The Voyages of Captain Scott - Charles Turley
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[Page ii]
[Illustration: Captain Robert F. Scott R.N.
_J. Russell & Sons, Southsea, photographers_]
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THE VOYAGES OF CAPTAIN SCOTT
_Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's Last
Expedition'_
BY CHARLES TURLEY
Author of 'Godfrey Marten, Schoolboy,' 'A Band of Brothers,' etc.
With an introduction by
SIR J. M. BARRIE, BART.
Numerous illustrations in colour and black and white and a map
[Page v]
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY'
Chapter
I. The 'Discovery'.
II. Southward Ho!
III. In Search of Winter Quarters.
IV. The Polar Winter.
V. The Start of the Southern Journey.
VI. The Return.
VII. A Second Winter.
VIII. The Western Journey.
IX. The Return from the West.
X. Release.
THE LAST EXPEDITION
Chapter
Preface to 'Scott's Last Expedition'.
Biographical Note.
British Antarctic Expedition, 1910.
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I. Through Stormy Seas.
II. Depot Laying to One Ton Camp.
III. Perils.
IV. A Happy Family.
V. Winter.
VI. Good-bye to Cape Evans.
VII. The Southern Journey Begins.
VIII. On the Beardmore Glacier.
IX. The South Pole.
X. On the Homeward Journey.
XI. The Last March.
Search Party Discovers the Tent.
In Memoriam.
Farewell Letters.
Message to the Public.
Index.
[Page vii]
ILLUSTRATIONS
_PHOTOGRAVURE PLATE_
Portrait of Captain Robert F. Scott
_From a photograph by J. Russell & Son, Southsea_.
_COLOURED PLATES_
_From Water-Colour Drawings by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._.
Sledding.
Mount Erebus.
Lunar Corona.
'Birdie' Bowers reading the thermometer on the ramp.
_DOUBLE PAGE PLATE_
Panorama at Cape Evans.
Berg in South Bay.
_FULL PAGE PLATES_
Robert F. Scott at the age of thirteen as a naval cadet.
The 'Discovery'.
Looking up the gateway from Pony Depot.
Pinnacled ice at mouth of Ferrar Glacier.
Pressure ridges north side of Discovery Bluff.
The 'Terra Nova' leaving the Antarctic.
Pony Camp on the barrier.
Snowed-up tent after three days' blizzard.
Pitching the double tent on the summit.
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Adelie Penguin on nest.
Emperor Penguins on sea-ice.
Dog party starting from Hut Point.
Dog lines.
Looking up the gateway from Pony Depot.
Looking south from Lower Glacier depot,
Man hauling camp, 87th parallel.
The party at the South Pole.
'The Last Rest'.
Facsimile of the last words of Captain Scott's Journal.
Track chart of main southern journey.
[Page 1]
INTRODUCTION
BY SIR J. M. BARRIE, BART.
On the night of my original meeting with Scott he was but lately
home from his first adventure into the Antarctic and my chief
recollection of the occasion is that having found the entrancing
man I was unable to leave him. In vain he escorted me through the
streets of London to my home, for when he had said good-night I then
escorted him to his, and so it went on I know not for how long through
the small hours. Our talk was largely a comparison of the life of
action (which he pooh-poohed) with the loathsome life of those who
sit at home (which I scorned); but I also remember that he assured
me he was of Scots extraction. As the subject never seems to have
been resumed between us, I afterwards wondered whether I had drawn
this from him with a promise that, if his reply was satisfactory, I
would let him go to bed. However, the family traditions (they are
nothing more) do bring him from across the border. According to
them his great-great-grandfather was the Scott of Brownhead whose
estates were sequestered after the '45. His dwelling was razed
to the ground and he fled with his wife, to whom after some grim
privations a son was born in a fisherman's hut on September 14,
1745. This son eventually settled in Devon, where he prospered,
[Page 2]
for it was in the beautiful house of Oatlands that he died. He
had four sons, all in the Royal Navy, of whom the eldest had as
youngest child John Edward Scott, father of the Captain Scott who
was born at Oatlands on June 6, 1868. About the same date, or perhaps
a little earlier, it was decided that the boy should go into the
Navy like so many of his for-bears.
I have been asked to write a few pages about those early days of
Scott at Oatlands, so that the boys who read this book may have
some slight acquaintance with the boy who became Captain Scott;
and they may be relieved to learn (as it holds out some chance
for themselves) that the man who did so many heroic things does
not make his first appearance as a hero. He enters history aged
six, blue-eyed, long-haired, inexpressibly slight and in velveteen,
being held out at arm's length by a servant and dripping horribly,
like a half-drowned kitten. This is the earliest recollection of
him of a sister, who was too young to join in a children's party
on that fatal day. But Con, as he was always called, had intimated
to her that from a window she would be able to see him taking a
noble lead in the festivities in the garden, and she looked; and
that is what she saw. He had been showing his guests how superbly
he could jump the leat, and had fallen into it.
Leat is a Devonshire term for a running stream, and a branch of
the leat ran through the Oatlands garden while there was another
branch, more venturesome, at the bottom of the fields. These were
the waters first ploughed by Scott, and he invented many ways of
being in them accidentally, it being forbidden
[Page 3]
to enter them of intent. Thus he taught his sisters and brother
a new version of the oldest probably of all pastimes, the game of
'Touch.' You had to touch 'across the leat,' and, with a little
good fortune, one of you went in. Once you were wet, it did not
so much matter though you got wetter.
An easy way of getting to the leat at the foot of the fields was
to walk there, but by the time he was eight Scott scorned the easy
ways. He invented parents who sternly forbade all approach to this
dangerous waterway; he turned them into enemies of his country and
of himself (he was now an admiral), and led parties of gallant tars
to the stream by ways hitherto unthought of. At foot of the avenue
was an oak tree which hung over the road, and thus by dropping from
this tree you got into open country. The tree was (at this time)
of an enormous size, with sufficient room to conceal a navy, and
the navy consisted mainly of the sisters and the young brother.
All had to be ready at any moment to leap from the tree and join
issue with the enemy on the leat. In the fields there was also a
mighty ocean, called by dull grown-ups 'the pond,' and here Scott's
battleship lay moored. It seems for some time to have been an English
vessel, but by and by he was impelled, as all boys are, to blow
something up, and he could think of nothing more splendid for his
purpose than the battleship. Thus did it become promptly a ship
of the enemy doing serious damage to the trade of those parts,
and the valiant Con took to walking about with lips pursed, brows
frowning as he cogitated how to remove the
[Page 4]
Terror of Devon. You may picture the sisters and brother trotting
by his side and looking anxiously into his set face. At last he
decided to blow the accursed thing up with gunpowder. His crew
cheered, and then waited to be sent to the local shop for a pennyworth
of gunpowder. But Con made his own gunpowder, none of the faithful
were ever told how, and on a great day the train was laid. Con applied
the match and ordered all to stand back. A deafening explosion was
expected, but a mere puff of flame was all that came; the Terror
of Devon, which to the unimaginative was only a painted plank,
still rode the waters. With many boys this would be the end of
the story, but not with Con. He again retired to the making of
gunpowder, and did not desist from his endeavors until he had blown
that plank sky-high.
His first knife is a great event in the life of a boy: it is probably
the first memory of many of them, and they are nearly always given
it on condition that they keep it shut. So it was with Con, and a
few minutes after he had sworn that he would not open it he was
begging for permission to use it on a tempting sapling. 'Very well,'
his father said grimly, 'but remember, if you hurt yourself, don't
expect any sympathy from me.' The knife was opened, and to cut
himself rather badly proved as easy as falling into the leat. The
father, however, had not noticed, and the boy put his bleeding
hand into his pocket and walked on unconcernedly. He was really
considerably damaged; and this is a good story of a child of seven
who all his life suffered extreme nausea from
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the sight of blood; even in the _Discovery_ days, to get accustomed
to 'seeing red,' he had to force himself to watch Dr. Wilson skinning
his specimens.
When he was about eight Con passed out of the hands of a governess,
and became a school-boy, first at a day school in Stoke Damerel
and later at Stubbington House, Fareham. He rode grandly between
Oatlands and Stoke Damerel on his pony, Beppo, which bucked in
vain when he was on it, but had an ingratiating way of depositing
other riders on the road. From what one knows of him later this
is a characteristic story. One day he dismounted to look over a
gate at a view which impressed him (not very boyish this), and when
he recovered from a brown study there was no Beppo to be seen. He
walked the seven miles home, but what was characteristic was that
he called at police-stations on the way to give practical details
of his loss and a description of the pony. Few children would have
thought of this, but Scott was naturally a strange mixture of the
dreamy and the practical, and never more practical than immediately
after he had been dreamy. He forgot place and time altogether when
thus abstracted. I remember the first time he dined with me, when
a number of well-known men had come to meet him, he arrived some
two hours late. He had dressed to come out, then fallen into one
of his reveries, forgotten all about the engagement, dined by himself
and gone early to bed. Just as he was falling asleep he remembered
where he should be, arose hastily and joined us as speedily as
possible. It was equally characteristic of him to say
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of the other guests that it was pleasant to a sailor to meet so
many interesting people. When I said that to them the sailor was
by far the most interesting person in the room he shouted with
mirth. It always amused Scott to find that anyone thought him a
person of importance.
[Illustration: ROBERT F. SCOTT AT THE AGE OF 13 AS A NAVAL CADET.]
I suppose everyone takes for granted that in his childhood, as later
when he made his great marches, Scott was muscular and strongly
built. This was so far from being the case that there were many
anxious consultations over him, and the local doctor said he could
not become a sailor as he could never hope to obtain the necessary
number of inches round the chest. He was delicate and inclined to
be pigeon-breasted. Judging from the portrait of him here printed,
in his first uniform as a naval cadet, all this had gone by the
time he was thirteen, but unfortunately there are no letters of
this period extant and thus little can be said of his years on
the _Britannia_ where 'you never felt hot in your bunk because you
could always twist, and sleep with your feet out at port hole.'
He became a cadet captain, a post none can reach who is not thought
well of by the other boys as well as by their instructors, but none
of them foresaw that he was likely to become anybody in particular.
He was still 'Old Mooney,' as his father had dubbed him, owing to
his dreamy mind; it was an effort to him to work hard, he cast a
wistful eye on 'slackers,' he was not a good loser, he was untidy
to the point of slovenliness, and he had a fierce temper. All this
I think has been proved to me up to the
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hilt, and as I am very sure that the boy of fifteen or so cannot
be very different from the man he grows into it leaves me puzzled.
The Scott I knew, or thought I knew, was physically as hard as
nails and flung himself into work or play with a vehemence I cannot
remember ever to have seen equaled. I have fished with him, played
cricket and football with him, and other games, those of his own
invention being of a particularly arduous kind, for they always
had a moment when the other players were privileged to fling a hard
ball at your undefended head. 'Slackness,' was the last quality
you would think of when you saw him bearing down on you with that
ball, and it was the last he asked of you if you were bearing down
on him. He was equally strenuous of work; indeed I have no clearer
recollection of him than his way of running from play to work or work
to play, so that there should be the least possible time between.
It is the 'time between' that is the 'slacker's' kingdom, and Scott
lived less in it than anyone I can recall. Again, I found him the
best of losers, with a shout of delight for every good stroke by
an opponent: what is called an ideal sportsman. He was very neat
and correct in his dress, quite a model for the youth who come
after him, but that we take as a matter of course; it is 'good
form' in the Navy. His temper I should have said was bullet-proof.
I have never seen him begin to lose it for a second of time, and
I have seen him in circumstances where the loss of it would have
been excusable.
However, 'the boy makes the man,' and Scott was
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none of those things I saw in him but something better. The faults
of his youth must have lived on in him as in all of us, but he
got to know they were there and he took an iron grip of them and
never let go his hold. It was this self-control more than anything
else that made the man of him of whom we have all become so proud.
I get many proofs of this in correspondence dealing with his manhood
days which are not strictly within the sphere of this introductory
note. The horror of slackness was turned into a very passion for
keeping himself 'fit.' Thus we find him at one time taking charge
of a dog, a 'Big Dane,' so that he could race it all the way between
work and home, a distance of three miles. Even when he was getting
the _Discovery_ ready and doing daily the work of several men, he
might have been seen running through the streets of London from
Savile Row or the Admiralty to his home, not because there was
no time for other method of progression, but because he must be
fit, fit, fit. No more 'Old Mooney' for him; he kept an eye for
ever on that gentleman, and became doggedly the most practical of
men. And practical in the cheeriest of ways. In 1894 a disastrous
change came over the fortunes of the family, the father's money
being lost and then Scott was practical indeed. A letter he wrote I
at this time to his mother, tenderly taking everything and everybody
on his shoulders, must be one of the best letters ever written by
a son, and I hope it may be some day published. His mother was the
great person of his early life, more to him even than his brother
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or his father, whom circumstances had deprived of the glory of
following the sailor's profession and whose ambitions were all
bound up in this son, determined that Con should do the big things
he had not done himself. For the rest of his life Con became the
head of the family, devoting his time and his means to them, not
in an it-must-be-done manner, but with joy and even gaiety. He
never seems to have shown a gayer front than when the troubles
fell, and at a farm to which they retired for a time he became
famous as a provider of concerts. Not only must there be no 'Old
Mooney' in him, but it must be driven out of everyone. His concerts,
in which he took a leading part, became celebrated in the district,
deputations called to beg for another, and once in these words, 'Wull
'ee gie we a concert over our way when the comic young gentleman
be here along?'
Some servants having had to go at this period, Scott conceived
the idea that he must even help domestically in the house, and
took his own bedroom under his charge with results that were
satisfactory to the casual eye, though not to the eyes of his sisters.
It was about this time that he slew the demon of untidiness so
far as his own dress was concerned and doggedly became a model
for still younger officers. Not that his dress was fine. While
there were others to help he would not spend his small means on
himself, and he would arrive home in frayed garments that he had
grown out of and in very tarnished lace. But neat as a pin. In
the days when he returned from
[Page 10]
his first voyage in the Antarctic and all England was talking of him,
one of his most novel adventures was at last to go to a first-class
tailor and be provided with a first-class suit. He was as elated by
the possession of this as a child. When going about the country
lecturing in those days he traveled third class, though he was
sometimes met at the station by mayors and corporations and red
carpets.
The hot tempers of his youth must still have lain hidden, but by
now the control was complete. Even in the naval cadet days of which
unfortunately there is so little to tell, his old friends who remember
the tempers remember also the sunny smile that dissipated them. When
I knew him the sunny smile was there frequently, and was indeed
his greatest personal adornment, but the tempers never reached
the surface. He had become master of his fate and captain of his
soul.
In 1886 Scott became a middy on the _Boadicea_, and later on various
ships, one of them the _Rover_, of which Admiral Fisher was at
that time commander. The Admiral has a recollection of a little
black pig having been found under his bunk one night. He cannot
swear that Scott was the leading culprit, but Scott was certainly
one of several who had to finish the night on deck as a punishment.
In 1888 Scott passed his examinations for sub-lieutenant, with
four first-class honours and one second, and so left his boyhood
behind. I cannot refrain however from adding as a conclusion to
these notes a letter from Sir Courtauld
[Page 11]
Thomson that gives a very attractive glimpse of him in this same
year:
'In the late winter a quarter of a century ago I had to find my
way from San Francisco to Alaska. The railway was snowed up and
the only transport available at the moment was an ill-found tramp
steamer. My fellow passengers were mostly Californians hurrying off
to a new mining camp and, with the crew, looked a very unpleasant lot
of ruffians. Three singularly unprepossessing Frisco toughs joined
me in my cabin, which was none too large for a single person. I was
then told that yet another had somehow to be wedged in. While I
was wondering if he could be a more ill-favored or dirtier specimen
of humanity than the others the last comer suddenly appeared--the
jolliest and breeziest English naval Second Lieutenant. It was Con
Scott. I had never seen him before, but we at once became friends
and remained so till the end. He was going up to join his ship
which, I think, was the _Amphion_, at Esquimault, B. C.
'As soon as we got outside the Golden Gates we ran into a full
gale which lasted all the way to Victoria, B. C. The ship was so
overcrowded that a large number of women and children were allowed
to sleep on the floor of the only saloon there was on condition
that they got up early, so that the rest of the passengers could
come in for breakfast and the other meals.
'I need scarcely say that owing to the heavy weather hardly a woman
was able to get up, and the
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saloon was soon in an indescribable condition. Practically no attempt
was made to serve meals and the few so-called stewards were themselves
mostly out of action from drink or sea-sickness.
'Nearly all the male passengers who were able to be about spent
their time drinking and quarrelling. The deck cargo and some of
our top hamper were washed away and the cabins got their share
of the waves that were washing the deck.
'Then it was I first knew that Con Scott was no ordinary human
being. Though at that time still only a boy he practically took
command of the passengers and was at once accepted by them as their
Boss during the rest of the trip. With a small body of volunteers
he led an attack on the saloon--dressed the mothers, washed the
children, fed the babies, swabbed down the floors and nursed the
sick, and performed every imaginable service for all hands. On
deck he settled the quarrels and established order either by his
personality, or, if necessary, by his fists. Practically by day
and night he worked for the common good, never sparing himself,
and with his infectious smile gradually made us all feel the whole
thing was jolly good fun.
'I daresay there are still some of the passengers like myself who,
after a quarter of a century, have imprinted on their minds the
vision of this fair-haired English sailor boy with the laughing
blue eyes who at that early age knew how to sacrifice himself for
the welfare and happiness of others.'
[Page 13]
THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY'
[Illustration: THE 'DISCOVERY'. Reproduced from a drawing by Dr.
E. A. Wilson.]
[Page 15]
CHAPTER I
THE _DISCOVERY_
Do ye, by star-eyed Science led, explore
Each lonely ocean, each untrodden shore.
In June, 1899, Robert Falcon Scott was spending his short leave in
London, and happened to meet Sir Clements Markham in the Buckingham
Palace Road. On that afternoon he heard for the first time of a
prospective Antarctic expedition, and on the following day he called
upon Sir Clements and volunteered to command it. Of this eventful
visit Sir Clements wrote: 'On June 5, 1899, there was a remarkable
coincidence. Scott was then torpedo lieutenant of the _Majestic_. I
was just sitting down to write to my old friend Captain Egerton[1]
about him, when he was announced. He came to volunteer to command
the expedition. I believed him to be the best man for so great a
trust, either in the navy or out of it. Captain Egerton's reply
and Scott's testimonials and certificates most fully confirmed
a foregone conclusion.'
[Footnote 1: Now Admiral Sir George Egerton, K.C.B.]
The tale, however, of the friendship between Sir
[Page 16]
Clements and Scott began in 1887, when the former was the guest of
his cousin, the Commodore of the Training Squadron, and made the
acquaintance of every midshipman in the four ships that comprised
it. During the years that followed, it is enough to say that Scott
more than justified the hopes of those who had marked him down
as a midshipman of exceptional promise. Through those years Sir
Clements had been both friendly and observant, until by a happy
stroke of fortune the time came when he was as anxious for this
Antarctic expedition to be led by Scott as Scott was to lead it. So
when, on June 30, 1900, Scott was promoted to the rank of Commander,
and shortly afterwards was free to undertake the work that was
waiting for him, one great anxiety was removed from the shoulders
of the man who had not only proposed the expedition, but had also
resolved that nothing should prevent it from going.
Great difficulties and troubles had, however, to be encountered
before the _Discovery_ could start upon her voyage. First and foremost
was the question of money, but owing to indefatigable efforts the
financial horizon grew clearer in the early months of 1899. Later
on in the same year Mr. Balfour expressed his sympathy with the
objects of the undertaking, and it was entirely due to him that
the Government eventually agreed to contribute L45,000, provided
that a similar sum could be raised by private subscriptions.
In March, 1900, the keel of the new vessel, that the
[Page 17]
special Ship Committee had decided to build for the expedition,
was laid in the yard of the Dundee Shipbuilding Company. A definite
beginning, at any rate, had been made; but very soon after Scott had
taken up his duties he found that unless he could obtain some control
over the various committees and subcommittees of the expedition, the
only day to fix for the sailing of the ship was Doomsday. A visit
to Norway, where he received many practical suggestions from Dr.
Nansen, was followed by a journey to Berlin, and there he discovered
that the German expedition, which was to sail from Europe at the same
time as his own, was already in an advanced state of preparation.
Considerably alarmed, he hurried back to England and found, as
he had expected, that all the arrangements, which were in full
swing in Germany, were almost at a standstill in England. The
construction of the ship was the only work that was progressing,
and even in this there were many interruptions from the want of
some one to give immediate decisions on points of detail.
A remedy for this state of chaos had to be discovered, and on November
4, 1900, the Joint Committee of the Royal Society and the Royal
Geographical Society passed a resolution, which left Scott practically
with a free hand to push on the work in every department, under a
given estimate of expenditure in each. To safeguard the interests
of the two Societies the resolution provided that this expenditure
should be supervised by a Finance Committee,
[Page 18]
and to this Committee unqualified gratitude was due. Difficulties
were still to crop up, and as there were many scientific interests
to be served, differences of opinion on points of detail naturally
arose, but as far as the Finance Committee was concerned, it is mere
justice to record that no sooner was it formed than its members
began to work ungrudgingly to promote the success of the undertaking.