#lawrence oates

[amundsenxcook]

Antarctica by Derek Mahon (1985)

[nopickls]

The heroic age of Antarctic exploration - after The Terror opening credits

[birdiebowers]

no surprises || terra nova expedition

112nd anniversary of finding the tent

series: the last place on earth (1985)

song: no surprises - radiohead

[thegodofhellfire]

“I am just going outside and may be some time.”

[thehutpoint]

To add a bit to the Jessamine lore, a post about winter entertainment in the Cape Evans hut. Remember Deb gushing in his memoirs how he spends these nice evenings, playing chess and chatting with his absolutely best bestie Titus Oates?

Legendary eloquence of my Soldier and his penchant for chitchat is already well known, let's just focus on the other claim, the chess matches between Deb and Titus. What do the other sources say?

The above excerpt is from Ponting's "Great white South". As you can see Oates is mentioned here as the fan of backgammon, with Meares being his game partner. By the way, I cannot refrain myself from laughter at the mention of Scott, avoiding Nelson at the chess board, because chere Marie invariably kicked his arse every time. Con and his fragile ego... No mention of our dear australian jasmine though, let's move then to other sources, namely to Griff and his "Silver Lining".

Ah, so sweet miss Jessamine makes her entrance at last. Take a good notice that chess board was usually occupied by Scott and Atch, Nelson gets mentioned as the best player in the hut, while Deb... Deb usually plays chess with Griff. And Oates gets busy with backgammon. I wouldn't be surprised if Griff made a mistake with Titus's backgammon partner, thinking about Meares. Nobody ever, though, mentioned Titus playing chess. Ever. EVER.

Pictured above: Jessamine and her crush.

So it seems these long, romantic evenings of chess matches and talks existed only in the heated imagination of the australian jasmine, Frank Debenham. Looks like Deb had really huge crush on Soldier and really wanted to get close to him, so badly he attempted to bewitch reality a bit, writing about things not as they were, but as he wanted them to be (me Deb and my oh so close bestie Oates!).

I admit, getting close to Laurie wasn't an easy task, as he kept himself tightly shielded from people. Your chances grew exponentially if you had a mane and hooves, or at least four paws and a wagging tail (poor Deb had none of it). Or at least a pointy nose, have you people noticed that Meares and Atch had the pointiest noses in the whole Terra Nova team? Seems my man had a type!

[richo1915]

"I am just going outside and may be some time."

Capt Lawrence Oates 17Mar1912

March 6th, 1912

"Poor Oates is unable to pull, sits on the sledge when we are track-searching- he is wonderfully plucky, as his feet must be giving him great pain. He makes no complaint, but his spirits only come up in spurts now, and he grows more silent in the tent."

Journal from Captain Scott's Last Expedition

Captain Lawrence Oates was never seen again….

[polarexplorerspoll]

POLAR EXPLORERS SHOWDOWN: ROUND THREE

[notalexhorne]

I have this image saved in an album on my phone. The album is called “pharmacy” and this is the only image in the album.

It is reserved for days like today, when what ought to be a quick dash across the street turns into an hour-long wait in a queue. I have this image saved just so I can send it to my husband to let him know that I have died of old age while waiting to pick up my prescription

[laurielover1912]

One day, I'm going to have to write some polar boy fanfic. But what and how and stuff? It's been brewing for decades, since TLPoE, let's face it. I mean, look at my username.

And there's all this comment and art on here and photos I've never seen before ... and it's under my skin as much as it was when I was 14 and imagined I travelled back in time and lived in the Cape Evans hut with them all in 1911 (and I was older in my head obvs) and they all fell in love with me (well, Deb and Atch and Nelson and Day and Cherry and sometimes even Con) but my heart only belonged to the Soldier cos he was beautiful but a total fucking enigma (but also not).

[thehutpoint]

Nice description of Titus, I'd say. I mean he enjoyed so much all these onboard antics, full of close physical contact, it's quite obvious he loved touch. Yet he hid back in his shell (and in the stables) whenever something went wrong. My poor, dear, sweet, underappreciated Titus Oates.

[birdiebowers]

[thehutpoint]

In Ye Olde Times, when beautiful and brave boys were swarming both poles to die there in stupidly heroical (or heroically stupid) fashion, and smoking was still socially accepted, the cigarette producents added collectible items to the packs. For instance the cards depicting famous people. Obviously, the Terra Nova pole team became insanely famous after they froze to death on the return leg of their trip (WHY MY TITUS?!) so yes, their depictions ended up on the cigarette cards. You could find Titus, Scott, Bill and Birdie (unfortunately not Taff, because classism, baby) and different antarctic landscapes in the pack of the Players cigarette brand.

That one is obviously my beloved Titus Oates in his polar gear. The artist tried hard to catch that likeness, he did well with the eyes and these tiny dimples in the corners of Laurie's lips, slightly worse with the shape, but at least Titus looks here like a human and not something that crawled out of the Uncanny Valley.

Scott, for some reason, looks at the viewer with deep distrust and I can only imagine he glanced like that at poor Teddy during that long polar winter night. Still, likeness is pretty good, the artist caught it better than Scott's own wife (I swear, the face of Scott's statue in Christchurch is exact same face that the one Kathleen carved into the memorial plaque for Titus in Eton).

Bill looks very much like himself, gazing lovingly upon someone behind the viewer. Is it Scott? Is it Shackles? Well, that's Bill's sweet secret.

Poor Birdie clearly got a nosejob and looks like a long lost cousin of Ernest Shackleton. Clearly the artist had something against the big noses, because Birdie's organ isn't the only famous polar schnoz that got trimmed.

Well, yes, that's Roald Amundsen, just like Birdie, after a nosejob. His gaze looks a bit like he is stoned and will get munchies on a raw seal meat soon. The artist had also a bit of difficulty with drawing properly the Inuit anorak, so Roald looks a tad like he is dressed in one of these kigurumi pjs.

As a final accent, Titus training a pony in a polar landscape, the mound behind them is probably our old friend Erebus. While I must applaud the artist for getting the shape of the famous DIY sackcloth balaclava correctly (even if he did not get the size right and is it me or does Titus look in this DIY sackcloth balaclava like a crazy, overgrown polar version of Red Riding Hood? Like Antarctic Sackcloth Riding Hood, trying to extort brandy from Grandma Billson's basket?), the boots, on the other hand are, umm, nope.

[gay-jesus-probably]

EVERYBODY SHUT THE FUCK UP WE FOUND IRVINE (partially). WE'VE GOT A BOOT, SOCK AND SEVERED FOOT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. There's only four pairs of hobnail boots on corpses up there, and we've already found two of them on Mallory's body, so this ones gotta be Irvine! I mean the sock literally still has his name on it ffs.

BUT HOLY SHIT WE FOUND IRVINE'S FOOT!!! THEY KNOW WHERE TO LOOK FOR THE REST OF HIM!!! AND THAT'S WHERE THE CAMERA IS, AND IF THAT FILM CAN BE DEVELOPED WE'VE GOT ANSWERS BABY!!!! Sure, maybe Mallory just accidentally dropped his wifes photo off a cliff and thats why it wasn't in his pocket anymore, the absence of a photo he meant to leave on the summit isn't solid proof that Mallory and Irvine reached the summit back in 1924 before their deaths. BUT THE CAMERA CAN PROVE IT, IF THE FILMS STILL GOOD LETS FUCKING GOOOO

WE'VE GOT A FOOOOT!!!!

[thehutpoint]

Aaah, for me it was not "The Terror" though it did play an important part. It was "The Last Place On Earth", Titus, crawling on all fours out of the tent and it might be some time, and the lonely cairn slowly drowning in the snow out there in the white vastness of Antarctic. It premiered in Polish TV in 1986 I think, so I was what, eight at the time? But yeah, that's how it started. These pictures stuck in my mind like a shhip stucks in the pack ice.

And then, two years later I found these under the Christmas tree.

Four brochures with stories from the Arctic. Yeah, these were still the (not so) merry times of the Iron Curtain, so there were some stories about so brave and so plucky Soviet polar explorers, triumphing over Mother Nature. But the rest? The rest was pure delight. Barents, wintering in the Arctic with his crew, Dr. Kane's expedition, Hudson, De Long and his Jeannette crushed by the merciless Ice, Fritdjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen attempting to get to the Northern Pole, captain Cagni of Italian 1899 Stela Polaris, doing DIY amputation of his thumb, Engineer Andre and his balloon, Amundsen and Nobile flying over the Pole in the airship Norge... aaaahhh. Not appropriate for ten years old, though still heavily sanitised, for example the eye inflammation that rendered lieutenant Danenhower of Jeannette (DeLong expedition) unfit for duty was said to be caused by the snow blindness, while in reality it was a sad complication of syphilis. Sanitized or not, appropriate or not, I loved these stories and my favourite play in winter was always The Polar Explorer, that means me, trodding on my crappy plastic skis on the fields around home, dragging my kiddie sledges and pretending I am Amundsen conquering the South Pole, or Nansen trying to reach the North one.

After that I've read voraciusly everything about polar exploration I could find. I went through the school library and other resources, learning about Franklin, Nansen, Amundsen, Exploration of Antarctic and two expeditions of Scott. Somehow, though, Titus did not catch my attention, he stayed somewhere on the margin (isn't that typical of him?) . To be honest he is a tad neglected by the polar autors, who do not know what exactly to do with him, so usually render him to this guy, you know, this silent dude who was taking care of the horses, then said, you know, This Badass Sentence and then went to die This Badass Death. Still, the frosty tales carried me through the chamber of hell called My Teenage Years.

For some time the polar stuff was at the fringe of my attention, because, you know, life happened, adulting was harder than I expected and so on. But then "The Terror" revived my love for brave, starving boys, freezing their lovely arses on both unhospitable ends of the Earth and I started sniffing again for the polar lit. And so I bought "Widows of the Ice" by Anne Fletcher which made me, by one quote in the chapter, I think, about Oriana Wilson, to go back to the man, who started it all. Titus Oates. Quiet, humble Captain Oates, who helped me to survive quite shitty period of my life and became my personal Comfort Polar Man. You might say I made a full circle.

there’s a certain descent into madness one takes after watching the terror. one minute you’re watching the show with mild interest and the next minute you’re hand painting Robert Scott’s sledging flag to put on your wall

[polarexplorerspoll]

POLAR EXPLORERS SHOWDOWN: BONUS ROUND

[skitskatdacat63]

This is probably missing some, but here is my “Here me out” cake!! I am open to giving explanations :)

I am tagging @lil-shiro @soup-racing @pitayyaaa @suzuki-ecstar and anyone else who is interested! I just picked people who exprssed interest so I’m not unwilling implicating anyone in this public humiliation ritual sjdkdl

Below are some popsicle stick and cake pngs for ease !!