Chapter II

In November, 1893, a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society was held, and the duties of the projected British expedition were stated. The first duty was "to determine the nature and extent of the Antarctic continent;" the fifth was "to obtain as complete a series as possible of magnetic and meteorological observations." Such an expedition was intended both to encourage maritime enterprise and to add to the world's knowledge. From the outset the promoters had decided that their expedition should be under naval control, but the Government could not be persuaded to take charge of it. The Admiralty, however, assisted both with the loan of instruments and by granting leave to officers and men on full pay.

Innumerable obstacles continued to hamper the promoters on every side, but they were slowly removed, and at last the ship was launched at Dundee in March, 1901, and christened the _Discovery_.

Sir Clements Markham, fourteen years before, had, in his own mind, selected the fittest commander if an expedition to the South ever became practicable. The name of this commander was Robert Falcon Scott, and after much opposition had been overcome--opposition which Sir Clements described as "harder to force a way through than the most impenetrable of ice-packs"--Scott's appointment was confirmed. A great attack upon the Antarctic regions was about to be made, but it is worthy of record that in the instructions issued to Captain Scott no mention of the South Pole as an objective was made.

By July the labour of preparation for the expedition was almost finished, and on August 5, 1901, the _Discovery_ was visited by King Edward VII. and Queen Alexandra, and then started on her adventurous voyage. We can easily understand Scott's anxiety to be up and away, for he had no Polar experience to help and guide him, and his desire to justify the confidence placed in him must have been intense.

In the _Discovery_, in addition to Scott himself, were several men whose names were destined to become famous in the history of Polar exploration. Ernest H. Shackleton was a second-lieutenant; Ernest A. Wilson was described as surgeon, artist, and vertebrate zoologist; Edgar Evans was a petty officer; Frank Wild and Thomas Crean were A.B.'s; William Lashley was a stoker. Surely the nucleus of a goodly company.

Lyttelton, New Zealand, had been chosen for the headquarters of the expedition in the South, and the _Discovery_ arrived there on 30th November. She stayed for three weeks to re-fit and take in provisions, and then started upon the next stage of her eventful journey. The Antarctic Circle was crossed on 3rd January, and soon afterwards the pack was on all sides of the ship; but she behaved splendidly, and Scott was delighted with the way she forced herself through the ice.

Scott's original intention had been that the _Discovery_ should not winter in the Antarctic, but that, having landed a party of men, she should return northward before the ice made such a journey impossible. A hut had been provided for this party, but in February a spot was found in McMurdo Sound in which it was thought that the ship would pass the winter in safety. Consequently Scott decided to use the _Discovery_ as his headquarters, and to utilize the hut for other purposes.

The task of erecting the huts (in addition to the main hut there were two smaller ones for magnetic work) was difficult, but it was eventually accomplished, and the party began to settle down to spend the approaching winter. Before, however, the winter set in, Scott, knowing how ignorant he and his companions were of sledging, was anxious to gain as much experience as possible. And the result of the sledging expeditions that were made only showed how urgently this experience was needed. "Even at this time [early in March]," Scott wrote, "I was conscious how much there was to be learnt, and felt that we must buy our experience through many a discomfort; and on looking back I am only astonished that we bought that experience so cheaply, for clearly there were the elements of catastrophe as well as of discomfort in the disorganized condition in which our sledge-parties left the ship."*

* _The Voyage of the "Discovery,"_ page 170.

When the _Discovery_ was brought into McMurdo Sound there was good reason to suppose that she would soon be frozen in. But weeks passed before the sea became frozen, and until the ship was firmly fixed in the ice there was always a chance that she might be driven away by a gale and be unable to return. This uncertainty hampered operations for some time, and it was not until the last days of March, 1902, that the ship was satisfactorily frozen in.

The sun departed at the end of April, and during the long winter that followed the party of explorers had much to occupy them and to discuss. Scott had taken dogs with him for sledging purposes, but although he knew that they must increase his radius of action, he always detested the idea of using them because of the suffering that must necessarily be caused. But the question of using dogs was only one of the many problems in connection with sledging that was debated during that Antarctic winter.

In judging the journeys that followed in the spring, it is to be remembered that as far as the Antarctic regions are concerned they were pioneer efforts, and also that the conditions of Antarctic sledging differ considerably from those of the Arctic. In these journeys Scott and his companions were taught lessons that were afterwards of the greatest value to other explorers as well as to themselves--lessons that nothing except experience could teach.

The journey that Scott, with Wilson, Shackleton, and several dogs, began on 2nd November with the object of pushing as far south as possible, was accompanied at the outset by a supporting party; but this party turned back by the 15th, and Scott, Wilson, and Shackleton had immediate cause to know how strenuous a task they had before them. The dogs were already causing anxiety, and were quite unable to do the work expected from them. Relay work, which meant that each mile had to be travelled three times, became the order of the day, and in consequence the advance towards the South was greatly hindered. Soon afterwards the men themselves began to suffer from blistered noses, cracked lips, and painful eyes; but on the 21st Scott took a meridian altitude, and found the latitude to be 80° 1'.

In spite of all discomforts and anxieties, Scott was in a happy mood that night when he wrote: "All our charts of the Antarctic regions show a plain white circle beyond the eightieth parallel.... It has always been our ambition to get inside that white space, and now we are there the space can no longer be a blank; this compensates for a lot of trouble."

As the advance laboriously continued, the condition of the dogs, to Scott's poignant sorrow, went from bad to worse, and by 21st December the question of turning back had to be considered. At this time additional anxiety was caused by Shackleton, who was showing symptoms of scurvy; but Christmas Day was in sight, and as on that festival the travellers had decided to have a really satisfying meal, they resolved to push on farther.

Their meal on Christmas Day put new life into the party; but they realized all too acutely that their food supplies were so inadequate that, if they were to continue the advance they must be prepared to face the risk of famine. There were, however, strong incentives to urge them on their way. Each day took them farther and farther into regions hitherto untrodden by the feet of men. Who can blame them for taking the risks that were involved in their determination to continue the march?

But on 27th December, Wilson, whose industry in sketching and determination not to give in were beyond praise, was suffering so severely from snow-blindness that he had to march blindfold; and at last the decision to turn back had to be made. Observations taken at their last camp showed that they had reached between 82° 16' and 82° 17' S.--a finer record than Scott anticipated, after he had realized that the dogs were unable to fulfill the hopes placed in them.

The return march was a prolonged period of suspense. By January 9, 1903, only four out of the nineteen dogs which had started on the journey were alive, and on the 15th the last of them had to be killed. "I think," Scott wrote, "we could all have wept." Even more serious was the fact that at this time Shackleton became seriously ill.

A grim struggle followed, for although Shackleton showed unending courage he was suffering severely from scurvy, and Scott and Wilson, who were themselves attacked in a lesser degree by this disease, often had cause to wonder whether this return journey was not beyond their powers. It was with feelings of profound thankfulness that, at the beginning of February, Scott and his companions reached the ship. For ninety-three days they had been on the march, and during that time they had travelled 960 statute miles.

When the explorers reached their goal they found that the relief ship, the _Morning_, had arrived, and Shackleton returned in her; but the _Discovery_, after being so reluctant to freeze firmly into the ice, refused entirely to thaw out, and consequently Scott and most of his original party spent a second winter in the Antarctic. During this additional year Scott, with Edgar Evans and Lashley as his companions, made a wonderful western journey, in which adventures enough to last ordinary men for a lifetime were almost part of the daily routine.

Not until February, 1904, was the _Discovery_ freed from the ice, and on 10th September she reached Spithead after an absence from England of over three years. In those years a crop of most useful information had been gathered, and many geographical discoveries had been made. Among the latter were King Edward Land, Ross Island, and the Victoria Mountains, and--most important of all--the great ice-cap on which the South Pole is situated.

Not for some years yet was the South Pole to reveal its secret, but Scott's first expedition may truthfully be said to have shown the way towards that revelation. In the years to come Amundsen frankly admitted how carefully he and his companions studied the accounts of Scott's and Shackleton's expeditions.