Terra Nova examines Robert Scott's failed Antarctic mission.
HISTORY
Terra Nova
Harrison Christian, Ultimo $36.99
In the Antarctic summer of 1911-12, a team of British explorers led by Robert Falcon Scott attempted to be the first to reach the South Pole. Beaten by Roald Amundsen's Norwegians, they died of exposure and starvation on the return journey, less than 20 kilometers from a depot of food and fuel that could have saved them.
Found 10 months later, their remains were buried under a cross made of bamboo skis, and expedition records found alongside their frozen bodies gave rise to a heroic legend vividly told in this new account of the New Zealand American writer Harrison Christian. .
What is it about this story that has allowed it to last so long? After all, Scott and his team failed. I believe the answer lies in the biblical resonance of a Christ-like leader and his disciples dragging their heavy burden through a vast and unforgiving wilderness in a doomed pursuit of eternal glory. Like the New Testament, the story is both epic and heroic, full of pathos and pain.
Today, 112 years later, Scott's devotees still fiercely debate the causes of the disaster. Was it because of the explorer's poor planning? That explanation was the subject of a now-discredited book by amateur historian Roland Huntford in the late 1970s, whose attack on Scott's character makes a recent scathing reappraisal of the writer George Orwell look tame.
Or maybe there was a Judas? The latter theory has proven to be infectious. For some, the culprit is the surgeon, Edward Atkinson, who did not follow Scott's precise instructions regarding the rescue of the returning polar team. Others blame Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the assistant scientist, who never learned to sail and returned his rescue mission too soon. Another suspect has been the dog driver Cecil Meares, who (so the story goes) chose the expedition's shoddy dogs and ponies and at a critical moment refused to follow orders to lead the dog teams south to save Scott's men.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott writing in the expedition hut.Credit: H. Ponting
The other suspect is Edward “Teddy” Evans, the expedition's second-in-command, who (according to his detractors) was a weak, impulsive and divisive figure who hated Scott and whose selfish behavior led to tragic step, to disaster. . Christian makes the Evans-Scott conflict the driving force behind his story, at one point repeating the charge of sedition. (In a delightful irony, Christian is a direct descendant of mutiny on the Bounty Fletcher Christian, whose sedition was responsible for the mutiny on HMS Bounty. A case, perhaps, of poacher turned gamekeeper?)
Harrison Christian insinuates through the accumulation of unsubstantiated claims that the lax and selfish Evans took more than his fair share of food and fuel from the tanks on his return trip, leaving Scott's party fatally short. He also points out that Evans' refusal to eat seal meat caused him to develop scurvy, which set off a chain reaction of improvisations that fatally altered Scott's meticulous plans to ensure his team's survival.
