No . 134
The Trusty Servant
Wykehamist of the Antarctic
‘ I for one , had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain . They talk of the heroism of the dying - the little they know - it would be so easy to die , a dose of morphia , a friendly crevasse , and blissful sleep . The trouble is to go on ...’ Adam Rattray , Head of Art History , recounts the exploits of Apsley Cherry Garrard ( D , 99-04 ) in Antarctica :
The experiences of the Wykehamist explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard ( 1886-1959 ) in the Antarctic winter of July 1911 were so brutal that he never fully recovered : the intense cold caused his teeth to shatter ; the daily task of 10-12 hours of man-hauling two heavily laden sledges across broken ice and granular snow to gain only a few miles left him exhausted ; and the winds and storms he and his companions faced were ferocious ( at one point they lay buried in a snow drift : their shelter torn apart , their tent blown away ). Rest required about an hour of pummelling to get Apsley inside a frozen sleeping bag in which
Apsley Cherry-Garrard ( D , 99-04 ) he hardly slept and would suffer grievously .
‘ I do not believe that any man , however sick he is , has a much worse time than we had in those bags , shaking with cold until our backs would almost break .’
Apsley was with Captain Scott in the ‘ Terra Nova Expedition ’ of 1910-13 . The tragic end of the ‘ Polar Party ’ in March 1912 ( five men would die alongside Scott , including Apsley ’ s two companions on the ‘ Winter Journey ’, Dr . Edward ‘ Bill ’ Wilson and Lt . Henry “ Birdy ” Bowers ) has overshadowed the scientific work of the expedition . 40,000 samples were taken back to the Natural History Museum and other institutions for investigation , and pioneering work achieved in the fields of Antarctic glaciology , meteorology , paleontology , geology , zoology and oceanography .
Apsley was a landowner and a classicist , not a scientist . He was taken on as ‘ Assistant Zoologist ’ more because he had given the expedition £ 1,000 than because of a knowledge of an animal life . However during the ‘ Terra Nova Expedition ’ he consistently made up for his lack of scientific training with his enthusiasm , work ethic and physical and moral courage .
Amongst his few consolations was the ( immediate ) literary and ( eventual ) commercial success of the book he wrote of his experiences : The Worst Journey in the World . It is in most explorers ’ literary canon , and on the 10 th November the College commemorated the 100 th anniversary of its publication with an exhibition in Musa , a service in Chapel , a feast in Hall , a lecture in New Hall and a plaque to Apsley ’ s memory in Cloisters .
Why Apsley and his companions were sledging in the Antarctic winter of June-August 1911 is the focus of the Musa exhibition : Suffering for Science in Antarctica . Captain Scott – no stranger to the perils of Antarctic travel - described it as “ the hardest journey ever made ”. The temperatures were dreadful : at times -70 ° F ( not including wind chill factor ). In such extremes of frost , ice and snow surface crystals act like sand , making sledge hauling comparable to dragging a bath full of lead through a desert . As they pulled , the men sweated – the sweat would freeze and the men ’ s clothing turned to ice .
‘ My helmet was so frozen up that my head was encased in a solid block of ice , and I could not look down without inclining my whole body .’ Lt . Bowers .
In what cause was all this suffering ? Well , here we must look to 19 th - century theories of ‘ recapitulation ’, that is that animals in their embryonic development provide evidence of their evolutionary history .
A breeding colony of Emperor penguins had been found at Cape Crozier on the lower slopes of Mount Terror during Captain Scott ’ s first expedition to the Antarctic , 1901- 4 . The Emperor penguin was – Dr . Wilson reasoned – a bird that had not developed from its earliest ancestors , so its embryo might give valuable clues as to the evolutionary history of birds . Could dissection of an Emperor penguin embryo reveal evolutionary transition from scales to feathers as reptiles evolved into birds ? This was Dr . Wilson ’ s theory ; to find out he
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