The Worst Journey in the World Apsley Cherry-Garrard (novel books to read TXT) 📖

by men on foot dragging sledges, or by men on sledges dragged by dogs, mules or ponies; nor will depots be laid in that way. The pack will not, I hope, be broken through by any old coal-burning ship that can be picked up in the secondhand market. Specially built ships, and enough of them; specially engined tractors and aeroplanes; specially trained men and plenty of them, will all be needed if the work is to be done in any sort of humane and civilized fashion; and Cabinet ministers and voters alike must learn to value knowledge that is not baited by suffering and death. My own bolt is shot; I do not suppose I shall ever go south again before I go west; but if I do it will be under proper and reasonable conditions. I may not come back a hero; but I shall come back none the worse; for I repeat, the Antarctic, in moderation as to length of stay, and with such accommodation as is now easily within the means of modern civilized Powers, is not half as bad a place for public service as the worst military stations on the equator. I hope that by the time Scott comes home⁠—for he is coming home: the Barrier is moving, and not a trace of our funeral cairn was found by Shackleton’s men in 1916⁠—the hardships that wasted his life will be only a horror of the past, and his via dolorosa a highway as practicable as Piccadilly.

And now let me come down to tin tacks. No matter how well the thing is done in future, its organizers will want to know at first all we can tell them about oil, about cold, and about food. First, as to oil.

Scott complains of a shortage of oil at several of his last depots. There is no doubt that this shortage was due to the perishing of the leather washers of the tins which contained the paraffin oil. All these tins had been subjected to the warmth of the sun in summer and the autumn temperatures, which were unexpectedly cold. In his Voyage of the Discovery Scott wrote as follows of the tins in which they drew their oil when sledging:

“Each tin had a small cork bung, which was a decided weakness; paraffin creeps in the most annoying manner, and a good deal of oil was wasted in this way, especially when the sledges were travelling over rough ground and were shaken or, as frequently happened, capsized. It was impossible to make these bungs quite tight, however closely they were jammed down, so that in spite of a trifling extra weight a much better fitting would have been a metallic screwed bung. To find on opening a fresh tin of oil that it was only three-parts full was very distressing, and of course meant that the cooker had to be used with still greater care.”349 Amundsen wrote of his paraffin: “We kept it in the usual cans but they proved too weak; not that we lost any paraffin, but Bjaaland had to be constantly soldering to keep them tight.”350

Our own tins were furnished with the metallic screwed stoppers which Scott recommended. There was no trouble reported351 until we came up to One Ton Camp when on the Search Journey. Here was the depot of food and oil which I had laid in the previous autumn for the Polar Party, stowed in a canvas “tank” which was buried beneath seven feet of snow; the oil was placed on the top of the snow, in order that the red tins might prove an additional mark for the depot. When we dug out the tank the food inside was almost uneatable owing to the quantity of paraffin which had found its way down through seven feet of snow during the winter and spring.

We then found the Polar Party and learned of the shortage of oil. After our return to Cape Evans someone was digging about the camp and came across a wooden case containing eight one-gallon tins of paraffin. These had been placed there in September 1911, to be landed at Cape Crozier by the Terra Nova when she came down. The ship could not take them: they were snowed up during the winter, lost and forgotten, until dug up fifteen months afterwards. Three tins were full, three empty, one a third full and one two-thirds full.

There can be no doubt that the oil, which was specially volatile, tended to vaporize and escape through the stoppers, and that this process was accelerated by the perishing, and I suggest also the hardening and shrinking, of the leather washers. Another expedition will have to be very careful on this point: they might reduce the risk by burying the oil.

The second point about which something must be said is the unexpected cold met by Scott on the Barrier, which was the immediate cause of the disaster. “No one in the world would have expected the temperatures and surfaces which we encountered at this time of the year.⁠ ⁠… It is clear that these circumstances come on very suddenly, and our wreck is certainly due to this sudden advent of severe weather, which does not seem to have any satisfactory cause.”352

They came down the glacier in plus temperatures: nor was there anything abnormal for more than a week after they got on to the Barrier. Then there came a big drop to a −37° minimum on the night of February 26. It is significant that the sun began to dip below the southern horizon at midnight about this time. “There is no doubt the middle of the Barrier is a pretty awful locality,” wrote Scott.

Simpson, in his meteorological report, has little doubt that the temperatures met by the Polar Party were abnormal. The records “clearly bring to light the possibility of great cold at an extremely early period in the year