Encounter 16 · 16 of 42 · c. 16 March 1912
I am just going outside
On or about 16 March 1912, Lawrence Oates left the tent. Scott wrote the sentence down. Oates did not come back.
Ross Ice Shelf · place approximate
He did not come back.
The situation
Scott’s polar party was walking north, starving, frostbitten, behind their own timetable. Oates’s feet were finished. He asked to be left. They would not leave him. He walked out of the tent during a blizzard. Scott’s diary records the line: ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’
Scott’s polar party was walking north, starving, frostbitten, behind their own timetable. Oates’s feet were finished. He asked to be left. They would not leave him. He walked out of the tent during a blizzard.
I am just going outside and may be some time.Scott’s diary, as published from the 1912 papers
What they knew
- They were not going to reach One Ton Depot on the food they had.
- Oates could not keep up.
- The others would not abandon him while he was in the tent.
What they could not know
- Whether a depot lay a few miles further than they could walk.
- Whether the sentence Scott wrote is the sentence Oates spoke.
- What Oates thought as he went.
What was at stake
Four lives, then three, then none. Staying in the tent had become a cost the others would pay.
The next move
He left. They went on. They died later, still short of the depot.
What they had
- A tent
- A diary
- Not enough food
- Each other, until they didn’t
What happened
Scott, Wilson and Bowers died in the tent. The search party found the diary. Oates’s body was not found. The line became famous. Fame is not the blizzard.
He did not come back.
Private. No one else will see it.