CHAPTER I

FROM ENGLAND TO SOUTH AFRICA

Take a bowsy short leave of your nymphs on the shore,
And silence their mourning with vows of returning,
Though never intending to visit them more.

          
                                                                Dido and Aeneas.

Scott used to say that the worst part of an expedition was over when the preparation was finished.  So no doubt it was with a sigh of relief that he saw the Terra Nova out from Cardiff into the Atlantic on June 15, 1910.  Cardiff had given the expedition a most generous and enthusiastic send-off, and Scott announced that it should be his first port on returning to England.  Just three years more and the Terra Nova, worked back from New Zealand by Pennell, reached Cardiff again on June 14, 1913, and paid off there.

From the first everything was informal and most pleasant, and those who had the good fortune to help in working the ship out to New Zealand, under steam or sail, must, in spite of five months of considerable discomfort and very hard work, look back upon the voyage as one of the very happiest times of the expedition.  To some of us perhaps the voyage out, the three weeks in the pack ice going South, and the Robinson Crusoe life at Hut Point are the pleasantest of many happy memories.

Scott made a great point that so far as was possible the personnel of the expedition must go out with the Terra Nova.  Possibly he gave instructions that they were to be worked hard, and no doubt it was a good opportunity of testing our mettle.  We had been chosen out of 8000 volunteers, executive officers, scientific staff, crew, and all.

We differed entirely from the crew of an ordinary merchant ship both in our personnel and in our methods of working.  The executive officers were drawn from the Navy, as were also the crew.  In addition there was the scientific staff, including one doctor who was not a naval surgeon, but who was also a scientist, and two others called by Scott ’adaptable helpers,’ namely Oates and myself.  The scientific staff of the expedition numbered twelve members all told, but only six were on board:  the remainder were to join the ship at Lyttelton, New Zealand, when we made our final embarcation for the South.  Of those on the ship Wilson was chief of the scientific staff, and united in himself the various functions of vertebral zoologist, doctor, artist, and, as this book will soon show, the unfailing friend-in-need of all on board.  Lieutenant Evans was in command, with Campbell as first officer.  Watches were of course assigned immediately to the executive officers.  The crew was divided into a port and starboard watch, and the ordinary routine of a sailing ship with auxiliary steam was followed.  Beyond this no work was definitely assigned to any individual on board.  How the custom of the ship arose I do not know, but in effect most