page_title: Henry Robertson Bowers
section_title: Terra Nova expedition
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Robertson Bowers / Terra Nova expedition
caption_attribution_description: English: Wilson Bowers and Cherry-Garrard on Their Return from Cape Crozier from Scott Expedition
context_page_description: Henry Robertson Bowers was one of Robert Falcon Scott's polar party on the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition of 1910–1913, all of whom died during their return from the South Pole.
context_section_description: Bowers joined Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition in 1910, after having read the accounts of Scott's earlier Discovery expedition, and of Ernest Shackleton's expedition in Nimrod. He had no previous polar experience, but was recommended to Scott by the ex-President of the Royal Geographical Society, Sir Clements Markham, who had been the main organiser of Scott's earlier Discovery expedition. Markham had met Bowers aboard HMS Worcester and had been so impressed with him that Scott invited Bowers to join the expedition without a prior interview. After Bowers fell 19 feet into a hold when loading the ship (someone had carelessly left the cover off), Scott was less impressed by the short, stout young man. "Well, we're landed with him now, and must make the best of it," said Scott, but he soon changed his mind.
  Originally appointed as a junior officer of the ship's party in charge of expedition stores, Bowers quickly distinguished himself as an extremely hard-working, highly skilled organiser. By the time the Terra Nova left New Zealand, Scott had promoted him to be a member of the shore party, in charge of landing, stores, navigation and the arrangement of sledging rations, a role in which his extraordinary powers of memory served Scott well.
  Six months after arriving in Antarctica, Bowers made the winter journey to the emperor penguin breeding grounds at Cape Crozier in July 1911 with Edward Adrian Wilson and Apsley Cherry-Garrard. The aim of the party was to secure an unhatched egg for scientific study. In almost total darkness and with temperatures ranging from −40 to −70 °F (−40 to −57 °C), they man-hauled their sledge 60 miles (97 km) from Scott's base at Cape Evans to the far side of Ross Island. Frozen and exhausted, they reached their goal, only to be pinned down by a blizzard. Their tent was ripped away and carried off by the wind, leaving the men in their sleeping bags under a thickening drift of snow. When the winds subsided, by great fortune they found their tent lodged about half a mile away in rocks. Having successfully collected three eggs and desperately exhausted, they eventually arrived back at Cape Evans on 1 August 1911, five weeks after setting off. Cherry-Garrard later referred to this trip as The Worst Journey in the World, which became the title of his book published in 1922 recounting the fate of the 1908–1912 expedition.
  On 1 November 1911, the long trek to the South Pole began. Scott had not originally planned to include Bowers in his polar party. He had been a member of the sledge team led by Scott's second-in-command, Lieutenant Edward Evans and the last support party to accompany Scott and his team southward, but on 4 January 1912, just as Evans party was about to turn back, Bowers was assigned to the polar party. Some have argued that this seems to have been an impulsive decision by Scott, however, others, such as Antarctic explorer Ranulph Fiennes, have indicated that this was a logical decision – particularly when one intended to increase the speed of a polar land-crossing, in an effort to reduce the consumption of resources.
  Only a few days earlier, he had ordered Evans' men to depot their skis, so that Bowers had to travel on foot to the pole while the others were still on skis. In addition, adding a fifth man to the party meant squeezing another person into a tent made for four, and having to split up rations that were packed in units for four men. The most likely motivation for Scott to add Bowers to the polar party was a realisation that he needed another experienced navigator to confirm their position at the South Pole to avoid controversy, such as that surrounding the claims of Frederick Cook and Robert Peary at the North Pole, although why he did not substitute Bowers for another member of the party—most likely Oates—is not clear. To back this theory up, it was Bowers who eventually took the sights to fix the exact location of the geographic South Pole for the Polar party. It was also Bowers who was in charge of the expedition's remaining camera and took most of the famous ph
caption: Edward Adrian Wilson, Henry Bowers and Apsley Cherry-Garrard on Their Return from Cape Crozier.
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