Edward Wilson of the Antarctic

BLAST! I wrote this months ago and only now lealised I never published it!! Well better late than never..

Edward Adrian Wilson of the Antarctic, also known as Uncle Bill to the expedition members was one of Robert Falcon Scott’s best friends. He accompanied Scott on his first expedition to the South Pole in the Discovery and was one of the team of three along with Shackleton, to reach Scotts “Farthest South”.

Wilson was the Chief science officer on the expedition and is probably know as a naturalist so it was a shock to me to read his diary which begins  a few weeks before the Terra Nova set sail. Wilson went to the Shetlands to learn how to catch whales, the plan being to take whaling gear on the Terra Nova with which to kill whales for study! His diary includes quite graphic descriptions of the hunt and death of whales. Luckily(?) there was no room on the ship for the heavy equipment so they never did hunt whales.

During the Antarctic winter of 1911 Wilson experienced one of the most harrowing episodes of polar explorartion when he lead a team to try to retrieve Emperor Penguin eggs from the rookery at Cape Crozier. Wilson, accompanied by Apsley Cherry Garrard (Cherry) and “Birdie” Bowers endured temperatures as low as -77 degrees Fahrenheit (about -60 c), in a tent! The tent actually blew away at one point leaving them sheltering in sleeping bags sheltered by a dry stone wall. They were luck enough to find the tent and get back to safety in the end. One of the best exploration book ever written came from this episode, Cherry’s “The Worst Journey in the World”.

The rest of the expedition of course is history, mistakes, accidents, bad luck, messages not being passed on and, yes some mis-management which culminated in the death of scott, Birdie, Evans, Oates and of course Wilson himself. Reading his diary, there are some poigniant moments when he talks about his loved ones and returning home etc when you realise that he is NOT going to return home and these are his last moments with his wife. If you read my tweets on twitter (unclebillwilson) you will see what he said/wrote exactly 100 years to the day.

Advertisement

~ by ir0nee on January 12, 2011.