Diary of the Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic 1910-1912 by Edward Wilson

Terra Nova in pack ice, photographed by Herbert Ponting

Let me never complain about my self-isolation:

Tuesday 18 July 1911    Temp -27.3º [Fahrenheit] and blowing too hard to finish the hut or do anything else. We therefore lay in our bags and were very cold for want of exercise.

Edward Wilson (1872-1912) was an astonishing person: physician, illustrator, polar explorer, naturalist, scientist, deeply religious and held in high affection by his companions. I first came across him in Kendal when I saw a couple of his watercolours from Antarctica. He joined the Discovery Expedition to Antarctica in 1901-04 and, with Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, trekked further towards the South Pole than anyone had before. That journey sounds fearsome enough, but it didn’t deter Wilson from joining Scott on the later Terra Nova expedition. One of the most astonishing things for this particular wimp to realise is how much Wilson enjoyed it: the privations, the isolation, the sense of pushing his body to its limits. He sounds like a highly cultured man who was happiest away from “civilisation”.

The Terra Nova left Cardiff in June 1910, stopped in Madeira, South Trinidad, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The journey to Cape Evans in McMurdo Sound took 7 months (delayed by being trapped for 3 weeks in pack ice). It was both a scientific expedition and a race to reach the South Pole first: altogether there were 65 men including geologists, meteorologists and zoologists. They split up into separate groups once they reached Ross Island. (Amundsen, whose team reached the South Pole 5 weeks before Scott’s, focussed only on the trek.)

In the winter (i.e. June, July) of 1911 Wilson, Henry Robertson Bowers and Apsley Cherry-Garrard undertook a 5-week “winter journey” in near total darkness to collect 3 eggs of emperor penguins for scientific study. Chipper as his tone is in the diary that he compiled afterwards, even Wilson makes it sound dreadful; Cherry-Garrard went further, calling it “The worst journey in the world” in his memoir.

Wilson, Bowers, Cherry-Garrard back after their winter journey

Even as I kept asking myself “why, for heaven’s sake?!”, I knew that I was being dense. No one knew about emperor penguins then. Wilson and the others were uncovering totally new knowledge. It’s so easy for me: almost 100 years after Wilson’s final journey, I watched “March of the Penguins” at the cinema, marvelling, from the comfort and warmth of the auditorium, at this film of the long journey of emperor penguins from the ocean’s edge to their inland breeding grounds. The film took 2 years to make, and the production crew had their own hardships to contend with . . . but nothing like the Terra Nova crew’s.

Wilson wrote his diary and painted his watercolours at Cape Evans or Hut Point, working from contemporary notes and sketches. The tone of the diary is engaging, good-humoured and temperate: even frostbite doesn’t sound too bad when Wilson talks of it. He doesn’t have an unkind word to say about anyone. In South Africa he comments unfavourably on some of the Africans he sees, but even there he acknowledges that “one feels that their degradation has been the direct result of our occupation”. His religious faith underpins everything: there is Church each Sunday, followed by regular activities:

Sunday 7 May 1911   Third Sunday after Easter. Church as usual and the rest of the day painting parasites.

So many things surprised me and showed me how ignorant I am. I had no idea that sailing ships were still in use then, although the Terra Nova was also a steamship. She set off from New Zealand  too heavily laden and into a heavy storm, which resulted in the loss of some supplies. Transport over the ice was to be by dogs, ponies and motorised sledges – one of which was lost very early on. Once they landed at Cape Evans, they built their own hut and laid out store depots further inland in preparation for their eventual attempt on the South Pole.

There was quite a lot of butchery en route: shooting birds and mammals from the ship to skin them and send the hides back for scientific investigation. Seal blubber was both food and fuel. The ponies were shot during the trek to the pole as food for men and dogs.

Clothing was based on wool and skins: reindeer sleeping bags and the question of whether to sleep with the fur on the inside or the outside.

The expedition to the South Pole began in November 1911. A large team set off, erecting cairns and laying supplies along the way as provisions for the return journey, with men peeling off gradually and returning to Ross Island. The last members of the supporting party returned at the beginning of January about 148 miles from the pole, leaving Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans to continue alone. Their route was over the Beardmore Glacier and they hauled the sledges themselves after shooting the last of the ponies. Before they reached the pole they realised that Amundsen – who had taken a different route across the Ross Ice Shelf – and his dog team had beaten them to it. They finally reached the pole on 17 January 1912.

The return journey is sad reading: they are hungry, tired, frost-bitten and suffering from snow-blindness – yet still make a detour to examine interesting-looking moraine. Evans was the first to die; Wilson’s diary entries get terser and end on 27 February. Oates died around 16 March, and the remaining three struggled until 21 March. They died in their tent 11 miles from the well-stocked One Ton Depot.

Wilson’s final letter to his parents, written when he was close to death, brings tears to your eyes as well as – for me – a bewildered acknowledgement of the strength of faith. He is certain that they will all meet together in the hereafter, and that he believes that everything he has done has been guided by God.

At the South Pole L to R: Wilson, Bowers, Evans, Scott, Oates

Sometimes it all sounds very “Boys’ Own”, seguing into “Ripping Yarns”, but there is no doubting Wilson’s commitment and knowledge. His standards are lofty, but he also sounds very gentle, and his loving references to his wife are very endearing. And what intelligence, courage and watercolours!

One other revelation was Herbert Ponting and his wonderful photographs, which combine technical brilliance and great imagery.