Endgame for Karen May and George Lewis’ Exoneration of Captain Scott

Endgame for Karen May and George Lewis’ Exoneration of Captain Scott

Kristoffer Nelson-Kilger

It is 2020, and the endgame is at hand for Karen May and George Lewis. Seven years ago, Karen May began a now joint quest to exonerate Captain Scott. Nothing in the disaster could have been his fault. It was really Dr Atkinson who made up the supposed orders that the dogs were not to be risked. Now it is 2020 (or it will be when their paper is formally published in Polar Record), and they realize that May was wrong in determining the culprit. Instead, it is Meares who is to blame, based on his alleged malfeasance with regard to the ponies. The reader is invited to read my refutation of May and Lewis’ ponies paper, “Big Trouble in Vladivostok” [insert link here].

Ignominious Beginning

To begin with, they make the unbelievable statement that Gran “apparently misinterpreted Scott’s use of the word “must”, taking it as an absolute imperative” and that “a native English speaker would understand Scott as urging the cautious assessment of numerous factors”(May and Lewis, 2019: 2). I will let this not even wrong statement stand without further comment. Their research establishes that Gran was the source of Roland Huntford's erroneous statement regarding verbal orders to Lt Evans which were to be relayed to Cape Evans. However, this does not exonerate Huntford. As Sienicki has documented in subsection 10.5.1 of his book, it was plainly obvious that such orders, if delivered by such means, could not possibly have been executed in time. Therefore, Huntford fabricated their existence. There is also issue to be taken with their statement that "[H]is 1961 memoir demonstrates his sincere misunderstanding of Scott’s 1911 orders (his erroneous belief that Scott delayed giving orders for dog teams until the last minute)"(May and Lewis, 2019: 5). Was it really Gran’s belief? He had to have received the orders from someone else, as he certainly would not have had any direct knowledge of them.

Their conclusion that because Captain Scott did not engage in speculation and self-criticism, cancellation or curtailment of the dog teams (as Gran hypothesized) did not occur, is not necessarily the case, assuming caeteris paribus. Captain Scott never criticized his own failure to respond to Captain Amundsen's threat to priority at the South Pole. Even disregarding the preceding example, he showed a strange slowness to recognize the failure of the dogs. He passed the northern bound of his rendezvous range (82° S) on February 28, yet he failed to finally conclude that there had been a failure until 11 days later. To add to this, May and Lewis erroneously write that: "Having written this expectation into his October 1911 orders, it is implausible that Scott would destroy this “safety-net” during his November–December 1911 trek"(May and Lewis, 2019: 6).Apparently, changing from a definite schedule to a to be determined schedule amounts to destruction. It does nothing of the sort.

Their treatment of Captain Scott’s sentimentality regarding animals is not much better than the preceding:

Clues to Scott’s thought processes in 1911 exist in Scott’s contemporaneous journal: these do not indicate a motivation of sentimentality... Hence, if a Scott–Oates argument had occurred in February 1911, we doubt that it followed Gran’s later-life attempts at character exposition through dialogue… We believe current confusion in the expedition narrative originated from expedition members, then historians, taking accounts on trust rather than tracing claims to their earliest sources. Modern theories of Scott’s sentimentality towards animals during the depot journey, and his last-minute ‘verbal orders’ to Evans, apparently originated from Gran’s honest misunderstanding of Scott’s intentions and writings… Primary evidence now indicates that Scott valued human life over animal...(May and Lewis, 2019: 4, 11).

On the contrary, sentimentality (ambiguous or otherwise) can be detected even in the quotes they provide: "We can’t afford to lose animals of any sort"; "The poor thing is a miserable scarecrow…" Further indications (by no means an exhaustive list) of sentimentality towards animals by Captain Scott are as follows:

Next came a short-legged, thick-set dog, with a long, shaggy coat, and black-and-white in colour; it was one of these who kept up the traditions of his race by pulling to the last gasp... But what mattered that? They had now good Anglo-Saxon names, and their value lay in their future, and not in their past. (Scott, 1905, Vol. I: 472)

The whip was never applied to his panting little form, and when he stopped it was to die from exhaustion. (Scott, 1905, Vol. II: 16)

One takes a look through a hole in the bulkhead and sees a row of heads with sad, patient eyes come swinging up together from the starboard side, whilst those on the port swing back; then up come the port heads, whilst the starboard recede. It seems a terrible ordeal for these poor beasts to stand this day after day for weeks together, and indeed though they continue to feed well the strain quickly drags down' their weight and condition; but nevertheless the trial cannot be gauged from human standards. (Scott, 1913, Vol. I: 5)

Finally, if Captain Scott had valued human life over animal life, then he never would have selected man hauling as the primary form of transportation. Valuation of human life over animal is a hallmark of selecting animal transportation, as it is the animals that will be accomplishing the logistical tasks, leaving the humans free to accomplish the goals of the expedition.