We continue our tour of the Cape Evans hut in the aft starboard corner. For the map of the hut and previous stops, please start with the Men’s Quarters and progress to the Tenements.
Coming out of the Tenements, we proceed down towards the end of the wardroom and find ourselves looking into a corner that is almost, but not quite, its own little room. This is where Captain Scott’s bunk was, as well as that of Teddy Evans, technically his second-in-command, and Dr Wilson, who everyone else considered to be his second-in-command. We will look at Scott’s cubicle first.
There is another historic photo here, of the man himself in his domain.
I have a high-res version of this and it shows the place as I need to draw it, so I deliberately didn’t take any similar shots when I was there, as its modern state is rather denuded. It has also been photographed extensively by every visiting photographer for the last twenty years, so if I really need to find reference for the modern space I can easily find it on Google, as can you. However, there were some small details that I hadn’t seen before and which gave a tangible connection to overlooked everyday life in the past.
A rather worn balaclava at the foot end of the bunk
Is this a matchbox? Scott was a heavy smoker … his pipes are gone but perhaps the matchbox was a less attractive souvenir for sticky-fingered visitors of the past.
Some lanterns, which may have been used in the search for Dr Atkinson when he was lost in a blizzard in July 1911.
A stack of socks, viewed close up for texture. The Expedition took several types of sock, including a Norwegian goat hair variety which were notorious for wearing out quickly. These socks have rather a hairy texture so I wonder if they are those.
The thing that really surprised me about Scott’s cubicle was how far the desk was from the bed, as the famous photo makes it look like a compressed space. Looking back at my photos against that one, I see now that he is not writing at the central desk that is there now, but instead at a smaller one that collapsed against the wall, and he’s sitting on his bed, not a chair. If you look closely at the first of my photos above, you can still see the triangular wooden support bracket still against the wall, though the table top is gone. So the large desk that is still there must be what was known as the chart table, and Scott’s collapsible desk was his writing desk. Learning new things all the time!
From Scott’s cubicle, you get a good view into one of the much less well=photographed parts of the hut, the nook that was shared by Lt. Evans and Dr. Wilson.
Evans on the left, Wilson on the right
Having only ever seen one photo of this space, I guessed it was overlooked by photographers because it really wasn’t much to look at, but trying to photograph it myself I think it’s also because the light conditions are extremely awkward. The light from the window shines bright on the wall to the right and on the table in the foreground, but Teddy’s corner is in deep darkness. The human eye can compensate for this somewhat, but cameras want to use one exposure setting for the whole image, and it just doesn’t work! This was the best I got, with the nighttime setting on my phone and some help from Photoshop. It seems like a lot of work for a middling photo of an unimpressive space, but the whole reason I was there was to get into the corners that are mostly left out of the photographic record, and this was one of the most important ones.
The shelves around Wilson’s bunk are full of medicines and medical supplies – you can see piles of rolled-up gauze bandages in the upper right. Wilson wasn’t the chief medical officer on the expedition (that was Atkinson, whose bunk we saw in the Tenements) but he had qualified as a medical doctor and had been Junior Surgeon on the Discovery, so they are not misplaced.
On his bed is a rather comfy-looking sweater:
Oh all right, here’s a shot of Scott’s cubicle. See? Empty. But I hadn’t seen it from Wilson’s bunk before, and this gives you more of a sense of space.
If you’re very observant, you may spot my minder trying not to be seen.
To the right is Ponting’s darkroom, where the picture at the top of this post was developed, and beyond that another of the largely unphotographed corners of the hut. But that is an adventure for next time!