The entry says that the journey to Cape Crozier was made to serve “a good many trial ends” besides the eggs: a ration, a tent, sleeping-bags, crampons and clothing, all to be tested for the journey to the Pole. This piece is the ledger of those trials: what went on the sledges, what the three men ate, and what Scott wrote down about it when they came back. The thermometer’s record is in The thermometer.
The weights
Cherry-Garrard opens his chapter on the journey with the list of sledge weights “taken from the reckoning made by Bowers before we started”. The expendable stores, which were food, fuel and the small things that get used up, came to 370 pounds: “Antarctic” biscuit, 135 pounds, in three cases weighing 12; pemmican, 110; butter, 21; salt, 3; tea, 4; oil, 60; spare parts for the primus and matches, 2; toilet paper, 2; candles, 8; packing, 5; spirit, 8. The permanent weights came to 420 pounds: two nine-foot sledges at 41 pounds each; a cooker, 13; two primus stoves filled with oil, 8; the double tent, 35; a sledging shovel, 3½; three reindeer sleeping-bags at twelve pounds and three eiderdown linings at four; an Alpine rope, 5; a bosun’s bag of repairing materials and a bag of tools, 5; three personal bags of spare clothing at fifteen pounds each; a lamp box “with knives, steel, etc., for seal and penguin”, 21; the medical and scientific box, 40; two ice-axes at three pounds; three man-harnesses and three portaging harnesses, 3 each; “cloth for making roof and door for stone igloo”, 24; an instrument box, 7; three pairs of ski and sticks, 33; a pickaxe, 11; three crampons, 6½; two bamboos “for measuring tide if possible”, 4; two male bamboos, 4; “1 plank to form top of door of igloo”, 2; a bag of sennegrass, 1; six small bamboo ends and a knife for cutting snow blocks, 4; packing, 8. The two columns add to 790. The lamp box held a lamp for burning blubber, a lamp for burning spirit, a tent candle lamp, a blubber cooker and a blowpipe.
“The party of three men set out with a total weight of 757 lbs. to draw, the ski and sticks in the above list being left behind at the last moment. It was impossible to load the total bulk upon one 12-ft. sledge, and so two 9-ft. sledges were taken, one toggled on behind the other. While this made the packing and handling of the gear much easier, it nearly doubled the friction surface against which the party had to pull.” Scott’s journal, on the day before they left, gives the same figure another way: “the people will have to drag 253 lbs. per man—a big weight.”
Two items in the list are the experiment proper. The medical and scientific box, forty pounds, was the heaviest single thing after the sledges and the clothing, and Cherry-Garrard describes it elsewhere as “a venesta case full of scientific gear for pickling and preserving”. The cloth, the plank and the pickaxe were for a hut that Wilson’s plan of 1907 had placed on the sea ice beside the rookery, as a shelter of snow blocks in which to open the eggs; on the journey it was built 800 feet up the mountain instead, and the eggs came to it frozen.
The rations
They took four foods. “For food we brought only pemmican and biscuit and butter; for drink we had tea, and we drank hot water to turn in on.” The pemmican was from Beauvais of Copenhagen; the biscuits had been made by Huntley and Palmer to a composition “worked out by Wilson and that firm’s chemist”, in two kinds, Emergency and Antarctic. The experiment was in the proportions. “By taking individually different quantities of biscuit, pemmican and butter we were able roughly to test the proportions of proteids, fats and carbo-hydrates wanted by the human body under such extreme circumstances. Bill was all for fat, starting with 8 oz. butter, 12 oz. pemmican and only 12 oz. biscuit a day. Bowers told me he was going for proteids, 16 oz. pemmican and 16 oz. biscuit, and suggested I should go the whole hog on carbo-hydrates. I did not like this, since I knew I should want more fat, but the rations were to be altered as necessary during the journey, so there was no harm in trying. So I started with 20 oz. of biscuit and 12 oz. of pemmican a day.”
The result came during the blizzard of 10 to 12 July, lying in the tent off Terror Point. “Bowers was all right (this was usual with him), but he did not eat all his extra pemmican. Bill could not eat all his extra butter, but was satisfied. I got hungry, certainly got more frost-bitten than the others, and wanted more fat, I also got heartburn. However, before taking more fat I increased my biscuits to 24 oz., but this did not satisfy me; I wanted fat. Bill and I now took the same diet, he giving me 4 oz. of butter which he could not eat, and I giving him 4 oz. of biscuit which did not satisfy my wants. We both therefore had 12 oz. pemmican, 16 oz. biscuit and 4 oz. butter a day, but we did not always finish our butter. This is an extremely good ration, and we had enough to eat during most of this journey. We certainly could not have faced the conditions without.” Wilson’s report adds that “we none of us missed sugar or cocoa, or any of the other foods we have been used to on sledge journeys, and we all found we were amply satisfied on this diet. Cocoa would have been pleasanter at night than plain hot water, but the hot water with biscuit soaked in it was very good.”
The meals were three: “for breakfast, pemmican, biscuits and tea”; for lunch, “tea and biscuits”, with butter for Wilson and Cherry-Garrard; for supper, “hot water and pemmican and biscuit”. Cherry-Garrard’s chapter gives the reason for keeping the foods to so few: “If the air temperature is 100 degrees of frost, then everything in the air is about 100 degrees of frost too. You have only to untie the lashings of one bag in a − 70° temperature, with your feet frozen and your fingers just nursed back after getting a match to strike for the candle (you will have tried several boxes—metal), to realize this as an advantage.”
The oil was the other ration, and it was the one that ran short. They started with six one-gallon tins. By 13 July four were gone, because “after each meal was cooked we allowed the primus to burn on for a while and thus warmed up the tent. Then we could nurse back our frozen feet.” Wilson’s report sets out how the reserve for the return was revised downwards as they went: “we said we must have at least two gallons to go back with: then about Terror Point a tin and two full primus lamps; until it came down to one full gallon tin, and this is what we actually did use.” The blubber stove that was to have replaced the primus at the rookery spat oil into Wilson’s eye on the first night and came to pieces in the blizzard, its solder melted. The one tin brought them home.
What Scott took from it
Scott’s journal for the days after the return has a section headed “Experience of Sledging Rations and Equipment”, and it is the record of the journey being used. “For our future sledge work several points have been most satisfactorily settled. The party went on a very simple food ration in different and extreme proportions; they took pemmican, butter, biscuit and tea only. After a short experience they found that Wilson, who had arranged for the greatest quantity of fat, had too much of it, and C.-G., who had gone for biscuit, had more than he could eat. A middle course was struck which gave a general proportion agreeable to all, and at the same time suited the total quantities of the various articles carried. In this way we have arrived at a simple and suitable ration for the inland plateau. The only change suggested is the addition of cocoa for the evening meal. The party contented themselves with hot water, deeming that tea might rob them of their slender chance of sleep.”
On the bags: “the eiderdown bag may be a useful addition for a short time on a spring journey, but they soon get iced up. Bowers did not use an eiderdown bag throughout, and in some miraculous manner he managed to turn his reindeer bag two or three times during the journey.” He gave the weights, before and after: Wilson’s reindeer bag and eiderdown, 17 pounds and 40; Bowers’s reindeer bag only, 17 and 39; Cherry-Garrard’s reindeer and eiderdown, 18 and 45. “This gives some idea of the ice collected. The double tent has been reported an immense success. It weighed about 35 lbs. at starting and 60 lbs. on return: the ice mainly collected on the inner tent. The crampons are much praised, except by Bowers, who has an eccentric attachment to our older form. We have discovered a hundred details of clothes, mits, and footwear: there seems no solution to the difficulties which attach to these articles in extreme cold; all Wilson can say, speaking broadly, is ‘the gear is excellent, excellent.’” He wondered, as he had before, whether Eskimo fur clothing would outclass theirs, and decided it could not be had in any case. “At any rate we can now hold that our system of clothing has come through a severer test than any other, fur included.” Then: “Effect of Journey—Wilson lost 3½ lbs.; Bowers lost 2½ lbs.; C.-Garrard lost 1 lb.”
A few days later Atkinson tested their blood and found “a very slight increase of acidity—such was to be expected, and it is pleasing to note that there is no sign of scurvy. If the preserved foods had tended to promote the disease, the length of time and severity of conditions would certainly have brought it out. I think we should be safe on the long journey.” The polar journey left on 1 November on the middle ration, twelve ounces of pemmican, sixteen of biscuit and four of butter, with the cocoa added. Of the three men who had tested it, two went with it.
Sources
- Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, vol. 1, Constable, 1922, chapter VII: the sledge weights, the rations and the food bags. archive.org
- Scott’s Last Expedition, Vol. II, Smith, Elder, 1913: Wilson’s report of the winter journey, on the diet, the meals and the oil. archive.org
- Scott’s Last Expedition, Vol. I, Smith, Elder, 1913: the entries of 26 June and 2 to 8 August 1911, including “Experience of Sledging Rations and Equipment” and Atkinson’s blood test. archive.org