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OHYAY: The Mystery of the Polar Bike
Oct. 9th, 2011 07:46 amThree years ago, when I was listening to Stef Penney's radio play of The Worst Journey in the World, one of the episodes that caught my imagination had Teddy Evans coming back with a frostbitten foot from a trip up The Ramp (a local geological feature) on a bicycle. Bicycling in the Antarctic! What a delightfully incongruous thing! And it's an image that really captures the blithe Edwardian hubris of much of the Expedition.
A small part of the fun of researching the Expedition more fully, later on, was coming across bits that were incorporated into the radio play, both events and actual words that people said. Sometimes the words were put in other mouths than the ones they came out of, and sometimes events were bent slightly or rearranged in time or space for narrative convenience, but I was astonished that the more I found out what really happened, the less of the radio dramatisation, it turned out, was made up whole cloth.
Unfortunately the story of Teddy and the bicycle seemed to remain the only major episode that did not have its feet in reality – I read and read and didn't even find a mention of a bicycle, never mind it being used irresponsibly, and resigned myself to it being a fiction. So it was with great surprise that, when reading Silas this past year, I stumbled on the Antarctic Bike.
It was T. Griffith Taylor, senior geologist, not Teddy, who took it for a spin, ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO YESTERDAY. He took it south to Turk's Head (a different geological feature, about halfway to Hut Point) across the flat sea ice. Despite that being marginally more sensible, it still turned out to be too far and too exhausting, so Scott ended up sending out a rescue party to bring him back. None of the records indicate that Griff was on the receiving end of one of Scott's famous blow-ups, as Teddy was in the play, but I'd be surprised if that didn't happen ...
So it turns out, once again, and perhaps finally this time, that Stef Penney wasn't frolicking completely in the land of invention. Griff's bicycle ride seems to have been conflated with Atch's blizzard adventure and frostbitten hand in a little dramatic episode that accomplishes a large number of things very efficiently. It is a rare but wondrous experience when a creative work you love actually gets better over time, the more you find out about it.
Bonus feature: Hey look, the bike is being conserved!
Oh, and also one hundred years ago yesterday, Clissold (the cook) fell off an iceberg while posing for Ponting's photography, hurt his back and got a concussion, disqualifying him from sledging. Quite a day!
A small part of the fun of researching the Expedition more fully, later on, was coming across bits that were incorporated into the radio play, both events and actual words that people said. Sometimes the words were put in other mouths than the ones they came out of, and sometimes events were bent slightly or rearranged in time or space for narrative convenience, but I was astonished that the more I found out what really happened, the less of the radio dramatisation, it turned out, was made up whole cloth.
Unfortunately the story of Teddy and the bicycle seemed to remain the only major episode that did not have its feet in reality – I read and read and didn't even find a mention of a bicycle, never mind it being used irresponsibly, and resigned myself to it being a fiction. So it was with great surprise that, when reading Silas this past year, I stumbled on the Antarctic Bike.
It was T. Griffith Taylor, senior geologist, not Teddy, who took it for a spin, ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO YESTERDAY. He took it south to Turk's Head (a different geological feature, about halfway to Hut Point) across the flat sea ice. Despite that being marginally more sensible, it still turned out to be too far and too exhausting, so Scott ended up sending out a rescue party to bring him back. None of the records indicate that Griff was on the receiving end of one of Scott's famous blow-ups, as Teddy was in the play, but I'd be surprised if that didn't happen ...
So it turns out, once again, and perhaps finally this time, that Stef Penney wasn't frolicking completely in the land of invention. Griff's bicycle ride seems to have been conflated with Atch's blizzard adventure and frostbitten hand in a little dramatic episode that accomplishes a large number of things very efficiently. It is a rare but wondrous experience when a creative work you love actually gets better over time, the more you find out about it.
Bonus feature: Hey look, the bike is being conserved!
Oh, and also one hundred years ago yesterday, Clissold (the cook) fell off an iceberg while posing for Ponting's photography, hurt his back and got a concussion, disqualifying him from sledging. Quite a day!
