"Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised." So begins Apsley Cherry-Garrard's account of his experience with Captain Scott. I was exhausted when I finished reading this book. Not because it is long (though at 564 pages it is not short), and not because it is tedious (there were only a couple of passages that I might describe that way). It's just that Cherry-Gerrard describes his journeys in Antarctica so compellingly that it is impossible not to feel that in some way you are along for the ride. At the same time, the chasm between his experiences and anything the average person is likely to experience is so enormous that you can't possibly think you have really experienced--even vicariously--what he went through.
I have read many books about Antarctic exploration, and this one easily ranks with the best of them. In 1910, at the age of 24, "Cherry," as he was known, joined famed explorer Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic expedition aboard the Terra Nova. Their objective was to be the first men to reach the South Pole, thereby winning glory for England and themselves. The story of the race that ensued between Scott and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen is well known: Amundsen's secret voyage to Antarctica when most people thought he was going north; the two groups' different routes, different modes of travel, and different types of preparation; Scott's decision to make the final leg of the journey to the Pole with four companions rather than three; the disappointment on arriving at the Pole only to find that the Norwegians had beaten them by a month; the death of Edgar Evans and the subsequent death of the entire Polar party on the return journey, just a few miles from a large cache of food and supplies; the discovery of their frozen bodies (with the exception of Oates, who apparently sacrificed himself for the others and was never found); and the posthumous transformation of Scott into a hero at home in England. What Cherry adds is not just a first-person account of polar exploration (there are many of those), but a bone-chilling description of hardships faced and endured. He does so with a modicum of humor, but mostly with just the right combination of detailed observation, descriptive power, and narrative flair.
The most noteworthy part of the expedition for Cherry as an individual was the famous "Winter Journey," a grueling three-man slog in the dead of the dark Antarctic winter to Cape Crozier (67 miles one-way from their base camp). The purpose of the trip was to collect emperor penguin embryos for scientific examination, but the fact that it had to be done in winter, and that this particular winter brought weather unbelievably inhospitable for traveling, made for an ordeal that Cherry describes with such a chilling matter-of-factness that it is hard to read without gasping. Take this: "It was the darkness that did it. I don't believe minus seventy temperatures would be bad in daylight, not comparatively bad . . ." Minus seventy? Not "comparatively" bad? How in the world did they make it back to their base at Hut Point alive, let alone keep journals along the way? And that is one of the most amazing things about so many of the explorers of the "golden age" of Antarctic exploration. Carrying out tasks that required the most arduous exertions, facing life-or-death situations almost daily, and ending each day in a state of utter exhaustion, they somehow found time to record their activities and their thoughts. And eloquently, too. Scott, of course, famously recorded his doomed party's activities and his own benedictory thoughts right up virtually to the moment of his death. So read Apsley Cherry-Garrard's book for his account of the polar party and the search for their bodies (a search in which he participated). Read it for the account of the incredible winter journey for the embryos. Read it for the sketches of the various characters that made up the Terra Nova's complement of officers and men. And if for no other reason, read it for gems like Chapter 6, a masterpiece on life in Antarctica and a memorable portrait of Captain Scott. This book is one of the very best accounts of Antarctic exploration. It is little wonder that it has become a classic of adventure literature.
The Worst Journey in the World
4.4 | 980 ratings
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Last update: 09-01-2024
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MoseyOn
The Title Says it All
Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2011joe c
Where are the maps
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2024nancy schultz
great story----exciting!
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2024Stephen Balbach
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Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2009P. R. Kettle
If you have not read this book - you should!
Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2015Charlie Victor
Good story, but difficult to read
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2018