The Worst Journey in the World (15 page)

The seas through which we had to pass to reach the pack-ice must be the
most stormy in the world. Dante tells us that those who have committed
carnal sin are tossed about ceaselessly by the most furious winds in the
second circle of Hell. The corresponding hell on earth is found in the
southern oceans, which encircle the world without break, tempest-tossed
by the gales which follow one another round and round the world from West
to East. You will find albatross there—great Wanderers, and Sooties,
and Mollymawks—sailing as lightly before these furious winds as ever do
Paolo and Francesca. Round the world they go. I doubt whether they land
more than once a year, and then they come to the islands of these seas to
breed.

There are many other beautiful sea-birds, but most beautiful of all are
the Snowy petrels, which approach nearer to the fairies than anything
else on earth. They are quite white, and seemingly transparent. They are
the familiar spirits of the pack, which, except to nest, they seldom if
ever leave, flying "here and there independently in a mazy fashion,
glittering against the blue sky like so many white moths, or shining
snowflakes."
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And then there are the Giant petrels, whose coloration
is a puzzle. Some are nearly white, others brown, and they exhibit every
variation between the one and the other. And, on the whole, the white
forms become more general the farther south you go. But the usual theory
of protective coloration will not fit in, for there are no enemies
against which this bird must protect itself. Is it something to do with
radiation of heat from the body?

A ship which sets out upon this journey generally has a bad time, and for
this reason the overladen state of the Terra Nova was a cause of anxiety.
The Australasian meteorologists had done their best to forecast the
weather we must expect. Everything which was not absolutely necessary had
been ruthlessly scrapped. Yet there was not a square inch of the hold and
between-decks which was not crammed almost to bursting, and there was as
much on the deck as could be expected to stay there. Officers and men
could hardly move in their living quarters when standing up, and
certainly they could not all sit down. To say that we were heavy laden is
a very moderate statement of the facts.

Thursday, December 1, we ran into a gale. We shortened sail in the
afternoon to lower topsails, jib and stay-sail. Both wind and sea rose
with great rapidity, and before the night came our deck cargo had begun
to work loose. "You know how carefully everything had been lashed, but no
lashings could have withstood the onslaught of these coal sacks for
long. There was nothing for it but to grapple with the evil, and nearly
all hands were labouring for hours in the waist of the ship, heaving coal
sacks overboard and re-lashing the petrol cases, etc., in the best manner
possible under such difficult and dangerous circumstances. The seas were
continually breaking over these people and now and again they would be
completely submerged. At such times they had to cling for dear life to
some fixture to prevent themselves being washed overboard, and with coal
bags and loose cases washing about, there was every risk of such hold
being torn away.

"No sooner was some semblance of order restored than some exceptionally
heavy wave would tear away the lashing, and the work had to be done all
over again."
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The conditions became much worse during the night and things were
complicated for some of us by sea-sickness. I have lively recollections
of being aloft for two hours in the morning watch on Friday and being
sick at intervals all the time. For sheer downright misery give me a
hurricane, not too warm, the yard of a sailing ship, a wet sail and a
bout of sea-sickness.

It must have been about this time that orders were given to clew up the
jib and then to furl it. Bowers and four others went out on the bowsprit,
being buried deep in the enormous seas every time the ship plunged her
nose into them with great force. It was an education to see him lead
those men out into that roaring inferno. He has left his own vivid
impression of this gale in a letter home. His tendency was always to
underestimate difficulties, whether the force of wind in a blizzard, or
the troubles of a polar traveller. This should be remembered when reading
the vivid accounts which his mother has so kindly given me permission to
use:

"We got through the forties with splendid speed and were just over the
fifties when one of those tremendous gales got us. Our Lat. was about 52°
S., a part of the world absolutely unfrequented by shipping of any sort,
and as we had already been blown off Campbell Island we had nothing but
a clear sweep to Cape Horn to leeward. One realized then how in the
Nimrod—in spite of the weather—they always had the security of a big
steamer to look to if things came to the worst. We were indeed alone, by
many hundreds of miles, and never having felt anxious about a ship
before, the old whaler was to give me a new experience.

"In the afternoon of the beginning of the gale I helped make fast the
T.G. sails, upper topsails and foresail, and was horrified on arrival on
deck to find that the heavy water we continued to ship, was starting the
coal bags floating in places. These, acting as battering-rams, tore
adrift some of my carefully stowed petrol cases and endangered the lot. I
had started to make sail fast at 3 P.M. and it was 9.30 P.M. when I had
finished putting on additional lashings to everything I could. So rapidly
did the sea get up that one was continually afloat and swimming about. I
turned in for 2 hours and lay awake hearing the crash of the seas and
thinking how long those cases would stand it, till my watch came at
midnight as a relief. We were under 2 lower topsails and hove to, the
engines going dead slow to assist keeping head to wind. At another time I
should have been easy in my mind; now the water that came aboard was
simply fearful, and the wrenching on the old ship was enough to worry any
sailor called upon to fill his decks with garbage fore and aft. Still
'Risk nothing and do nothing,' if funds could not supply another ship, we
simply had to overload the one we had, or suffer worse things down south.
The watch was eventful as the shaking up got the fine coal into the
bilges, and this mixing with the oil from the engines formed balls of
coal and grease which, ordinarily, went up the pumps easily; now however
with the great strains, and hundreds of tons on deck, as she continually
filled, the water started to come in too fast for the half-clogged pumps
to cope with. An alternative was offered to me in going faster so as to
shake up the big pump on the main engines, and this I did—in spite of
myself—and in defiance of the first principles of seamanship. Of course,
we shipped water more and more, and only to save a clean breach of the
decks did I slow down again and let the water gain. My next card was to
get the watch on the hand-pumps as well, and these were choked, too, or
nearly so.

"Anyhow with every pump,—hand and steam,—going, the water continued to
rise in the stokehold. At 4 A.M. all hands took in the fore lower
topsail, leaving us under a minimum of sail. The gale increased to storm
force (force 11 out of 12) and such a sea got up as only the Southern
Fifties can produce. All the afterguard turned out and the pumps were
vigorously shaken up,—sickening work as only a dribble came out. We had
to throw some coal overboard to clear the after deck round the pumps, and
I set to work to rescue cases of petrol which were smashed adrift. I
broke away a plank or two of the lee bulwarks to give the seas some
outlet as they were right over the level of the rail, and one was
constantly on the verge of floating clean over the side with the cataract
force of the backwash. I had all the swimming I wanted that day. Every
case I rescued was put on the weather side of the poop to help get us on
a more even keel. She sagged horribly and the unfortunate ponies,—though
under cover,—were so jerked about that the weather ones could not keep
their feet in their stalls, so great was the slope and strain on their
forelegs. Oates and Atkinson worked among them like Trojans, but morning
saw the death of one, and the loss of one dog overboard. The dogs, made
fast on deck, were washed to and fro, chained by the neck, and often
submerged for a considerable time. Though we did everything in our power
to get them up as high as possible, the sea went everywhere. The wardroom
was a swamp and so were our bunks with all our nice clothing, books, etc.
However, of this we cared little, when the water had crept up to the
furnaces and put the fires out, and we realized for the first time that
the ship had met her match and was slowly filling. Without a pump to suck
we started the forlorn hope of buckets and began to bale her out. Had we
been able to open a hatch we could have cleared the main pump well at
once, but with those appalling seas literally covering her, it would
have meant less than 10 minutes to float, had we uncovered a hatch.

"The Chief Engineer (Williams) and carpenter (Davies), after we had all
put our heads together, started cutting a hole in the engine room
bulkhead, to enable us to get into the pump-well from the engine room; it
was iron and, therefore, at least a 12 hours job. Captain Scott was
simply splendid, he might have been at Cowes, and to do him and Teddy
Evans credit, at our worst strait none of our landsmen who were working
so hard knew how serious things were. Capt. Scott said to me quietly—'I
am afraid it's a bad business for us—What do you think?' I said we were
by no means dead yet, though at that moment, Oates, at peril of his life,
got aft to report another horse dead; and more down. And then an awful
sea swept away our lee bulwarks clean, between the fore and main
riggings,—only our chain lashings saved the lee motor sledge then, and I
was soon diving after petrol cases. Captain Scott calmly told me that
they 'did not matter'—This was our great project for getting to the
Pole—the much advertised motors that 'did not matter'; our dogs looked
finished, and horses were finishing, and I went to bale with a strenuous
prayer in my heart, and 'Yip-i-addy' on my lips, and so we pulled through
that day. We sang and re-sang every silly song we ever knew, and then
everybody in the ship later on was put on 2-hour reliefs to bale, as it
was impossible for flesh to keep heart with no food or rest. Even the
fresh-water pump had gone wrong so we drank neat lime juice, or anything
that came along, and sat in our saturated state awaiting our next spell.
My dressing gown was my great comfort as it was not very wet, and it is a
lovely warm thing.

"To make a long yarn short, we found later in the day that the storm was
easing a bit and that though there was a terrible lot of water in the
ship, which, try as we could, we could not reduce, it certainly had
ceased to rise to any great extent. We had reason to hope then that we
might keep her afloat till the pump wells could be cleared. Had the storm
lasted another day, God knows what our state would have been, if we had
been above water at all. You cannot imagine how utterly helpless we felt
in such a sea with a tiny ship,—the great expedition with all its hopes
thrown aside for its life. God had shown us the weakness of man's hand
and it was enough for the best of us,—the people who had been made such
a lot of lately—the whole scene was one of pathos really. However, at 11
P.M. Evans and I with the carpenter were able to crawl through a tiny
hole in the bulkhead, burrow over the coal to the pump-well cofferdam,
where, another hole having been easily made in the wood, we got down
below with Davy lamps and set to work. The water was so deep that you had
to continually dive to get your hand on to the suction. After 2 hours or
so it was cleared for the time being and the pumps worked merrily. I went
in again at 4.30 A.M. and had another lap at clearing it. Not till the
afternoon of the following day, though, did we see the last of the water
and the last of the great gale. During the time the pumps were working,
we continued the baling till the water got below the furnaces. As soon as
we could light up, we did, and got the other pumps under weigh, and, once
the ship was empty, clearing away the suction was a simple matter. I was
pleased to find that after all I had only lost about 100 gallons of the
petrol and bad as things had been they might have been worse....

"You will ask where all the water came from seeing our forward leak had
been stopped. Thank God we did not have that to cope with as well. The
water came chiefly through the deck where the tremendous strain,—not
only of the deck load, but of the smashing seas,—was beyond conception.
She was caught at a tremendous disadvantage and we were dependent for our
lives on each plank standing its own strain. Had one gone we would all
have gone, and the great anxiety was not so much the existing water as
what was going to open up if the storm continued. We might have dumped
the deck cargo, a difficult job at best, but were too busy baling to do
anything else....

"That Captain Scott's account will be moderate you may be sure. Still,
take my word for it, he is one of the best, and behaved up to our best
traditions at a time when his own outlook must have been the blackness of
darkness...."

Characteristically Bowers ends his account:

"Under its worst conditions this earth is a good place to live in."

Priestley wrote in his diary:

"If Dante had seen our ship as she was at her worst, I fancy he would
have got a good idea for another Circle of Hell, though he would have
been at a loss to account for such a cheerful and ribald lot of Souls."

The situation narrowed down to a fight between the incoming water and the
men who were trying to keep it in check by baling her out. The Terra Nova
will never be more full of water, nearly up to the furnaces, than she was
that Friday morning, when we were told to go and do our damndest with
three iron buckets. The constructors had not allowed for baling, only for
the passage of one man at a time up and down the two iron ladders which
connected the engine-room floor plates with the deck. If we used more
than three buckets the business of passing them rapidly up, emptying them
out of the hatchway, and returning them empty, became unprofitable. We
were divided into two gangs, and all Friday and Friday night we worked
two hours on and two hours off, like fiends.