The Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica is one of the most famous in history. This was Scott's attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. He failed (Roald Amundsen and his team of Norwegians beat him by days) and then, in the greatest of a long line of great exploration tragedies, Scott and his four companions died in their attempt to return back to their base. Titus Oates gave history the classic example of a loyal friend when he walked outside the tent and committed suicide in an attempt to save the others by freeing them from having to care for him in his weakened state. "I am just going outside and may be some time," he said before he disappeared into the snow. Oates was never found; the other three men, too weak to get home, were discovered months later in their tents buried in the snow. (The fifth member had died a few days earlier.)
They failed for reasons that have been analyzed and reanalyzed a zillion times by everyone from school children to polar history experts. But none of that really matters. They became immortal in their attempt to simply reach the Pole and more importantly the stunning way in which they stayed faithful to each other until the very end. Their last letters are full of love and respect for others, and sorrow that they did not survive to bring glory to England, and science (in the way of stones they pulled all the way) to the world.
It is purely impossible not to love these men at least a little bit.
Apsley Cherry-Garrard was a member of the larger Terra Nova expedition and participated, along with two of the men who died, on the earlier Cape Crozier expedition, an attempt to return Emperor Penguin eggs to the base for further study. (It was believed in some circles at the time that the Emperor Penguins might hold the secret evolutionary connection to the dinosaurs and Dr. Edward Wilson wanted to study the embryos and see what could be learned.) "Cherry" adored Wilson who was very much a mentor and largely responsible for Cherry's inclusion on the trip. The other Cape Crozier member, Henry "Birdie" Bowers, was Cherry's dear friend and someone he mourned forever. The loss of these two men devastated him.
The Cape Crozier story, and what came afterwards for Scott and the others, was told in Cherry's classic memoir, The Worst Journey in the World. As Sara Wheeler recounts in her amazing biography, Cherry: The Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the book was supposed to be a more traditional record of the expedition but Cherry just could not write that way. It took him years and hundreds of false starts and the stalwart assistance of good friend George Bernard Shaw, but in the end he wrote about himself, his friends, Scott, and all the things that went good and bad in Antarctica. He wrote more honestly and emotionally than anyone did in this genre - then any explorer would ever think to do. Most significantly, he wrote well and he wrote honestly, something else that rarely happens when explorers tell their tales.
Physical survival is something they can do, write about it in a way that is interesting....well, not so much.
But even as significant and compelling as Cherry's book was (and is), Sara Wheeler has done something equally impressive with her biography of him. Wheeler goes far beyond the expedition to include Cherry's whole life (the trip is only a few chapters) and spends a great deal of time showing just what that journey did to him and many of the others. There were nervous breakdowns aplenty among the survivors and a longing to always return to the story of Antarctica; to never forget. While this makes sense, it is not something commonly discussed especially back then. Scott's wife was furious with Cherry because he dared to suggest that Scott was fallible in Worst Journey (he did not however lay the blame of the tragedy at his feet as history has proven he could have and as Cherry pretty much knew). You were never supposed to suggest that the commanders did anything wrong, or unseemly or unbecoming a British officer and gentleman. That's just not the way exploration literature worked, not then, not for any of them. Wheeler wants to show just what happened to Cherry however, and how he lived in the years that followed.
Myths were important and at that time in world history - the deaths occurred in 1912 - myths were everything. We might think ourselves beyond all that now but really, we aren't. When it comes to men dying in any way, shape or form for their country, the myths are always most important. Maybe we think we need those myths in order to live. The irony is that they kill us, something we never seem to realize unless we see them crash to the ground before our very eyes. This was something Cherry discovered when he came home and it drove him to both refute the lies of who did what right or wrong while still protecting the dead, a difficult task but something he admirably held onto for all the days of his life.
Sara Wheeler's biography is wonderful, partly because her subject (who was not perfect) is so fascinating but also because she leaves no stone uncovered. It's just really compelling reading. I loved it though because it goes so far beyond the expedition and into the years and decades that follow. Sometimes there are parts of your life that you can never leave behind. Wheeler shows what happened to Cherry because of who he left in Antarctica and how he maintained his faith for them when he did not die. Their deaths broke his heart and sometimes, even with great explorers, hearts can not be mended.
[Post pic: Left to right, Bowers, Henry Robertson, 1883-1912. Wilson, Edward A., 1872-1912. Cherry-Garrard, Apsley, 1886-1959.]
