Of volunteers, Lieut. Robert F. Scott, now in ‘Majestic’, is much the best man to command the expedition I think; and Lieut Charles Royds (‘Crescent’) would be the best as the one lieutenant …
With the heavy demands made on the service by the Boxer Rebellion in China and war in South Africa, the Admiralty were reluctant to lend anyone, but by 5 April the appointment of Scott and Royds had been confirmed. On the following day Markham wrote to congratulate Scott and reassure him on the score of promotion, and it was probably as well that he did not tell him just how strong the opposition remained. ‘I read my letter to Mr Goschen,’ Markham noted in his diary for 18 April, after he had finally broken the news of his fait accompli to the odd alliance of naval hydrographers and Royal Society entomologists his years of bullying had conjured into existence, ‘and the reply from him, and from the Secretary of the Admiralty appointing Scott and Royds. Captain Tizard immediately became most insolent, questioning my right to write to Mr Goschen, cross-questioning, and making a violent attack on the professional character of the officers. His real meaning is that no officer in the regular line is fit, only those serving in the surveying branch. His manner was most offensive.’ After all Markham’s manipulation and deceptions, there was probably no protégé of his the hydrographers could have accepted, but their opposition to Scott was not simply a matter of revenge. He might, they conceded, have the paper certificates to prove his ‘thorough grounding in seamanship, navigation, surveying, chemical & mechanical science’. He might well have got the best marks of his year – 980 out of 1000 – in seamanship. He might equally have done a special course in surveying at Greenwich, and written up the ‘whole question of mining survey’. None of that answered to their point. ‘That officer’s [Scott’s] certificates are without doubt remarkably creditable & show him to be possessed of a rare combination,’ Captain Mostyn Field – ‘Scott’s chief enemy’, Markham called him – wrote on 12 May, in a letter that remains as crucial now to any valuation of Scott’s capacities as it was then,
but qualifications for the command of an expedition to the Antarctic should, in my opinion, include experience as a responsible officer in a masted ship … Not less essential in the officer in Command, is a practical acquaintance with the practice of deep sea sounding, dredging, running survey, and magnetical & astronomical observations both afloat & ashore … Mere courses of instruction in these subjects cannot adequately take the place of years devoted to their practice under varied conditions, however talented an officer may be. All experience must be purchased, and if an officer inexperienced in these matters be appointed, the price will be paid in time and material, neither of which can be afforded in an Antarctic Expedition … It is one thing to take observations in a hut at Kew or the courtyard at Greenwich observatory, but quite another thing to get the same observations under conditions of service & especially such as prevail in the Antarctic … I regret that I cannot concur in the appointment of that officer.
The tone here is so disarmingly reasonable, so apparently unarguable, that it is easy to forget that the same objections would have applied to any young naval officer at the end of Victoria’s reign. It is certainly true that a candidate from the hydrographers’ branch would have been in a better position to carry out the oceanographic and surveying work of the expedition, and yet after a gap of more than twenty years in naval polar exploration, Field’s ideal of a commander no more existed among the junior officers of the surveying branch than did Markham’s incarnation of Arthurian chivalry in the executive line.
If Field thought arguments were going to win him the case, however, he had misjudged his enemy. At the next meeting of the Joint Committee the old alliance of hydrographers and professors fought one last stand, but with the control of the vital naval subcommittee set up to resolve the issue slipping away from them and into the hands of Markham’s old ‘Arctics’ clique, they were finished. ‘There were six distinguished Naval Officers most of them with Arctic experience, who would insist upon Scott’s appointment,’ Markham wrote of the final, bitter end game. ‘Wharton’s hydrographic clique also numbered six, and they would strive to secure & job for the survey department with obstinate perversity … I saw the R.S. Secretaries and told them that if Wharton was allowed to continue the dead lock they would be responsible. But they could do nothing with him. At last I persuaded McClintock to have one more meeting and divide. The Committee met once more on May 24th, when Wharton and Tizard both heard some home truths. Some of the Clique were ashamed and staid [sic] away … On a division there was a good majority for Scott’s appointment, Wharton and Tizard had been the only dissentients.’
Markham had won. Wharton, unwell at this time, and presumably no better for his drubbings in committee, had given in. The following day Markham called a meeting of the Joint Committee to endorse the appointment. Markham proposed Scott, and Lord Lister, the President of the Royal Society – ‘always courteous, never taking a decided line, and caring nothing’ – seconded him. The motion was adopted unanimously. ‘We take the opportunity of offering you our congratulations, on assuming the conduct of an enterprise involving difficulties and responsibilities of no ordinary character,’ the two presidents wrote to Scott with an inscrutable show of unity.
Scott, in his turn, was no less silkily diplomatic. ‘My Lord and Sir,’ he replied on 11 June 1900, a year to the day since he had followed Mrs and Miss Nuttall into Ecclestone Square, ‘I am keenly alive to the great honour done me in the selection and sincerely hope that the trust reposed in me may be justified in my conduct of the enterprise and in my earnest wish to further its great scientific aims. I am grateful for your kindness in the applications you have made on my behalf to my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and feel that while in your service, I can confidently leave in your hands, my interests in a profession to which I am devotedly attached.’
Scott had learned fast. But if he thought that his troubles were over, he was in for a brutal awakening. Wharton and his clique had been no more than stalking horses for a far more dangerous challenge.
Oh Lord! What an expedition, but order will come.
George Murray, 26 February 1901
IT HAD BEEN AN odd twelve months for Scott. In the week before Markham finally brought Wharton to his knees he had been up in London on leave, but for most of the year during which the RS and the RGS had been locking horns over his nomination, Scott was in Majestic and more concerned with ship and home life than any remoter prospect of command.
With his appointment at the end of May this changed, and although his duties in Majestic did not officially end for another two months, he immediately found himself plunged into Antarctic business. In his book on his great 1893–96 journey in the Fram Nansen described the preparation as the hardest part of any expedition, and for a thirty-year-old naval lieutenant with scarcely more experience of the hostile world of the Royal Society than had his dressmaking sisters, it was harder again.
There is possibly nothing in Scott’s whole career that so clearly demonstrates the competence of the man – his intelligence, grasp of detail, ability to get on with people, or, for that matter, his tact and charm – than the astonishing way in which he rose to the challenge. There were times over the next year in which he came very close to buckling under the strain, but one only has to look at the letters and memos that poured from his desk to recognise that in his new independence here at last was a man who had found himself.
It is to Sir Clements Markham’s everlasting credit, too, that having for so long sung the song of youth, he was prepared, when the time came, to give it its head. ‘I am delighted to see your promotion in the Times,’ he wrote generously on 2 July 1900, the day after Scott was appointed commander. ‘In taking charge of Antarctic matters, you may rely on my support always … I consider that the commander is the man whose opinion should prevail,