The Welsh Polar Explorer

Jon Gower details the story of the Welshman who went with Scott to the South Pole and inspired his new Welsh language novel I’w Ddiwedd Oer.

History is awash with the stories of neglected heroines and heroes whose achievements are overshadowed by the exploits of others, or simply overlooked or even, sometimes deliberately airbrushed out.

Welshman Edgar Evans went with Captain Robert Falcon Scott to Antarctica, on that fateful race to the South Pole which was ultimately lost to the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Evans was chosen as part of the five-man party because of his strength – a pragmatic necessity should anything happen to the dogs and ponies who were helping drag the necessary sleds bearing food and equipment – and for his positive disposition. He was also the team member you could depend on for a laugh.

Seaman

Evans was born in the Gower village of Middleton near Rhosili in 1876, one of a dozen children in what must have been a very busy household. His father was a seaman, so it was natural that his son Edgar should follow him, joining the Royal Navy in 1891 when Edgar was just 13 years of age.

He sailed on the same ship as Scott, where Scott was the Torpedo Officer and subsequently joined him on voyages between 1901 and 1904, before returning to his south Wales home. During some of his shore leave he met a local woman called Lois Beynon, eventually marrying in 1904 and they had three children together.

Evans and Scott clearly got on together and there must have also been mutual respect because Scott invited Petty Office Evans to join him on the Terra Nova expeditions between 1910 and 1913. He almost didn’t make it all the way.

On a stopover in New Zealand he was so drunk he fell into the sea while trying to get back on deck.

Drinking

Evans had gained a reputation for his drinking, a bad name he found hard to shrug off. On the night before the Terra Nova set sail from Cardiff there was a grand reception in the city’s Royal Hotel where Evans has more than his share of celebratory drinks and disgraced himself.

Such incidents coloured the opinion of one of Scott’s biographers, Roland Huntford, who described Evans as “a huge, bull-necked beefy figure” and a “beery womaniser” who was “running a bit to fat” by the time of Scott’s second expedition aboard Terra Nova.

The race to the Pole was an absolute test of human endurance, with Evans leading a pony called Snatcher as part of a group of five men who would perish on their way back, one of the most famous instances of heroic failure in modern times.

So “Taff” Evans, along with Scott, Lawrence Oates, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers set off late in 1911, reaching the South Pole on 17 January 1912, just 11 weeks later.

It must have been a sight to break the spirits when they saw the Norwegian flag planted in the ice, a sign that they had lost the race.

Ice and snow

But they still had to get back to their first supply depot and nature conspired against them, as this was a time of ferocious gales – some of the worst ever recorded in the Antarctic – and they had to trudge along in the face of whipping winds throwing up ice and snow.

Evans had cut his hand on the way to the Pole creating a wound that stubbornly refused to heal.

Despite his bear-like strength and mental steel Evans began to weaken and when frostbite took its grip of his nose and fingers it sapped his resolve and will to go on.

An accident when they climbing down the Beardmore Glacier resulted in Evans receiving a head injury. He could no longer keep up with the other men and as Scott’s diary recorded: ‘After lunch, and Evans still not appearing, we looked out to see him still afar off…I was the first to reach the poor man and was shocked by his appearance; he was on his knees with clothes disarrayed, hands uncovered and frostbitten, and a wild look in his eyes.’

Icy trek

Evans didn’t have the strength to continue the icy trek, didn’t live to realize his own dream of opening a pub, where he might capitalize on his global fame, even though his friend Tom Crean opened the ‘South Pole Inn’ in the village of Annascaul in County Kerry, Ireland.

The ailing, broken-spirited Evans was placed onto a sledge and taken to the camp they had set up. By the time he was placed in the tent, he was comatose. He died that night, exactly a month after setting off.

He was buried in an unmarked spot on the cold continent although a plaque erected by his widow in Rhosili commemorates his courage with these words: “To seek, to strive, to find and not to yield.”

I’w Ddiwedd Oer is published by Y Lolfa. Jon will be talking about the book at the launch in Ty Tawe, Swansea on Tuesday, May 13^th.