The Worst Journey In The World is considered by some literary critics as the finest travel book ever written. Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s vivid account of the 1910-1913 British Antarctic Expedition is an epic read.
It’s an almighty piece or writing and an inspirational tribute to the human spirit. But it’s also a tragic tale, one which saw the legendary Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Dr. Wilson, Lawrence Oates, and others succumb to horrendous conditions.
We’re here to explore all of that and more (especially the many accounts of the daft little Adélie penguins) in this book review.
An Impossible Adventure in The Worst Journey in the World
“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.”
Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959) wrote and published the work in 1922, a decade long delay in documenting the Scott expedition. One brought about due to his efforts in World War I.
When the crew set off, you have to remember the British Empire was in its death throes, but there was still very much a pioneering sense of British stiff upper lip in the air.
Whilst his work reserves this era for posterity, it’s also a fascinating account of an expedition that took a famous and tragic turn.
In 1910 Cherry-Garrard, only 24, headed off to the South Pole with Scott’s team in an attempt to reach the Pole. At the time, this would have marked the first occasion anyone had managed such a colossal feat.
Scott also planned extensive scientific studies of the region, so this was about much more than national conquest and chest thumping ego time.
To say our writer is detailed is an understatement. In this enormous and detailed account, we’re treated to insights on every part of the Antarctic expedition.
This includes the nightmarish journey to the pole (via boat, obviously, in the famous Terra Nova vessel) through astonishing storms—at one point, a mule was carried off the boat by a wave to certain doom, only to have another wave launch it back onto the ship into its exact stable.
Such bizarre and terrifying incidents became commonplace on a mission fraught with danger at every turn.
Whilst the Brits set up base in a modest-looking hut (still standing, as you can watch in the below clip) and began their research, there was also the need to push on and try to reach the South Pole.
After making themselves at home, the crushing nature of the cold impressed itself on all in attendance. As did the remote nature of the location, which left everyone on the verge of being stranded.
Where keeping a level-head was essential, with little room for error. And added frustrations on top of that:
“Both sexually and socially the polar explorer must make up his mind to be starved. To what extent can hard work, or what may be called dramatic imagination, provide a substitute? Compare our thoughts on the march; our food dreams at night; the primitive way in which the loss of a crumb of biscuit may give a lasting sense of grievance. Night after night I bought big buns and chocolate at a stall on the island platform at Hatfield station, but always woke before I got a mouthful to my lips; some companions who were not so highly strung were more fortunate, and ate their phantom meals. And the darkness, accompanied it may be almost continually by howling blizzards which prevent you seeing your hand before your face. Life in such surroundings is both mentally and physically cramped; open-air exercise is restricted and in blizzards quite impossible, and you realize how much you lose by your inability to see the world about you when you are out-of-doors. I am told that when confronted by a lunatic or one who under the influence of some great grief or shock contemplates suicide, you should take that man out-of-doors and walk him about: Nature will do the rest. To normal people like ourselves living under abnormal circumstances Nature could do much to lift our thoughts out of the rut of everyday affairs, but she loses much of her healing power when she cannot be seen, but only felt, and when that feeling is intensely uncomfortable.”
Sections of the book remind us of what the survivors of the Andes Flight Disaster had to experience in late 1972. Much of that was documented in Nando Parrdo’s excellent Miracle in the Andes (2006).
It’s all there again—the pulverising cold, frustrations, solitude etc.
These experiences are so removed from normal life it feels positively alien to read that work, this, and other tales of surviving in freezing temperatures.
And The Worst Journey in the World is, ultimately, tinged by a great deal of tragedy. It feels harsh to call the mission a “disaster”, but cruel fate did have it in for those who set out to reach the pole first.
Captain Scott’s Final, Fateful Push
The Worst Journey in the World isn’t named after that fateful push. Rather, it’s Cherry-Garrard’s account of his appalling trip with Dr. Edward Wilson to recover an Emperor penguin egg as part of his research into evolution.
They travelled across the Ross Ice Shelf in complete darkness in temperatures of −40 °C, barely making it back alive.
Cherry-Garrard was part of the expedition to reach the South Pole, too, but wasn’t selected for the final push (a decision that saved his life).
This section of the book is made up of Scott’s diary entries (plus those of other crew members), alongside the Cherry-Garrard’s tales about the many hazards of the Antarctic.
It was late 1911 when Captain Scott led a party of five in the push for the South Pole, which they reached in January 1912.
There they found they’d been beaten by Norwegian Roald Amundsen’s expedition a month earlier. In the dramatic trek back, they were then plagued by unusually horrendous weather that left them stranded and unable to reach safety.
The diary entries from Scott from this time are poignant and spell out the impending doom, but also detail heroic deeds. The most famous of these are Oates’ last words:
“I am just going outside, and may be some time.”
Sacrificing himself to the wilderness (his body was never found) to provide the others with a chance. Scott’s last diary entry was on the 29th March 1912—their bodies were found over a year later in a mission to recover them.
It was a brutally unfair end to their heroic efforts.
Captain Scott’s Adventures With the Unruly Adélie Penguins
Throughout the work, there are an amusing number of descriptions regarding the mischievous Adélie penguin colony.
These comical little creatures are highly inquisitive, so took great interest in the arrival of the Brits (as you would!), but this attention was largely unwanted.
Captain Scott grew irritated by their relentless efforts to stuff their beaks into everything the British expedition was up to.
You can read some of the best antics over on the Wikipedia page under Adélie penguin behaviour, as researched and contributed by our very own editor Mr. Wapojif. Here’s one such Scott encounter:
“The great trouble with [the dog teams] has been due to the fatuous conduct of the penguins. Groups of these have been constantly leaping onto our floe. From the moment of landing on their feet their whole attitude expressed devouring curiosity and a pig-headed disregard for their own safety. They waddle forward, poking their heads to and fro in their usually absurd way, in spite of a string of howling dogs straining to get at them. ‘Hulloa!’ they seem to say, ‘here’s a game – what do all you ridiculous things want?’ And they come a few steps nearer. The dogs make a rush as far as their harness or leashes allow. The penguins are not daunted in the least, but their ruffs go up and they squawk with semblance of anger.… Then the final fatal steps forward are taken and they come within reach. There is a spring, a squawk, a horrid red patch on the snow, and the incident is closed.”
And our favourite Adélie moment is:
“Meares and Dimitri exercised the dog-teams out upon the larger floes when we were held up for any length of time. One day a team was tethered by the side of the ship, and a penguin sighted them and hurried from afar off. The dogs became frantic with excitement as he neared them: he supposed it was a greeting, and the louder they barked and the more they strained at their ropes, the faster he bustled to meet them. He was extremely angry with a man who went and saved him from a very sudden end, clinging to his trousers with his beak, and furiously beating his shins with his flippers.”
Ever since reading this work, we’ve remained in adoration of the penguin species as a whole. They’re particularly bizarre, waddling about the place in a self-absorbed manner.
But as cute as they are, these are wild animals with some weird procreation and survival instincts.
Over 100 years after the British expedition, it emerged the troop was horrified by the deranged sex lives of the beasts, leaving them to cover this side of their behaviour up. The documents were eventually rediscovered by the Natural History Museum.
The press then covered the news, as you can read in The Guardian article ‘sexual depravity’ of penguins that Antarctic scientist dared not reveal:
“It was the sight of a young male Adélie penguin attempting to have sex with a dead female that particularly unnerved George Murray Levick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition. No such observation had ever been recorded before, as far as he knew, and Levick, a typical Edwardian Englishman, was horrified. Blizzards and freezing cold were one thing. Penguin perversion was another.
Worse was to come, however. Levick spent the Antarctic summer of 1911-12 observing the colony of Adélies at Cape Adare, making him the only scientist to this day to have studied an entire breeding cycle there. During that time, he witnessed males having sex with other males and also with dead females, including several that had died the previous year. He also saw them sexually coerce females and chicks and occasionally kill them.”
As unpleasant a revelation it may seem, for all their cute and comical behaviour we must remember they’re wild animals.
Survival is at the forefront of their daily activities, as well as a set of fairly basic animal instincts.
The “Failure” of Scott’s Mission and the British Empire
Just over two weeks after the Terra Nova tragedy, the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage. This inspired various heroic deeds itself as the vessel Carpathia raced to save Titanic survivors.
The decade of 1910-1920 was punishing for the British Empire. It endured a nightmarish time of it during World War I, making this a pivotal moment in the history of the country.
It was a marked shift away from previous successes towards a move away from being a superpower.
What Apsley Cherry-Garrard documented was something of a last hurrah. But what we can also take from this masterpiece is the men who put their lives at risk in the names of scientific study.
The British Expedition wasn’t about winning the race to the pole, it was about discovering an unknown wilderness.
They achieved that and then some, with their little shack from 1912 still standing as a testament to their efforts.
This incredible book stands as a testament to that and is a time capsule for an era which seems so dramatic, modern, and yet archaic in our eyes. It’s one hell of a read.
Over 100 years later, it’s full of daring, tragedy, and a heroic sense of can do. It represents an era of British history that’s fallen by the wayside, but it’s also one that ensures Captain Scott’s progressive efforts have been reserved for endless future generations.
