'SOLDIER'
Lawrence Edward Grace Oates, a Captain in the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons stationed in India, volunteered for Scott's second Antarctic expedition, was granted leave by his regiment and joined the Terra Nova in London in March 1910. As a horseman, he was given special responsibilities for seventeen Siberian ponies that would join the Terra Nova in New Zealand, with three motor sledges and thirty dogs, Scott's auxiliary methods of transport for the journey to the South Pole.
The expedition wintered at Cape Evans in 1911 and after depôt-laying, Oates was selected along with Wilson, Bowers and Evans for the final sledging party from the top of Beardmore Glacier across the polar plateau to the South Pole. They reached the pole in mid January 1912 only to find Amundsen's tent flying a Norwegian flag. In poor spirits, they turned for home, facing an eight hundred mile journey back to Cape Evans. 'Taff' Evans, the strong man of the party, exhausted and frostbitten, fell and died on 17 February. Oates, frostbitten and with gangrene setting in, walked out of their tent into a blizzard on the morning of 16 March and the remaining three, Scott, Wilson and Bowers died of starvation and exhaustion in their tent two weeks later, just eleven miles short of the One Ton Depôt.
Oates' body was never found. The search party built a cairn near where he walked to his death, leaving a message 'Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L.E.G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons. In March 1912, returning from the Pole, he walked willingly to his death in a blizzard to try and save his comrades beset by hardship'. The search party found Scott and his colleagues frozen in their sleeping bags and, after removing their notebooks and effects, lowered their tent over them.
HERBERT GEORGE PONTING (1871-1935)
Captain Lawrence Edward Grace 'Titus' Oates, British Antarctic Expedition, 1910-12
Details
HERBERT GEORGE PONTING (1871-1935)
Captain Lawrence Edward Grace 'Titus' Oates, British Antarctic Expedition, 1910-12
Large format gelatin silver print, 33 x 22 in., H. G. Ponting, F.R.G.S, copyright in the negative, mounted on card, original oak frame.
Captain Lawrence Edward Grace 'Titus' Oates, British Antarctic Expedition, 1910-12
Large format gelatin silver print, 33 x 22 in., H. G. Ponting, F.R.G.S, copyright in the negative, mounted on card, original oak frame.