Dan Snow's History Hit - Was Scott's Antarctic Expedition Sabotaged?

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

In the winter of 1911, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his party set out into the frozen heart of Antarctica. Battling blizzards and treacherous terrain, they were determined to be the first people to reach the South Pole. But when they arrived in early 1912, they discovered that a Norwegian team had beaten them to it. As if that weren't enough, their return journey turned into a tragedy, with Scott and his men dying just 11 miles from a supply depot that would have been their salvation.Their deaths are usually attributed to Scott's failures in planning and leadership or simple bad luck. But based on rediscovered documents, journalist and writer Harrison Christian points to other, more sinister causes - betrayal, sabotage, and a bubbling animosity that pitted the expedition's two most senior members against one another.Harrison's book is called 'Terra Nova: Ambition, jealousy and simmering rivalry in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration'.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

When Captain Robert Falcon Scott arrived at the South Pole on 17th of January 1912, hoping to be the first human being to stand on the spot, he found a flag. It was a Norwegian flag. Next to it was a tent. And in that tent was a letter. It was from the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who had arrived on that spot just 34 days earlier.

The letter was addressed to the King of Norway, and there was a covering note asking if Captain Scott would be so kind as to post it. The very next day, as you can imagine, somewhat disheartened, Scott and his men marched north. The goal now being to survive. Two months later, mid to late March 1912, two of his team had died. One of them, Titus Oates, had famously walked out of the tent. Scott wrote in his diary, we knew Paul Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him,

we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman. As Oates lifted the flap of the tent, he looked back at his comrades, Scott reports, and said, I'm just going outside, and maybe some time. He walked to his death in the hope that his companions, unburdened by him, would be able to make it back to base. They would not. Scott finished his diary as he huddled in his tent with the blizzard raging outside. Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardyhood, endurance and courage of my companions, which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.

The death of Scott and his comrades was turned into a glorious story of tenacity, of ambition, of endurance and failure. A story that would shape the young minds in Britain's public schools and prepare countless young officers for service on the battlefields of the First World War. But in recent years, we've been adding to the story. We've been gaining a fuller and perhaps more real understanding of it. We no longer believe it's just a story of plucky British heroes frustrated by unseasonable cold. It is possible that there was more going on. There was bad luck, yes, but there was poor decision-making. There was incompetence. And there may even have been treachery. This podcast is a deep dive onto that fateful expedition.

And it particularly explores the relationship between Scott and his second-in-command, Edward Evans. Evans had been born into an affluent, middle-class background, but he found himself in trouble almost straight away. He was excluded from school, his father worried about him, he'd been failed in his exams to become a naval cadet. He was a headache for his family. In the end, he clawed his way into the Navy and he managed to get himself seconded as soon as he could on an expedition to the Antarctic. The age of exploration of the great southern continent was in full swing. The Discovery Expedition, a British expedition on board the ship Discovery, had sailed south in 1901. It was commanded by Robert Scott. There were other men

on board who had become legends like Ernest Shackleton. In 1902 though a relief ship was sent from the UK. It was carrying lots of supplies and it arrived off the Ross Sea ice shelf late in 1902. At the end of the Antarctic summer, which is March 1903 confusingly, it left having dropped lots of supplies and done an exchange of crew. It was taking Shackleton back home, for example, who'd been invalided off the expedition, having set a record for reaching the furthest south. Evans went back home. He rejoined the Navy. He thought about signing up with Shackleton when Shackleton went back to the Antarctic to try and reach the South Pole, but he decided he wanted to pursue his career, notch up a few years of seniority in the Navy.

By 1909, though, well, he'd got the bug and he was planning his own expedition. He did get some traction, he got some funders, but then he learned that Captain Scott was also planning his ill-fated dash to the South Pole and Evans agreed to combine the two expeditions. He found himself second in command under Scott. This would not be a happy relationship, as you will hear, This would not be a happy relationship, as you will hear. And thanks to recent document finds, it's possible that we can say Evans was responsible for the tragic end of that expedition, the death of Scott and his men.

But was it deliberate? Was it really Evans' fault? Was it just bad luck, a little bit of incompetence here or there? Or was it possibly, maybe, revenge? Well, we're going to find out right now. Here is the author, Christian Harrison, who's just written Terra Nova, Ambition, Jealousy and Simmering Rivalry in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. He's been scouring new documents that have come to light, and he is able to tell a very different tale about Scott, the Terra Nova expedition, and that heroic failure. Enjoy. Save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity.

Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Hey Harrison, how's it going? Really good, thanks Dan. Good to see you again. Thanks for coming back on the pod. Tell me, why do we suddenly get this so-called heroic age of Antarctica exploration? Why does it start? Is there a technology or even a climate shift? What's going on?

That's a good question. The exploration of Antarctica really happened in fits and starts, and it dates all the way back to the days of Captain Cook. But the problem was there weren't the usual commercial or political or strategic incentives for the exploring nations to go down there. As you know yourself, Dan, there's nothing down there. There were no minerals to be extracted. There was no agricultural land. Really, when these expeditions were mustered, the incentive was either science, scientific contributions, things like understanding the magnetism of the earth, the climate, the world feeling in Britain and the other exploring nations was at a pitch that we really wouldn't recognize today, that idea of claiming land for one's country. And so in terms of the Royal Navy, it was a time of relative peace as well. So when these ships went down south, it was an opportunity for

ambitious young naval officers to prove their mettle, so to speak. And it was an opportunity for fast promotion as well, the promotion of the sort of pace that would usually happen in wartime. So you have this crop of young, ambitious men heading down there with this heady combination of nationalism. And it's kind of the veil that's put over it is that it's for the benefit of science and humanity at large. These expeditions were kind of live experiments. They were making it up as they went along on Scott's first expedition in the Discovery. He was a polar amateur, along with pretty much his entire crew. The Royal Navy hadn't done any polar exploration for 20 years.

Let's hammer down the chronology here. So you've got the Royal Navy, the British government actually sends an expedition 1901 to 1904. You can still go and look at the wonderful ship Discovery today in Dundee that carried that expedition south. And many of the future legends of Antarctic exploration were on that ship. Tom Crean, Frank Wilde, I think, was on the discovery as well. So men who had gone to become legends, they go down. What does that initial expedition achieve? Oh, it was a great success. And as we say, they were amateurs. They were making it up as they went along. There were some accidents and problems, but despite that, the Discovery Expedition was a great success.

The press and the public viewed the success of polar expeditions in terms of latitude gained. And Scott did achieve that new farther south. Him and a small team set off across the Great Ice Barrier. It's this huge shelf of freshwater ice that's attached to the Antarctic continent. It's the size of France. achieve their farthest south, they, for the first time, discovered the sheer scale of the barrier because they sailed to its eastern side and discovered a land which Scott named King Edward Land. And he gathered evidence that the barrier was this huge floating shelf of ice. The other thing he did was he, so where the barrier meets the Antarctic landmass, there are just these huge coastal mountains. And Scott and his team actually went up a glacier through the mountains and reached the polar plateau where no one had ever set foot before.

And that's essentially just this giant ice cap at about 9,000 feet of altitude. I mean, if you think the barrier is desolate, the polar plateau is infinitely worse. It's just this windswept plain. And he even marched for some miles over that. And so when he got back to England, although there had been some controversies associated with the expedition, Scott was the man of the moment. It was a great success. Okay. So Scott comes back as the man. In fact, Shackleton was invalided out of that trip. He arrived back in the UK early. He thought, he was worried his exploring career

might be at an end, but it was he that actually put together the next expedition south, 1907 to 1909, the so-called Nimrod Expedition. And they set, Shackleton and three colleagues set another furthest south record on that one. So Scott, I mean, Scott must be a little bit worried that Shackleton was going to beat him to the pole on that one, was he? Was he watching in the wings? Oh, he was. And it would have been a terrible shock to Scott. The extent to which

Shackleton had beaten him was very unnerving. He'd made a huge advance. So the barrier that we mentioned earlier, Shackleton had crossed it. He'd crossed the entire thing, and he'd found its southern extremity, where it meets the southernmost coastal mountains. And then he'd ascended through those mountains by a glacier called the Beardmore Glacier, which is about 120 miles long. And there's a huge ascent up to 9,000 feet. And then he carried on across the polar plateau. I believe he got within something like 120 miles of the pole. So Scott in England, very unnerved, I think. When Shackleton got back, he kind of agreed to let bygones be bygones,

but the pressure was on. I mean, in terms of Shackleton had got so close and the question became, well, who is going to do it? And so Scott is unlike Shackleton. And so he's in the heart of government. He's perfectly placed to launch, well, an expedition with more of an official seal of approval than some of Shackleton's moonlighting. I think so. I think that's fair, well, an expedition with more of an official seal of approval than some of Shackleton's moonlighting? I think so. I think that's fair, Dan, because although the Terra Nova expedition was private as well, it had the financial backing of the RGS, the Royal Geographical Society, the exploring establishment in London. It had the backing of the government. When Scott was putting it together, his approach was completely different from Shackleton's. Shackleton was a man who,

great as he was, he was mostly interested in fame and fortune. I think one of his biographers said he would just as soon have sought treasure on the Spanish main than have gone to Antarctica. But at this point in his career, Scott was a bit different. He'd become enamored with the science of Antarctica. He was a technician. His work in the Navy involved mines and torpedoes and the development of projectiles like that. And he had become almost obsessed with mounting a scientific expedition.

He told his crew that he wanted science to be the foundation of all effort. And so that's where this jarring difference comes in with Scott's lieutenant, Edward Evans, who was a younger naval officer who Scott brought into the fold because Evans had actually started mounting his own expedition to Antarctica and had started to attract wealthy backers. And so as a matter of convenience, Scott brought Evans into the fold to avoid having to compete with him and to bring his sponsors on board. And Evans was very much more of the Shackleton attitude of, we're going down to snatch the pole for Britain. That talk didn't sit well on Scott anymore at this point.

He was much more interested in the scientific program he was putting together. And indeed, when they left Britain, it was the biggest scientific expedition that had ever left. Just tell me, at what stage did they get wind of the fact the Norwegians are also planning a parallel expedition to the Pole? This was in Australia, I believe. And it came in the form of a single, very brief telegram from Roald Amundsen, who was leading the Norwegian expedition. And Scott was floored by this. I mean, he knew Amundsen.

He was an admirer of Amundsen. He'd actually tried to meet Amundsen during his travels in Norway many years ago. Because what Amundsen had told the world, including the King of Norway and all his financial sponsors, was that he was going to the North Pole. And he was planning to finish what Nansen had started. and he was planning to finish what Nansen had started. He was kind of the heir apparent to Nansen, another great Norwegian explorer. And so for Scott to receive this cryptic telegram from Amundsen saying that he was heading south was extremely worrying

because it turned everything Scott had assumed about Amundsen on his head. Suddenly, he would be competing with Amundsen to get to the South Pole. What other decisions do they make that will prove decisive in this coming expedition? Well, in terms of the transport, Scott took a combination of ponies, dogs, and motor sledges. And his transport setup was kind of set up as this live experiment. He chose to rely on ponies, which we know now are a bad choice of transport for traveling in Antarctica because they are susceptible to cold. They're vegetarian. If you want to use ponies in Antarctica, you have to bring all of their fodder with you. The other big one was he chose to go with heavy cotton garments, which we know

now are just the worst possible choice for doing hard work in cold weather because cotton absorbs and retains moisture, which then freezes. So there's a situation where Scott and his men are walking around and I think one of the expedition members described it as armor plate. The clothing is just, it becomes a block of ice. In this day and age, you know, we've got things like Gore-Tex and membranes that can retain heat but allow moisture to escape. You know, it's very easy in retrospect to bash Scott for the equipment he used. But you have to look at him in the context of his time. And he was just kind of having to make it up as he went along. Before he even gets to Antarctica or New Zealand, he starts to have differences with his lieutenant,

Edward Evans. And Evans, in the word of one crew member, tries to raise a mutiny. He feels that Scott isn't giving him his dues. He isn't being given enough control of the way things are being run. And he threatens to resign if certain demands aren't met. And in Antarctica, you can imagine during hard sledging and when they're cooped up in the hut passing the long, dark winter, the differences between Evans and Scott just became insurmountable. They arrive, and before you march off the South Pole, you've got to do a lot of preparation.

Tell me about the timeline of things when they arrive, and getting there as well was, well, they had a very near miss. The ship almost founded in a storm, so it wasn't easy. No, it wasn't easy. And it's pretty much as soon as they had chosen the place to set up their base at Cape Evans, and once they'd got all their stuff off the ship, pretty much as soon as they had set up their hut there, they had to leave. They had to start setting up a line of depots as far across the barrier as they could before

start setting up a line of depots as far across the barrier as they could before the end of that Antarctic summer so that those depots would be waiting for them when they started their march proper to the South Pole the following spring. And so that's what they did. And they marched out across the barrier and laid the string of supply depots. And they didn't get as far as Scott had hoped. So the final depot that they placed was called One Ton Depot. And it was about a third of the way across the barrier. So you can imagine there's still hundreds of miles to go beyond there. You've got the rest of the barrier, then the Bairdmore Glacier, and then this huge tract of the polar plateau. So they laid their supplies and then on their way back to base, they're trying to get there before the winter sets in. And the sea ice in McMurdo Sound actually

broke up while they were trying to get back to Cape Evans. And so they'd lost a couple of ponies on these flows of ice that sort of began floating out to sea. And it was a really difficult journey. They were lucky to get back to Cape Evans alive. And I think once they settled in for the winter, they'd been given a rude awakening about what lay in store for them. So they settle in for the winter. As you say, any festering differences are going to get fanned into full flames during that period of confinement. Tell me about the following spring. When did they set off? They set off as early as they could, but unfortunately, because they were using ponies, that meant they had to set off later than Amundsen did with his dogs. But it was sometime

around September or October at the beginning of the Antarctic summer that they set off. And as they were going along, so they used the depots that were already laid out for them. They managed to get to one ton. And then as they continued along the fuel, the paraffin, biscuits, and horse meat, and other sustenance in order to make their return march. Meanwhile, we should check in on Amundsen. He's left a bit earlier, and are they able to move lighter and faster what there's so much myth making around this how are they getting across Antarctica absolutely they're moving lighter and faster they're using dogs which we know are much less susceptible to cold and travel much faster than ponies do so they're moving a lot

faster they're covering a lot more ground in a day. And they're also traveling in conditions, sometimes blizzard conditions, that caused Scott and his men to actually stop and hunker down in their tents. This is Dan Snow's History. There's more on this topic coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, To be continued... rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So right from the beginning, they are, well, they're way ahead scott's got no chance of catching them up and being the first scott didn't know it at the time but he had no chance of catching the norwegians and in terms of the dynamics within his own team things were breaking

down as well he as far as ev, the expedition diaries were full of complaints about him not pulling his weight, catching food from other expedition members, wasting fuel. The big thing about fuel was you used it to cook your food, but it also just warmed your tent at night. So it was quite easy to overindulge in the paraffin. And as they march on, it's this strange situation where eventually they're separated into two parties, one led by Evans and one led by Scott. And the two are actually competing. And so, yeah, at the point where they're manhauling their sledges, they've killed and eaten all their ponies at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. They switch to manhauling, which is literally just they're dragging the sledges behind them as they climb the glacier.

The dogs made it some way up the glacier, but Scott made the decision to send them back to base. And so they're manhauling up the glacier and onto the polar plateau, Evans and Scott having this strange competition between each other. plateau, Evans and Scott having this strange competition between each other. And once they're on the plateau and they keep going, Scott makes the decision to actually demote Evans and send him back early. This is within about 150 miles of the pole. And the plan is that Evans will go back. Scott decided to go on with four expedition members. And that's Henry Bowers, Edward Wilson, Edgar Evans, who's another Evans. So to avoid confusion, I'll just call him Taff,

which is his expedition nickname. And of course, Oates, the soldier. Evans isn't part of that party. And he had assumed he would be. He's the second in command. He's got a silk flag that his wife has given him that he wants to fly at the pole. And he had thought all along that surely despite their differences, Scott would allow him to have that glory, to share that glory with him. But that wasn't the case.

The plan for Evans was that he would be demoted, he'd be sent back to base. And when the ship arrived during that summer, he would actually be sent back to New Zealand. And Harry Pennell, the captain of the ship, would come ashore at Cape Evans and assume the role of second-in-command while the expedition spent their second winter in Antarctica. So he must have been absolutely furious. They're approaching their physical and mental limits anyway. How did Evans take that news? situation where Evans is traipsing back to Cape Evans with Crean and Lashley, two very strong, dependable seamen who are detached to go back with him. And so back they go across the polar plateau,

down the Bedmore Glacier, across the ice barrier. And about halfway across the barrier, Evans develops scurvy. It's a severe case. His legs are turning gangrenous. He can't walk anymore. In the end, Crenn and Lashley actually haul him on a sled back to base. And he's the only expedition member to develop scurvy. There's speculation about why he did, but according to a couple of the expedition members, it was because he refused to eat seal meat during the expedition. Seal meat, who would have thought it's rich in vitamin C. And there was a medical protocol during the expedition. The doctor, Edward Atkinson, had made sure everyone was eating seal meat, but apparently Evans refused to eat it. Shout out for Tom Crean, who would go on to achieve immortality in the endurance expedition. Shout out for Tom Crean, who would go on to achieve immortality in the Endurance Expedition. I think he walked something like 35 miles in 18 hours to get help so that a team could go back and rescue Evans. And that became one of the great epics of Antarctic history, before Tom Crean went and set another epic of Antarctic history a few years later on. If you can imagine, he's dragged Evans halfway across the Great Ice Barrier, and then he walks alone many, many miles to Cape Evans and manages

to rouse Atkinson and bring him to save Evans. And I think it's Atkinson who made a note that after he put Evans on the sled and that turned around to head back to base, Crean was actually running alongside the sled. And just the idea that he had that energy and wherewithal to be not walking, but running while Atkinson and Evans were riding along on the dog sledge. I just found that incredible. Truly, there's no one else like him. There is no one else like Tom Crean.

And he needs to be mentioned every time. If we're talking about the great Antarctic explorers, he should be top of mind. Okay, so we got Scott. He dispatched Evans, and he's heading towards the South Pole. Has he got five people with him? Yes, he's got Bowers, Oates, Wilson, and Teff. I'm calling him Teff.

He's got four comrades with him. What's the date and how close to the pole are they approximately? He sends Evans back when he's about 150 miles from the pole. So he's up on the polar plateau. At this point, everyone's in okay condition. I mean, they're obviously exhausted, but been traveling for hundreds of miles, much of it manhauling. And the conditions on the polar plateau are dreadful. Not only are you physically exerting yourself massively, you're hauling your own supplies behind you, but you're doing it at altitude, 9,000 feet. So the air is thin. It's hard to catch your breath. There's altitude sickness. The boiling

point of water is lower. So your food isn't as warm when you heat it up. So all of those factors are kind of compounding and they are wary, but they are still optimistic of achieving their aim. Are they walking or skiing? It depends on the condition of the ice. Sometimes they're skiing, but at other times the skis go on the back of the sled or sometimes they even just do away with the skis entirely and depot them and just carry on on their own two feet. Okay and so they walk across this empty waste and what happens when they get to the South Pole? I believe it's Bowers who sees it first he just far in the distance he sees black, which is obviously not something you want to see on the polar plateau.

And as they trudge on, the thing kind of resolves itself into a flag. And there's this awful realization among the whole team that it's a Norwegian flag and they've been forstalled. The Norwegians have beaten them. And Amundsen has set up a little pole camp there. He called it Poleheim. And it wasn't exactly on the geographical South Pole, but it was as near as possible to get in those days with the instruments that they had.

And inside the tent was a letter that Amundsen had actually written for King Harkon, the King of Norway. And he actually asked Scott to deliver it to the King if he didn't make it back alive himself. So he was actually using Scott as a kind of insurance policy. And so obviously, very disheartening, and they were just crushed, all of them. And so they hung around at the pole for a bit. They took their own measurements. They turned north and marched for a bit and then set up their pole camp where they roughly ascertained the pole to be. And then they went to bed. And the next day, it was right back into marching again. Really? There's no point staying there, right?

There's nothing different about that place than any other place. So you might as well just get going, get home. Exactly. And it's kind of the longer you stay up there, the worse off you'll be. And that was one of Scott's greatest anxieties before he set out is as he was kind of computing the length of the journey and the time involved, his greatest concern was no one has spent this long on the polar plateau before. Shackleton's been up there, but not for this period of time. So they have got to get back. They start hiking on the 18th of January, 1912 then? Correct.

There's just another day's marching and it's kind of a relief to have the wind at their backs. That's another thing about the plateau is just this endless southerly wind blows. It's just this oppressive wind blows without end up there. So at least they have that at their backs now, and they can put up a little sail on their sledge to help it along. But unfortunately, I mean, they're going uphill because the way to the pole for some days had sloped downhill. So they're going uphill. They've got the wind at their backs. And now the main thing is just accurate navigation, making sure they know exactly where they are so that they can find those supply depots on the way back and actually get back alive.

The next job is then you try and hit the depots that they've been laying on their outward journey. Exactly. And there's a couple on the plateau and then there's depots down the Beardmore Glacier and then all across the expanse of the barrier there are as well. But they're so far apart that they're not within sight of each other and accurate navigation is crucial at this point in order to find them. We should say they're navigating by, as you would at sea, by using the sun or are they using stars at night? How are they managing to zero in on these depots? Exactly, as you would at sea.

So, yeah, they're using the sun and visual landmarks where possible, but for much of the journey, especially on the plateau and the Great Ice Barrier, there are no landmarks. So finding longitude becomes an exercise in using the sun. And Scott was a skilled navigator and so was Bowers. They were both skilled navigators, but things still have to go right for you to a point. The weather needs to be good. You need to be able to see something in order to be able to ascertain where you are. And did they have benign weather?

No, at this point, there was a big cold snap. Winter was setting in. There was a blizzard even before they left the plateau, although they marched through it. And in terms of the weather, that's often an argument that's made for Scott's failure. And certainly, there were times during the journey where they encountered weather that was unseasonable. During their outward march, they were stuck in a blizzard for four to five days that they hadn't expected and was indeed unusual for the time and place they were in. And Shackleton had nothing like that. The weather was dangerous in the sense that it could inhibit your navigation, but it also simply delayed you. You had to hunker down in the tent and that was fuel and food being used that shouldn't be. But in your latest book, you've uncovered some new documents,

some new archival sources that suggest that there were bigger problems than that. That, in fact, there had been incompetence, I suppose, are we saying, in laying down the supplies for this return journey? Yeah, I think the book gets to the heart of the question of, could Scott have been saved? And I think, absolutely, he could have been, and he should have been. So you have the shortage of supplies at the depots that Scott was relying on during his return march. Scott referred to the shortage as inexplicable, but he made hints about other expedition members being responsible. He wrote in his diary, generosity and thoughtfulness have not been abundant. A line that was actually redacted from his published diary.

In 2017, new documents were discovered in the British Library, and these are a collection of notes and letters and telegrams between members of the Royal Geographical Society, the exploring establishment in London. And they are documents from around the time of Scott's death. And they refer to Evans being blameworthy for Scott's demise. And they talk about the shortage of food and fuel that's mentioned in his diary and that it warrants investigation, but that they should keep their inquiries secret.

They want to avoid a scandal. That really interested me. So I went to London, I went to the British Library, I looked at the documents, and I decided to write a book from that perspective of looking at the interpersonal relationships within the expedition and how it broke down in that way. But Evans was expecting to be on the return journey himself. So he kind of been deliberately trying to endanger the lives of the people on the expedition. Can he? Is there incompetence going on? What do you put this down to? So what we know is that the shortages that Scott encountered at the depots, the depots had last been touched by Evans because, of course, he had sent Evans

back early. And so Evans had touched those depots before Scott reached them. So if anyone was responsible for the shortage, it must have been Evans. We know that Evans had a history of taking more than his share of food and fuel that other expedition members were suspicious of him, thought he was the wrong man for the job. We know that he was very indignant at being sent back early. last message to the public when he makes reference to the shortage of fuel that he found in the depots on the barrier, Evans tried to doctor the message and suppress any mention of fuel shortages, which I think is suspicious. It's all circumstantial evidence. I think it tends to suggest that Evans was to blame for food and fuel shortages, But I think even if he wasn't, it's clear that more could have been done to save Scott. Scott had left detailed instructions for Cecil Mears and

the dog teams to meet him on the barrier during his return march. He wanted them to meet him more than halfway across the barrier, a significant distance, and then they would help speed him up and bring him back to the ship. Unfortunately, Cecil Mears had absconded from his duty. He had left early. He'd chosen to leave early on the Terra Nova back to New Zealand. The reasons for this are unclear. It's often said that it was because he'd received news of the death of his father, but we know now that his father was still alive at that time. So Cecil Mears had left. The plan was if Mears left, the job of the rescue operation, so to speak, would fall on the doctor, Edward Atkinson. So Mears having left, Atkinson was getting ready to carry out Scott's orders and meet him on the barrier during his return. Unfortunately, when Evans

arrives at Cape Evans, horribly afflicted with scurvy, he diverts all Atkinson's attention. And Atkinson says that he can't leave Evans in his present state. He needs to nurse him back to health. And so what's going to become of Scott's orders. Atkinson decides to delegate them again, but he can't find a suitable expedition member. Those who have skills of navigation that would be needed out on the barrier are busy with other jobs. And so in the end, the role falls to poor, absolutely cheery Gerrard, who is not a skilled navigator. And the situation on the barrier is you can get to one ton depot about a third of the way across the ice by navigating visually. You can see landmarkers in clear weather. If you go further than that, it's just a featureless void. It's

just a blank as far as the eye can see. And you need strong navigational skills to be able to know where you are. And so Atkinson has to kind of dumb down Scott's orders in order to keep Cherry Garrard safe. And so he just tells Cherry Garrard to go to One Ton Depot, not more than halfway across the barrier, beyond the middle barrier depot, as Scott's original orders had said, but just to one ton depot. And so that's what Cherry Garrard does. And of course, when he gets there, Scott isn't there. He's some 70 miles away near the middle barrier depot, keeping an eye out for Cecil Mears and the dogs and wondering why they're not there. Cecil Mears and the dogs and wondering why they're not there. So there was kind of a chain reaction of improvisation that was happening back at Cape Evans that I think led to Scott's demise. And at that point, Evans was back at base, albeit with scurvy, but even though he was aware of

Scott's orders, he didn't insist that they were carried out. And in fact, there was one member of the expedition, a skilled navigator, who wanted to go further than Wonton Depot. He actually wanted to go to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. And he asked Evans for permission to go and was refused. And when Evans got back to Britain, he actually claimed wrongly that Scott had forbidden any parties from meeting him onium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades.

Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Interesting. And so we get one member of scott's party who has a bad fall and he dies on the 17th of february tell me about as we get into march of 1912 there's four of them left how are they doing not well so once they're on the barrier, terrible cold weather, we're down to minus 40 degrees at times and compounding factors. So they've found food shortages, they've found not the right proportion of biscuits at a depot, or they've found

there's a depot that's supposed to hold a proportion of horse meat for them. The poor ponies that were slaughtered on the outward march, there's no horse meat there. Then they're encountering the food shortages. They reach a depot and it's supposed to hold a gallon of fuel and it's only half a gallon. At this point, they're essentially starving. I mean, their bodies are calorie starved. They've been marching for hundreds of miles. It's extremely cold. Because they don't have fuel, that means they can't heat up their food and they can't warm the tent. In the end, they're actually eating their rations cold, which you can imagine it wouldn't bring you much comfort

or sustenance at all to have to wolf down cold pemmican. And so during that final trek across the barrier things are going from bad to worse i mean wilson and oats are suffering severely from frostbite about their faces and feet and in the end scott begins to have frostbite in his feet as well to the point where the best he can hope for is amputation and still they're plotting on. In the end, you mentioned right back at the beginning of the podcast that One Ton Depot was not as far south as they'd have liked, and they end up snowed in by another blizzard just 11 miles south of One Ton Depot. They've encountered another blizzard,

and they're hunkered down in their tent for at least four days with the blizzard raging outside and then even when the blizzard clears Wilson and Bowers make tentative plans to walk to the depot and back over those 11 miles but it's essentially too late they don't have anything left. Their feet are ruined. And it seems that the decision they made was to stay with Scott until the end. And that's what they did. They were in that tent for about nine days before Scott wrote the final entry in his journal. And as you say, only 11 miles from Wonton Depot where Cherry Garrard had been sometime earlier to deposit fresh supplies. So obviously a terrible thing for him to consider. But it wasn't Cherry Garrard's fault.

His orders from Atkinson had been to just go to Wonton Depot and restock it. And when he got to Wonton Depot, when Scott was still 70 miles away, and he saw that it was untouched, he was relieved because in his mind, he'd got there before Scott and he could restock the depot and there would be a help to his leader. He didn't know at the time that Scott really was relying on those dogs to meet him around the middle barrier depot, many miles away. And he'd been anxiously scanning the horizon every day, looking out for the little black dots that might turn into dogs and harness coming to his rescue. And they had never come.

So come on, let's do this. You've lived this story now. You've seen the new sources. Was it incompetence? Was it full treachery that led to the death of Scott and those men? I think it was a combination. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to Evans tampering with the depots, but I don't think Evans is the only one to blame.

Cecil Mayers shouldn't have absconded from his duty and left Antarctica rather than fulfilling Scott's orders. And I also think that Evans should have eaten his seal meat so that he hadn't come down with scurvy and distracted Atkinson and forced Atkinson to improvise and send out Cherry Garrard instead. So there are all these factors and there'll always be a great debate about why the expedition failed. Over the years, it's been people have put it down to the bad weather or just bad luck or Scott's poor decision-making, Scott being complacent and arrogant and a heroic bungler, so to speak. I think it came down to his lieutenant was not the right man for the job. And his lieutenant was not a man he could depend on. And unfortunately, some of his other officers meet that description as well. Well, thank you for retelling a story that we

thought we knew in a fascinating way with new archival research. That's a great bit of history. So thank you very much, Harrison. The book is out now. What's it called? It's called Terra Nova and it's available as a physical copy or audio book or ebook, whatever you prefer.

Thanks, man. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks, Dan. Music you