Tuesday, 1 August 1911

Scott

Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry on their return from Cape Crozier, 1 August 1911. [1]

Cherry had nothing but praise for his companions on the Winter Journey. "In civilization men are taken at their own valuation because there are so many ways of concealment, and there is so little time, perhaps even so little understanding. Not so down South. These two men went through the Winter Journey and lived: later they went through the Polar Journey and died. They were gold, pure, shining, unalloyed. Words cannot express how good their companionship was." [2]

The three men returned, Scott wrote, "after enduring for five weeks the hardest conditions on record. They looked more weather-worn than anyone I have yet seen. Their faces were scarred and wrinkled, their eyes dull, their hands whitened and creased with the constant exposure to damp and cold."

"That men should wander forth in the depth of a Polar night to face the most dismal cold and the fiercest gales in darkness is something new; that they should have persisted in this effort in spite of every adversity for five full weeks is heroic. It makes a tale for our generation which I hope may not be lost in the telling."

A map of Griffith Taylor's and Wilson's routes on their respective journeys. [3]

The trip had also been an opportunity to test different rations, with each man having a different combination of fats and carbohydrates. Scott summed this up the next day: "For our future sledge work several points have been most satisfactorily settled. The party went on a very simple food ration in different and extreme proportions; they took pemmican, butter, biscuit and tea only. After a short experience they found that Wilson, who had arranged for the greatest quantity of fat, had too much of it, and C.-G., who had gone for biscuit, had more than he could eat. A middle course was struck which gave a general proportion agreeable to all, and at the same time suited the total quantities of the various articles carried. In this way we have arrived at a simple and suitable ration for the inland plateau. The only change suggested is the addition of cocoa for the evening meal. The party contented themselves with hot water, deeming that tea might rob them of their slender chance of sleep."

"One continues to wonder as to the possibilities of fur clothing as made by the Esquimaux, with a sneaking feeling that it may outclass our more civilised garb. For us this can only be a matter of speculation, as it would have been quite impossible to have obtained such articles. With the exception of this radically different alternative, I feel sure we are as near perfection as experience can direct." [4]


Notes:

[1] Source unknown.
[2] Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, ch.VII.
[3] Scott Polar Research Institute.
[4] R.F. Scott, diary, 2 August, 1911, quoted in Scott's Last Expedition, v.1.

Tuesday, 25 July 1911

Scott

At some point -- dates were hazy by then -- Wilson decided to turn the Crozier party for home. Their tent had blown away on the 22nd, and the day after that the canvas roof and door of their igloo were ripped off by a blizzard, leaving the three men to lie in their bags in the open igloo, buried in snow. After forty-eight hours, they got up to make a meal of pemmican and tea, and during a lull in the blizzard, Bowers went out and found the tent on the slope below, folded up on itself like an umbrella. "Our lives had been taken away and given back to us," Cherry wrote simply. "We were so thankful we said nothing." [1]


Notes:

[1] Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, ch.VII.

Saturday, 15 July 1911

Scott

At Cape Evans, Gran wrote, "One day passes very much like the next. After breakfast, Evans goes to his cartography, Scott to his diary, Day to his 'make and mend' [with the motor sledges], Meares to his harness-making, Oates (at 12) to his horses, Ponting to his photographic plates, Deb to his rock specimens, Taylor and I to our geographical studies or to our diaries. At noon Atkinson with Taylor or Ponting go up to The Ramp. Then comes lunch with cocoa, coffee, cheese, marmalade and honey. The afternoon is like the morning, except that after five o'clock the pianola starts up. Day, Ponting, and Atkinson are the main players, supplemented occasionally by Deb and Meares. Then comes supper. Taylor waits impatiently for the pudding. Finally it comes and the meal ends with the lighting-up of cigars and pipes. Atkinson or I put the gramophone on. Then we play dominoes or chess until ten. Nelson is the chess champion. About ten we begin to turn in; we read in bed, some till nearly midnight, and Deb, Nelson, and Ponting often later. Deb is the worst. Out go the lights at 11 and on goes the night watchkeeper's lamp. At midnight and at 4 a.m. readings of the barometer and thermometer are taken. Naturally the watcher is on the look-out every hour for signs of the aurora." [1]

Wilson, Cherry, and Bowers arrived at Cape Crozier on the far side of Ross Island, sixty miles (97 km) from Cape Evans. Temperatures had ranged from -40 °F (-40 °C) to -77.5 °F (-60.8 °C), with winds anywhere from Force 3 to Force 10 during a blizzard.

"The horror of the nineteen days it took us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier would have to be re-experienced to be appreciated," wrote Cherry later, "and any one would be a fool who went again: it is not possible to describe it. The weeks which followed them were comparative bliss, not because later our conditions were better -- they were far worse -- because we were callous. I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain." [2]

They began almost at once to build a stone igloo in which they planned to shelter while collecting their penguin specimens. Cherry stopped keeping his diary, because his breath froze a film of ice on the paper, making it impossible to write on.


Notes:

[1] Tryggve Gran, diary, 15 July, 1911, quoted in The Norwegian With Scott : Tryggve Gran's Antarctic Diary 1910-1913 ([Greenwich] : National Maritime Museum, 1984), p.110.
[2] Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, ch.VII.

Wednesday, 5 July 1911

Scott

"Three Men with a Sledge in Snow", a sketch by Wilson.

The Cape Crozier party had begun relaying, taking one sledge at a time and going back for the other, making them travel three miles for every one of distance. On the 5th, they managed only one and a half miles in soft new snow and a strong breeze, and recorded a noon temperature of almost -77°. "The day lives in my memory," wrote Cherry, "as that on which I found out that records are not worth making." [1] Wilson apologised continually, saying that he had never dreamed it would be so bad.


Notes:

[1] Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, ch.VII.

Saturday, 1 July 1911

Scott

Atkinson's hand in a frostbitten condition similar to Cherry's, June 1911. [1]

Cherry wrote later, "During these days the blisters on my fingers were very painful. Long before my hands were frost-bitten, or indeed anything but cold, which was of course a normal thing, the matter inside these big blisters, which rose all down my fingers with only a skin between them, was frozen into ice. To handle the cooking gear or the food bags was agony; to start the primus was worse; and when, one day, I was able to prick six or seven of the blisters after supper and let the liquid matter out, the relief was very great. Every night after that I treated such others as were ready in the same way until they gradually disappeared. Sometimes it was difficult not to howl." [2]

Blistering is in fact a symptom of relatively shallow frostbite, deeper than when the skin becomes numb and white, but not as bad as when the affected area turns hard and, in worst cases, black.


Notes:

[1] Scott Polar Research Institute.
[2] Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, ch.VII.

Wednesday, 28 June 1911

Scott

Hauling their sledges up onto the Barrier, Cherry got all of his fingers frostbitten, leaving blisters an inch long, and that night the temperature fell to -47°. His glasses iced up and had to be put away -- "must be sure not to let any inability arising from this get on my nerves," he told himself. [1]


Notes:

[1] Apsley Cherry-Garrard, diary, 27 June, 1911, quoted by Sara Wheeler in Cherry : a life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard (New York : The Modern Library, c2001), p.110.

Tuesday, 27 June 1911

Scott

"Henry Robertson Bowers (left), Dr Wilson (centre), and Apsley George Benet Cherry-Gerrard (right) with loaded sled, ready to leave for Cape Crozier, 27 June 1911. Photograph taken by Herbert George Ponting, during the British Antarctic ('Terra Nova') Expedition (1910-1913)." [1]

Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry left on an expedition to Cape Crozier to collect penguin eggs.

This was Wilson's pet project, to study the embryology of Emperor penguin eggs, available unhatched only in the middle of winter. "It is because the Emperor is probably the most primitive bird in existence," Cherry explained later, "that the working out of his embryology is so important. The embryo shows remains of the development of an animal in former ages and former states; it recapitulates its former lives. The embryo of an Emperor may prove the missing link between birds and the reptiles from which birds have sprung." [2] The only known rookery was at Cape Crozier, and Wilson reckoned that the eggs would be laid in the beginning of July.

They took two 9-foot sledges lashed together, with 790 lbs. of gear and supplies for six weeks, travelling in the almost-complete darkness of midwinter. It would be the "worst journey in the world" after which Cherry later named his book.


Notes:

[1] Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand.
[2] Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, ch.VII. Wilson had been deeply influenced by the work of the German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, who proposed that the embryonic stages of an animal repeat the evolutionary history of its type. It is thought today that flightless birds evolved from those with flight, rather than the other way around.