From: dbarker@spang.Camosun.BC.CA (Deryk Barker)
Subject: Re: "I'm going out now and may be some time"
Organization: Camosun College, Victoria B.C, Canada
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 19:59:25 GMT

Sorry  about the  previous  quote-only  posting  - I'm  having lost of
trouble with noise on the line from home.

In article <792@nate.UUCP> nate!loring@cs.rit.edu writes:
>In the last few weeks of watching Dr. Who I've seen the following quote
>(and variations of it) used in several Dr. Who stories:
>
>	"I'm going out now and may be some time"
>
>This was said by an explorer before leaving his group on his own and 
>getting to be the first person to either the north or south poles, right?
>(pardon my ignorance, I'm US educated :-) ).

I make no comment on your education....

According to   Robert Falcon Scott,  leader  of  the British Antarctic
Expedition,  the last words of  Captain  Lawrence Edward Grace "Titus"
Oates were "I am just going outside and may be some time". These words
were -  according to Scott's diary  - uttered by  Oates as he left the
tent in  which the remaining  4 men of  the polar party were  stranded
with little food or  fuel.  Oates  was suffering from a  more advanced
form of scurvy than the other 3 (one,  PO Evans had  already died) and
left  to  wander off into the Antarctic  wilderness  and die, in order
that the others might have a better chance of living.

In  the   end, all the   party  died.  Scott's diary  was   eventually
discovered and - suitably bowdlerised - published. In fact through his
{almost total arrogance and incompetence Scott had  managed not only to
fail to  get to the  South Pole first  (Roald Amundsen, the  Norwegian
explorer, beat him to it by a couple of weeks -  *and* brought all his
men back safe) but also to lose the lives of himself and 4 others.

Scott's Last Journey has been glamorised as something heroic and noble
- see the movie Scott  of the  Antarctic for example -  whereas it was
probably "nasty brutish and short". For a  healthy counterblast to all
the Jingoistic tub-thumping read "The  Last Place on  Earth" by Roland
Huntford. In the  TV  dramatisation Oates's  farewell words are  "Just
going  out for a leak  Birdie"  addressed to Henry  Robertson "Birdie"
Bowers,  another  member of    the ill-fated   party.  This caused   a
tremendous  stir in England,   where  Scott's  son,    Sir   Peter the
naturalist, was still  alive. Nevertheless,   as Huntford points  out,
there is *no*  independent evidence that   Oates  actually uttered the
words ascribed to him by Scott. Dr.  Edward "Uncle  Bill"  Wilson, who
also ket a journal  and wrote final  letters home to his wife  -  also
discovered in the tent together with the corpses - makes no mention of
them, and he was not  - unlike Scott  - writing with  the intention of
posthumous publication.

The whole point of the Doctor's frequently reference to these words is
that they are some of the most famous in the  English language, and no
Englishman or woman brought  up in the  first  6 or  7 decades of thie
century would fail to  recognise them.   They have a mighty resonance,
and - total jerk  though Scott may  have been  - they do summarise the
phlegmatic Englishness  at its best,  the complete understatement of a
man about to walk to certain death in order to help his friends.

And people seriously suggest casting an American as the Doctor!

Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept., Camosun College, Victoria B.C.