The Worst Journey in the World (8 page)

I have quoted this review at length, because it gives the atmosphere of
hero-worship into which we were plunged on our return. That atmosphere
was very agreeable; but it was a refracting medium through which the
expedition could not be seen with scientific accuracy—and the expedition
was nothing if not scientific. Whilst we knew what we had suffered and
risked better than any one else, we also knew that science takes no
account of such things; that a man is no better for having made the worst
journey in the world; and that whether he returns alive or drops by the
way will be all the same a hundred years hence if his records and
specimens come safely to hand.

In addition to Scott's Last Expedition and Priestley's Antarctic
Adventures, Griffith Taylor, who was physiographer to the Main Party, has
written an account of the two geological journeys of which he was the
leader, and of the domestic life of the expedition at Hut Point and at
Cape Evans, up to February 1912, in a book called With Scott: The Silver
Lining. This book gives a true glimpse into the more boisterous side of
our life, with much useful information about the scientific part.

Though it bears little upon this book I cannot refrain from drawing the
reader's attention to, and earning some of his thanks for, a little book
called Antarctic Penguins, written by Levick, the Surgeon of Campbell's
Party. It is almost entirely about Adélie penguins. The author spent the
greater part of a summer living, as it were, upon sufferance, in the
middle of one of the largest penguin rookeries in the world. He has
described the story of their crowded life with a humour with which,
perhaps, we hardly credited him, and with a simplicity which many writers
of children's stories might envy. If you think your own life hard, and
would like to leave it for a short hour I recommend you to beg, borrow or
steal this tale, and read and see how the penguins live. It is all quite
true.

So there is already a considerable literature about the expedition, but
no connected account of it as a whole. Scott's diary, had he lived, would
merely have formed the basis of the book he would have written. As his
personal diary it has an interest which no other book could have had. But
a diary in this life is one of the only ways in which a man can blow off
steam, and so it is that Scott's book accentuates the depression which
used to come over him sometimes.

We have seen the importance which must attach to the proper record of
improvements, weights and methods of each and every expedition. We have
seen how Scott took the system developed by the Arctic Explorers at the
point of development to which it had been brought by Nansen, and applied
it for the first time to Antarctic sledge travelling. Scott's Voyage of
the Discovery gives a vivid picture of mistakes rectified, and of
improvements of every kind. Shackleton applied the knowledge they gained
in his first expedition, Scott in this, his second and last. On the whole
I believe this expedition was the best equipped there has ever been, when
the double purpose, exploratory and scientific, for which it was
organized, is taken into consideration. It is comparatively easy to put
all your eggs into one basket, to organize your material and to equip and
choose your men entirely for one object, whether it be the attainment of
the Pole, or the running of a perfect series of scientific observations.
Your difficulties increase many-fold directly you combine the one with
the other, as was done in this case. Neither Scott nor the men with him
would have gone for the Pole alone. Yet they considered the Pole to be an
achievement worthy of a great attempt, and "We took risks, we knew we
took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no
cause for complaint...."

It is, it must be, of the first importance that a system, I will not say
perfected, but developed, to a pitch of high excellence at such a cost
should be handed down as completely as possible to those who are to
follow. I want to so tell this story that the leader of some future
Antarctic expedition, perhaps more than one, will be able to take it up
and say: "I have here the material from which I can order the articles
and quantities which will be wanted for so many men for such and such a
time; I have also a record of how this material was used by Scott, of the
plans of his journeys and how his plans worked out, and of the
improvements which his parties were able to make on the spot or suggest
for the future. I don't agree with such and such, but this is a
foundation and will save me many months of work in preparation, and give
me useful knowledge for the actual work of my expedition." If this book
can guide the future explorer by the light of the past, it will not have
been written in vain.

But this was not my main object in writing this book. When I undertook in
1913 to write, for the Antarctic Committee, an Official Narrative on
condition that I was given a free hand, what I wanted to do above all
things was to show what work was done; who did it; to whom the credit of
the work was due; who took the responsibility; who did the hard sledging;
and who pulled us through that last and most ghastly year when two
parties were adrift, and God only knew what was best to be done; when,
had things gone on much longer, men would undoubtedly have gone mad.
There is no record of these things, though perhaps the world thinks there
is. Generally as a mere follower, without much responsibility, and often
scared out of my wits, I was in the thick of it all, and I know.

Unfortunately I could not reconcile a sincere personal confession with
the decorous obliquity of an Official Narrative; and I found that I had
put the Antarctic Committee in a difficulty from which I could rescue
them only by taking the book off their hands; for it was clear that what
I had written was not what is expected from a Committee, even though no
member may disapprove of a word of it. A proper Official Narrative
presented itself to our imaginations and sense of propriety as a quarto
volume, uniform with the scientific reports, dustily invisible on Museum
shelves, and replete with—in the words of my Commission—"times of
starting, hours of march, ground and weather conditions," not very useful
as material for future Antarcticists, and in no wise effecting any
catharsis of the writer's conscience. I could not pretend that I had
fulfilled these conditions; and so I decided to take the undivided
responsibility on my own shoulders. None the less the Committee, having
given me access to its information, is entitled to all the credit of a
formal Official Narrative, without the least responsibility for the
passages which I have studied to make as personal in style as possible,
so that no greater authority may be attached to them than I deserve.

I need hardly add that the nine years' delay in the appearance of my book
was caused by the war. Before I had recovered from the heavy overdraft
made on my strength by the expedition I found myself in Flanders looking
after a fleet of armoured cars. A war is like the Antarctic in one
respect. There is no getting out of it with honour as long as you can put
one foot before the other. I came back badly invalided; and the book had
to wait accordingly.

Take a bowsy short leave of your nymphs on the shore,
And silence their mourning with vows of returning,
Though never intending to visit them more.
Dido and Aeneas.

Scott used to say that the worst part of an expedition was over when the
preparation was finished. So no doubt it was with a sigh of relief that
he saw the Terra Nova out from Cardiff into the Atlantic on June 15,
1910. Cardiff had given the expedition a most generous and enthusiastic
send-off, and Scott announced that it should be his first port on
returning to England. Just three years more and the Terra Nova, worked
back from New Zealand by Pennell, reached Cardiff again on June 14, 1913,
and paid off there.

From the first everything was informal and most pleasant, and those who
had the good fortune to help in working the ship out to New Zealand,
under steam or sail, must, in spite of five months of considerable
discomfort and very hard work, look back upon the voyage as one of the
very happiest times of the expedition. To some of us perhaps the voyage
out, the three weeks in the pack ice going South, and the Robinson Crusoe
life at Hut Point are the pleasantest of many happy memories.

Scott made a great point that so far as was possible the personnel of the
expedition must go out with the Terra Nova. Possibly he gave
instructions that they were to be worked hard, and no doubt it was a good
opportunity of testing our mettle. We had been chosen out of 8000
volunteers, executive officers, scientific staff, crew, and all.

We differed entirely from the crew of an ordinary merchant ship both in
our personnel and in our methods of working. The executive officers were
drawn from the Navy, as were also the crew. In addition there was the
scientific staff, including one doctor who was not a naval surgeon, but
who was also a scientist, and two others called by Scott 'adaptable
helpers,' namely Oates and myself. The scientific staff of the expedition
numbered twelve members all told, but only six were on board: the
remainder were to join the ship at Lyttelton, New Zealand, when we made
our final embarcation for the South. Of those on the ship Wilson was
chief of the scientific staff, and united in himself the various
functions of vertebral zoologist, doctor, artist, and, as this book will
soon show, the unfailing friend-in-need of all on board. Lieutenant Evans
was in command, with Campbell as first officer. Watches were of course
assigned immediately to the executive officers. The crew was divided into
a port and starboard watch, and the ordinary routine of a sailing ship
with auxiliary steam was followed. Beyond this no work was definitely
assigned to any individual on board. How the custom of the ship arose I
do not know, but in effect most things were done by volunteer labour. It
was recognized that every one whose work allowed turned to immediately on
any job which was wanted, but it was an absolutely voluntary
duty—Volunteers to shorten sail? To coal? To shift cargo? To pump? To
paint or wash down paintwork? They were constant calls—some of them
almost hourly calls, day and night—and there was never any failure to
respond fully. This applied not only to the scientific staff but also,
whenever their regular duties allowed, to the executive officers. There
wasn't an officer on the ship who did not shift coal till he was sick of
the sight of it, but I heard no complaints. Such a system soon singles
out the real willing workers, but it is apt to put an undue strain upon
them. Meanwhile most of the executive officers as well as the scientific
staff had their own work to do, which they were left to fit in as most
convenient.

The first days out from England were spent in such hard and crowded work
that we shook down very quickly. I then noticed for the first time
Wilson's great gift of tact, and how quick he was to see the small things
which make so much difference. At the same time his passion for work set
a high standard. Pennell was another glutton.

We dropped anchor in Funchal Harbour, Madeira, about 4 P.M. on June 23,
eight days out. The ship had already been running under sail and steam,
the decks were as clear as possible, there was some paintwork to show,
and with a good harbour stow she looked thoroughly workmanlike and neat.
Some scientific work, in particular tow netting and magnetic
observations, had already been done. But even as early as this we had
spent hours on the pumps, and it was evident that these pumps were going
to be a constant nightmare.

In Madeira, as everywhere, we were given freely of such things as we
required. We left in the early morning of June 26, after Pennell had done
some hours' magnetic work with the Lloyd Creak and Barrow Dip Circle.

On June 29 (noon position lat. 27° 10' N., long. 20° 21' W.) it was
possible to write: "A fortnight out to-day, and from the general
appearance of the wardroom we might have been out a year."

We were to a great extent strangers to one another when we left England,
but officers and crew settled down to their jobs quickly, and when men
live as close as we did they settle down or quarrel before very long. Let
us walk into the cabins which surround the small wardroom aft. The first
on the left is that of Scott and Lieutenant Evans, but Scott is not on
board, and Wilson has taken his place. In the next cabin to them is
Drake, the secretary. On the starboard side of the screw are Oates,
Atkinson and Levick, the two latter being doctors, and on the port side
Campbell and Pennell, who is navigator. Then Rennick and Bowers, the
latter just home from the Persian Gulf—both of these are watchkeepers.
In the next cabin are Simpson, meteorologist, back from Simla, with
Nelson and Lillie, marine biologists. In the last cabin, the Nursery, are
the youngest, and necessarily the best behaved, of this community,
Wright, the physicist and chemist, Gran the Norwegian ski-expert, and
myself, Wilson's helper and assistant zoologist. It is difficult to put a
man down as performing any special job where each did so many, but that
is roughly what we were.

Certain men already began to stand out. Wilson, with an apparently
inexhaustible stock of knowledge on little things and big; always ready
to give help, and always ready with sympathy and insight, a tremendous
worker, and as unselfish as possible; a universal adviser. Pennell, as
happy as the day was long, working out sights, taking his watch on the
bridge, or if not on watch full of energy aloft, trimming coal, or any
other job that came along; withal spending hours a day on magnetic work,
which he did as a hobby, and not in any way as his job. Bowers was
proving himself the best seaman on board, with an exact knowledge of the
whereabouts and contents of every case, box and bale, and with a supreme
contempt for heat or cold. Simpson was obviously a first-class scientist,
devoted to his work, in which Wright gave him very great and unselfish
help, while at the same time doing much of the ship's work. Oates and
Atkinson generally worked together in a solid, dependable and somewhat
humorous way.