It helped that they saw things in virtually identical terms, but it would be a mistake to assume that when one reads Scott he is simply writing to another man’s dictation. ‘I must have complete command of the ship and the landing parties,’ he wrote in the first crucial letter after his appointment, a memo that bears the stamp of Scott’s mature style as clearly as it does that of Markham’s coaching.
There cannot be two heads.
I must be consulted on all matters affecting the equipment of the landing parties.
The executive officers must not number less than four, excluding of myself.
I must be consulted on all future appointments both civilian and other, especially the Doctors.
It must be understood that the Doctors are first medical men, and secondly members of the scientific staff, and not vice versa.
I am ready to insist upon these conditions to the point of resignation if, in my opinion, their refusal perils the success of the undertaking.
If there was a certain amount of shadowboxing here, behind that first point lay a quarrel that went to the heart of both Scott’s and Markham’s understanding of the position of commander. From the earliest planning stages of the expedition two distinct naval and scientific elements had been envisaged, but what had never been satisfactorily established in all the arguments of the previous year was either the balance of power between the two or the ultimate authority over any landing party.
In Markham’s own mind, fixed as it was with a theological fury on the indivisibility of a naval command, there had never been and never could be any confusion, but in a lapse of concentration he had opened the door to his opponents. In October 1899 he had received a request for a testimonial for Melbourne University from a Professor Gregory of the Natural History Museum, and in an unusual show of unity with his Royal Society opponents, met Gregory the following month with the counter suggestion that he should become the Director of Civilian Staff on the forthcoming expedition. With the benefit of hindsight, Markham managed to convince himself that Gregory’s size, voice and habit of ‘nervously pulling his moustache’ had never inspired confidence, but at the time he seemed the ideal candidate for the job. ‘I was influenced by his proved success in organisation and the management of men in a most difficult expedition (British East Africa),’ Professor Edward Poulton, an Oxford zoologist with a speciality in butterflies, and an object of particular contempt to Markham, later wrote of Gregory, ‘by the wide grasp of science which enabled him to bring back valuable observations and collections in so many departments. His ice experience in Spitzbergen and Alpine regions was also of highest importance, together with the fact that his chief subject was geology, a science which pursued in the Antarctic Continent would almost certainly yield results of especial significance … No one was more competent to state the probable structure of the Antarctic Continent and its relation to that of the earth. This opinion of Prof. Gregory’s qualifications for the position of scientific leader of an Antarctic expedition is I know widely held among British scientific men. In their wide combination and united as they are to tried capacity as a leader they are unique, and an expedition with Prof. Gregory f or its scientific chief, with as free a hand as English law would permit, was bound to yield great results.’
If Markham had paused for a moment, he must have known that the last thing he wanted on his naval expedition was a scientist of this kind of stature, but by the time he realised the threat the damage was done. In the early January of 1900 Gregory had sailed for Australia with what seemed to him a clear understanding of their agreement, and in a letter posted in Egypt on his way out, he spelled out his idea of the command he was accepting. Gregory envisaged a small and carefully chosen landing party, with two scientists supported by a cook, porter, two sailors, one reserve, a ‘medical man of endurance, resource and pluck’, equipped with a three-roomed house, two observatory huts, stables, two boats, sledges, dogs and fuel for two years. ‘As the main object of the landing party would be to solve the problem of the nature of the countryside,’ he had written in a letter that in some bizarre aberration Markham had ‘approved’, ‘which is a geological and geographical problem, it seems to me that it would be better for the organization of the land party to be placed in the hands of the scientific leader … The captain would, I hope, be instructed to give such assistance from the crew as may be required in dredging, tow-netting etc, to place boats where required at the disposal of the Scientific staff … In regards of the Captain, it seems to me that the main desiderata are considerable experience of sailing ships and of ice navigation which would be most likely combined in a whaling captain.’ The advantages of a naval commander, Gregory conceded, were obvious, ‘but sailing is a neglected art in the navy. Further, it seems doubtful whether a first-rate naval officer would in the present condition of affairs be willing to bury himself in the Antarctic for three years, and whether the admiralty would give the necessary leave of absence to one of its best men.’
It seems likely that Markham’s ‘approval’ of this plan is one of the first signs of old age and failing powers that would become increasingly worrying over the next three years. For some time he had been suffering from sporadic ill health, but it is impossible to believe that the younger Markham would have allowed gout or pneumonia or anything else to cloud his judgement in a way that was so potentially crippling to Scott’s prospects.
With Gregory not expected back from Australia until December, however, there was nothing to do but go on as if nothing had happened, and after a crash course in magnetism at Deptford, Scott joined Markham in Norway to look at equipment and meet the men whose experience he so badly needed. ‘It is quite clear that our Hydrographer Dept is behindhand & old fashioned as regards all these matters,’ Markham had written to him after a cruise with Nansen had opened his eyes to the oceanographic advances being made abroad, ‘while it will not be to our credit if our Antarctic work is not quite up to date. I think it quintessential that you should come out here in September … Nansen and Hjort will be delighted to see you.’
Scott never needed much encouragement to bring himself up to date with technical innovations, and while his magnetic course kept him busy through September, he was in Oslo by 9 October. From Oslo he went up to a new health hydro to join Markham and his wife Minna, and on the next day, he recorded in the blue hardcover notebook he had bought himself for the journey, boarded the Michael Sars, the state-owned oceanographic ship.
It is unusual to have a diary of Scott’s from this period, because unlike most naval officers, to whom a journal was second nature, he never seems to have kept one before going south. It is possible that they have simply disappeared, but if the odd, aborted fragments from his early career are any guide, there would seem to have existed in Scott an ingrained habit of reserve that extended even to the private page. There is certainly nothing in this journal to suggest anything of a private life; what it conjures up instead is the curiosity, excitement and openness that Scott brought to almost everything he did at this time. In her memoir of him his sister spoke of his need for a wider and more challenging world than the navy, and in Norway he found himself in his element, doing what he did best with the kind of men for whom science and practical invention merged in the precise way he admired.
Scott would, in fact, have made a good Norwegian. ‘So many things discussed that it becomes absolutely necessary to start this journal,’ he scrawled on the tenth, and the next two weeks were filled with notes, memos, questions, sketches and snatches of conversation. Nansen, too, was as generous with his time and advice as Markham had promised. ‘Nansen joined us for dinner … Nansen rejects asbestos … Many interesting scraps of conversation with Nansen … N. spoke of Borchgrevink as a tremendous fraud … Nansen’s name will go far here … ’ From scurvy to the size of boats, from sledges to ski, sextants, theodolites, ships’ plans, insulation, thermometers, propellers, drag nets, matting, moccasins, wool, provisions, grain and even dogs, Scott got all he could out of him. ‘Discussed dogs,’ Scott recorded a conversation on the eleventh with the arch-man-hauler of Ecclestone Square.‘He [Markham] is evidently yielding – and we must do something soon.’
The note of urgency – of impatience, even – in that entry is typical, because the more Scott was impressed