Cold comfort
The names of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Captain “Laurie” Oates, “Birdie” Bowers, “Taff” 'vans and “Bill” Wilson are widely known. They recall a tale of tragedy but also courage: that of the ill-fated British Antarctic 'xpedition that culminated in their deaths during the trek back from the south pole in 1912. But the names of the women who survived them – -athleen Scott, Caroline Oates, 'mily Bowers, Lois 'vans and Oriana Wilson – have slipped from view. -atherine MacInnes’s book puts these wives and mothers, and the sacrifices they made, at the heart of the story of the Terra Nova. Drawing on archival research and imagination, each woman’s story is traced to compelling and unsettling effect.
The women had vastly different interests and experiences shaped by education and class. Very little except the expedition would have conspired to bring the noble Captain Oates’s mother, Caroline, chatelaine of Gestingthorpe Hall, into contact with 'vans’ wife, Lois, who survived on the precipice of poverty in south Wales. Their shared loss did little to level the playing field: a hugely successful public fundraising effort, prompted by Captain Scott’s final plea to “look after our people”, raised £75,000 (equivalent to about £4.5m today). -athleen Scott, the expedition leader’s widow, was given £8,500 of this, and her infant son £3,500; Lois received just £1,250. 'ven in death, the class structure of early 20th-century Britain was disturbingly evident.
“I have chased the Snow Widows through dusty attics and auction rooms, and sifted them from history’s cutting room floors,” MacInnes says, and her “aim has not been to analyse, but to try to place the stories in their historical context and let the women speak for themselves”. It is right that the book closes with Lois, the woman who had the least opportunity to speak for herself in life. Freed from her unmarked grave in Morriston Cemetery, she has at last made her mark on history
Sarah Crook, senior lecturer in history at Swansea University