Episode One: Scott’s Fatal Expedition to Antarctica, Part I
Official credit: ‘Robert Falcon Scott in his den, Antarctica. Kinsey, Joseph James (Sir), 1852-1936: Photographs relating to Antarctica and mountaineering. Ref: 1/2-011384-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
On November 12th 1912, a tent containing the bodies of 3 men was found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. In this episode, we discuss what brought them to Antarctica, and what troubles awaited there.
Check out our Instagram for some amazing images taken on the Terra Nova Expedition. Check out our website or find us @themaydaypod on Twitter/ Instagram to say hello.
Many thanks to our composer and producer Marlon Grunden, who you can find at his website here.
Further Reading/Viewing
Robert Falcon Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition (1913)
Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World (1922)
Susan Solomon, The Coldest March: Scott's Fatal Antarctic Expedition (2001)
Edward J. Larson, An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science (2011)
The Great White Silence (1924)
Transcript
ANA: On November 12th 1912, a tent containing the bodies of 3 men was found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. By these men lay a journal containing a message to the public. It’s final paragraph read: ‘We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last ... Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale’
LUCA: Welcome to the first episode of the Mayday Podcast! I’m Luca
A: I’m Ana
L: And this is part one of two covering Robert Falcon Scott’s fatal expedition to Antarctica
A: Before we begin we’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we record today, the Bunurong and Wurundjeri peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, and we pay our respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
A: So a quick content warning for this episode, there will be discussion of animal death.
L: This being our first episode, we’d like the introduce the concept we’re going to use to… rank? To compare?
A: Compare, compare’s better
L: To compare the main topics of our episodes using what we’re calling the ‘Mayday Moments’ system, which is – as we go on and talk about the topic at hand – this one being pretty mayday heavy I think
A: Very mayday heavy
L: We will start making notes of moments we consider to be like critical important and dangerous moments for the participants. And at the end of episode we will begin a rank of each previous episode against each other based on how many mayday moments they had over the course of the adventure.
A: Yeah. And it won’t be like a perfect ranking of one expedition had more mayday moments than the other, but also a degree to which each moment was serious
L: Substantial, yeah. And we are also going to, at the end of the episode, give the topic a mayday out of three, given that mayday is used – when it is used in an emergency it’s used three times, mayday mayday mayday – we will give each expedition, adventure, or mystery rating out of three, and that will contribute to its overall mayday score, and hopefully by the end of a few episodes we’ll have a bit of a list going.
A: So alongside our Mayday moments, each episode we’re also going to indulge in a sip of some alcohol – whether it be a whiskey or a rum or a wine or other – that’s somehow themed according to our episode topic, so this might be a drink named after people involved in it, or just from the place that it’s set. So today’s drink is not technically Scott themed, because no one decided to make an alcohol based on the Scott expedition, maybe it was too much of a downer
L: at least that we could find. If you do know of a related Scott alcohol then shout and we’ll see if we can get our hands on it.
A: Yeah. But this week’s drink is called Shackleton Blended Malt Scotch Whiskey, so it’s supposed to be a whiskey based on the unique blend of Mackinlay’s malt whiskey which was actually used on Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition in 1907. So this was the Nimrod expedition and it will be mentioned in the episode, because Shackleton was a contemporary of Scott and kind of a rival, though originally he’d started off as an inferior. So we thought it’d be a fun drink-
L: Inferior, Ana…
[laughter]
A: I mean he was literally an inferior on the expedition that Scott was first on
L: It’s such a brutal word
A: I know, is my bias coming across? It’s fine
[laughter]
A: But yes, Shackleton whiskey is what we’re having a little sneaky drink of today. How is it, Luca?
L: It’s a little sharper than I usually like in my whiskies
A: Yes
L: I can understand how it would keep someone warm on the cold Antarctic winters
A: Yeah it makes sense when you’ve kind of got… limited options
L: It’s probably not one that I would buy again. But I am enjoying it for now
A: I feel like Shackleton Whiskey Limited or whatever are not going to answer us to uh…
Luca: Sponsor us?
Ana: Yeah they’re not going to sponsor the podcast if this is our review
[laughter]
L: Well…
A: It’s great if you’re dying, that’s our review
[laughter]
L: No I need to come in here, it’s great, it’s just not to my taste. But we also know I like sweet whiskies
A: That’s true, I actually quite enjoy it
L: Hey! There you go
A: I’ve come to like it a lot more over time
L: Over a bottle?
[laughter]
A: We don’t need to tell them how much of the bottle has been drunk
L: yeah so the bottle is about three-quarters finished
A: Okay but it was literally bought months ago, so…
[laughter]
L: So we have ourselves a topic, we have ourselves a drink, now let’s jump into the history. So we know that Shackleton is the inferior of the two, let’s talk about Scott shall we?
A: Yes! Well first I’ll give a bit of background into the Scott expedition itself. So I’ll give a brief overview of Antarctic exploration before Scott, just to give an idea of what his context was. So we do have theories and possibly a little bit of evidence about Polynesian to Antarctica way before Europeans ever got there, but obviously this is not recognised or accepted by a lot of the Western establishment
L: Look I’m just going to say based on my knowledge of how far Polynesian people have travelled, I 100% believe they went to Antarctica
A: Oh yeah completely
L: I have no evidence for this, I just don’t see why they wouldn’t have ended up there, and then turned around because it’s Antarctica.
A: yeah they would have just seen some penguins and been like ‘actually, there is nothing here for us, let’s go somewhere much nicer
L: That being said, that is based on no evidence, it is just pure conjecture from me here
A: I trust and believe you
[laughter]
L: You shouldn’t
A: In my heart I know it to be true
L: My sourceless, baseless claims
A: Yes
[laughter]
A: So after potential Polynesian arrival in Antarctica, we have Captain Cook – because he always turns up in everything – being the first recorded person to reach the Antarctic circle, so that’s in 1773. We have a little bit of exploration around the Antarctic circle in the 1820s and 1840s, but there’s nothing major until 1839 which is when Sir James Clark Ross runs a British-run expedition to Antarctica with the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which listeners might recognise as the ships that would eventually be lost on the Franklin expedition
L: Wait, so the ships went to Antarctica, before they returned to presumably Britain, and then proceeded to get stuck in the Arctic?
A: Yes. So they were quite old ships by the time they were on the Franklin expedition, although it was only a few years after this, but they’d been through a lot
L: Good for them
A: Like literally across the world between the two poles, so it’s pretty intense
L: Yeah wow
A: Yeah. But James Clark Ross’s expedition was really important because they identified a lot of key landmarks, like what was named after him the Ross Ice Shelf, which will come up a lot in the episode, as well as several mountains, so there’s volcanoes and stuff in Antarctica which are now named after the ships Erebus and Terror.
A: After his expedition there is a bit of a gap, and some minor expeditions happen in the late 19th century, but it isn’t until the turn of the century that we have the first major expedition to go to Antarctica and survey the actual land. So this is Scott's first expedition, the Discovery, which is not the topic of this episode but we will touch on it briefly because it does create a lot of background as to how he approaches his second – and spoilers, final – expedition to Antarctica.
A: So the Discovery expedition occurs in 1901 to 1904 and this is in the very beginning of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, which covers from about the very late 19th century up until the 1920s. This is usually the period people talk about when they talk about famous historical expeditions in Antarctica. So the key figures of this period are obviously Scott himself, Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, and Douglas Mawson, who’s an Australian.
L: Nice
A: So before we talk about Scott's final expedition to Antarctica, I'll give some details of his early life and then a little bit about the Discovery expedition itself. He was born in Plymouth in England in 1868, as the son of a man who ran a small brewery, although most of his family were in the military or the Navy. Scott would go on to join the Navy himself as a cadet when he was 13 years old.
L: oh boy
A: He moved quickly through the ranks, eventually becoming lieutenant by 1889. So he's lieutenant for about 10 years, and by 1899, he runs into Clements Markham on a street in London. Clements Markham is an important figure in this whole history. He's the president of the Royal Geographical Society, and at this point he is trying to find expedition members to run a journey to Antarctica to try and explore it, funded by the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society.
L: That's super interesting. So essentially, during this period, there was suddenly a desire to explore this, unexplored continent, company, people were legitimately hunting out folks that were willing to do it.
A: Yeah, and they were specifically doing it from a scientific standpoint. So the Royal Society was a scientific institution. And the Royal Geographical Society, whilst it was exploratory, they often had a lot of links to scientific work as well. Clements Markham wanted to recruit young people for the expedition, having this sort of idea that they would be more open minded and more willing to try out new things
L: So they were specifically hunting out children, because...
A: Not children, young people, because at this point Scott’s 33 years olds
[laughter]
L: Okay, they were specifically hunting out young people. Young people?
A: Well comparative to a lot of the people who were major captains and stuff within the navy because they wanted people who, as I said, weren't going to be held back by preconceptions about what exploration should be like, and particularly maybe an anti-scientific approach
L: Oh, yeah. Like they didn't want to be held back by a sort of militaristic mindset in which science was put secondary
A: Exactly. Because they were still getting obviously a lot of naval personnel for this, so-
L: Yeah, well, I guess those are the ones that are experienced in the era of travelling.
A: Exactly. But you say experience in the area, it will be noted that on the Discovery expedition, there was practically no polar experience at all, amongst any of the crew members. Yeah, so this was really an interesting choice. Like, I see where they were coming from in deciding to do this, but are you really not going to have anyone who's an expert in travelling in cold places? Like that's a choice.
L: You know what, it doesn't surprise me, but it does disappoint me.
A: Yeah. So as the discovery expedition goes forward, Scott, obviously volunteers himself as soon as he hears about the potential expedition, and he's chosen, despite at this point only being a lieutenant. So before leaving, he does get promoted to commander, and then after the expedition he gets promoted to captain.
L: So at the time of the first expedition, the Discovery expedition, he was the commander of the vessel and expedition, and then he was promoted after that. And then when they were on the last one?
A: He was still just captain at that point
L: He was captain. Yeah.
A: So he doesn't get any higher within the ranks of the Navy, so he doesn't become like a commodore or anything, he's just a captain. But you could very well run an expedition and just be a commander, that was fairly normal for exploration. So the expedition was officially named the British National Antarctic Expedition, which is incredibly creative.
L: 10 out of 10 guys, on the naming conventions
[laughter]
A: Later, though, it became primarily referred to as the discovery expedition being named after the ship that they took to get to Antarctica. So the discovery expedition leaves in 1901, and it ends in 1904. But there's a lot of scientific research that goes on in this period. There is a plan to try and reach the South Pole, but it's not as central to the expedition as it would be later for the Terra Nova expedition. That being said, Scott, Shackleton, and Edward Wilson – who at this time as a junior doctor and zoologist – do try and march South together in November 1902. And this goes, shockingly, quite badly. So all of their dogs die.
L: Oh, my God.
A: Yeah. They are all affected by snow blindness – which is, if you don't know, is when the snow is so bright that it affects your eyes, and it can be quite difficult to see for a period of time after that.
L: Yeah, that's why you need sunnies. A thing that I’m guessing they did not have.
[laughter]
A: That's the thing. Even if they had some kind of protective glasses, they just didn't have good enough ones in place and people were constantly getting snow blindness. And this is obviously a temporary thing, but it does happen consistently on the future expedition. So it's quite, quite bad. But they also get scurvy and frostbite.
L: Oh my god
A: Yep. So this ends in Shackleton actually returning to England early, so before the expedition is done. And it may be the start of a bit of a rivalry/antagonistic relationship between him and Scott, which is a bit hard to track because obviously, in public, they were a lot more polite towards each other. But it does impact the way that each of them then ran expeditions that they would take to Antarctica.
L: Yeah, interesting.
A: So the ship stayed stuck in ice for two years from early 1902 to 1904, and was eventually freed but this meant that in future expeditions they were a lot more careful about where they were once winter came.
L Yeah. Interesting, so when ships get stuck in the ice is it like, I mean, it's ice. So it's not like it's quick to freeze, do they literally just watch the ship get frozen up? And they're like, yep, this is it. This is happening.
A: So what usually happens is that there's ice anyway, around them in smaller parts, and they sort of sail into it. And they’ll be, say, moored in a bay of some kind. And then the ice around them will freeze and solidify together. So it becomes tighter and tighter, and they can't leave. But often this is done on purpose. So they know that the ice is going to come. And in the case of the Discovery, they did choose to leave it there to freeze, and then what they call ‘overwinter’, so they were going to stay there for the winter period. And it being stuck in the ice did have the benefit of them being able to stay on the ship and access it really easily. But it did mean that the ship could not leave.
L: Yeah. Okay.
A: So they were stuck there for a little bit longer, and eventually they were freed by two relief ships which came over, one of which was the Terra Nova.
L: Oh!
A: Yeah, at this time it was still just a private whaling ship.
L: Oh, interesting.
A: Yeah! So it would later be bought for the Terra Nova expedition, but at this point, it wasn't, it was just coming in as a relief ship. I think it was temporarily hired for this.
L: Yeah, someone took an eye to the ship and was like, ‘Hey, I’d like that one next time.’
A: It was very useful in polar regions because it had been built for that, specifically for whaling and sealing up in the Arctic. So it was the ideal ship to come in to try and save them from this. That expedition ended with several major geographic discoveries and scientific ones as well, including an emperor penguin colony, which they would later go and try to find at Cape Crozier. And they also found out that seal meat is what's called an ‘antiscorbutic’. So it helps stave off scurvy. So from that point on, they were eating quite a lot of, or at least saving and then eating quite a lot of seal meat.
L: Interesting. Gross, but interesting.
A: Yeah, super gross. Unsurprisingly, quite a few members of the expeditions in future just didn't want to eat it because it's not nice. So during the period between the expeditions, Scott becomes quite famous and popular. He starts travelling around Europe giving public lectures on the Discovery expedition, he publishes quite a bit of work on it. Having grown up as the son of a brewer, and within the Navy, he is now catapulted up through high society. So he meets a lot of famous people, he meets his future wife, who's a sculptor named Kathleen Bruce.
L: Good for him.
A: Yeah, she seems quite interesting and quite nice. So she's friends with Pablo Picasso and taught by Auguste Rodin. So like, very big in a lot of artists circles, which is quite different from the kind of background that he's coming from.
L: Yeah, brewery and then Navy.
A: Yeah. Not an artistic group at all. But they meet, they eventually marry in September 1908, and then they have their first son (who's Peter Markham Scott) in 1909, which is right before his expedition. Should be noted that Peter Markham Scott is named after Clements Markham, who is the man who recruited him for the original expedition. And that man is his godfather alongside J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan.
L: the things you don't expect
[laughter]
A: I know, it's just completely out of left field.
L: Peter Pan makes an appearance
A: It’s wholesome! I hope he read it to him when Peter Scott was, you know, a little kid. Would be very cute. As early as 1906 Scott speaks to the Royal Geographical Society about a potential second Antarctic Expedition, which is the point when he finds out that Shackleton has been organising his own expedition to the Antarctic with the primary goal of pushing for the South Pole. Scott is unsurprisingly not pleased about this, considering their history. And there's some public discussion between the two of them regarding where Shackleton will base the expedition. So originally he was planning on doing it in the same place that Scott had for the Discovery expedition, and Scott basically put his foot down and said, ‘no, this is a space that I will explore in future and it's been staked out by me’. So after some discussion, Shackleton does agree to have his base elsewhere.
L: A bit of tension there.
A: Yes. And amusingly, it just all comes to nothing, because once Shackleton actually gets there, he can't find a better place for his base, so he does it in the same spot anyway. Which, unsurprisingly is a bit unpopular when it gets released to the public.
L: I mean, that to me sounds like ‘Oh, sure, I won’t set up base in the same spot’ and then just sailing directly for the same spot
[laughter]
A: No, there is actually evidence that he was searching for another spot for a little while, but it's still pretty funny to think otherwise.
L: Brutal
A: Yeah. That became Shackleton's Nimrod expedition of 1907 to 1909, which is named after his own ship. And they ended up pushing further south than the Discovery expedition had. So they set a new record of 180 kilometres away from the pole.
L: Yeah wow, so that was Scott's record to beat essentially
A: Precisely. And it was something that was very clear in his mind as well as obviously wanting to attain just the pole itself. But seeing as they had this very public competition going-
L: 179 kilometres away from the Pole
[laughter]
A: Spoiler alert, he does better than that!
L: Aye!
A: By this point, the public fervour to reach the South Pole had attained such a fever pitch that articles were constantly being written about potential future expeditions right after Nimrod’s failure. So The Globe in 1909 said, ‘it would be most unfortunate if any other nation were to reap the final glory of Antarctic exploration. Great Britain has done all the pioneer work, and has already established a sort of claim over the South polar continent’.
L: Okay, firstly, yikes. And that's all I have to say on that
[laughter]
A: So Scott starts to use this excitement to reach the pole to raise funding for his own expedition. Whilst the Discovery expedition had been institutionally backed, the Nimrod expedition under Shackleton had struggled financially and been entirely privately funded. So now the Terra Nova expedition reached a kind of middle point. It was privately funded, but it had a government grant, as well as the backing from the Admiralty and the Royal Geographical Society. So this expedition was estimated to cost about £40,000 British pounds at that time, so converted into money now that's £4.9 million pounds or $9.1 million Australian dollars
L: Oh, boy
A: that, in fact, is less than half of what the Discovery expedition had received. So it's a lot of money, but it is still nothing near what they needed for the expedition itself. So they were really struggling and it meant that a lot of the people on the expedition had to work harder and do a lot of the manual labour that they traditionally wouldn't do. So the scientists and the officers were also working very hard on the trip there to make up for the money as they couldn't they couldn't hire other people for this.
L: Yeah, they essentially didn't have enough hands because they didn't have enough money
A: precisely. So what’s quite fun is that schools started to hold donation drives for the expedition, but they did this by planning to fund specific items or animals. For example, a girls secondary school and Derby donated money which then covered the purchase of a sled dog named Suka, and Eton college paid for a pony named Snippet.
L: That's super cute but I have a really bad feeling about how that's going to go for these animals.
A: Yes, you will find out as the episode goes, but it's not. It's not great.
L: Oh, boy.
A: So for the expedition they purchased the Terra Nova, which was the biggest cost of the entire journey. It was £12,500 pounds, which in current money is £1.5 million pounds or $2.9 million dollars.
L: Okay wow, so what like 20% of the cost
A: Yeah, exactly. Scott even paid extra to have the ship registered with the Royal Yacht Squadron, which would enable him to impose naval discipline on the expedition.
L: Oh, interesting. So he paid more to make it a Navy vessel?
A: Precisely. Yep. So even though they had Admiralty backing, it wasn't officially a naval expedition. So he had to do this to kind of-
L: Yeah, so he could institute the rules and regulations of a naval ship.
A: Exactly. So on the expedition itself, there were 65 men making up both the shore and the ship's parties. So quite a few people who just had to run the ship itself, and then all the people who are going to actually stay in Antarctica after they arrived. Of the 65, 7 had been discovery members, and 5 had been on Nimrod. On the ship where naval and military personnel, scientists, medical crew, and specialists in skiing, dogs, and motor mechanics. I'll maybe just give a rundown of a couple of the key members of the expedition because obviously 65 is a huge number, and there's no point in explaining who everyone was, but there's a few people who come up a couple times.
L: I've got Scott down pat, who else?
A: So obviously, yes, we've got Robert Falcon Scott, he is 41 years old at this point. Then we've got his second in command, who's Lieutenant Edward Evans, who's 29. And he had actually been the navigating officer on the Morning, which was the second ship alongside of the Terra Nova that took the Discovery out of ice.
L: Oh, interesting. So he literally was one of the rescue ships, and then he was like, ‘I would like to do that please’.
A: Exactly, and it's possible that him and Scott got to know each other a little bit during that period, so he kind of came to trust him. There was Edward Wilson, who was 33, and he was a close personal friend of Scott because they had been on the Discovery expedition together when he was a junior zoologist and doctor. And now he served as the chief scientist on this expedition, and was still obviously working as a medical doctor and was an expert in ornithology – which is a study of birds, for those who don't know
L: I did not know that
A: There you go! There's also Captain Lawrence Oates, who was 30 years old. He was an army man, and he had personally donated £1000 to the expedition. So the equivalent again £120,000.
L: Oh, boy.
A: Yep, next was Edgar ‘Taff’ Evans, age 33, a Welsh naval Seaman
L: Okay right, just for clarification. So we have Lieutenant Edward Evans, and then we have Edgar Evans.
A: Yes.
L: Who's an able seaman. So he wasn't lieutenant.
A: No he was not, and there was no relation between the two of them. Edgar Evans was just a sort of standard Seaman, but he was also a former Discovery member and was known for being quite strong. So Scott had brought him on to the expedition because he was impressed by Edgar Evans's... size
[laughter]
L: You know what, from now on, we're gonna call him ‘Taff’, because I feel like that's how they addressed him.
A: Super fair, yes. Funny fact about Taff is that in New Zealand before they actually left for Antarctica, he tried to board the ship while drunk and fell into the water.
L: Firstly, iconic
[laughter]
A: Yeah it's really funny. But apparently, Scott respected him too much for him to actually get punished and left behind, so he got brought on anyway.
L: Oh, my god, I love that. So wait he showed up to work blind drunk, fell in the harbour, and Scott was just like, ‘actually, he's my guy still’.
A: Yeah he was like, ‘absolute mad lad, bring him on’. Actually, specifically, this is a line from Scott’s journal. He was a ‘man of herculean strength’.
L: Oh, boy.
A: Yeah, he's a lot to say about Taff’s size, it's really interesting.
L: Oh, boy.
[laughter]
A: Anyway, moving on
L: Yeah, so Taff Evans. Very strong.
A: Yeah. Then we've got Henry Robertson Bowers, who was 26 and he was a marine. He had started off as a junior officer of the ship’s party, so he'd never been intended to come ashore, but Scott was so impressed by his behaviour during the journey to Antarctica that he then was brought on to the shore party itself and ended up joining in on several major journeys during the expedition. We have Herbert Ponting, who was 40 years old at the time and he was the expedition photographer. So he recorded the expedition and various Antarctic animals and natural phenomena that they saw, both with his camera and with a cinematograph. So he was the first person to shoot film in the Antarctic.
L: That is super cool.
A: Yeah. So the footage that Ponting shot would later become The Great White Silence, which is a silent film from 1924, which basically recounts much of the expedition.
L: Amazing. Yeah, I think I've seen like little bits of that, and yeah, it's incredible.
A: It's really interesting, I've watched it in full. It's quite humanising to see the members of the expedition at work and interacting with one another and the animals on the expedition itself. It's worth watching, it's on YouTube. Last two relevant members were Cecil Henry Meares, who was 33 years old. And he was a dog handler, linguist and Russian interpreter because they had several Russian-speaking dog experts along on the expedition itself. Lastly, there was Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who was an assistant zoologist and one of the youngest members of Expedition at 24. He would go on to write The Worst Journey in the World, which was published in 1922. Might give you a bit of an idea of what's going to happen after this.
L: When you first started saying the title, I thought it was like, not the title. And then I realised it was the title and I was like, you know what, he was honest about it.
A: Yeah, direct quote from the book. He was having a rough time. We'll explain why later.
L: So for my own brain, as we have nine critical people. First one is Scott obviously, then we have Lieutenant Edward Evans, we have Bowers, we have Taff Evans, the strong one, and then I've forgotten the rest.
A: So we've got Captain Oates, in charge of ponies. Edward Wilson, Chief Scientist; Apsley Cherry-Garrard, assistant zoologist; Herbert Ponting, photographer; Cecil Mears, dog handler. That's all nine. Alongside the human members of the expedition, there were 34 dogs, 19 ponies and 3 motorised sledges.
L: So that's obviously a lot of animals to care for and feed in the Antarctic.
A: Yes
L: Was there a point to having all of these?
A: Yeah, well, Scott wanted to give himself several options of modes of travel. So they weren't sure how each one would actually hold up on long distance trip within the Antarctic. So Shackleton had previously had quite a lot of success trying to get to the Pole with ponies, soScott's general plan was to try and use them to get as far as possible. But with the dogs, he didn't fully trust them because he'd had bad experiences on Discovery, but also knew that they were a really important way to sled through the Antarctic, so he had quite a few of them brought along. And the motorised sledges were entirely new and untested, but the hope was that they would enable them to travel long distances.
L: Yeah, awesome. I do just want to throw in here as well, that it's kind of hilarious that… so. I have this vision. And I know it's 100% incorrect, right? I've seen nature documentaries. I also have a brain and have lived in the world. But I still just had this persistent, childish image of Antarctica, I was just like this flat block of ice, right? So to my mind, I'm just like, just, it's just like a flatline, right? You just have to go all the way. And I know, I know, intellectually, that like, there's mountains and crevices, and just like lots of different terrain.
[laughter]
A: Yeah there sure is
L: But my mind is just like, ‘No, it's just like a flat... ice.’
A: Yeah, I have great news for you. It is super not.
[laughter]
A: And that is a major problem on this expedition. As I’ll explain later, there's one specific point where they have to ascend and descend a huge amount of ice and crevasse, and it's really dangerous. And it's a point that sledges and horses can't pass.
L: Yeah, so basically, my brain is correct, but my heart is wrong.
A: Yeah. You got the spirit, you’re just a little off
L: I just like, I don’t know. Like you know, it's one of those things, I know it.
A: Well, to be fair, there is an Antarctic plateau, which is fairly flat, and it takes up a lot of East Antarctica, and is somewhere they are going to travel across. It's just, it's not flat the entire way, you know?
L: Yeah, of course, 100%. Because that wouldn't make sense.
A: Yeah. Because it's a huge continent.
L: But that doesn't mean that the five year old brain in me is just like, ‘yeah, it's like the desert, right? It's just sand.’
A: Yes Luca, it’s just sand. It's super warm and lovely all the time.
[laughter]
L: It’s the white desert
A: Yeah
L: Anyway.
A: All right, so the Terra Nova set sail from Cardiff on June 15, 1910. Scott isn't actually on board at this time as he's fundraising elsewhere, but he meets the ship in South Africa and sails with them to... Melbourne!
L: Aye!
A: Yeah! So Melbourne is an important place for them to stop because that's where they meet and pick up a bunch of geologists who are Australian, who are going to join part of the scientific team. And Scott also did a lot more fundraising here, particularly petitioning the Australian Government for money. So they end up receiving £2500 from the government, which is the equivalent of £300,000 now or $570,000.
L: Damn.
A: Yeah, and that was matched by an unknown private donor.
L: Ooooh
A: Yeah so in total they receive £5000 pounds from Australians. And at the same time, there is a telegram waiting for Scotland here in Melbourne.
L: Wait, wait, wait, can I guess who it's from?
A: Yes.
L: Is it from Shackleton?
A: No! It's a new person, it's a fun surprise. It's a fella named Roald Amundsen. He's going to be very important as we progress through this story. Okay, so Roald Amundsen is a Norwegian Explorer. And at this point in time, he has already been the first person to traverse the Northwest Passage. So a journey that the Franklin expedition and many people previously had tried to do. And at this point in time, he had recently announced that he planned to go back to the north and try and actually reach the North Pole, which he hadn't set foot on when he was on the Northwest Passage journey because that’s by sea. But having recently learned that another group had potentially reached the North Pole (but that wasn't absolutely confirmed yet) he decided to go south instead. So Amundsen had left a telegram there for Scott basically informing him of his intention to go to the Antarctic. The exact wording no longer exists because the telegram has been lost, but various people have recorded it as either ‘beg leave to inform you proceeding Antarctic, Amundsen’, or ‘am going south, Amundsen’.
L: So this guy knew about Scott's expedition, even though it was more scientific than a race to the South Pole.
A: Exactly, yes.
L: Amundsen essentially was turning it into a race for the South Pole.
A: Yeah. But not in a sort of antagonistic way, he was just informing Scott in advance that that was his intention to do it at the same season, or during the same season that Scott was going to be there. Scott obviously knew that Amundsen’s goal was entirely a race for the pole.
L: Whereas Scott obviously had years of scientific research to do.
A: Exactly. This is a bit of a stressful moment for him and the other expedition members, but Scott said in both letters and announcements to the public that he would still pursue the scientific goals of the expedition without focusing entirely on reaching the pole. From Melbourne they proceeded to New Zealand where they met with Cecil Meares, who had brought along the dogs and the ponies. So he had purchased the dogs in Siberia and the ponies in Vladivostok. But the problem with Cecil Meares being a dog expert and not a horse expert, was that 2 of the ponies were Siberian and the other 17 were Manchurian, so they weren't necessarily ideal for polar exploration. Captain Oates, who would be the horse expert, apparently exclaimed upon seeing them that they were ‘the greatest lot of crocks he had ever seen’.
L: What does he mean by this?
A: Basically, that they were tired and low quality and just not ideal for the journey
L: Oh, like a crock of... bleep.
[laughter]
A: Yes, exactly. A crock of redacted.
L: Yes
A: They were also all white, because Scott believed that white ponies dealt with Antarctica better. Which, by the way, has absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever.
L: I love that. I love that there's just like, it's just that you can just tell the connection but there's just like zero reasoning behind it. In fact, it would make them harder to see.
A: Yeah, right?
L: I love that. Mr. Scott, sir… what the hell.
A: It’s very funny. So at this point, Oates does warn Scott that the Manchurian ponies are unfit for travel, but Scott ignores him. So this is the start of quite a lot of antagonism between Oates and Scott, which is recorded in different ways because obviously in Scott’s journal he presents their relationship as much more positive, but-
L: because he intended for his journal to be published, right?
A: Exactly, but letters and journals from other people on the expedition including Oates himself reveal they had several rows regarding the horses. Oates also checked the stored food for the ponies and decided that it was lacking, so with his own money, he bought a bunch of food in New Zealand and secretly brought it onto the ship.
L: Okay, firstly, incredible, I actually have a bunch of respect for Oates now.
A: Oh, wait til later in the episode, because it's gonna... it's gonna fluctuate
L: Okay, okay, I have... I'm not gonna... okay.
A: Yeah, so the Terra Nova departs from Port Chalmers on the South Island of New Zealand on November 29. And the journey to Antarctica is pretty unlucky. So they get hit with bad storms, and they lose two of the ponies and one of the dogs. They also lose large loads of coal and petrol, and they get stuck in pack ice before reaching Antarctica for 20 days.
L: Was it the Manchurian ponies that were lost?
A: You know I actually don't know specifically which ponies it was, I think it was just two random parties. Likely the Manchurian ones because that was the majority.
L: Oh, yeah. It was like 2 to 17
A: Exactly. Yeah. So two of them are lost. They lose a lot of petrol and they end up using a fair bit of supplies while they're stuck in the ice.
L: Yeah. So is this... a mayday moment?
A: Oh, yeah...
L: How dire are things at this point?
A: This is a moment that later will be quoted as one of the things that held them back. But it wasn't…
L: No one was at threat of death at this point, other than the dog and the ponies.
A: Well, yes. But yes, I wouldn't class it as an official Mayday moment, because it's a blip and it's bad, but it's only bad because it was followed by a lot worse.
L: It's a hump day
A: Exactly.
L: It’s a Wednesday.
A: Eventually, once freed from ice, they chose a Cape to overwinter in, and they named it Cape Evans after the lieutenant.
L: Which one?
[laughter]
L: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Taff Evans wasn't a lieutenant.
A: No, he was not Luca, don’t confuse people!
L: What if Scott actually named it after Taff Evans, but just said it was after Edward Evans to just like…
A: You know what's worse, is that there's also a place called Evans Cove, which is not anywhere near Cape Evans, and was named after a Captain Frederick Price Evans by Shackleton several years before. So there's two places named after two different Evans, only one of whom is a person on this expedition.
L: And there was a third Evans who has no place named after him, which is just disappointing.
A: He actually might, I just can't remember
L: But, do we know which Evans didn’t…
[laughter]
A: That's a good point. It's just, there's far too many. They needed to have people with more...
L: variety of names?
A: Variety of names, exactly
L: It should be like the Actors Guild, where if you have the same name as someone else, you just have to choose a new name.
[laughter]
L: Anyway, moving on. So not a great start.
A: No. And when they're actually unloading their ships once arriving in Cape Evans, they also lose one of the motorised sledges.
L: Oh my god.
A: Yeah, of three. So this is quite a big loss
L: Oh my god
[laughter]
L: Okay so yeah. So basically, someone dropped a pallet and it went over into the water.
A: Yeah. And I won't go into details, but this has been often blamed on Scott himself because it was poorly timed mismanagement.
L: Yeah wow. Okay. Interesting.
A: Yeah. So they then establish their hut at a place that they've been called ‘Hut Point’.
L: Incredible. Once again, 10 out of 10 on the naming conventions.
A: Yeah the creativity in the naming of places in the Antarctic is spectacular
L: There’s clarity, I'll hand them that.
A: Yeah. In this early period, Scott's journal recounts various interactions with the local wildlife. So they have a lot of curious Adelie penguins who come up to the expedition hut. They have killer whales in the water, and they do a lot of training with the dogs and the ponies now that they finally been able to come off the ship. Scott also writes extensively about the expedition members, describing how, and this is a direct quote: ‘each man in his own way is a treasure’.
L: Awwww
A: Yeah, it's actually quite nice. He also quite sweetly lists in his journal all of the nicknames he's heard used for the major members of the expedition. Henry Bowers is ‘Birdie’, Edward Wilson is ‘Uncle Bill’, Herbert Ponting is ‘Ponco’, Oates is ‘Titus’. And my favourite one: Apsley Cherry-Garrard is ‘Cherry’, which seems fairly standard, but specifically it is often pronounced: ‘Chewwy’.
L: I hate that.
A: I love it so much
L: So there's yeah, there's some bonding going on
A: Absolutely. At the same time, the array of geologists, meteorologists, biologists, zoologists and physicists are doing their research. At this point, Herbert Ponting is recording a lot of the expedition, sothe film The Great White Silence primarily comes from this early period in the first season, when they're just setting up, exploring, practising with sledges, that sort of thing. One group of expedition members does travel east, and they come across Amundsen’s camp in the Bay of Whales, where he offers them help with their dogs after they see him sledding with his. They decline, but the conversations are brief and cordial.
L: Was it a bit impolite of him to offer help with the dogs? Or were they like actually having trouble and he was like legit
A: Yeah, and to be fair to Amundsen, A) he was actually quite excellent with his dogs, and B) they had been having quite a bit of trouble over time.
L: Yeah okay, so he was like actually being polite, he wasn’t being like [evil laugh]
[laughter]
A: that, but in a Norwegian accent
[laughter]
A: I don’t know how you’d do that
L: I don't know what that would sound like
A: don't try
L: It’s alright, I know where the line is.
[laughter]
A: So crucially, at this point, they commenced the job of laying depots on the route to the pole. So depots are points where they have cached food and supplies, particularly fuel and oil. So on the journey back from the pole, they would be able to find food and fuel whenever they needed to.
L: Interesting. So essentially, they would – with no intention of heading for the pole – they were laying out breadcrumbs back to camp
A: Exactly. They don't go obviously the whole way to the pole to do this, because that's the journey that they're gonna attempt later, but they do go quite far and the last set of provisions are left at a place called One Ton Depot, which is at 80 degrees south and it's named after the weight of the contents left there. So they had various problems on route, for example, ice prevented the motor sledges from being used, so they had to be left behind, the ponies were struggling repeatedly, and in early February there was a blizzard which hit and stopped them for several days. The ponies were now in such a bad way that Scott decided to lay the final depot – so One Ton Depot – 48km short of the original planned location.
L: Okay, and this is just the laying of the depots, this is just the laying of the drop points. This isn’t the actual journey.
A: Exactly. This is not their journey south which is going to come in the next season. So you can see they are having consistent problems this early in the expedition.
L: And presumably Amundsen is doing the same thing, laying his own drop points
A: Exactly. So Amundsen is also laying depots, but it should be noted that Amundsen laid more depots than Scott did. So, to give an example, where Amundsen had once laid 7 depots, in the same space Scott laid about 2.
L: Oh wow. And was there a substantial size difference?
A: We don’t know the exact differences because there were different men on the expeditions, and also Amundsen was taking a different route to the Pole than Scott was, because he wasn’t camped at the point that Scott was, he was approaching the Pole slightly differently
L: Okay I do have another question, was Amundsen self-funded? Or was he funded in a way that was– [laughter] Sorry
A: I’m sorry, I just don’t have a lot of details on Amundsen because-
L: For those who cannot see my dear cousin’s face, it was extremely funny, and she is now looking up the answer to my rather specific question
[laughter]
A: I’m trying to remember, because I know I read about this but I need to double-check. But because Amundsen’s expedition wasn’t a scientific one the funding was very different. Obviously it was coming from Norway instead of being British
L: Also I feel like he immediately has the benefit of being Norwegian, in that he’s probably way more used to the climate. Not that the climate of Antarctica and Norway are the same, but-
[laughter]
A: Yeah, but he had a lot of experience, as had a lot of Norwegian explorers. So Scott had actually been advised by Fridtjof Nansen, who was a major Norwegian explorer, on a lot of things like how to use the skis, and certain details about travelling in Antarctica. So obviously Norwegians were quite respected in terms of polar exploration.
L: Yeah, so obviously Amundsen is already off to a great start, in that he has more depots, more closely together, more accurately laid
A: And he hasn’t got the focus on science to distract himself or to use up expedition resources. And also he has decided to only take dogs, so he has 55 dogs, no ponies, and he’s planning to go by skis rather than on foot
L: Okay, hold up, 55 dogs? How many people did he have with him? Because presumably it wasn’t one long train of 55 dogs and then him.
A: So Amundsen had a total of 19 people on his expedition
L: Okay
A: But keeping in mind that Scott had a lot of scientists and various researchers on his
L: Yes, and presumably of those 19 people, some were left at base camp, and some of them were taken on the trip
A: Yeah eventually only 5 of them would go towards the South Pole, which is pretty standard. And would later be the same number that Scott took.
L: Yes, okay. So things are looking a bit rough for Scott. And you said it was 48km – so One Ton Depot was 48km off where it should have been
A: Precisely. And at this points Oates had recommended that they push on anyway to get to the final point for the depot and kill any ponies that collapsed on the way and store their meat for the dogs, but Scott reportedly said: ‘I have had more than enough of this cruelty to animals, and I’m not going to defy my feelings for the sake of a few days’ march’, to which Oates replied that he would regret that choice.
L: Okay, well based on the look in your eyes, I’m going to say that Oates was right
A: Well yes, so I want to mention that those quotes are from an interview with a more minor member of the expedition – he’s got a Norwegian name and I’m going to mess it up, because it’s T-R-Y-G-G-V-E
L: I forgive you already
A: Tryve?
L: I know less than you
A: Anyway his surname is Gran. So Gran was the skiing expert on the expedition, and he was interviewed when he was 84 years old by a historian named Roland Huntford. And so this is where the quote comes from, it’s from that interview
L: Okay, so decades later, obviously with the hindsight of everything that does happen – I don’t know what that is, but presumably it was bad.
A: Exactly. And Gran himself may have had biases against either Oates or Scott, but more importantly Roland Huntford – who ran the interview – was extremely biased against Scott, and we’ll find out later that he wrote one of the most biased biographies of him.
L: Oh wow, okay, so essentially this quote was from an interview in which the interviewer was ragging on Scott
A: Exactly. And seeing as he was the one to translate this, it’s entirely possible that he translated it in a way that was favourable to him.
L: Yes. That all being said, Oates was essentially pro killing the ponies
A: Yes he was, that definitely happened. He definitely wanted to kill them and save their food for the dogs
L: I’m going to be real. Kind of sounds like he was right.
A: Yeah, well again, this is going to come up later and you’ll have more opinions on this
L: I’m sure I will, but I do also want to preface this by saying I am a vegetarian, like, I don’t eat meat
A: Yeah, we don’t love killing horses
L: No, but there is a point where… yeah
A: There is an expectation in going to Antarctica that they weren’t going to keep the horses
L: I mean yeah, if we’re being honest, they brought the horses with the full knowledge that they would probably die, if they wanted to not do that they probably would have got… well, less Manchurian horses-
A: Well here’s the kicker though, so Scott supposedly kicks up a fuss here about not wanting to kill the horses, but then when they eventually do go south, his plan is always to kill the horses.
L: Yeah, okay
A: So the horses were never going to come back from the southern journey, they were going to be killed and kept for food.
L: Interesting, so it might have also been for Scott, a matter of ‘if we save them now, we can have them later’
A: Yeah. But the wording of that quote implies that it’s some kind of...
L: Moral choice
A: Moral choice, exactly. And it is mentioned by other people that he relied on his, air-quotes ‘chistian values’ in regards to the wellbeing of the animals.
L: Okay. But also…
A: He was going to kill them anyway
L: Yeah.
A: So, you know, kind of hypocritical
[laughter]
L: But also, he put them on the boat to Antarctica, where they shouldn’t have been
A: Exactly. So obviously in the quote as presented by Huntford, Oates comes out as the intelligent one there making that choice, but it should be noted that part of the reason that the horses were struggling was that they didn’t have the proper snow shoes that had been originally packed for them. And it’s because Oates made the decision not to bring the snow shoes on the depot-laying journey because he believed that they weren’t useful.
L: Okay. So what I’m getting from this is that no one made good choices
A: No, this expedition is full of poor choices, and it’s really frustrating because they did actually have more experts than the Discovery had – obviously the Discovery had barely anyone who knew anything about polar exploration-
L: And they just sort of guessed their way through correctly
A: Exactly! But even now they were making… just wild choices. The whole way through.
L: Yeah. So Oates chooses not to bring the snow shoes, the horses get really messed up, for whatever reason they decide not to move the extra 48km and lay the final depot where it should be to save these 2 horses. Do the horses make it back to base camp?
A: So 8 ponies were taken on this depot-laying journey. Initially 3 were sent back early because they were becoming weak, so this was before they get to One Ton Depot. Of those 3 sent back, 2 of them die on the journey because they’re so weak that they just collapse.
L: Okay so we’re in season one of the multiple year journey, and we’ve already lost 2 of our 19 horses. No, we’ve lost 4 of our 19 horses, because 2 died on the boat, so we’re down to 15.
A: Yep. Now another one, named ‘Weary Willie’, bless him, collapses of exhaustion
L: Down to 14
A: Yep. And then 3 more die when they’re travelling back to Cape Evans because they’re on sea ice which breaks up, and they end up being pursued by orca whales
L: Oh my god
A: Yeah…
L: Ana, what…
A: I did mention animal death warning for this episode, it’s not good
L: You did. Okay, so we’re down to 11 horses, and on the depot-laying trip the final folks – so Scott, and Oates, and whoever was with them – are left with 1 horse, right? Because they sent 3 back, then 1, Willie, collapsed, and then 3 got eaten by orcas.
A: Yep. Although it should be noted that they were killed before they were eaten by orcas, because they were trapped on ice and there was no way of getting the animals free, and the point where they were trapped on ice was fairly close to Cape Evans already, so they were almost back.
L: Okay, so by the time they got back to camp they had one horse left with them and one was already back at camp. So we’re down to 11 horses of the 19 that we brought with us.
A: Correct.
L: Oh boy. We are literally in our first season.
A: Exactly.
L: Meanwhile, Amundsen has got his 55 dogs and he’s laying his depots 7 to 2
A: Yeah, but he also intended for at least some of the dogs to die
L: Oh boy
A: So no one’s coming out looking so great in terms of animal welfare on these trips, and unfortunately that will continue.
L: Okay, well okay. Let’s just swallow that and keep going. Okay so are we calling the One Ton Depot a mayday moment? Because we’ve lost 6 horses on that journey alone, the depot is 48km away from where it should be, and we still lost 6 horses.
A: Yeah, so I would say that this is definitely a mayday moment, because the impact it has long term is quite serious. And even if you’re just looking for a moment when they would have been really distressed and stuck and would have called out ‘mayday’ in the traditional sense, the moment when they’re stuck on the ice with the horses
L: and they’re choosing to abandon the 3 horses
A: and with orcas around them churning up the water, that’s quite a serious moment.
L: Yeah, I’m going to give that a mayday. We’ve got one on the mayday tally.
A: That concludes our first episode and part 1 of 2 on the Scott Expedition.
L: Thanks for listening. If you want to get in touch, or see some amazing pictures taken on the Terra Nova expedition, follow us on instagram at twitter at themaydaypod, or on our website themaydaypod.com
A: Thank you to our composer and producer Marlon, who you can find on his website marlongrunden.com. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating or review.
L: Look out for part 2 on Wednesday the 22nd of September wherever you get your podcasts.