Episode Two: Scott’s Fatal Expedition to Antarctica, Part II
Edward Adrian Wilson, Robert Falcon Scott, Lawrence Oates, Henry Robertson Bowers and Edgar Evans at the South Pole. Photo by Henry Bowers (1883–1912)
Our story of Scott’s team continues in our second and final episode on the Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica. Listen now to learn about how sea ice can mess up research trips for geologists, why you shouldn’t study Emperor Penguin eggs in the winter, and what exactly happened on Scott’s fatal journey to the South Pole.
NOTE: We mention in the episode that Amundsen was involved in the rescue of a ship stuck in the Arctic, and say that it may have been an American ship. It was actually an Italian airship.
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)
Official credit: ‘Dog Chris, listening to the gramophone, Antarctica. Kinsey, Joseph James (Sir), 1852-1936: Photographs relating to Antarctica and mountaineering. Ref: PA1-f-067-099-2. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand
Transcript
LUCA: Hello, and welcome to the second episode of the Mayday Podcast. I'm Luca
ANA: and I'm Ana
L: and this is part two 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: Some content warnings for this episode, there will be discussion of death, both human and animal, as well as suicide, starvation and some racism.
L: In part one, we discussed the lead up to the Terra Nova Expedition and the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who was also heading for the South Pole in the same season as Scott. We ended with the disastrous laying of the supply depots for the return journey from the South Pole, the last of which was placed short at 48 kilometres away from its intended destination, further from the South Pole than where it should have been. As we return, the winter is coming, and next spring, Scott and his explorers will make their trek towards the south pole.
A: So back at camp. At this point the Terra Nova has been sent back to New Zealand, partly because the expedition couldn't afford for it to be frozen in the ice and because they had planned for it to return in 1912 with more supplies.
L: Okay, okay. And presumably it was going to return next summer when the ice was thinner.
A: Exactly. Yeah. So at this point, they settle down for the winter. So the sun sets on April 23rd 1911. And in this period, they conduct research, prepare for future journeys, tend to animals and give lectures.
L: Oh, wait, I forgot that the sun doesn't rise during the winter in Antarctica
A: Yeah.
L: Oh, boy, that makes everything so much worse.
A It is, yeah. It’s pretty tough. There are stories about how specific members, particularly Oates, were quite affected by the lack of sun.
L: So like, the Norwegians are like ‘this is fine’. And everyone else is like, yeah, oh, no.
A: Yeah. Seasonal depression off the charts for these fellas.
L: Yeah. Wow.
A: Yeah. It's pretty rough. But they keep up morale, by, as I said, conducting lectures, playing football, that kind of thing.
L: In the dark?
[laughter]
A: In the winter months, there is occasionally a little bit of sun without it actually being seen, but just like the rays from it on the horizon. So there's enough light for them to be able to see by and they can play.
L: Yeah, that sounds horrific. And I know we're not even at the bad part of the day.
A: Yeah, fully this is one of the nicest things. I’m about to describe something that is much worse in terms of an experience of winter. So we're not even at the South Pole journey yet. Because there are several journeys that happen beforehand, or at the same time. So there's a northern party, there's two Western parties, and there's the Cape Crozier journey.
L: Okay, so the irony of there being a northern party…
A: in the south?
L: in the south.
[laughter]
L: When like, which direction are you travelling? If you're travelling North? Would you not be going over the ocean to Australia?
A: It's so confusing. It's like they go east, and then they turn north from the point they are in the east.
L: Okay
A: so there is land, but it's just confusing.
[laughter]
A: So firstly, I’ll just mention the western parties, because they're quite simple and go shockingly well
L: Oh I’m excited
A: yeah it’s nice. So it’s just two geological parties. One of them is in early 1911, the second is in late 1911 to early 1912. And both of them just go off West to do some geological research. They do briefly get stuck because the ship can't reach them, and they have to walk but then the ship finds them again, and they're okay.
L: Cool cool cool
[laughter]
A: It's just, there's not much to say there, because that is the most successful of these trips.
L: So basically, these guys did everything pretty right.
A: Yeah, the geologists were happy. They would having a good old time
L: you know what, 10 out of 10. Good on the geologists.
A: Yes. and they were largely Australians. Win.
L: I mean, we have our answer.
A: But it should be said there was some geological research happening on the northern party, and that went less well.
L: Oh boy.
A: So the northern party occurred basically for the entirety of the expedition. And you just need to remember it while we're talking about the polar journey that this was sort of happening concurrently elsewhere. And occasionally, they would be remembered or come in contact with the rest of the group, but they were mostly having to deal with these things alone. So this was a group of six men. They were the ones who'd originally travelled east and met Amundson, right.
L: Oh, cool.
A: So when they met Amundsen, they wrote about the meeting with him in a letter which went on Terra Nova, and Terra Nova went back to the camp and gave it to Scott when he returned from his Depot laying trip. So they meet with Amundsen and after that, they then turn North they have to spend a winter separate from the expedition. So they build their own hut there, and that was originally the plan.
L: Yeah, still, that's…
A: it's pretty rough. Yeah. So they're there in their own hut. They spend the winter and then the sea ice in the summer is so bad that they can't travel to the next point that they intended to go. Then Terra Nova returns in January 1912. It picks them up, it moves them to Evans Cove, which, as mentioned, is not the same as Cape Evans.
L: Yes.
A: So they go there, they do some geological research. And then February comes round the next month. And because of the ice, the ship can't reach them. They're now low on provisions and stuck there. And as the winter comes around, they are forced to spend it in this space without their hut, without the ship. So they spent an entire winter in a snow cave.
L: Oh my god.
A: Yeah, the winter of 1912. This is a really rough period for the six men. They suffered dysentery, frostbite, obviously hunger, cause provisions are quite low.
L: Oh, my god,
A: yes, really not good. But luckily, they survived the winter. And then they managed to leave for Cape Evans in September. So September 1912
L: Literally how did they survive?
A: it's amazing
L: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. But oh my… literally, what?
A: the amazing thing is, this is all happening while the southern polar journey is kind of wrapping up slash already happened. And obviously…
L: Of course, because you said it was over multiple winters, right. So the first winter they had the hut, the second winter, they had the ice cave.
A: Yeah. literal ice cave that they built.
L: And dysentery. Oh, my..
A: Yeah, it's not good. And they were, you know, having problems breathing in the cave, because the fuel from their stove was quite tough in the small area.
L: I don’t doubt it.
A: Yeah, yeah, it was really rough. But they did manage to leave, they had enough energy to leave in September. And they walked back to Cape Evans and returned on the seventh of November in 1912.
L: Wow,
A: all alive.
L: You know that. I will give the geologists that right. Everything went terribly. But they all made it back. All alive. And even though things went poorly, like, mainly, it wasn't their fault, right. Like it was environmental factors, or…
A: Exactly.
L: Like the ship couldn't reach them. Still, they made it through, which is frankly, astounding.
A: Yeah, it's really impressive. Honestly, if everything else hadn't happened on the expedition, this itself would have been a story. And it kind of became eclipsed by everything else.
L: Yeah, yeah.
A: It should be noted that these aren't the same geologists who were on the western geological expeditions.
L: Yeah so the western ones were like, a gander into the ice. They were fine.
A: Yeah. And they were happening over a two year period as well. They were all good. These guys also did geological research. But yeah.
L: So the western folks did fine. The northern folks had a terrible time, but they all made it. And they all met back at camp in the November of 1912.
A: 1912, exactly. So there's one other journey that's pretty significant before you get to the southern journey, and this is the Cape Crozier journey. So this one is also scientific, and specifically, it's to go to the Cape Crozier emperor penguin colony.
L: Incredible
A: Yeah, because Wilson, who was chief scientist and an ornithologist, as mentioned, wanted to obtain some eggs from emperor penguins to check them at a certain point in their foetal development, because they wanted to check if they resembled dinosaurs.
L: Oh, wow
A: Yeah, so it's quite interesting research. But because as I said, it's a specific moment for the eggs, they had to go there at a difficult time of year, namely winter. No one had ever attempted a winter journey in the Antarctic until this point.
L: So it's pitch black out, and…
A: and it's three guys.
L: It’s three guys, and it's so cold.
A: It is three guys on foot
L: what... do we have any idea what the average temperature would have been in the Antarctic winter?
A: I don't have it written down, but it would have been really tough at this point. I mean, negative 40s at least.
L: Oh my god
A: Yeah, it's really difficult. So it's Wilson, Bowers, who was mentioned earlier, and Cherry-Garrard, who's the junior zoologist
L: Chewwy
A: Chewwy. It's Chewwy. I think we should just call him Chevy.
L: Chewwy-Garrard?
A: No, leave the Garrard. It's just Chewwy. So it's Wilson, Bowers and Chewwy.
[laughter]
A: And they plan to travel 97 kilometres. One way.
L: You can't see my expression, but I'm just…
A: It’s great
L: The fact that this one wasn't considered the bad one is really shocking to me
A: Yeah, I know. Incredibly, the men actually managed to both reach their destination and get back despite blizzards and extreme temperatures with three eggs. Not the original number of eggs that they picked up, but three of them did survive that journey. Obviously, this was extremely difficult, not least because Cherry had quite bad eyesight. And in blizzards, and in darkness, this was significantly reduced as well.
L: So the Cape Crozier journey. Three dudes. Middle of winter. Blizzards literally all the time, I'm guessing.
A:Yeah, pretty bad.
L: And they make it to the penguin colony. And they make it back with three whole eggs.
A: Yeah. Which are still in I think the Natural History Museum in London. So you know, they survive the journey and everything.
L: That is awesome.
A: Yeah, unfortunately, was slightly later in terms of foetal development than they had originally intended. But what could they do?
L: Well, they can still not prove that they were dinosaurs
A: Exactly. Also I said foetal, probably embryonic is-? I don't know if you can say foetal for eggs.
L: I think embryo is the more correct…
Yeah, well, I will say that I'd read foetal written as one of the quotes from someone else, but these are scientists in like 1911. So they’re probably wrong.
L: This is probably true.
A: Yeah. Anyway, they manage that journey between June 27th 1911 and August 1st. So it's quite short, despite the distance. And again, they survive. It's kind of miraculous.
L: Yeah.
A: But cherry does describe it as the worst journey in the world, which became the title of his book.
L: You know what, I'll give him that. Obviously the northern party were not having a good time.
A: But this was particularly bad.
L: This really feels like… you always know that walking around in the Antarctic is never going to go well. But specifically setting out choosing to travel, like in winter.
A: Yeah.
L: Like, was there nowhere closer they could park?
[laughter]
A: Well, they had to get to this one emperor penguin colony. So they had no choice but to go there specifically. It was really... a decision that they made. And hadn't planned in advance either. They made that decision only a few months beforehand. Wilson asked Scott if he could undergo this and Scott agreed.
L: Oh, boy
A: Yeah.
L: Okay. So essentially, at this time, separate from the South Pole expedition, you got a bunch of scientists walking around doing their various – sounds like pretty successful – scientific research.
A: Yeah. And in the end, you know, this expedition did meet a lot of its scientific goals. So despite everything that eventually would happen in the south, this was a really positive experience.
L: Yeah, right up until whatever happens, happens.
A: Yeah. You're about to find out.
L: I'm both extremely curious and terrified.
A: Yeah, you should be a little bit. So now we come to the bush for the Pole. Despite the fact that obviously, these scientific expeditions were really important, this was Scott's own priority. And he was obviously going to be leading the expedition himself. So during the winter, they spent a lot of time planning it. And he named an initial group of 16 men, although he would reveal the final group that would push for the Pole later in the journey.
L: I'm sorry, so he took 16 people, and he did not tell them who he was going to take to the Pole.
A: Yeah
L: Did they have any say?
A: Well, all of them decided or were ready to go
L: So all of them wanted to push for the Pole
A: Exactly, yeah, but the idea was that they would all act as supporting groups, to lay the groundwork and everything to get the final polar group all the way South. So you first have four men who leave on October 24th 1911. These aren’t including Scott, so they're led by Lieutenant Evans, and they travel with the motors sledges. And their point is to preceed the rest of the group and take the supplies 320 kilometres south, and then stay there and wait for everyone else. So the motors fail.
L: Oh boy
A: After one week.
L: Oh god
A: Yeah. Which means for the next two weeks, they have to manhaul the supplies, which is essentially like literally pull them on sledges. They did think that this could possibly happen, they had prepared for that. But it still holds them back and is obviously very physically taxing. So the sledges wait for the rest of the team who join them on the 21st of November, and they're travelling with the ponies and the dogs. Yeah?
L: I'm so sorry to do this to you. But what is the distance between the camp and the South Pole?
A: So the absolute distance is 1387 kilometres
[laughter]
A: Yeah. It is no small distance.
L: So this initial four person party with the broken motor sled
A: that goes 320km
L: Yeah, okay, so they go like 25% of the way.
A: Yeah. So the exhibition is behind on its original schedule, and instead of sending the dogs back at this point, which has been Scott's plan, he actually decided to take them a little bit further to make travelling easier. The problem with this is that it does tire them out, and it has repercussions on future dogsledding journeys that would be important later.
L: Okay. And is this them reaching the initial four man band?
A: This is the point that they're already at the four man band, and it’s just like the next push from there.
L: Okay,
A: Yeah, so the four men in the motor group, two of them now get sent back to camp, specifically to give the news regarding the dogs being taken further along. So this was important because the dogs crucially needed to return to base as they would need time to recover and then journey back with more supplies for One Ton Depot, and then again make the journey to actually meet the polar party on March 1.
L: Okay, so essentially, by bringing them further, Scott was shooting himself in the foot later.
A: Yeah, he was just making the dogs more tired and potentially pushing back the time that they could bring supplies to One Ton Depot
L: Yes, which was 48 kilometres off where it should have been
A: exactly
L: I feel like that's going to be relevant, which is why I keep saying it
A: Yeah, it really is. I wish it wasn't. So the remaining men are now held another five days by a blizzard and that uses up some of the supplies that are meant for the journey ahead. So again, another minor setback, but it contributes to the overall situation. At this point, they've reached the Beardmore Glazier. I mentioned this briefly earlier on as the point where there's a massive ascent up onto the glacier, which then once you get to the top, it becomes the polar plateau, which is the kind of flat area between the glacier and the South Pole, and covering quite a lot of Eastern Antarctica.
L: Yeah. Which I'm guessing: strong winds, very cold temperatures?
A: Yes, but also relatively flat in terms of travel, but they can't actually get to that with the ponies and any motor ledges and so on. So at this point, Meares and his fellow dog driver, Dimitri Gerov have both set off back to base with the dogs. Unfortunately, the ponies are all shot for food.
L: So the remaining 11 ponies are now dead.
A: Yeah.
L: So we are down to zero ponies.
A: Yeah, all ponies are gone.
L: But we still have…
A: So all the dogs have gone back.
L: Okay, so the dogs are back at basecamp.
A: Well, on their way back to basecamp.
L: Yeah
A: Now they've just got the men left trying to ascend onto the glacier. So the area around the glacier is really dangerous as there's all these ice crevasses, which can be hidden by snow. So at every point you have to be careful about where you're stepping, because if you fall into one, it could mean death. It takes them several days to ascend it and eventually on December 20, they get to the top and they start laying out more supplies. Now Scott sends Cherry and three other men back to base. The group is getting smaller and smaller and breaking off towards those who will finally head towards the pole.
L: Okay, so at this point, the two dog handlers and all the dogs plus two of the original party and four additional people (so Cherry and the three others) have all gone back to base.
A: Yeah
L: Which means that of the original 16 we're now down to…?
A: eight
L: Eight, okay
A: So several men are now struggling with snow blindness, particularly Wilson, who tended to get it quite badly, but they are generally improving. Scott now decides to choose who he's going to take with him on the final push to the pole. He announces on January 3rd 1912 that it will be himself, Captain Oates, Wilson, Bowers, and Edgar Evans.
L: Okay, hold up. He's taking snowblind Wilson?
A: Yeah. So everyone is a little bit snowblind and Wilson is getting better, but yes, he's taking him despite the fact that he knows Wilson has a particular problem with this.
L: Yeah. Okay. And he's also taking Edgar Taff Evans, our strong man.
A: That's right. Exactly. Strong man, not Lieutenant Evans, who is already gone
L: Yes. Okay.
A: Now, the one of the problems with this is that he has now chosen five men to go to the Pole, whereas originally he was only supposed to choose four including himself.
L: Okay, here's your solution, leave Wilson behind, he’s blind
A: So don't forget that Wilson, as well as being chief zoologist and scientist is also a doctor.
L: Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Yeah. Yeah. So even though he's a little snowblind, he's also the one person who can help people out with snowblindness
L: Yeah. Okay. But he's chosen five people to go with him instead of four, which is what he was supposed to. Exactly.
A: So what this means is that they now have to look at their supplies and reorganise them, depending on a larger number of people being on the trip.
L: Yeah. Did Scott give a specific reason as to why he chose an additional person?
A: From what I've read, it's unclear. But in terms of the actual food supply, this isn't going to cause problems with another person being there because they can just reorganise it.
L: Yes, as long as they just bring the food
A: Exactly. The problem actually comes from the fact that now they have to use up more fuel to cook because there's another person's food to be cooked, which is not something that they plan for and does cause problems. Yes, so the three remaining men now turn off and this group continues South. On January 9, the group pass Shackleton's record of the furthest point South
L: hey!
A: Yeah, so they’re quite celebratory at that point. Another week passes and now they're only 24 kilometres away from the pole when Bowers, who has exceptionally good eyesight, spots a flag on the horizon.
L: Oh, no.
A: Yeah. So they arrive at the pole on January 17, to find the remains of Amundsen’s camp and his flag.
L: So he beat them there.
A: Yeah. He actually leaves a note for them inside of a tent there, and it's addressed to Scott. It mentions that he arrived at the Pole on December 16. So it was a full month before they had arrived.
L: Awww. That hurts.
A: Yeah, it's very difficult for them.
L: That's really rough.
A: The letter that he leaves for Scott is, to be fair to Amundsen, quite kind. It reads: ‘Dear Captain Scott: as you are probably the first to reach this area after us, I will ask you to kindly forward this letter to King Haakon VII (so that's the Norwegian king). If you can use any of the equipment left in the tent, please do not hesitate to do so. The sledge left outside may be of use to you. With kind regards. I wish you a safe return. Yours truly, Roald Amundsen.’
L: Yeah. So he was like, honestly, that is as kind as you can be in that situation. Being like, ‘yeah, we knew this was a race, and I have won this race, and please use the stuff that I left behind’, because it will only be more embarrassing if I was like, ‘don't use the tent that I left’
A: Yeah, it'd be cruel.
L: I also just want to point out here, something that I mentioned to you off microphone earlier is that I didn't actually know how this was going to end. I did not know who was the first to reach the South Pole. Well, I think part of me assumed it was Scott, because that was the name that I knew. Before this point, I didn't know the name Amundsen.
A: Yeah, well, that's part of why it's so interesting. Because what happens to Scott after this is so famous that it completely eclipses Amundsen’s achievement
L: His entire achievement of actually being the first one there, presumably, safely given that I don’t know any stories about him dying?
A: No, no, he gets back fine. So do he's men. A lot of the dogs do get killed en route, but that was always the plan. Yeah. But because they take dogs the entire way, they are able to do a lot quicker than obviously Scott is and they leave at an earlier point than Scott does too.
L: Yeah, a whole month before I assume. Presumably they must have been extremely well prepared.
A: Yeah, 100%. Because this was their entire goal.
L: Yeah. I mean, I can't discredit that, like Scott had a bunch of scientific stuff that he had to deal with, and like, I'm sure he was happy to deal with, it seems like it was a very positive thing for all the scientists whose expedition seemed to be going terribly and/or excellently depending on who you were, but Amundsen just had the resources and the know how I guess
A: Exactly. Scott, of course, had known that this was a risk and was kind of likely, but the whole way through they'd been keeping up morale, because the hope was always that he would still reach the Pole first. I mean, it was something that he had been looking forward to for years. So you get a description in his journal of his feelings on the day that this happens, and it is quite sad. You can tell there's a massive shift in tone for him. So he says: ‘Great God, this is an awful place, and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority. Well, it is something to have got here.’ And then he continues: ‘Now for the run home and a desperate struggle. I wonder if we can do it.’
L: Yeah. Okay. So there was definitely a huge question mark over whether or not they would succeed in even returning.
A: Yeah. So at this point, their health is fairly good. But they are still very aware that as mentioned, it is 1387 kilometres back.
L: of which they had not laid out the supplies as was originally intended, or as well as Amundsen had done.
A: Yeah. Bowers wrote a letter to his sister at this point, in which he said: ‘I'm awfully sorry for Captain Scott, who has taken the blow very well indeed’. So you can tell that everyone's having quite a difficult time at this point.
L: Yeah. And yet, Scott is trying to be as put together as possible.
A: Yeah, exactly. I mean, he's just trying to keep up morale for as men because this is a very difficult thing. But we do have photographs from this point, because they do build a cairn, which is a little mound of stones, and pop a union jack in it and take photographs of themselves. But you can tell from the photographs that they are very sombre. It is not the most positive image.
L: Yeah, it's not a celebratory thing.
A: Not at all. So they leave a note with the cairn and they turn back north on the 19th. The strength of the men begins to falter on the march back. So they are walking for a few weeks, but slowly they start to suffer from frostbite for the most part, particularly Evans and Oates. And Wilson, also strains a tendon, and all of them are getting slowly a bit weaker. So they get back to the edge of Beardmore glacier, on the seventh of February, and they begin trying to descend from the polar plateau. Briefly, they do take a break, because Evans’ health is quite bad, so Scott gives him some time to rest. And in that period Wilson actually finds a bunch of geological samples, and particularly fossils, and he collects them and brings them along with him.
L: So now he's also carrying rocks as well as all the food.
A: Yes, he is carrying 16 kilogrammes of fossils.
L: You know, I'll hand him this, you find fossils in the middle of the Antarctic, you want to you want to grab some
A: these are some of the first fossils ever found in Antarctica, so this is quite significant, and it would long term continue to be. But Evans' health is getting quite bad at this point. Now he's obviously known for being the strongest within the group, and Scott had chosen him for his physical ability, so to see him slowly deteriorating,actually has quite a large effect on Scott's own morale. He writes constantly about how difficult it is to see Evans’ demeanour, and his emotions getting lower and lower as time goes on. So Evans does fall into a crevasse with Scott several days before this, which causes him potentially a head injury, but definitely just exhausts him generally. His hands and nose are blistered badly with frostbite, and they aren't healing.
L: Oh god
A: Yeah, it's rough. And eventually on the 16th of February he collapses. Later that night, at I think was just after midnight, he does die.
L: Oh, wow. So Taff Evans is the first to go.
A: Yeah. And now we don't know exactly what causes this. But going from descriptions of Scott and other people in the party, it seems that he had received some kind of brain injury either from the fall in the cravasse or other falls during the journey, and that was worsened possibly by the onset of scurvy, which none of them officially had, according to what Wilson's analysis was, but it is entirely possible that he was just in the very early stages. With Evans being quite large, it's also possible that his allotted ations, which were the same as every other man's, were not enough for him physically, because he was bigger than they were. Obviously, all of them are manhauling sledges as well. So their rations weren't even enough to cover the fact that they were expending so much energy. So for someone like Evans that was particularly bad. So after Evans’ death, the tone in Scott’s journal entries does move between careful optimism and increasingly towards doubt. So on March 5, he starts his entry with: ‘regret to say going from bad to worse’, and then ends it with ‘one can only say “God help us!” and plod on our weary way, cold and very miserable’. They're still relying on the dog teams to come meet them with more supplies, but the date for their arrival on March 1 has now passed with no sign of the dog teams. The temperature’s now dropped to the negative 30s, and at several points even reaching negative 40. Celsius, obviously, just, terrible. Oates was suffering very badly from frostbite on his feet, which meant that they were making very little progress every day. By March 10, Scott had given up hope on the dog teams meeting them, saying in his journal: ‘the dogs, which would have been our salvation, have evidently failed’. He had also lost faith in Oates’ recovery, and the next day, he wrote that ‘he is very near the end’. According to Scott, the group discussed this fairly openly, but he says he had to practically order Wilson to give each of them enough opioid tablets or morphine, that each one could end their lives if they chose to do so.
L: Oh, boy.
A: Yeah, it's really tough. And that's one of those things that's not mentioned in a lot of the history books, but when you actually read the journal it's right there. It's because this is such a sad thing to accept that they were kind of reaching this point.
L: Yeah. So essentially, Scott is saying, there's a high chance that we're not all going to make it, and he orders Wilson to distribute the medication, just in case.
A: Yeah, just so that each individual has that choice, really.
L: Yeah. Which at this point, Oates os the one that's looking the worst with the frostbitten feet.
A: Precisely. So Scott is also now writing several letters to his friends and family which are left in his journal, and by his tone is very clear that he doesn't think they're going to return. So on the 16th, he writes to Sir Edgar Speyer, who had been one of the major financiers of the expedition, and he says: ‘I feel we must go, and that it leaves the expedition in a bad muddle. We have been to the pole and we shall die like gentlemen’. Later in the letter, he also emphasises that the dog teams were not the result of anyone's fault, even though he had no idea what had happened with them. And he specifically writes: ‘no one is to blame, and I hope no attempt will be made to suggest that we lacked support’.
L: Yeah, so like, Scott, through this whole thing, he seems to have a very strong desire to make sure that everyone around him was not seen as incompetent or was not seen poorly because of things that had happened that were outside of- or even though decisions that might have been made.
A: Yeah, absolutely. And this is even the case with Oates, who obviously had disagreed with him multiple times on the journey.
L: Yeah.
A: So on the same day, March 16, Scott writes about the final decline in Oates’ health, and he begins this specifically by saying: ‘should this be found, I want these facts recorded’ of Oates. He then wrote ‘he did not, would not, give up hope till the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last hoping not to wake but he woke in the morning yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, “I'm just going outside and maybe some time”. He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.’ So I don't know if you recognise that those are some very famous lines, and they’re often quoted regarding polar travel generally, but especially Antarctic travel. There's quite a lot of books and things named after ‘I am just going outside and may be some time’
L: Yeah, I've definitely heard that story, if not that exact quote.
A: Yeah. So obviously, we don't know if those were his exact words, but it is possible that Scott just wrote them down as they were. It kind of fits Oates’ character as a person to make the decision to walk out into a blizzard rather than keep holding the rest of his men back. So the remaining three men are now able to keep travelling but they only make it another 32 kilometres. Scott's feet are now badly frostbitten as well. They make camp on March 20 when a bad blizzard hits again and they have to remain within that tent. They're only 18 kilometres away from One Ton Depot, which if it had been in its intended place, they would have already surpassed.
L: Based purely on your expression, I'm guessing they're running pretty low on supplies?
A: Yeah, so at this point, they're run out of fuel and they've only got a few days worth of food leftover. Scott's final diary entry is dated to March 29. In it he wrote, ‘I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end but we are getting weaker. Of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more. R Scott. Last entry. For God's sake, look after our people.’
L: You okay there, buddy?
A: Yep. It gets to me, man.
L: Yeah
A: Oof, it’s sad. Okay. How are you?
L: Yeah, I think the obvious thing gets to me. That they were so close. One previous decision, which was not to travel the extra 48km, which didn't even end up mattering because three horses died on that journey anyway, is the thing that like, did it essentially.
A: Yeah, I mean, look, they might not have lived even if they reached One Ton Depot because they were still injured and really exhausted
L: And in a blizzard
A: Yeah, but we'll never know. Like, it's one of those things where it could have made a huge difference. Maybe if they'd been able to wait it out there, they would have been found by someone else.
L: Or it could have made no difference, and we'd be telling the same story with slightly different kilometres.
A: Exactly. So Scott likely died on the day of writing this diary entry or at most on the day after, and the position of Bowers’ and Wilson's bodies indicate that he was the last to go. So those remaining at Cape Evans had stayed over the winter and tried to continue scientific research while they waited for Scott, but obviously they knew that at this point he should have returned. So that was a great worry about his well being. A search party was sent out in October 1912, and on November 12, they found the bodies of Scott, Bowers and Wilson. With the bodies they found the 16 kilogrammes of plant fossils that Wilson had discovered on the Beardmore Glazier, and they also found seven letters that Scott had written in his journal. One each to Wilson and Bowers’ mothers, several to his friends and benefactors, and then one to his wife and one to his mother. In the letter to his wife, Scott wrote about his son, who at this point was three years old and had been one when he left for Antarctica. He asked her to ‘make the boy interested in natural history if you can, it is better than games’. Peter Scott would actually go on to found the WWF, so the World Wide Fund for Nature, so clearly this advice was taken on. In the letter to his friend J.M. Barrie, he wrote: ‘I may not have proved a great explorer, but we have done the greatest march ever made and come very near to great success’. The men who discovered their bodies covered the tent with stones and turned it into a grave, whereas Oates’ body was never found. The news reached the world in February 1913. Both Shackleton and Amundsen expressed shock. Amundsen supposedly said: ‘I would gladly forego any honour or money if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death’.
L: I know all we have of Amundsen are his quotes and conjecture on what he might have said, but I'm inclined to believe that.
A: Yeah, I think so too. And obviously Amundsen was quite sombre about this loss, despite the fact that it was completely eclipsing his own success. Amundsen did go on exploring after this. So he did try and reach the North Pole despite it being supposedly reached by other people before him, and this is technically marked as the first absolutely indisputable journey to the North Pole.
L: So this man that I have never heard of until today, was the first man to reach the South Pole, and the first man to be indisputably confirmed to have reached the North Pole
A: and the first man to have traversed the Northwest Passage. So these are three extremely important milestones in Arctic and Antarctic exploration. And they will all reached by this one guy.
L: This guy's insane.
A: Yeah, no, Amundsen’s really interesting. I actually have quite a lot of respect for him.
L: How have I never heard of him until today?
A: Because he's Norwegian. It's literally it. It’s that his achievements aren’t talked about, especially in places like Australia or any other part of the Commonwealth.
L: Yeah, the British are essentially mad that he did all the things that they were trying to do.
A: Exactly. He did also disappear in 1928. So he was-
L: I’m sorry, you buried the lead there Ana. He what?
[laughter]
A: In 1928, right, when he was age 55, by the way, he was flying in the Arctic on a rescue mission, because there was- I think it was an American ship that had been stuck there, and everyone had to try and get out. But while he and a team of people on his plane were searching and trying to rescue them, they disappeared and their bodies were never found.
L: What the hell?
A: I know. So he was, as I said, not just a really interesting man, but also his own mystery.
L: I want to talk about that.
A: I know. There's actually quite a famous film starring... I think it was Sean Connery? A Russian-made film from the 60s, which is about this rescue.
L: We're going to explore this and see what's in it.
A: could be a future episode, potentially.
L: That's extraordinary.
A: So those men who survived the Scott expedition did go on to receive awards and medals for their work, and money was raised for the families of the five men who died. Unsurprisingly, Scott and his team became instant heroes after this point.
L: Once again, it's interesting that they became heroes given- not that they didn't suffer, but that Amundsen had achieved what they had set out to achieve, more successfully and faster.
A: There was a degree to which some people, obviously not very explicitly in the public, but there were people who kind of looked down a little bit on Amundsen because he had rushed to the Pole and hadn't had all these scientific goals as well. He had only focused on trying to get there as fast as possible. But to be fair to him, sure, that was entirely the goal of his expedition and had always been, you know?
L: Yeah, there were no qualms about it. It’s not like a cover up. He was very clear. I mean, he even was honourable enough to message Scott in Melbourne and say, ‘Hey, just a heads up. I'm also doing this thing.’
A: Exactly.
L: I just want to give Amundsen more credit than what he got. That he was more prepared, that he was more experienced, that he was more strategic in his placement of his depots, that he was faster, that he was better prepared.
A: I will say that even though in the immediate aftermath he didn’t get much credit and everyone focused on Scott, there was a big turn from about the 70s onwards in histories of this expedition in which people started to portray Scott as a ineffective leader, and sort of flipped and suddenly Amundsen was lauded and seen as this great hero. So you're not the only one to feel that way. Historically, people went too far the other way, though.
L: Okay. Yeah.
A: So before I go into my own list of some of the potential causes for why everything started to go downhill for the expedition, do you have any ideas? Like just from having heard the story now, any things that sort of piqued your interest?
L: I think something that really stands out to me, other than just not placing depots where they needed to be or where they had planned to have been, is kind of the hubris of assuming you had the correct way, even though there was a distinct lack of experience among the people, you know? Yes, they had done one previous expedition, the Discovery, or some of them with Shackleton, but they also were Brits in the Navy, who decided that the best idea was to bring a bunch of Manchurian ponies and, you know, poorly equipped snowmobiles, essentially. It's kind of that hubris of believing that the way that you've got it is the best way. I don't think it was the main cause in that, like, there was a lot of luck in there, and I think that based purely on Scott's own writings, and it's hard to gauge someone's character from their own writings, but it doesn't seem like he was a particularly like, arrogant kind of person.
A: Well, yeah, this is actually quite an interesting thing about Scott is that even though he and everyone on the team were definitely filled with this English assumption that it would be them who reached the pole, or if it wasn't them, it would be an Englishman after them, you know. And this is something that from what little they had done, they must have the right ideas and the right planning and everything, which obviously proved not to be true. But the interesting thing about Scott as an individual is that despite definitely being caught up in that point of view, he was also personally quite insecure. And what you see in his journals, and in the writings of other people around the expedition, was that at random moments, when he should have maybe taken a bit more leadership, he would defer to someone that he thought was an expert. At times he would put his foot down and make decisions himself and at other times he would defer, and often he chose the wrong moment to do either one.
L: Yeah, he put his foot down to not put the depot where it needed to be, but he would defer to someone else for other…
A: yeah, like, Oates deciding not to bring the snow shoes. He was like: ‘Yes, you're the expert, I'll agree to let you not bring them’. But then when Oates was like, we should push further and put the depot in the right place and kill the ponies. Scott was like, No, I refuse. And obviously, I'm not advocating for animal death, but considering that we know that his refusal was on the basis that he didn't want to kill the animals, and then he killed them later anyway, it was...
L: Or that they died worse later.
A: Yeah, exactly.
L: And, you know, hand in glove with that is even the simple decision of the placement of the depots. Amundsen was putting, as you said, seven depots for the same distance that Scott would put two.
A: Yeah, not not the whole way through, but that is like a rough comparison.
L: Yeah, of course, like specific areas. And I think that in itself is like, just a fundamental understanding of the planning of the situation. And it was that different decisions were made, and maybe down to luck, and maybe down to just unfortunate poor decision making. That's the outcome.
A: There are a couple things that a lot of historians point to as the reasons why this expedition started to break down as it did. Obviously, the main one is food, which we mentioned, which is kind of tied up in the fact that they laid the final Depot too far away to actually reach. But there's also the fact that, as mentioned, they'd only packed enough rations for men who were eating normally, rather than those who were hauling sledges, so they were actually eating well below the calorie count that they had to be. And this was proven in 2006, when there was a BBC expedition who tried to recreate the Scott expedition, and they actually had to hold that because the members were losing so much weight.
L: Yeah, wow.
A: Yeah. So we know for a fact that they were losing weight on this expedition, and compare that to Amundsen, where one of the members of the expedition said that he was gaining weight, because they had so much food and they weren't hauling sledges because they were on dogs.
L: Yeah, I mean, that's it. The decision to haul ledges without thinking what that actually means for your body, the decision to bring an extra person without thinking about what that means for your fuel supply.
A: Yes. There is a possibility that they also had the early stages of scurvy, as mentioned with Evans, though we haven't got absolute proof of this. But as having scurvy does deplete your ability to deal with the cold, as does hunger generally, and the journal entries talking about how debilitating the cold was kind of indicate they probably had this. It should be mentioned that Lieutenant Evans, who had been one of the original 16 who'd left for the Pole but obviously returned to camp much earlier than Scott and his men attempted to, he had actually gotten scurvy really badly on the way back and had to be rescued. So while everything was happening in the south, and they were dying in their own way, Lieutenant Evans almost also died.
L: Wow. And who rescued him?
A: From memory it was Atkinson and a few other people who are within the base camp party who I haven't named really before this point, because it just happened as a bit of an aside
L: But he didn't have the dogs, he was not the... he and the other gentlemen were heading back to camp.
A: Actually of the two men who went back with the dogs the first time round, one of them was Cecil Meares, who was the main dog trainer. He had actually clashed with Scott a few times earlier in the expedition, and Scott knew that Cecil was planning on resigning. So he actually did so while Scott was still out south and ended up leaving on Terra Nova in early 1912.
L: What the Hell
A: Yeah
L: So the dogs were left without their main handler?
A: Yeah
L: So is that why they didn't come and meet Scott's party on March 1?
A: It contributed to the reason. So I'll go into a bit of detail on that now because this is one of the most well debated aspects of the Scott expedition and why things went wrong.
L: I'm sure that Cecil Meares wanted to be well debated, but I think there's a pretty clear answer here.
A: Well, to be fair to him, I wouldn't blame him entirely, but his behaviour was not great. So I'll explain. The dog teams went back to base camp, but they arrived there a little bit later than they had originally planned, because obviously, they'd gone further with Scott than had been planned. As we know, Scott had made the order asking the dog teams to replenish One Ton Depot as well, and later come and meet the polar team on March 1. Now, there was more emphasis placed on the first order than the second.
L: So replenish the Depot.
A: Yep. Not to say there wasn't an expectation that the dogs would come, but the focus was obviously to replenish the depot. So I said Meares does return on Terra Nova in March 1912. Because Scott had known that Meares might resign from the expedition, he asked another member, Edward Atkinson, to bring the dogs himself. So when the time came for Atkinson to leave with the dogs to replenish the depot, he was unable to do so because he had just been rescuing Lieutenant Evans, who, as mentioned, had had scurvy on the way back. So instead, he asked Cherry to go. So Cherry left with Dimitri Gerov, who as mentioned was the Russian dog handler, and they went to one time dapper, and ended up waiting there for Scott instead of going further south. So part of the reasoning behind this is that there was supposedly a blizzard that hit them, which obviously was happening quite constantly here. And they apparently lacked enough dog food for them to go further to meet Scott, so if they'd gone to meet Scott further south they probably would have had to kill some of the dogs and then pick up Scott and then go back. So instead, they waited for one week at One Ton Depot and then eventually went back to camp instead. At this point, they didn't know that they were essentially a rescue team. Like they knew that Scott had wanted more people to meet him, but they didn't know how bad things were for Scott, so they made the decision instead to just return to base
L: the wrong decision, which I'm sure they lived with forever.
A: 100%. So Cherry, as mentioned, did write a book after this. He did not mention anything about what happened with the dogs at this point, but then he addressed it later in a foreword that he wrote to a later edition of the book, and it made it very clear that he was living with the guilt of that. And obviously, there had been quite a lot of pressure publicly from people who did put the blame on him a little bit.
L: Yeah, I mean, in fairness to him, he wasn't even supposed to be with the dogs.
A: Yeah, he was 25 and a junior zoologist, this was not something that he had expected to have to do. So that was generally speaking the debate around the dog teams. And then the other causes were pretty expected given what you've heard so far. So obviously, there was bad weather. Susan Solomon, who's one of the writers I largely based my research on, she's atmospheric chemist, and she has argued quite extensively that meteorologically the weather was quite difficult at this point. And that's part of the reason why Scott and his team was struggling so much.
L: Yeah, it was just purely unlucky.
A: Exactly. It was really cold and the blizzards were quite bad. They also had, as mentioned, a transport issue, so losing the first ledge when they had tried to arrive in Antarctica was bad enough, but they also had oil leaking from canisters at the depots. So each depot they went to there was less oil and fuel than they thought there should be.
L: Oh no
A: Yeah. And obviously, there was the decision to use ponies, sledges and man hauling as opposed to dogs and skis as Amundsen had done.
L: Yeah. Which I would honestly just chalk up to a lack of experience. It was, you know, they fundamentally misunderstood the weaknesses that the ponies and the sledges would have in a situation in which the dogs were obviously the key contributor
A: Yeah, yeah. So I think Scott had had this idea that you couldn't take the dogs up Beardmore Glacier, and obviously that was proven untrue because Amundsen managed to do it. That being said, Amundsen had only 11 dogs survive of his original 55, so it didn't go well for the dogs, but that was a risk they had already known they were taking.
L: I'm sorry, I'm just absorbing that information for a second.
A: Yeah, 44 dogs died on Amundsen’s trip back
L: Which, obviously, as you said, was a known factor. But that being said, obviously, we can't give Scott too hard a time believing that the dogs couldn't make up the glacier, because apparently, most of the dogs didn't make it up and down the glacier with Amundsen
A: Yeah, well, exactly. One last problem they had, and this kind of comes hand in hand with the weather issues, is that they're sleeping bags were made of poor quality fur which started shedding during the journey. So the sleeping bags themselves became less and less capable of holding heat, which is part of the reason why they were getting really, really cold in their final days. And this, again, was something that they couldn't have realised until partway through the journey. And it had been known that previously Shackleton had struggled to find high quality sleeping bags made out of so it was something that they could have worked on better, but also wouldn't have known the impact of until it was too late as they did
L: Let me guess, Amundson had Norwegian sleeping bags and they were great.
A: Yeah. He was also, it seems, prepared for much worse temperatures than he actually experienced. So he in fact overshot how much fur and warm things he’d actually need for his expedition.
L: Yeah, because he was preparing to trek the Antarctic snows,
A: Yep, when it's negative 40 degrees!
L: Yeah, yeah.
A: So I’ll quickly summarise the sort of aftermath of this expedition and Scott's own reputation. Quite a few members of the expedition obviously had to join the war effort and World War One directly after this
L: Oh, boy
A: but for the most part they survive. As mentioned, Roald Amundsen’s achievement wasn't really recognised as much as it could have been. And then he would go on to disappear in 1928. Herbert Ponting, who had been the photographer on the journey, ended up releasing his footage as The Great White Silence, which was not a commercial success. So he eventually died with very little money and a lot of debts.
L: Yeah, wow.
A: Yeah. In 1948, there was a film released called Scott of the Antarctic, which was a hugely popular film and kind of revamped the heroism and the legend of these men. Obviously, this was in the post World War Two era, so it was a ripe period for people to kind of be refilled with, like, nationalist fervour. And there was a lot of pride again, around Scott and his achievements. I previously mentioned Roland Huntford as being one of the major critics of Scott, and so his book on the expedition called Scott and Amundson was released in 1979. It was the first sort of major revisionist approach to the expeditions. That means the first work to really flip on its head the whole narrative and start to attack Scott, and specifically describe him as a ‘heroic bungler’, in quotes, which became the main term that people would then use for Scott for quite a while afterwards.
L: I understand that perspective. I do disagree with it.
A: Yeah, I agree with you. I think it goes way too far the other way. Several works followed this along the same vein, until the early 2000s, which is when people started to revise the revisionist approach. So we have Susan Solomon's book, which I mentioned in 2001, which uses science to analyse the conditions during the expedition. And she's not totally uncritical of Scott, but she's way more sympathetic, and she describes herself in the introduction to the book as a humanist and trying to understand their experiences as another human being, you know? Then there’s Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who's obviously a very famous explorer in his own right, and in 2003 he wrote a book that directly refuted Huntford’s, and his was also very sympathetic to Scott. This sympathetic tone to Scott was then sort of rounded off by David Crane’s book in 2005, which argued that Scott's life and achievements had been totally obscured by the legends and the mythologies surrounding what happened, and so he tried to kind of get back to the base of like, understanding why everything happened the way it did, and reassess it on different grounds. So generally speaking, I personally agree with a lot of what Susan Solomon writes, I think Ranulph Fiennes sometimes goes a bit too far, and I haven't read David Crane’s book. But I think trying to understand what happened to them as a humanist and accepting that, obviously, there were mistakes made, and they were flawed, but they were also human beings who died. That being said, it is important to at least briefly remember that all of this occurred within the kind of context of the British Empire, right? So unlike with, say, Arctic exploration, we aren't coming across indigenous peoples who Scott and his buddies can mistreat, so the actual instances of racism or a sort of colonial mentality are less frequent, but it's still there, and a lot of the writings and lot of they're reasoning behind reaching the pole ‘for Britain’ and so on. And in fact, in Scott’s final message to the public, which I quoted part of at the very beginning of the podcast, he does also end it with: ‘surely a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for’
L: My boy, why'd you have to go in and ruin it?
A: I know, he specifically ends by saying we need to provide for our colonies, because obviously, this is 1912, and there are still many of them. This sort of tone continues in The Great White Silence, the film I mentioned, which starts with a card because it's a silent film. But it begins with a card that says: ‘I wish that every British boy could see this film for it would help to foster the spirit of adventure on which the Empire was founded’
L: Yeah, okay. So this is essentially one of those things where yeah, it might not have been like, directly colonial in that they weren't literally going and setting a flag in a foreign nation, and killing its people, but they were still doing it for pure and simple colonial reasons.
A: Yeah. And I think what really brought this back to me was another moment in The Great White Silence, which is not super important, obviously, to the general story of what happened to them, but I think it's significant just to mention. It seems a bit arbitrary, But they had this cat on the ship that was a kind of Expedition mascot, and obviously it’s pretty normal for ships to have cats because they have rat problems, that kind of thing.
L: Adorable. I love this cat already.
A: Oh…
L: oh, no, am I not gonna love the cat in the next 20 seconds?
A: to be fair the cat did not commit any crimes, they were committed through the cat.
L: Oh no
A: So the cat was a black cat, and in the documentary, they named the cat and kind of show it doing all these things and presenting this as whimsical and it's like, ‘oh, look how sweet this cat is on our expedition’.
L: Ana please tell me they didn't call the cat what I think they called it
A: they called the cat the N word
L: ****. Jesus.
A: Yeah.
L: I can't swear, I just swore again.
A: Yeah… And because it's a silent film, they have to show this written out in title cards. So I was sitting there like, ‘oh... that's that word…. about six times over’. It's really tough.
L: Yeah, you know, you really successfully made me forget that this was in 1912 and all of these people were white.
A: I know. Because you do really... like obviously I still sympathise with them and what happened to them, and I don't know who named the cat, but like, you need to remember the context of everything that happened.
L: Yeah, I mean, I think the context that we've established now is that it was 100% a colonial ideal for the British to reach the South Pole first, even though they didn't end up finding the Northwest Passage or reaching the South Pole or reaching the North Pole first, apparently, that was all one Norwegian guy, they still were very heavily dedicated to that ideal, with no critical ability to look at that and be like ‘yo, maybe not’.
A: Yeah. Alright. So before we have a quick little toast to Scott and everyone with our Shackleton whiskey, I have a fun fact, that's really just personal to us, but I think is gonna slightly blow your mind.
L: Alright then, lay it on me. I'm ready.
A: Okay, so reminding listeners that we are in fact cousins, so we share one side of our family.
L: Yeah
A: We are related by marriage to Captain Oates.
L: Are you ******* with me right now?
A: No
[laughter]
L: No you're ******* with me
A: I’m absolutely not! Okay so I have to find the exact details and I won't give names away, but an aunt is helping me with this
L: Amazing
A: I found this out from dad who was told by grandpa that it's obviously not by blood, but I think it was something like Oates’ sister married someone that we are directly related to
L: Yeah. Whoa.
A: Yeah
L: Again, you really buried the lead there
A: I was so excited to tell you. I thought you might have already known! But I realised as we were talking, I was like, ‘Oh, he has no idea who Oates is. Oh… oh, yes.’
L: I had no idea, it's crazy.
A: Goes without saying I don't have like the literal evidence in front of me because we need to do more digging but quite a few people in the family have said this is a fact and I think from the people who have dug into it they've seemed pretty certain on it so...
L: We’ll put it in the show notes if we find this.
A: We don’t want to be doxxed
L: We will not put it in the show notes. Yeah, we're gonna need to do some bleeping because I swore.
[laughter]
A: I knew you would, it was so funny
L: Okay, well with that revelation, that I'm extremely excited to look more into, I think we will wrap up with our Mayday score for the Scott expedition. Firstly, we will list out some moments that we consider Mayday moments. I currently have four listed, but you can you can throw some in if you'd like.
A: Well, yeah. Tell me yours. And I'll like, say if there's anything else I want to kind of add into it.
L: Yeah, yeah. So my first one is when they chose not to walk the additional 48km to where they should have put One Ton Depot and instead turned around, and then like, got stuck on the ice and all of their ponies got eaten by killer whales?
A: Yes. So we counting that as one Mayday moment, or two?
L: I’m counting that as one Mayday moment, because it wasn’t a mayday moment, it was just like a foreshadowing moment when they turned around.
A: Yes. Okay.
L: Yeah, the Mayday moment was when the ponies were being eaten by the killer whales.
L: Yeah, that was pretty bad.
A: There's actually some really good descriptions in his journal of the water churning up around them on the ice while the killer whales were kind of circling.
L: Yeah, horrifying.
A: Yeah. As we said, the killer whales didn't directly kill the horses, it was more than the men realised they wouldn't be able to get the horses from one ice floe to another, so they killed them and left them for the killer whales to eat.
L: Yes. My second Mayday moment is when the dog team didn't arrive on March 1st. I know there was like, some other times in there when things were going poorly, but I felt like up until that moment, there was a sense of like ‘no, help is still coming, we can still push through.
A: Yeah, completely. And that's definitely the tone that they had.
L: My third is actually incredibly heartbreaking, obviously, and it was the moment when Scott asked the doctor Wilson to distribute the opioids in case the worst happened. And the fourth one, equally tragic, is just those last days, when 18km away from One Ton Depot and they hadn't made it. So yeah, that's my four mayday moments that I think were really all turning points for the worse.
A: Yeah. Yeah, I definitely agree with those four moments, because I think there's too many little things that contributed to what happened, but they don't count as a whole moment. You know, like, the fuel canisters. And the fact they didn't have quite enough food and everything. Like, it's actually four turning point moments, within in a lot of bad things.
L: Yeah.
A: So we've got our four Mayday moments now, officially. How many maydays would you give it out of three?
L: Yeah, as awful as everything was, and I think my initial instinct was to give it a three because of that factor, I think I'm gonna give it a two.
A: Yeah. Yeah, I think two is a solid choice. Obviously, it was very tragic. But a lot of things that started to go wrong did happen in quite a short span, at the very end, right. Obviously, there were things throughout the expedition that were kind of going badly, but the real turning points were all in a short period. And for the most part, the majority of Expedition members lived and did fulfil whatever scientific experiments or research they wanted to do.
L: Absolutely. I think as disasters go, it's certainly... I mean, I could count right now on two hands more substantial and significant disasters.
A: Yeah, this is more of a, I think, very sad story. And that was partly because we have the accounts, particularly Scott's own journal. So you do get very close to them. And particularly having now like watched The Great White Silence and seen footage of them talking and living their lives, and at one point, you know, cutting each other's hair and that kind of thing, you do get really close to them as individuals and kind of sympathise quite a bit, which increases the tragedy feeling of it. But then you also have expeditions or other events in future where much larger numbers of people die, but we don't have the same kind of record of it. So you don't feel the deaths as keenly.
L: Yeah. And then you remember that they called their cat the N word.
A: Yeah. There's really some moments where you're like, ‘oh, wow, yeah, you were all... imperialists. Who were flawed and had a lot of things going on.
L: I think we're in agreement. That's four mayday moments, a mayday rating of two, and currently, it's sitting at the top of our mating rankings list. We'll see how Bounty slots in there in two weeks time for our episode on the HMS Bounty, and whatever was going on there.
A: I cannot wait to find out. To finish us off, we'll do a toast with our Shackleton whiskey. So here's to Scott, Bowers, Wilson, Evans and Oates.
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 and twitter @themaydaypod or 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 and review.
L: Look out for our next episode on the Mutiny on the Bounty on Wednesday, sixth of October wherever you get your podcasts.