The Worst Journey in the World

The Worst Journey in the World is a memoir of the 1910-1913 British Antarctic Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. It was written and published in 1922 by a member of the expedition, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and has earned wide praise for its frank treatment of the difficulties of the expedition, the causes of its disastrous outcome, and the meaning (if any) of human suffering under extreme conditions.Preparations and the Worst Journey:In 1910, Cherry-Garrard and his fellow explorers...
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The Worst Journey in the World is a memoir of the 1910-1913 British Antarctic Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. It was written and published in 1922 by a member of the expedition, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and has earned wide praise for its frank treatment of the difficulties of the expedition, the causes of its disastrous outcome, and the meaning (if any) of human suffering under extreme conditions.Preparations and the Worst Journey:In 1910, Cherry-Garrard and his fellow explorers travelled by sailing vessel, the Terra Nova, from Cardiff to McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. 'Cherry' was teased at first by some of the other members of this expedition because of his lack of Antarctic experience, his lack of specialised credentials for the position of 'assistant zoologist' to which he had been named, and persistent suspicions among some of his comrades that he had in fact bought his way on board by contributing £1,000 to the expedition's troubled funds.Cherry-Garrard responded to these taunts with modesty, a self-sacrificial ability to work hard, and acute observational skills. He was also, according to novelist, biographer, and socialite Nancy Mitford, the only intellectual amongst the crew. These traits were to serve him well when it came time for him to write down his memories of the expedition. They also caught the eye of the expedition's second-in-command, Dr Edward 'Bill' Wilson, who adopted Cherry-Garrard as a protégé.Dr Wilson's personal goal in Antarctica was to recover eggs of the Emperor penguin for scientific study. It was thought at the time that the flightless (and "primitive") penguin might shed light on an evolutionary link between reptiles and birds through its embryo. As the bird nests during the Antarctic winter, it was necessary to mount a special expedition in July 1911, from the expedition's base at Cape Evans, to the penguins' rookery at Cape Crozier. Wilson chose Cherry-Garrard to accompany him and 'Birdie' Bowers across the Ross Ice Shelf under conditions of complete darkness and temperatures of −40 °C and below. All three men, barely alive, returned from Cape Crozier with their egg specimens, which were stored.It was this "Winter Journey", not the later expedition to the South Pole, that Cherry-Garrard later described as The Worst Journey in the World.Later: the tragedy and the book:The expedition then swung into preparations for a march from Cape Evans to the as-yet-unreached South Pole. This march was to be done during the Antarctic summer in 1911-1912. Scott's strategy called for a large team of men, ponies, motor sledges and dogs to start out southward from their base, hauling food and fuel on sledges. As the team progressed southward, the leader would successively send support groups back home, leaving a small "Pole party" of the fittest men to make the final advance to the South Pole.Cherry-Garrard accompanied the initial team across the Ross Ice Shelf and up the Beardmore Glacier, that discharges ice from the Antarctic Plateau down onto the shelf. At the edge of the polar plateau Scott told him that he would have to return northward. The men not chosen to go on to the Pole all returned to the base camp at Cape Evans. Some returned by ship to Britain while others stayed in the Antarctic and prepared to meet Scott and his four companions on the return journey. But for a variety of reasons, partly described in The Worst Journey in the World, the rendez-vous failed. Cherry had been given the task of using the dog teams to meet Scott's party and assist them home, but in fact Cherry-Garrard did not penetrate beyond One Ton Depot, only 11 miles distant from Scott's final location where he and his companions froze to death.In 1912-1913 Cherry-Garrard and other expedition members once again marched southward, this time to try to find traces of their lost comrades.