May 1910

Scott

The first sight of Oates at the Victoria Street offices gave the expedition members something of a surprise. "We had pictured a smartly-turned-out young cavalry officer with hair nicely brushed up and neat moustache," Teddy Evans wrote later. "Our future companion turned up with a bowler characteristically on the back of his head and a very worn Aquascutum buttoned up closely round his neck, hiding his collar, and showing a strong, clean-shaven, weather-beaten face with kindly brown eyes indicative of his fine personality. 'I'm Oates,' he said." [1]

At the West India Docks a few days later, it was the same story. "We could none of us make out who or what he was when he came on board," Tom Crean remembered, "we never for a moment thought he was an officer for they were usually so smart! We made up our minds he was a farmer, he was always so nice and friendly, just like one of ourselves, but oh! he was a gentleman, quite a gentleman, and always a gentleman!" [2]

Frank Debenham later said that Oates's appearance was generally that of "a stableman with unusual good manners". [3]

Oates proved to be so useful as the Terra Nova was being fitted out, that Evans and Campbell asked that he be enrolled as a midshipman and stay onboard rather than go to Siberia with Meares to select the dogs and ponies. Scott agreed.


Notes:

[1] E.R.G.R. Evans, "My Recollections of a Gallant Comrade," The Strand Magazine, December 1913, quoted by Sue Limb and Patrick Cordingley in Captain Oates : Soldier and Explorer (London : Batsford, 1982), p.94-95.
[2] Tom Crean, quoted by Sue Limb and Patrick Cordingley in Captain Oates : Soldier and Explorer (London : Batsford, 1982), p.95.
[3] Frank Debenham, in The Quiet Land (1992), quoted by Diana Preston in A First Rate Tragedy (Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1998, c1997), p.108.

May 1910

Scott

"Terra Nova, Tromsö, Norway, 1905", a watercolour by Russell W. Porter. [1]

The Terra Nova, although lately put into service as a relief ship for both the Jackson-Harmsworth Arctic expedition and Scott's own Discovery, was still equipped for her original use as a whaler, and was now in London's West India docks being refitted for the Antarctic: blubber-tanks removed, hold cleansed, bilges sluiced, hull reinforced with seven feet of sturdy oak.

Lt. Evans recorded "a multitude of necessities -- canvas for sail-making, fireworks for signalling, whale-boats and whaling-gear, flags, logs, paint, tar, carpenter's stores, blacksmith's outfit -- bought, borrowed or 'aquired'. We then 'had her barque-rigged'.... A large, well-insulated ice house was erected on the upper deck which held 150 carcasses of frozen mutton, and owing to the position of the cold chamber, free as it was from the vicinity of iron, we mounted here our standard compass and Lloyd Creek pedestal for magnetic work.... A new stove was put in the galley, a lamp-room and paraffin store built, and store rooms, instrument, and chronometer rooms were added.... Twenty-four bunks were fitted around the saloon accommodation ... laboratories ... constructed on [the] poop, while two large magazines and a clothing store were zinc-lined to keep them damp free." [2]


Notes:

[1] Papers of Russell W. Porter, 1893-1949 (XRWP), The National Archives and Records Administration. Porter was astronomer and artist for the American Ziegler/Fiala expedition to the Arctic in 1903-1905. The Terra Nova collected the stranded expedition in Franz Josef Land and brought them back to Tromsø.
[2] E.R.G.R. Evans, South with Scott, pp.27-29, quoted by David Crane in Scott of the Antarctic (New York : Knopf, c2005), p.364.

Tuesday, 17 May 1910

Scott

Gran joined the Terra Nova at the West India Docks. "Men tore about like busy ants," he wrote later, "Sailors were crawling over rigging and spars." Belowdecks, he added, "chaos also reigned." [1]

First mate Victor Campbell was already aboard. Campbell, an Old Etonian who had retired from a naval career at twenty-seven to live part of the year on a salmon river near Sandefjord in Norway, knew Gran from when they had met skiing at a Norwegian mountain hotel. Campbell's knowledge of ski was one of the reasons he had volunteered for Scott's expedition; he was to lead the party that was to explore King Edward VII Land. "He had a very nasty temper," Gran recalled, "& the nickname 'the wicked mate' was a right one. But he was a very good sailor." [2]


Notes:

[1] Tryggve Gran, Slik var Det, pp.75-76, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.280.
[2] Tryggve Gran, personal communication with Roland Huntford, quoted by Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.281.