Thames, confusion competes for airspace with the smoke plume issuing from Scott’s pipe. After receiving Professor David’s cable recommending Dr Mawson, and then the cable from Mawson himself requesting a meeting, Scott immediately assumed that the Australian wanted what all of the other thousands of men who have contacted him in recent weeks want: to join him on his Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole. The difference in this case, as Scott makes clear to Dr Mawson from the first – his words cutting through the hustle and bustle of activity outside his office door – is that he would be delighted to have him. As a matter of fact, he very nearly insists upon it.
As a keen student of the Nimrod expedition, Scott, like the rest of the polar community, is well aware of the Australian’s extraordinary all-round capabilities. Professor David has heaped garlands of praise upon Mawson’s broad shoulders, his high opinion confirmed by the writings of Ernest Shackleton, who has documented the young Australian geologist’s leading role on the record-breaking man-haul to conquer the South Magnetic Pole, among other things.
As Scott is a man who believes in the purity of man-hauling, Mawson’s ability in this department – together with his scientific acumen and obviously good character – is highly desirable. In fact, so keen is Scott to have Mawson commit to him that on the spot he not only guarantees he will be a member of the final party that marches to the South Pole but also offers to pay him handsomely for the privilege – £800 for the two years Mawson will be away is not an inconsiderable sum, when the average wage at the time is just £3 per week. The one thing that Scott cannot offer him is the chief scientist’s position, as that has already been taken by Bill Wilson.
In response, Mawson stuns Scott by making it clear that he has no interest in any ‘boy’s own adventure’ attempt on the South Pole; it holds little vocational interest for him at all. No, Captain Scott, he has something else in mind, entirely. ‘Have you thought of exploring the uncharted coast west of Cape Adare?’ Mawson asks. No, Scott has not.41
Mawson follows up with a rather impassioned exposition of so doing, pointing out that since the days when Dumont d’Urville and Charles Wilkes spotted and charted odd wisps of that coast, no one has even seen it, and to this day no one has set foot on it. And it is high time! And so to the point of the exercise for the Australian. ‘I’ll join you,’ Mawson tells him, ‘if you’ll land me and a party of three on that coast.’42
If Mawson and his small party could be left there, they would independently undertake valuable scientific research and geographical reconnaissance along the largely unexplored coast – an area that is ‘crying out’ for investigation. Back in 1899, Borchgrevink and his men established that Cape Adare, with its relatively accessible landing sites and huge penguin rookeries, was a good place to make a base for the winter, despite its difficult situation for access to the interior. And right next to such a base, you have one of the greatest ranges of rocky coast on the Antarctic continent. Geological studies already undertaken at its eastern and western limits indicate that a connection once must have existed with Australia between Cape Adare on the one side and Gaussberg on the other. The magnetic pole is close to the coast inland of Cape Adare,43 allowing further magnetic observations, and the area’s meteorology and biology essentially remain unexamined. Mawson goes on, his words tumbling forth in his passion for the project and the need to make Scott see its virtues.
In addition to adding to the body of Antarctic knowledge, the region may well open up economic opportunities for the Empire – through the potential discovery of viable deposits of coal and minerals as well as exploitation of its ocean’s resources.
Scott acknowledges it to be an interesting idea … but at the conclusion of the three-hour meeting he has made no commitment to take Mawson and a small party to Cape Adare. Nevertheless, he has pressed Mawson to allow his name to be put down as a member of the expedition, to be confirmed by the Australian within three weeks.
In a second meeting, however, which includes Scott’s right-hand-man Bill Wilson, it is not long before an impasse is reached. Scott is very keen for Mawson to come, but the Australian is equally insistent that he will not do so unless his plan for a Coastal Party is agreed upon. Scott, who has pledged to establish bases at both McMurdo Sound and King Edward VII Land, feels fully committed and simply will not agree to Mawson’s request. For one thing, he is most intent on getting to the South Pole, and, as he explains with some firmness, bordering on irritation, dropping a secondary group at Cape Adare will be a dashed distraction, don’t you see?
There seems to be only one way to proceed, and yet when Mawson floats the possibility of mounting his own expedition, Scott bridles. Why, don’t you know, it has always been Scott’s intention to explore the coast west of Cape Adare, and he has now more or less set his mind to ‘picking the plums’ out of that area when Terra Nova returns to pick up his expedition.
Well then, Mawson tells Scott, if he cannot be landed where he wants, the only capacity in which he would have considered enlisting was as chief scientist, but as Bill Wilson already fills that position, he will not ‘henceforth accept a post on the expedition’.44
Despite the fact that Wilson appears to be the very roadblock that keeps Mawson from joining the expedition, the English scientist comes out of the meeting feeling positive, recording in a subsequent letter to Professor Edgeworth David, ‘We both of us really liked what we saw of Mawson – he is obviously capable and keen on his work.’45 Yet Mawson does not return the compliment and is likely the only man ever to have recorded a negative thought about the all-but-universally popular Wilson, when he writes unambiguously in his diary, ‘I did not like Dr Wilson.’46
But, in the meantime, surely, old bean, they can keep talking? With this in mind, on Wednesday 26 January Scott invites Mawson for dinner at his fashionable, albeit small, Georgian terrace at 174 Buckingham Palace Road so they can continue to discuss it, and …
And so this, then, is Kathleen Scott. An alluring and artistic woman, as charismatic as she is independent, Kathleen is attracted to men of power and intellect. Her close friends include George Bernard Shaw, James Barrie, Max Beerbohm and Henry James, while the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin (her one-time teacher, and admirer of her sculptures) attended her wedding to Scott. These famous men are, in turn, attracted to her candour, generosity, loyalty and optimism, as well as, most likely, her flirtatiousness.
Mawson immediately joins the ranks of Mrs Scott’s ardent admirers, but still he refuses to commit to the Terra Nova expedition unless her husband agrees to take him to Cape Adare. And still Scott does not agree. Mawson expresses his frustration in a letter to famed British geologist Sir Archibald Geikie:
This area is crying out for investigation. It offers the greatest range of rocky coastline anywhere obtainable on the Antarctic Continent, the cliff exposures cross the strike of the older rocky complex; it is here a connection must one-time have been effected with Australia … and it is an almost unknown coast for meteorology and biology. In my opinion it is the pick of the Antarctic for scientific investigation and I deplore Capt Scott’s inability to include part of it in his programme.47
Bit by bit, Mawson comes to the conclusion that the only way he can achieve what he wants is to undertake his own Australian expedition – a Herculean task in terms of preparation, but he has done the work of Hercules before in the Antarctic, and there now appears to be no other choice.
Who, in England, could most help him to mount such a venture if not Scott? Of course, there could only be one man. None other than Sir, if you please, Ernest Shackleton …
At this point, Shackleton is on a speaking tour of Europe, still trying to pay the outstanding bills from the Nimrod venture. (He had hoped that the sales of The Heart of the Antarctic would wipe out a lot of that debt, but, sadly for him, all of the excitement over Scott’s announcement that he was heading for the South Pole made his own account rather like old news. Yes, he got close, but Scott, well, he was going to finish the job.)
As it happens, Shackleton and Mawson have already been in touch.
‘ON NO ACCOUNT SEE SCOTT TILL I RETURN,’ Shackleton had rather presumptuously cabled him from Europe.48 Mawson had no qualms about ignoring that directive because, firstly, Shackleton is no longer quite ‘the Boss’ he was, at least not to Mawson, plus the Australian has no interest in getting personally involved in the Shackleton versus Scott rivalry.
Still, when Shackleton returns to England at the conclusion of the Continental leg of his lecture tour, Mawson is earnestly there waiting for him on the docks at Plymouth. Three years earlier, of course, when Shackleton’s ship pulled into Adelaide, it was Mawson who requested to go on board to have an audience with him. Now, it is Shackleton, all hustle and bustle and hail-fellow-well-met, who is quick to come off the ship so he and Mawson can travel back to London together on the train and have time to talk.
It is odd for Mawson to compare the Shackleton of Antarctica that he knew with the figure that sits before him now, as outside the train window the English countryside flies backwards through the night. Shackleton of the Antarctic had been all Burberry, boots and ice forming on his whiskers. But this one, Sir Ernest Shackleton, is besuited, polished and groomed, as befitting a gentleman who has been appearing before large audiences.
He remains the same old Shackles underneath, however, with the same charisma and gregarious nature, the same restlessness to be off on other adventures. The Anglo-Irishman’s head is awhirl with get-rich-quick schemes, as a consequence of one too many coffee-house conversations in Budapest. According to Shackleton, Hungary’s version of Lasseter’s Reef lies just around the next pass, old chum, if only he can organise to get the mining rights to it.49 It could be the answer to Shackleton’s ongoing financial woes, for, despite his great fame now, and the fact that the British Parliament has granted him £20,000 to settle his many debts, he is still a long way from satisfying his creditors.
But to the business at hand, the thing that Mawson’s head is awhirl with: a journey to Antarctica, with a main base established at Cape Adare. Mawson is delighted with Shackleton’s response. ‘You ought to go yourself! I could get you support.’50
Typical Shackleton. If Scott is blocking you on a matter Antarctic, well, dear boy, just do it anyway. And Shackleton knows just the person who can help Mawson to do it. Why … Shackleton himself! ‘Australia helped me on my south polar expedition in 1907,’ says he, ‘[so] let me be the first to assist you in England …’51
In equally typical generous fashion, Shackleton offers Mawson space in his own offices at 9 Lower Regent Street in downtown London to get the English end of the expedition organised – an offer that Mawson is quick to accept. And, true to his word, it doesn’t take long for Shackleton to get his eye back in – working all the old angles and contacts to raise funds for a fresh expedition.
The most important breakthrough comes after Shackleton arranges for Mawson to travel south to Plymouth to visit his good friend and noted steel industrialist Gerald Lysaght, a keen yachtsman who, out of friendship for Shackleton and eagerness to have some part of such a great venture, generously supported the Nimrod expedition. Mawson spends five hours alone with the potential benefactor explaining details of the expedition, and Lysaght soaks it all up. So well does it all go, in fact, that when Shackleton places a follow-up call the next day, the result is the promise of £10,000 towards their expedition. This could really happen!
Not surprisingly, seeing just how much money could be collected, Shackleton’s enthusiasm grows from there, and not long afterwards he comes into the offices early one morning to make a peremptory announcement, as casually as he might say he was just ducking down to the shops to get some tobacco: ‘I have decided to go to the coast west of Cape Adare and you are to be chief scientist.’52 Just like that!
Although feeling somewhat done over, the ever-practical Mawson realises the charming Shackleton’s worth as a proven fund-raiser – as a matter of fact, on the spot he claims he can lay his hands on a further £70,000 – and reluctantly takes the suggested demotion. After all, this is not about the pursuit of personal glory, it is about expanding the frontiers of science, and it matters little who commands the expedition so long as those frontiers are pushed back.
15 February 1910, London, Mawson’s plans begin to crystallise
It is all starting to come together, and Mawson is fairly certain now of his course. Hitching his wagon to Shackleton’s steam train – he’s a good goer, eh? – makes a lot of sense. In an elegantly penned letter to his old friend from Sydney University, the geologist Griffith Taylor, Mawson sets out his thoughts:
I am almost getting up an expedition of my own – Scott will not do certain work that ought to be done – I quite agree that to do much would be to detract from his chances of the pole and because of that I am not pressing the matter any further. Certainly I think he is missing the main possibilities of scientific work in the Antarctic by travelling over Shackleton’s old route. However he must beat the Yankees … 53
21 February 1910, London, Shackleton is careful
With the chance of returning once more to the scene of his greatest triumph, and the money starting to flow, Shackleton remains passionate about the whole expedition. Careful this time not to have any repeat of the ill will between him and Scott, though, Shackleton divulges all of his plans by writing Scott a letter:
I am preparing a purely Scientific Expedition to operate along the coast of Antarctica commencing in 1911. The Easterly base is Cape Adare and the farthest west, Gaussberg … I am particularly anxious not to clash with your Expedition, nor in any way to hinder your pecuniary efforts.
With this object in mind I have decided not to appeal for public funds, either Government help or for donations from Societies, as I am being strongly supported by individuals.54
12 March 1910, Melbourne, one of Shackleton’s expedition members decides to say goodbye at the Melbourne Club
While the likes of Shackleton returned from the Nimrod expedition to find fame and at least half a fortune, and men such as Mawson had been so inspired that they want nothing more than to return to Antarctica as soon as possible, the aftermath of the polar experience had not been a happy one for them all. Such a man is Bertram Armytage, who had, of course, been the only other Australian on that expedition apart from Mawson and Edgeworth David.
He had been well enough regarded to have successfully led the Western Party of Raymond Priestley and Philip Brocklehurst to the top of Ferrar Glacier. A taciturn and moody man at the best of times, things have not panned out for him at all since returning, however. A highly coveted position at the Imperial War Office in London had been denied him, for one thing.
On the evening of 12 March, he quietly checks into Room 24 at the exclusive Melbourne Club on Collins Street and then gets busy. First, he dresses himself in his impeccable dinner suit, then he dons all of his Boer War and Polar Medals – the Queen’s Medal, the King’s Medal, the silver Polar Medal that he’d personally received from King Edward VII – before putting a towel down on the floor. Lying upon it, and carefully ensuring his head is fully upon the towel, he takes out his colt pistol and puts the muzzle to his temple.
Then he pulls the trigger.
It is 6.20 pm.
A shot rings out, and around the Melbourne Club the startled members suddenly pause. What on earth was that? It sounded very like a shot. When Armytage’s door is opened with the master key, he is found on the floor, a grievous wound on his temple and the towel saturated with his blood. He is dead.
Astonishingly, he has written no note nor left any clue as to why he has done this. As they would find out in days to come, he has left behind a grieving wife, Blanch, who would shortly receive a cheery letter from him that he penned just three days earlier.
In the endless speculation that follows, the least that can be agreed is that the experience of having gone through the long, dark night of a polar winter had not been good for his mental equilibrium.
Mid-March to late April 1910, Hungary’s Carpathian Mountains, Mawson and Davis pursue wild geese
Strange, where the winds of adventure blow you …
In early March, Mawson and Davis find themselves in the Carpathian Mountains at Borpatak near Nagybanya, on the border of Hungary and Bukovina. Following up on Shackleton’s insistence that not only is there gold in them thar hills of Hungary but that the goldmine might be purchased at bargain-basement prices, they have gone to investigate. Their former expedition leader has been informed that the mine in question is so rich that the local peasant who owns it has already made a fortune using the most primitive mining techniques.
As it pans out, however, the only yield from this enterprise is two months’ squandering of their valuable time. A peasant the mine owner might be, but he is shrewd and proves to have about as much interest in selling his gold mine at the preposterous sums that Shackleton offers as sailing to Antarctica. It is a pity. The fortune they need to get to Antarctica will not be coming from here.
17 March 1910, London, Scott gathers his men
In Scott’s offices, the recruiting process goes on. In these last months of preparation, a 27-year-old God-fearing Scotsman, Henry Robertson Bowers, is appointed to the expedition as storekeeper on the strong recommendation of Sir Clements Markham.
As Bowers – who comes to them from the Indian Marine Service, where he had been assigned to catch pirates in the Persian Gulf and survey the Irrawaddy River – is a squat man with a barrel chest, flaming-red bristly hair and an enormous beak nose, animated by great energy and organisational ability, he is of course known as ‘Birdie’ Bowers. And he is tough, too. When he falls through the main hatch while loading Terra Nova’s hold, landing 19 feet down on a pile of pig iron, he simply picks himself up, dusts himself off and continues on his merry way. This is precisely the kind of man they are looking for.
While home on leave from military service in India, another man has become interested in joining Scott’s expedition. Lawrence Edward Grace Oates, known to most as ‘Titus’ Oates after the seventeenth-century English conspirator, is a man in the mood for adventure.
Of the landed gentry, the dyslexic Oates was educated at Eton, after which his application to Oxford was rejected due to a below-par academic record, which the outspoken and independent lad quickly blamed on the incompetence of his teachers. Such were the times that the obvious career for such a well-born man was the army, and accordingly, with the influence of his doting mother, Caroline, he received a commission in the 6th Iniskilling Dragoons. Although this was his second choice after the Greys, it was nevertheless one of the most highly regarded cavalry regiments in the British Army and provided the ideal opportunity to indulge his passion for horses.
Though he did extremely well in the army, it left him far from unmarked. His left leg is shorter than his right as a result of a bullet through the left thigh, courtesy of a battle against the Boers in March 1901. It was in this same action that he earned the nickname ‘No Surrender Oates’ from his admiring regiment, and for which some felt he deserved nothing less than the Victoria Cross. Just six months after being invalided home, Oates rejoined his regiment in South Africa.55
Though the limping Oates’s spirits slumped during those inactive military years since the Second Boer War, an increasing passion for horses served as some substitute for the excitement of real action. An outstanding horseman, he won several Military Cups, helping to add to an already impressive résumé.
Now, though? Now, his outward demeanour of comfortable English gentleman turned army man belies a tense, somewhat world-weary, 30-year-old man. In India, he had been long resentful of his superiors and, as a consequence, military life in general. In one of his many letters to his mother, he had commented with disdain on the army’s latest drive to recruit men with brains, ‘A man with brains knows too much to join the Service.’56
While Oates was on furlough in England in the middle of 1909 – fired up by the huge public fanfare surrounding Shackleton’s return in June – Scott publicly announced plans for the Terra Nova expedition. Oates was presented not only with an exciting alternative to his current life prospects but also with the ideal opportunity, felt by so many children of the age, to serve his King and Country.
Returning to India, Oates sends Scott a straightforward note in application, which soon sits towards the top of the mountainous pile in Scott’s offices. A terse, independent man, Oates is an unlikely candidate for Scott. Nevertheless, aspects of the man do commend him. One thing is that having an old Etonian British Army officer – a war-hero cavalry officer no less – would surely boost not only the expedition’s profile in all the right quarters but also the men’s morale.
But it is Oates’s proven expertise with horses that is the major point in his favour, as while Scott prefers the purity of man-hauling, he is nevertheless a firm believer that it is horses – specifically Manchurian ponies with white coats – that will do most of the back-breaking work of getting to the South Pole. Among Scott’s present troupe of mostly scientists and mariners, knowing one end of a pony from the other may well be crucial.
Equally attractive to Scott is Oates’s offer to contribute the not insubstantial amount of £1000 of his own money towards the cost of the expedition and forego his salary for its duration. This is a significant amount of money to Scott, given the constant burden of attempting to reach the £40,000 initially estimated as necessary to undertake the enterprise. (The concept of expedition members paying to claim a place on an Antarctic expedition is by no means a new one. The Nimrod expedition’s assistant geologist, Philip Brocklehurst, the second Baronet of Swythamley Park, Staffordshire, paid a staggering £2000 to secure a place on that expedition.)
Just on the basis of Oates’s written application, then, Scott decides to offer him a position. On this 17th day of March – which turns out to be Oates’s 30th birthday – the War Office cables the commander in chief, India, granting Oates his freedom.
In general, so high is the quality of applicants that inevitably there are many very good men who do not make the cut. One such army man not able to convince Scott of his worth is a young lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers, Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis, even though he has a strong pedigree in the field. Ninnis’s father had gone on the famed British Arctic Expedition of 1875 to 1876 as a surgeon, and the 23-year-old Belgrave is keen to duplicate the feat on a major polar expedition of his own. Alas, he does not make the selection.
Another man comes to the expedition in an interesting way. While on a trip to Norway in early March to see tests of the motor sledge as well as to purchase furs and the finest traditional ash and hickory sledges, Scott takes the opportunity to meet Fridtjof Nansen to apprise the famous Arctic explorer of his plans and ambitions for his Antarctic expedition. In response, Nansen is somewhat underwhelmed to hear that Scott intends to favour motor sledges and ponies instead of what the Norwegian believes is the correct way, which is dogs and skis. Nansen believes it is imperative that Scott’s men be good skiers, and with that in mind he recommends a keen 20-year-old Norwegian Antarctic explorer in waiting, Tryggve Gran.
An interesting fellow, Gran, whose own interest in Antarctic exploration was piqued a year earlier when he posed as a journalist so he could meet Scott’s great rival, Shackleton, in Oslo, while the latter was on his never-ending world lecture tour. ‘Shackleton,’ he later recounted, ‘was a master of the art of involving his audience in the inner meaning of his topic. One could almost say that the splendid slides were superfluous. I drank in his every word. I fastened especially on his remarks about skis.’57
A small parenthesis here.
In fact, another person of particular interest sat spellbound in the audience that day. As later recounted by Shackleton’s wife, Emily, as her husband spoke, Roald Amundsen sat with ‘keen eyes … fixed on him, and when Ernest quoted Robert Service’s lines, “The trails of the world be countless”, a mystic look softened his eyes, the look of a man who saw a vision’.58
Close parenthesis.
So enamoured had Gran become with the whole idea of the South Pole that he, too, was mounting an expedition, with Shackleton’s active encouragement. ‘Go ahead with your plan, my boy, and do it right away,’ Shackleton told him, adding an unusually frank and public expression of support for a potential competitor of Scott’s.59 Nansen, concerned over Gran’s lack of experience and Scott’s reluctance to use skis, arranges a meeting between the young greenhorn and Scott. As a result, Gran starts to consider throwing in his lot with the Englishman, if Scott would ever agree to it …
The clincher comes a few days after their first meeting, when Gran accompanies Scott to the Norwegian village of Fefor to witness further trials of the motor sledge and … all too inevitably … its axle snaps clean in two.
What to do? For, as it happens, time is of the essence. Scott is due back in London the following day, and the nearest workshop is well down in the valley, ten miles away. Gran’s hand is up in an instant – he could do it! Soon, snow powder flying back in Scott’s face, Gran is swooshing off down the deep valley on his skis, the broken 25-pound axle strapped to his back like a samurai’s sword. Within five hours, he is back to lay the expertly repaired part at Scott’s feet.
An instant convert to both the virtues of skiing and the abilities of this young man, Scott offers Gran a position on his staff as expert ski instructor, at the same time offering to buy out the equipment Gran has already purchased in preparation for his own expedition. And so it is that two aspiring expedition leaders in their own right, first Teddy Evans and now Tryggve Gran, are subsumed by the Terra Nova expedition under the leadership of the Owner, the irrepressible Captain Robert Falcon Scott.
One more thing, however. Now that Gran is a fully fledged member of the Scott expedition, he takes steps to arrange for Captain Scott to visit Roald Amundsen, whom he knows. Given that Amundsen has announced that he will soon be heading to the North Pole, Scott is interested to see if they might be able to do something together in the field of science, whereby, using the same instruments, their two parties could make magnetic-field measurements simultaneously in the north and south for later comparison.
Alas, though the meeting is all arranged through the good graces of Gran and Amundsen’s brother Gustav, when Scott turns up at Amundsen’s home, the Norwegian explorer is not there, leaving Gran severely embarrassed.60
Scott heads home to continue his preparations …