Plymouth (13 page)

The doomed
Terra Nova
expedition at the South Pole: Robert F. Scott, Lawrence Oates, Henry R. Bowers, Edward A. Wilson, and Edgar Evans. (LC-USZ62-8744)

Just 140 years later, Plymouth-born Robert Scott would be the man to prove Cook wrong in his assumptions, though Scott and his men would die in the attempt. March 2012 was the 100th anniversary of the death of Captain Scott and his men in the Antarctic. His final farewell letter sold for over £160,000 at auction in London, in which he pledged he and his team would together ‘die like gentlemen’. The letter was written on 16 March 1912, as his men succumbed to starvation and hypothermia in a blizzard, just 11 miles from a food depot.

Robert Falcon Scott was born at Milehouse in Plymouth – a plaque there commemorates his links with the city. In January 1912 he led an expedition to be the first to the South Pole, but they were beaten by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen by just one month. Scott and his team perished in the Antarctic wasteland, in temperatures of -40 degrees Celsius – it was freak weather even for the Antarctic, the winter unexpectedly arriving hard and early. Their frozen bodies were not discovered until February 1913, and a memorial to his enterprise was erected on Mount Wise.

But the enterprise was more than just a race to the South Pole. Scott was a dreamer, an adventurer, but also he was an explorer, just like Cook. For Scott, this Antarctic wilderness was a final frontier to be documented and discovered in all its harsh beauty. Although their mechanical sledges failed them and all their ponies had to be shot, unable to survive the bitter conditions, Scott’s journey was one of remarkable discoveries. Scott and his team collected 2,000 specimens of animal life, including – for the first time – the eggs of the Emperor Penguin. His specimens are still the baseline by which the effects of chemicals and climate change are measured today. He was also the pioneer in the use of the camera for biological research. Even while struggling to return from the Pole, Scott took his men out of their way to explore a moraine near Mount Buckley, where he discovered fossils that proved the prior existence of the ‘supercontinent’ of Gondwana when the Antarctic lands had existed in a temperate climate. Scott became not only a legend and a tragic hero, but was also the founder of modern Polar science.

I
N THE MIDDLE
of the wars against France, and the constant threat of a French invasion of England, the worst possible event occurred in 1797 – the British Navy went on strike. With the French Revolution and the publication of Tom Paine’s
The Rights of Man
came an atmosphere of discontent aboard the ships, and a seaman’s life was hard. They had not had a pay rise in 100 years. In fact, with the costs of the wars escalating, most sailors had not been paid at all for the previous two years. Barely 15 per cent of sailors were volunteers; the vast majority were conscripted or impressed, many as a result of being caught as smugglers. During the Napoleonic Wars, 103,660 deaths were recorded, 82 per cent dying from disease, 12 per cent in accidents or shipwrecks and only 6 per cent in enemy action. Combine this with the dreadful conditions on board and punishments such as flogging with a cat-o-nine tails, and it was no wonder that the Navy was an unhappy place of work.

In Plymouth, six Irish sailors had been hanged from the yard-arm for fermenting discontent. Suddenly there was news that the Navy ships at the Spithead and Nore anchorages had gone on strike. The Plymouth sailors cheered and raised the red flags, refusing to work. The Plymouth agitators were initially satisfied by a shilling a day increase and a promise not to make examples of the ringleaders, but petitions at Spithead went unheeded and Plymouth re-joined the strike, evicting officers from the ships. Suddenly, England’s coastlines were undefended.

Flogging aboard a man-o-war. (LC-USZ62-46517)

The mutinous crews then went a stage further: they attacked the officers that remained. Those officers who had mistreated their men were raised into the rigging on ropes, amidst cheers and jeers from their rebellious crews. Meanwhile the town, initially sympathetic to the sailors’ plight, was given over to riot, and humiliated officers were paraded through the town and consigned to the Black Hole, a notorious prison on Fore Street. The houses of wealthy men were besieged (though the rioting achieved little more than hangovers and retaliation by the Navy, and was soon quelled).

The Navy retaliated in force. Lord Keith demanded the delivery of fifty of the most active mutineers or the punishment would include everyone. After quashing some further rebellion, Keith saw to it that fourteen men were condemned to death. Many others received 100 lashes apiece.