A First Rate Tragedy (19 page)

Oates spent the post-Boer War years indulging his passion for ‘the only thing that makes this life endurable’ – horses and hunting. His military career took him to Ireland, a huntsman’s dream, and then to Egypt where he took up polo, not altogether successfully, and on to India where he devoted himself to his pack of hounds. However, these activities hid a restlessness. There are echoes here of Scott’s own agnostic anxiety about ‘what is it all for?’ Oates contemplated leaving the army, irritated by what he saw as the inefficiency and stupidity of others and frustrated by the difficulty of getting on. He also felt that life was not sufficiently challenging and that Antarctic exploration would suit him better than soldiering on in India. A fellow officer later analysed
his motives: ‘He wanted something that would require a good deal of sacrifice on his part. I think he wanted adventure and he wanted something that would be a tough proposition.’
¹⁰

In January 1910 Oates wrote to his mother from base hospital in Delhi, where he was recovering from eating a bad tin of fish while on manoeuvres:

I have now a great confession to make. I offered my services to the Antarctic expedition which starts this summer from home under Scott. They wrote and told me to produce my references which I did and they appear to have been so flattering that I have been practically accepted. Now I don’t know whether you will approve or not but I feel that I ought to have consulted you before I sent in my name. I did not do so as I thought there was very little chance of my being taken (as cavalry officers are not generally taken for these shows) . . . Scott however appears to be a man who can make up his mind and having decided he told me so at once which was the first intimation I had I was likely to go.

What Oates had actually offered was £1,000 to the expedition’s coffers and his services for free. He added in naïve mitigation that: ‘The climate is very healthy although inclined to be cold.’
¹¹
Apart from worrying about Caroline Oates’s reaction he was also concerned to find ‘a decent chap’ to take his hounds. He hoped they would not have to go to ‘some native prince, they hate the sight of a black man’.
¹²

The War Office agreed to release Oates and so, after a great deal of stubbornness from Oates, did his regiment. Teddy Evans’s
description of the young man who presented himself captures his charm and his eccentricity:

We had pictured a smartly-turned-out young cavalry officer . . . Our future companion turned up with a bowler characteristically on the back of his head and a very worn ‘Aquascutum’ buttoned closely round his neck, hiding his collar, and showing a strong, clean-shaven, weather-beaten face with kindly brown eyes indicative of his fine personality. ‘I’m Oates,’ he said.
¹³

His job was to look after the ponies which, on the basis of Shackleton’s less than fully successful experience, Scott had decided somewhat quixotically would be the core of his transport plans. It was, however, a decision which puzzled his great rival. Amundsen later wrote: ‘We had heard that Scott, relying on his own experience, and that of Shackleton, had come to the conclusion that Manchurian ponies were superior to dogs on the Barrier. Among those who were acquainted with the Eskimo dog, I do not suppose I was the only one who was startled on first hearing this.’
¹⁴

Oates showed such a capacity for hard work that Evans persuaded Scott to enrol him as a midshipman so he could stay aboard the expedition’s vessel rather than going to Siberia to select the expedition’s dogs and ponies. Scott agreed but it was a foolish decision he would have cause to regret and perhaps made in a moment’s weakness to appease the overpowering Evans. Oates knew far more about horseflesh than the man to whom the task was entrusted, Cecil Meares. However, Oates duly signed on as a midshipman at a salary of one shilling a month at the West India Docks and presented such a strange appearance that the seamen
‘never for a moment thought he was an officer for they were usually so smart! . . . but oh! he was a gentleman, quite a gentleman, and always a gentleman!’
¹⁵
The appearance he usually presented was of a ‘stableman with unusual good manners’.
¹⁶

Oates soon made the acquaintance of another of his future comrades – as short and ugly as he was tall and handsome, as quick at figures as he was slow – indeed he chaffed Oates that his thoughts were as slow as snails climbing up a cabbage stalk. This was Henry Bowers of the Royal Indian Marine who was quickly to be nicknamed ‘Birdie’ by his friends because of his huge and distinctive beak-like nose. In a letter to his mother he complained, ‘I was of course the first to pick up a nickname. Why, I don’t know – it has always been the same. I was “Polly” at Sidcup, “Beakie” at Streatham . . . “Nosy” on the
Fox
and now I am “Birdie”.’
¹⁷
One of his expedition colleagues, Frank Debenham, left this endearing description: ‘Imagine a fat little man with a perfectly immense nose and red bristly hair, unquenchable spirits and energy, and marvellous endurance.’ Born in 1883 he was just three years younger than Oates and came of old Scottish seafaring stock. His father died while he was still a child, leaving Birdie to be brought up by his kind and deeply religious mother to whom he was always devoted. Though he was somewhat troubled by reading Darwin’s
The Descent of Man
, he shared his mother’s fundamentalist evangelical faith, was a keen reader of the
Watchtower
and regarded the liberal Church of England as ‘the daughter of the harlot’. Bowers grew up with a passion for butterflies and a very real terror of spiders. During the voyage to the Antarctic, he would write of an encounter in his bunk with a spider. ‘I would rather dive on the back of a sixteen-foot shark than face that awful thing.’ He was also, like so many boys of his day, captivated by stories of faraway places. When he was just seven he wrote a letter
to an Eskimo: ‘Dear Eskimo, Please write and tell me about your land. I want to go there some day. Your friend Henry.’
¹⁸
His fascination with the unknown remained with him all his life.

Unlike Oates’s, Birdie’s school reports were peppered with praise about his hard work and conscientiousness. In September 1897 his mother allowed him to enrol as a cadet in the
Worcester
and he went into the Merchant Navy. In 1905 he left it for the Royal India Marine Service as a sub lieutenant. Such a transfer was a rare privilege – the Indian Marine was second only to the Royal Navy – but Bowers had worked hard for it, submitting his application very soon after leaving the
Worcester
. As he once wrote to his sister, ‘I leave no stone unturned, and I leave nothing to chance.’
¹⁹
He was a very purposeful young man and one of his driving forces was, rather like Scott, the desire to ensure a degree of security for his mother, who had little money.

Bowers learned to navigate the tortuous Irrawaddy River and did so well in the Marine that at just twenty-three years old he found himself in temporary command of a ship. His comrades commented on his seemingly perennial good fortune, but one of them predicted accurately enough, ‘Your bad luck will come all at once.’
²⁰
However, at this stage in his life his good luck also extended to his health. In a notoriously unhealthy part of the world he remained untouched by malaria or any serious ailment. His only worry was that he could not get his weight below about twelve stones which he felt was too much for his five-foot-four-inch frame. However, he was immensely fit, boasting that he had more energy than he knew what to do with. His passion for physical fitness probably resulted, at least in part, from a desire to compensate for his size and looks. Though short, he was determined to show that he was strong.

Birdie’s experiences in Burma and India confirmed his
imperialist views. In 1907 he wrote to his mother about a prophecy that the British would lose India ‘They [The Indians] will never conquer us unless we degenerate at a greater rate of speed than we are at present disintegrating’ and then added prophetically himself ‘perhaps a “Labour” government will get into power and give them self-government’. Imbued with the xenophobic as well as religious prejudices of his age, he believed his country had given ‘peace, famine relief, protection and a degree of happiness thrown in’ to ‘the coolie’ and he loved it profoundly, expressing the sentiments that just four years later would send millions of young men to face the guns in France and Flanders:

I love my country, and trust that I shall not be found wanting when the day comes to act. That dear old country – I wonder if a fraction of its inhabitants appreciate its worth, or does it require a probation of long absences to show one that that little island is – under
any
circumstances of weather or anything else – the best, the very best place on God’s earth.
²¹

He regarded Germans as ‘sausage machines’ and dismissed the French as ‘Froggies’ – ‘the most gay, over-dressed, pleasure-sodden animals ever made in the image of God’ who at the forthcoming end of the world would see ‘their hopelessly flimsy castles and hopes dashed from them finally’. Another thing he wrote was ‘their food . . . all their dishes exude oil’.

Although he was enjoying life in the East his mind returned again and again to thoughts of the south. At one stage in his career, he had sailed within 3° of the Antarctic Circle and felt the lure: ‘. . . I have thought – as I thought then – that’s my mark! The Southern Continent. Reading Capt. Scott’s two volumes on
the ‘
Discovery
’ Expedition made me as keen as mustard. Perhaps my chance will come later.’
²²
He eagerly read the newspaper accounts of the departure of Shackleton’s expedition aboard the
Nimrod
. When his sister criticized him for having such foolhardy and vainglorious aspirations he rebuked her as a man of his age: ‘How can anyone in conjecture say it will be of no use to mankind to penetrate North or South to the Pole? . . . apart from all the magnetic or meteorological interest, is it nothing to a nation to produce men willing to undergo hardships and privation with practically no gain to themselves?’
²³

For the time being, though, Bowers had to content himself with pursuing smugglers in the Persian Gulf and playing intricate games of bluff and double bluff. However, luck again played its part. He met Sir Clements Markham, who agreed to recommend him for the expedition and managed to persuade his former commander on the
Worcester
to second the recommendation. As a result Birdie was offered a place without interview. Picked out of thousands of applicants, he felt that destiny had taken a hand. He wrote to his mother: ‘I am going to do a man’s work, which only a strong man could do . . .’
²⁴

Bowers’s prejudices, racial and religious, were of a theoretical sort and he was kind and considerate to all on a personal basis. His dependability, meticulous planning, cheerfulness and endless appetite for work soon impressed his new comrades. Teddy Evans described the incident which quickly became a legend:

Lieut. Bowers came home from the Indian Marine to begin his duties as Stores Officer [on the expedition’s ship] by falling down the main hatch on to the pig iron ballast. I did not witness this accident, and when Campbell reported the matter I am reported
to have said, “What a silly ass!” This may have been true, for coming all the way from Bombay to join us and then immediately falling down the hatch did seem a bit careless. However, when Campbell added that Bowers had not hurt himself my enthusiasm returned and I said “What a splendid fellow!”. Bowers fell nineteen feet without injuring himself in the slightest. This was only one of his narrow escapes and he proved himself to be about the toughest man amongst us.
²⁵

The other officers all came from the Royal Navy. They included the camera-shy naval surgeon Atkinson or ‘Atch’ who was soon ‘very thick’ with Oates and almost as laconic. Oates’s verdict on him was ‘He is an extraordinarily quiet man, he hardly ever speaks but is a capital chap and a first-rate boxer.’ Praise indeed. Teddy Evans marvelled that two such silent men managed to have a relationship at all. A second naval surgeon, G. Murray Levick, was also lent by the navy and the two of them were to be responsible for studying bacteriology and parasitology in addition to their medical duties. There were also two naval lieutenants. Harry Pennell, a lively energetic character, was appointed navigator and took charge of the ship’s magnetic work. Henry Rennick was made responsible for the hydrographical survey work and deep-sea sounding. Victor Campbell, a recently retired naval officer, was appointed chief officer and his mission was to lead a second party to Edward VII Land while Scott went for the Pole. In fact Campbell’s story was to be as remarkable as anything which befell Scott’s men.

The ship’s company included twenty-six naval petty officers and men. Five of the twelve who were to be in the shore parties were
old ‘Discoverys’ as Markham called the men who had sailed with Scott in 1901. They included William Lashly and Edgar Evans with whom Scott had shared a sleeping bag on ‘the terrible plateau’ and Thomas Crean, his coxswain who had been with him on the railway station platform when he heard the news of Shackleton’s failure to reach the Pole. Scott had been particularly determined to take Edgar Evans, writing to him in March 1910 that he had asked for his services and that ‘I expect you will be appointed in about a fortnight’s time, and I shall want you at the ship to help fitting her out.’
²⁶
Evans was no less eager to go. Apart from loyalty to Scott, it was an opportunity for him to make something of himself. Since the
Discovery
expedition Evans had married a local girl from the Gower, become a father and was now a highly competent naval gunnery instructor with a reputation for being a strict disciplinarian who had no time for shirkers but gave credit where it was due.