The Worst Journey in the World/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
THE POLAR JOURNEY (continued)
People, perhaps, still exist who believe that it is of no importance to explore the unknown polar regions. This, of course, shows ignorance. It is hardly necessary to mention here of what scientific importance it is that these regions should be thoroughly explored. The history of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness towards light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, he is no longer man.—Nansen.
III. The Plateau from Mount Darwin to Lat. 87° 32′ S.
| First Sledge | Second Sledge | |
| Scott Wilson Oates Seaman Evans |
Lieut. Evans Bowers Lashly Crean |
For the first week on the plateau Bowers wrote a full diary, which I give below. After December 28 there are little more than fragmentary notes until January 19, the day the party started to return from the Pole. From then until January 25, he wrote fully; nothing after that until January 29, followed by more fragments to "February 3rd (I suppose)." That is the last entry he made.
But this is not surprising, even in a man of Bowers' energy. The time a man can give to writing under such conditions is limited, and Bowers had a great deal of it to do before he could think of a diary—the meteorological log; sights for position as well as rating sights for time; and all the routine work of weights, provisions and depôts. He wrote no diary at the Pole, but he made a very full meteorological report while there in addition to working out sights. The wonder is that he kept a diary at all.
From Bowers' Diary
December 22. Midsummer Day. We have had a brilliant day with a temperature about zero and no wind, altogether charming conditions. I rigged up the Upper Glacier Depôt after breakfast. We depôted two half-weekly units for return of the two parties, also all crampons and glacier gear, such as ice-axes, crowbar, spare Alpine rope, etc., personal gear, medical, and in fact everything we could dispense with. I left my old finnesko, wind trousers and some other spare gear in a bag for going back.
The two advance parties' weights amounted to 190 lbs. per man. They consisted of the permanent weights, twelve weeks' food and oil, spare sledge runners, etc. We said good-bye and sent back messages and photo films with the First Returning Party, which consisted of Atch, Cherry, Silas and Keohane. It was quite touching saying farewell to our good pals—they wished us luck, and Cherry, Atch and Silas quite overwhelmed me.
We went forward, the Owner's team as before consisting of Dr. Bill, Titus and [Seaman] Evans, and [Lieut.] Teddy Evans and Lashly coming over to my sledge and tent to join up with Crean and myself. We all left the depôt cairn marked with two spare 10-feet sledge runners and a large black flag on one. Our morning march was not so long as usual owing to making up the depôt, but we did five miles uphill, hauling our heavier loads more easily than the lighter ones yesterday. A fall in the temperature had improved the surface. We had also sand-papered our runners after the tearing up they had had on the glacier; this made a tremendous difference. The afternoon march brought our total up to 10.6 miles for the day on a S.W. course.
We are steering S.W. with a view to avoiding ice-falls which Shackleton met with. We came across very few crevasses; the few we found were as broad as a street, and crossing them the whole party, sledge and all, would be on the bridge at once. They only gave way at the edges, and we did nothing worse than put our feet through now and then. The surface is all snow now, névé and hard sastrugi, which seem to point to a strong prevalent S.S.E. wind here.
We are well clear of the land now, and it is a beautiful evening. I have just taken six photographs of the Dominion Range. We can see many new mountains. Our position by observation is 85° 13′ 29″ S., 161° 54′ 45″ E., variation being 175° 45′.
December 23. Turned out at usual time, 5.45 a.m. I am cook this week in our tent. After breakfast built two cairns to mark spot and shoved off at quarter to eight.
We started up a big slope on a S.W. course to avoid the pressure which lay across our track to the southward. It was a pretty useful slog up the rise, at one time it seemed as if we would never top the slope. We stopped for five minutes to look round after 2½ hours' hard plugging and about 1½ hours later reached the top, from which we could see the distant mountains which have so recently been our companions. They are beginning to look pretty magnificent. The top of the great pressure ridge was running roughly S.E. and N.W.: it was one of a succession of ridges which probably cover an area of fifty or sixty square miles. In this neighbourhood Shackleton met them almost to 86½° south. At the top of the ridge were vast crevasses into which we could have dropped the Terra Nova easily. The bridges were firm, however, except at the sides, though we had frequent stumbles into the conservatory roof, so to speak. The sledges were rushed over them without mishap. We had to head farther west to clear disturbances, and at one time were going W.N.W.
At lunch camp we had done 8½ miles, and in the afternoon we completed fifteen on a S.W. course over improved ground. Our routine is to actually haul our sledges for nine hours a day; five in the morning, 7.15 a.m. till 1 p.m.; and four in the afternoon, 2.30 p.m.–6.30 p.m. We turn out at 5.45 a.m. just now. The loads are still pretty heavy, but the surface is remarkably good considering all things. One gets pretty weary towards the end of the day; all my muscles have had their turn at being [stiffened] up. These hills are giving my back ones a reminder, but they will ache less to-morrow and finally cease to do so, as is the case with legs, etc., which had their turn first.
December 24. Christmas Eve. We started off heading due south this morning, as we are many miles to the westward of Shackleton's course and should if anywhere be clear of the ice-falls and pressure. Of course no mortals having been here, one can only conjecture; as a matter of fact, we found later in the day that we were not clear by any means, and had to do a bit of dodging about to avoid disturbances, as well as mount vast ridges with the tops of them a chaos of crevasses. The tops are pretty hard ice-snow, over which the sledges run easily; it is quite a holiday after slogging up the slopes on the softer surface with our heavy loads, which amount to over 190 lbs. per man.
We mark our night camp by two cairns and our lunch camp by single ones. It is doubtful, however, among these ridges, if we will ever pick them up again, and it does not really matter, as we have excellent land for the Upper Glacier Depôt. We completed fourteen miles and turned in as usual pretty tired.
December 25. Christmas Day. A strange and strenuous Christmas for me, with plenty of snow to look at and very little else. The breeze that had blown in our faces all yesterday blew more freshly to-day, with surface drift. It fairly nipped one's nose and face starting off—until one got warmed up. We had to pull in wind blouses, as though one's body kept warm enough on the march the arms got numbed with the penetrating wind no matter how vigorously they were swung. Another thing is that one cannot stop the team on the march to get clothes on and off, so it is better to go the whole hog and be too hot than cause delays. We had the addition of a little pony meat for breakfast to celebrate the day. I am the cook of our tent this week.
We steered south again and struck our friends the crevasses and climbed ridges again. About the middle of the morning we were all falling in continually, but Lashly in my team had the worst drop. He fell to the length of his harness and the trace. I was glad that having noticed his rope rather worn, I had given him a new one a few days before. He jerked Crean and me off our feet backwards, and Crean's harness being jammed under the sledge, which was half across an eight-feet bridge, he could do nothing. I was a little afraid of sledge and all going down, but fortunately the crevasse ran diagonally. We could not see Lashly, for a great overhanging piece of ice was over him. Teddy Evans and I cleared Crean and we all three got Lashly up with the Alpine rope cut into the snow sides which overhung the hole. We then got the sledge into safety.
To-day is Lashly's birthday; he is married and has a family; is 44 years of age, and due for his pension from the service. He is as strong as most and is an undefeated old sportsman. Being a chief stoker, R.N., his original job was charge of one of the ill-fated motor sledges.
[The following is Lashly's own account:
"Christmas Day and a good one. We have done 15 miles over a very changing surface. First of all it was very much crevassed and pretty rotten; we were often in difficulties as to which way we should tackle it. I had the misfortune to drop clean through, but was stopped with a jerk when at the end of my harness. It was not of course a very nice sensation, especially on Christmas Day, and being my birthday as well. While spinning round in space like I was it took me a few seconds to gather together my thoughts and see what kind of a place I was in. It certainly was not a fairy's place. When I had collected myself I heard some one calling from above, 'Are you all right, Lashly?' I was all right it is true, but I did not care to be dangling in the air on a piece of rope, especially when I looked round and saw what kind of a place it was. It seemed about 50 feet deep and 8 feet wide, and 120 feet long. This information I had ample time to gain while dangling there. I could measure the width with my ski sticks, as I had them on my wrists. It seemed a long time before I saw the rope come down alongside me with a bowline in it for me to put my foot in and get dragged out. It was not a job I should care to have to go through often, as by being in the crevasse I had got cold and a bit frost-bitten on the hands and face, which made it more difficult for me to help myself. Anyhow Mr. Evans, Bowers and Crean hauled me out and Crean wished me many happy returns of the day, and of course I thanked him politely and the others laughed, but all were pleased I was not hurt bar a bit of a shake. It was funny although they called to the other team to stop they did not hear, but went trudging on and did not know until they looked round just in time to see me arrive on top again. They then waited for us to come up with them. The Captain asked if I was all right and could go on again, which I could honestly say 'Yes' to, and at night when we stopped for dinner I felt I could do two dinners in. Anyhow we had a pretty good tuck-in. Dinner consisted of pemmican, biscuits, chocolate éclair, pony meat, plum pudding and crystallized ginger and four caramels each. We none of us could hardly move."[1]]
We had done over eight miles at lunch. I had managed to scrape together from the Barrier rations enough extra food to allow us a stick of chocolate each for lunch, with two spoonfuls of raisins each in our tea. In the afternoon we got clear of crevasses pretty soon, but towards the end of the afternoon Captain Scott got fairly wound up and went on and on. The breeze died down and my breath kept fogging my glasses, and our windproofs got oppressively warm and altogether things were pretty rotten. At last he stopped and we found we had done 14¾ miles. He said, "What about fifteen miles for Christmas Day?" so we gladly went on—anything definite is better than indefinite trudging.
We had a great feed which I had kept hidden and out of the official weights since our departure from Winter Quarters. It consisted of a good fat hoosh with pony meat and ground biscuit; a chocolate hoosh made of water, cocoa, sugar, biscuit, raisins, and thickened with a spoonful of arrowroot. (This is the most satisfying stuff imaginable.) Then came 2½ square inches of plum-duff each, and a good mug of cocoa washed down the whole. In addition to this we had four caramels each and four squares of crystallized ginger. I positively could not eat all mine, and turned in feeling as if I had made a beast of myself. I wrote up my journal—in fact I should have liked somebody to put me to bed.
December 26. We have seen many new ranges of mountains extending to the S.E. of the Dominion Range. They are very distant, however, and must evidently be the top of those bounding the Barrier. They could only be seen from the tops of the ridges as waves up which we are continually mounting. Our height yesterday morning by hypsometer was 8000 feet. That is our last hypsometer record, as I had the misfortune to break the thermometer. The hypsometer was one of my chief delights, and nobody could have been more disgusted than myself at its breaking. However, we have the aneroid to check the height. We are going gradually up and up. As one would expect, a considerable amount of lassitude was felt over breakfast after our feed last night. The last thing on earth I wanted to do was to ship the harness round my poor tummy when we started. As usual a stiff breeze from the south and a temperature of −7° blew in our faces. Strange to say, however, we don't get frost-bitten. I suppose it is the open-air life.
I could not tell if I had a frost-bite on my face now, as it is all scales, so are my lips and nose. A considerable amount of red hair is endeavouring to cover up matters. We crossed several ridges, and after the effects of overfeeding had worn off did a pretty good march of thirteen miles.
[No more Christmas Days, so no more big hooshes.[2]]
December 27. There is something the matter with our sledge or our team, as we have an awful slog to keep up with the others. I asked Dr. Bill and he said their sledge ran very easily. Ours is nothing but a desperate drag with constant rallies to keep up. We certainly manage to do so, but I am sure we cannot keep this up for long. We are all pretty well done up to-night after doing 13.3 miles.
Our salvation is on the summits of the ridges, where hard névé and sastrugi obtain, and we skip over this slippery stuff and make up lost ground easily. In soft snow the other team draw steadily ahead, and it is fairly heartbreaking to know you are putting your life out hour after hour while they go along with little apparent effort.
December 28. The last few days have been absolutely cloudless, with unbroken sunshine for twenty-four hours. It sounds very nice, but the temperature never comes above zero and what Shackleton called "the pitiless increasing wind" of the great plateau continues to blow at all times from the south. It never ceases, and all night it whistles round the tents, all day it blows in our faces. Sometimes it is S.S.E., or S.E. to S., and sometimes even S. to W., but always southerly, chiefly accompanied by low drift which at night forms quite a deposit round the sledges. We expected this wind, so we must not growl at getting it. It will be great fun sailing the sledges back before it. As far as weather is concerned we have had remarkably fine days up here on this limitless snow plain. I should like to know what there is beneath us—mountains and valleys simply levelled off to the top with ice? We constantly come across disturbances which I can only imagine are caused by the peaks of ice-covered mountains, and no doubt some of the ice-falls and crevasses are accountable to the same source. Our coming west has not cleared them, as we have seen more disturbances to the west, many miles away. However, they are getting less and less, and are now nothing but featureless rises with apparently no crevasses. Our first two hours' pulling to-day. . . .
From Lashly's Diary
December 29, 1911. A nasty head wind all day and low drift which accumulates in patches and makes it the deuce of a job to get along. We have got to put in long days to do the distance.
December 30, 1911. Sledges going heavy, surface and wind the same as yesterday. We depôted our ski to-night, that is the party returning to-morrow when we march in the forenoon and camp to change our sledge runners into 10 feet. Done 11 miles but a bit stiff.
December 31, 1911. After doing 7 miles we camped and done the sledges which took us until 11 p.m., and we had to dig out to get them done by then, made a depôt and saw the old year out and the new year in. We all wondered where we should be next New Year. It was so still and quiet; the weather was dull and overcast all night, in fact we have not seen much of the sun lately; it would be so nice if we could sometimes get a glimpse of it, the sun is always cheering.
January 1912. New Year's Day. We pushed on as usual, but were rather late getting away, 9.10—something unusual for us to be as late. The temperature and wind is still very troublesome. We are now ahead of Shackleton's dates and have passed the 87th parallel, so it is only 180 miles to the Pole.
January 2, 1912. The dragging is still very heavy and we seem to be always climbing higher. We are now over 10,000 feet above sea level. It makes it bad as we don't get enough heat in our food and the tea is not strong enough to run out of the pot. Everything gets cold so quickly, the water boils at about 196° F.
Scott's own diary of this first fortnight on the plateau shows the immense shove of the man: he was getting every inch out of the miles, every ounce out of his companions. Also he was in a hurry, he always was. That blizzard which had delayed him just before the Gateway, and the resulting surfaces which had delayed him in the lower reaches of the glacier! One can feel the averages running through his brain: so many miles to-day: so many more to-morrow. When shall we come to an end of this pressure? Can we go straight or must we go more west? And then the great undulating waves with troughs eight miles wide, and the buried mountains, causing whirlpools in the ice—how immense, and how annoying. The monotonous march: the necessity to keep the mind concentrated to steer amongst disturbances: the relief of a steady plod when the disturbances cease for a time: then more pressure and more crevasses. Always slog on, slog on. Always a fraction of a mile more. . . . On December 30 he writes, "We have caught up Shackleton's dates."[3]
They made wonderful marches, averaging nearly fifteen statute miles (13 geog.) a day for the whole-day marches until the Second Return Party turned back on January 4. Scott writes on December 26, "It seems astonishing to be disappointed with a march of 15 (statute) miles when I had contemplated doing little more than 10 with full loads."[4]
The Last Returning Party came back with the news that Scott must reach the Pole with the greatest ease. This seemed almost a certainty: and yet it was, as we know now, a false impression. Scott's plans were based on Shackleton's averages over the same country. The blizzard came and put him badly behind: but despite this he caught Shackleton up. No doubt the general idea then was that Scott was going to have a much easier time than he had expected. We certainly did not realize then, and I do not think Scott himself had any notion of, the price which had been paid.
Of the three teams of four men each which started from the bottom of the Beardmore, Scott's team was a very long way the strongest: it was the team which, with one addition, went to the Pole. Lieutenant Evans' team had mostly done a lot of man-hauling already: it was hungry and I think a bit stale. Bowers' team was fresh and managed to keep up for the most part, but it was very done at the end of the day. Scott's own team went along with comparative ease. From the top of the glacier two teams went on during the last fortnight of which we have been speaking. The first of them was Scott's unit complete, just as it had pulled up the glacier. The second team consisted, I believe, of the men whom Scott considered to be the strongest; two from Evans' team, and two from Bowers'. All Scott's team were fresh to the extent that they had done no man-hauling until we started up the glacier. But two of the other team, Lieutenant Evans and Lashly, had been man-hauling since the breakdown of the second motor on November 1. They had man-hauled four hundred statute miles farther than the rest. Indeed Lashly's man-hauling journey from Corner Camp to beyond 87° 32′ S., and back, is one of the great feats of polar travelling.
Surely and not very slowly, Scott's team began to wear down the other team. They were going easily when the others were making heavy weather and were sometimes far behind. During the fortnight they rose, according to the corrected observations, from 7151 feet (Upper Glacier Depôt) to 9392 feet above sea level (Three Degree Depôt). The rarefied air of the Plateau with its cold winds and lower temperatures, just now about −10° to −12° at night and −3° during the day, were having their effect on the second team, as well as the forced marches. This is quite clear from Scott's diary, and from the other diaries also. What did not appear until after the Last Returning Party had turned homewards was that the first team was getting worn out too. This team which had gone so strong up the glacier, which had done those amazingly good marches on the plateau, broke up unexpectedly and in some respects rapidly from the 88th parallel onwards.
Seaman Evans was the first man to crack. He was the heaviest, largest, most muscular man we had, and that was probably one of the main reasons: for his allowance of food was the same as the others. But one mishap which contributed to his collapse seems to have happened during this first fortnight on the plateau. On December 31 the 12-feet sledges were turned into 10-feet ones by stripping off the old scratched runners which had come up the glacier and shipping new 10-feet ones which had been brought for the purpose. This job was done by the seamen, and Evans appears to have had some accident to his hand, which is mentioned several times afterwards.
Meanwhile Scott had to decide whom he was going to take on with him to the Pole,—for it was becoming clear that in all probability he would reach the Pole: "What castles one builds now hopefully that the Pole is ours," he wrote the day after the supporting party left him. The final advance to the Pole was, according to plan, to have been made by four men. We were organized in four-man units: our rations were made up for four men for a week: our tents held four men: our cookers held four mugs, four pannikins and four spoons. Four days before the Supporting Party turned, Scott ordered the second sledge of four men to depôt their ski. It is clear, I suppose, that at this time he meant the Polar Party to consist of four men. I think there can be no doubt that he meant one of those men to be himself: "for your own ear also, I am exceedingly fit and can go with the best of them," he wrote from the top of the glacier.[5]
He changed his mind and went forward a party of five: Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Seaman Evans. I am sure he wished to take as many men as possible to the Pole. He sent three men back: Lieutenant Evans in charge, and two seamen, Lashly and Crean. It is the vivid story of those three men, who turned on January 4 in latitude 87° 32′, which is told by Lashly in the next chapter. Scott wrote home: "A last note from a hopeful position. I think it's going to be all right. We have a fine party going forward and arrangements are all going well."[6]
Ten months afterwards we found their bodies.