It was, in fact, another nineteen-year-old from the same term in Britannia as Scott, Tommy Smyth, who for a long time, before he went off the rails, commanded Markham’s deepest affections and hopes. Smyth had passed out of Britannia in second place, five above Scott, and in terms of family, looks, temperament and aristocratic connections was everything that Markham wanted. ‘My bright young friend Tommy Smyth brings such sunshine into the house,’ he wrote on their return from the West Indies. ‘The boy has a very warm place in my heart: he has rare gifts of intellect and heart, not weak but a little wild – and all the better for that – brimming over with merriment and fun … went fast asleep with his head on my shoulder.’
If it was a Tommy Smyth that Markham wanted, in fact – and looks, birth, connections and a sunny nature the principal criteria of judgement – then the wonder of it is that he should have ended up with Scott at all. It is certainly true that Markham had identified him as an officer of ‘great ability’, but it is doubtful if he had any more idea of what he had got himself when Scott came to see him than the navy had when they let him go.
It would have been odd if he had done, because anyone who could dismiss the whole surveying and engineering branches with Markham’s breathtaking arrogance was unlikely to have recognised the practical and scientific bent that was at the heart of Scott’s genius. He would have known that as a torpedo officer Scott possessed a certain technical aptitude, but for all the subsequent claims over the appointment, the truth is that Markham – and those who allowed him to wield such unfettered powers – were luckier than they knew or deserved when they found themselves Scott.
It would be harsh to blame Markham, though, because the navy establishment was not designed to recognise the worth of an officer like Scott. He did not have a great naval name like Hyde-Parker, the boy he beat in the cutters’ race. No one said that Scott reminded him of his father or his uncle. Nobody suggested he would sooner go into battle or spend a polar winter with him than any man in the service. No captain thought him one in a thousand. All, when brought to think of him, spoke simply in terms of ‘entire satisfaction’ … ‘ a most promising officer’ … ‘a zealous and painstaking young officer … of most value to the service’. ‘You have nothing to thank me for,’ Lord Louis of Battenberg had written to him on quitting Majestic, as if Scott’s existence in his ship had come as something of a surprise to him. ‘I required a reliable first Lieut. & was glad to get him.’
Only George Egerton – Lord Louis’s successor in Majestic – seemed to have any real conception of Scott’s abilities, and even he had to warm himself to the task. ‘I am at a loss to name any officer who is likely to be more suitable,’ he had written in his initial response to Markham’s appeal. ‘Lieutenant Scott is an officer of great capabilities and possesses a large amount of tact and common sense. He is of strong physique and robust health – a scientist and an expert in electricity. Very keen, zealous, of a cheerful disposition, full of resource and a first rate comrade.’ ‘You certainly could not do better than put Scott in command,’ he wrote again from on board Majestic in Dublin Bay when he had had more time to think about it; ‘he is just the fellow for it, strong, steady and as keen as possible. Genial, scientific, a good head on his shoulders and a very good officer. I am in hope he will get his promotion in June, he deserves it.’
Scott himself was the first to admit that he had no knowledge of Antarctica and no great ‘predilection’ for polar exploration, but it is not hard to see what took him to Ecclestone Square. The idea that exploration on the eve of the ‘Fisher Revolution’ that would haul the navy into the twentieth century offered some magic route to promotion is utter nonsense, and yet what it did offer was both a physical and intellectual release from the straitjacket of service life that Scott had been craving since his days in Amphion.
And if he lacked the charisma and pedigree of Smyth, or even the focused ambition for exploration, he had a charm and tact that immediately sealed Markham’s support. ‘I told Captain Egerton about your wish,’ Markham wrote to him after his visit to Ecclestone Square, the first of a long stream of hints, warnings and instructions. ‘There could not be a better adviser. You will make a great mistake if you do anything at the Admiralty before you get the signal. I very well remember the way you won the service cutter race at St Kitz when you were in the “Rover”, and with the same combination of good judgement, prudence, and determination you will win again.’
It was a steep and unfamiliar learning curve for Scott. The appointment was not going to be straightforward, Markham explained three days later. Quite apart from the hostility of the Royal Society members who wanted a scientific leader, the factions within the RGS element also posed a difficulty. Sir George Nares wanted his son on the expedition. The powerful surveying lobby grouped around Sir William Wharton, the navy’s Chief Hydrographer, was going to demand a surveyor for the post. Lord Walter Kerr, the First Sea Lord, would be in Scott’s favour, Markham added with a final cautionary word, but it would be best ‘to do nothing until October beyond making interest with the naval officers on the Joint Committee’.
‘I see no possible danger in seeing the naval members of the Committee personally,’ Markham was warning again just two days later; ‘the mistake would be to make any application until the right time. Lord Walter Kerr would be the most important person to get on your side. Unluckily people are out of town until the autumn … Hoskins and McClintock are the most important to get on your side, as regards the Committee. Vesey Hamilton is luckily dead against Wharton and his surveyors … Sir George Nares is for the surveyor, but he seems to me to be getting into his dotage, and keeps maundering about his son going, whatever the subject of the discussion may be. He will be no good.’
‘You have your hands full indeed,’ Markham wrote once more on 1 August, determined to mark his protégé’s card as fully as possible. ‘I have told them to send you … Murray’s Antarctic paper of 1890, which is worth reading … They made (yesterday) Admiral Markham Secretary of the “Ship” sub-committee, so it is very desirable that you should square him … I have mentioned you to him … Success attend you.’ ‘I am glad you saw Sir Leopold McClintock and Admiral Markham,’ he wrote from Norway three weeks later. ‘The great thing will be to talk it over with Captain Egerton and get him to recommend you. His opinion will carry most weight … The only thing I am afraid of is that you will be considered too good – that the Admiralty may give leave to one of Wharton’s people about whom they care nothing, but may hesitate about a rising officer in the regular line.’
‘The hydrographers are directly responsible for all former disasters,’ Markham was complaining just over a month after he had first seen Scott, ‘for the Franklin catastrophe, for the searches invariably being sent in wrong directions … for having jobbed other failures into commands … for jobbing an old woman like Nares into the command in 1875 … Wharton has continually harassed and annoyed me, and now it is a success he wants to do the same; job the appointments, and get all the credit. If he succeeds there will be blunder after blunder ending in disaster like everything else they touch.’
To Markham the answer to any such impasse was always the same – ‘the important questions must be left to one man’, he insisted – and in the spring of 1900 he wrote directly to the Admiralty to put forward Scott’s name. ‘I have written to Mr Goschen,’ First Lord of the Admiralty, applying for the release of two officers, he told Lord Walter Kerr, one ‘to take charge of the executive work of the Antarctic Expedition, and