‘These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale’

THEY were just 15 miles from their goal when they spotted a black spot like a portent of doom on the horizon. Having trudged their weary way on foot and ski and man-hauled sledge across the Great Ice Barrier and up and over the Beardmore Glacier, the five-strong band of men led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott were looking forward to the triumph of being the first explorers ever to reach the South Pole.

But the spot, which soon became a flag, announced the news they dreaded: that their Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it.

They battled on regardless and the following day, 100 years ago on Tuesday, they planted their own Union flag with heavy hearts. “The Pole. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected,” Scott wrote, despondently, in his diary. “Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.”

The men – Scott, Lawrence Oates, Edward Wilson, Edgar Evans and Henry Bowers – had failed in their attempt to secure the honour of reaching the South Pole first “for the British Empire” by 34 days.

Yet despite this, and the fact that all five men died on the doomed 800-mile trek back, their heroic endeavour remains one of the most inspirational stories of our time. A century on, the legacy of the Terra Nova expedition is incalculable. Not only did it change they way we understand our planet, the irresistible combination of heroism, endurance and tragedy inspired great works of art.

The words of Oates who, realising his ill health was slowing the party down, stepped out of the tent into a blizzard, saying: “I am just going outside, I may be some time,” also seeped into the fabric of 20th-century culture and become a synonym for self-sacrifice.

“[The Terra Nova expedition] has influenced the world in ways that people don’t often fathom,” says Dr David Wilson, the great nephew of Edward Wilson and the man behind a centenary expedition which will retrace the steps of the search party that discovered the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers nine months after their deaths.

“The friendship between my great uncle and Scott resulted in Scott writing the line “make the boy more interested in natural history” [to his wife] which inspired [his son] Peter’s life and led to the foundation of the World Wildlife Fund and the whole conservation movement.”

For the latter part of the 20th century, however, the Terra Nova expedition was not viewed in such a positive light. After decades in which Scott was portrayed as a plucky British hero, and Amundsen as an upstart who used ungentlemanly tactics to gain the upper hand, critics came to question Scott’s “amateurish” approach and to blame him for the deaths.

A naval officer, Scott’s involvement in the Antarctic was born of a desire to distinguish himself at a time of peace when opportunities for advancement were limited. In 1901 to 1904, he led the Discovery Expedition – the brainchild of Sir Clements Markham, the then president of the Royal Geographical Society – during which he, Wilson and Ernest Shackleton embarked on a march south which took them 530 miles from the pole. Six years later, and after Shackleton’s Nimrod Expedition got within 97 miles of the Pole, Scott secured funding for the Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic.

He put together a team of explorers, including second-in-command Teddy Evans, biologist Apsley Cherry-Garrard and freelance photographer Herbert Ponting, whose images provided the most dramatic record of the venture.

Over in Norway, Amundsen had already become the first man to cross the Northwest passage and had set his sights on the North Pole; but when in 1909, two US explorers claimed to have achieved that feat, he turned his attention south.

Aware that any attempt to upstage Scott would be frowned upon by his own country, which was grateful to the British government for helping it win its independence, he didn’t tell anyone of his new plans until he reached Madeira. When Scott – by then in Australia – received a telegram informing him that Amundsen was heading south, he realised the gun had been fired in a two-horse race.

But almost as soon as the Terra Nova set sail from New Zealand – where 34 dogs, 19 Siberian ponies and three motorised sledges had been loaded on – it was beset with problems. First, the ship was struck by a heavy storm; then it became stuck in southern pack ice for 20 days before breaking free and continuing its journey and eventually landing at Cape Evans, where one of the motorised sledges fell into the water.

Long before the Polar party started its trek in November 1911, some members of the Terra Nova expedition had had their endurance tested to the limits. Desperate to bring back eggs from the Emperor penguin, Wilson, Cherry-Garrard and Bowers set off for Cape Crozier in June; it was the first time such a journey had been undertaken during an Antarctic winter, a time of perpetual darkness. It took 19 days to travel the 60 miles, the temperature fell to below -60C and sleeping bags and clothes were constantly iced up. Having built an igloo near the penguin colony, they managed to take six eggs (three of which broke on the way back).

Later on, the six-strong Northern party, which had been sent out to explore an area 200 miles from Cape Evans became trapped and had to spend the Antarctic winter of 1912 in a snow cave. They suffered ptomaine poisoning from a contaminated stove and the high uric acid content of the seal meat they were eating, combined with a lack of carbohydrates, meant they wet themselves constantly.

But it was the long march to the South Pole (or rather the long trek back) that was to lead to disaster. On the early stages of the outward journey, the party of 16 had fun. In his diary, Bowers wrote: “What a day we’ve had. Crossing the waves of ice was such sport. You poised the sledge on a giddy height, aimed her carefully, all four men braking with their feet and then a shove and down you would fly.”

Later, of course, there would be less laughter. On 3 January, 1912 – after the party had ascended the Beardmore Glacier – Scott chose his final team of five, sending everyone else back to base.

The five arrived at the South Pole on 17 January, discovered Amundsen had left a tent and some supplies, planted their flag, and started back.

At first, all went well. But then Evans’ health began to deteriorate. Already suffering from frostbite and malnutrition, he suffered concussion after several falls. Near the bottom of the Beardmore Glacier, he collapsed and died.

As the rest of the party crossed the Barrier, they ran into some of the worst conditions ever recorded in the region. The weather and the poor surfaces slowed them down; and Oates, whose feet were frostbitten, found walking increasingly difficult.

From that point on, the expedition seemed cursed; temperatures continued to fall and, when the men made it to the various depots they had laid down on the early part of the expedition, they found supplies of food and fuel depleted.

Around 17 March, Oates, realising he would not make it, stepped out of his tent to his certain death. The rest of the team struggled on, but were hampered once again by a blizzard; for days they were stuck in their tent, just 11 miles from Depot Ton One, with its vital cache of supplies. Their rations ran out and they died around 29 March.

Nine months later, a search party discovered the bodies of the three men lying huddled together in a tent.

After collecting their diaries, the men reburied their bodies and built a cairn with a cross over the spot where they lay. Later, a large wooden cross inscribed with the names of the lost party and the line: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”, from Tennyson’s poem Ulysses was placed on Observation Hill. The diaries, however, were an even more eloquent epitaph. “Had we lived,” wrote Scott, “I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.”

Those for whom Scott was at best an enthusiastic amateur and, at worst, a reckless egotist point, blame him for the disaster which befell the Polar party. They point to the vitamin-deficient rations, Scott’s wariness of dogs (Amundsen’s understanding of dogs was probably the biggest factor in his success) and his insistence on stopping to collect geological specimens despite Evans’ failing health, as evidence of his arrogance and incompetence. They also point out that if Depot Ton One had been further south (as was originally planned), the men would have survived. Others insist the polar party was the victim merely of a confluence of unfortunate circumstances.

But to Dr Wilson, the public’s obsession with apportioning blame is as pointless as it is infuriating. “Why do we make so much out of Scott’s death?” he asks. “The cause of human progress, particularly in that period, frequently involved people dying sometimes in large numbers. Vast numbers of people died to develop aircraft, in the Arctic explorations whole ships’ companies were lost, you still lose people today on the space shuttle. It’s part of the price of human progress.”

One hundred years on, reaching the South Pole no longer requires immense mental or physical fortitude. Hundreds of tourists have been flocking to Antarctica to mark the anniversaries of both Amundsen and Scott’s arrival. Some have been skiing the route, others arriving by truck. A handful have taken a catered flight which lets them off just a few miles away. For Wilson, all this playing at exploring is a sign the Earth no longer holds enough new challenges for young adventurers. “If people want to go to the Pole then fine, but what makes me laugh is when they make great claims for themselves – ‘I’m the oldest, the youngest, the sexiest to get there.’ It’s all become rather irrelevant,” he says.

“In this country we specialise in explorer types and I’m all in favour of finding them something useful to do... I think we should be sending them off to Mars and Jupiter. Let’s get people exploring properly again.”

The Spirit of The Terra Nova, it seems, lives on.