OHYAT: A Very Gallant Gentleman

Captain Scott's journal, as found and read to the expedition by Atch, was fairly specific about where they had camped when Titus Oates walked to his death, so they decided to go try to find his body and give it some degree of a proper burial. Two days (26 miles) south of the Last Camp, they found one of the walls of snow that had been built on the outward journey last year, to shelter the ponies from the wind, and which had served as landmarks for the returning parties to keep the trail. On it was draped some sacking and Oates' sleeping bag – evidently the surviving Polar Party had taken it with them a few miles in case they found him. Inside it were his socks and finnesko (one of which had been slit a long way down to accommodate his frozen foot), his socks, and the theodolite. They continued a few miles, hoping to find his body. "When we arrived at the place where he had left them," Atch wrote in his report, "we saw that there was no chance of doing so. The kindly snow had covered his body, giving him a fitting burial. Here, again, as near to the site of the death as we could judge, we built another cairn to his memory, and placed thereon a small cross and the following record: Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L.E.G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons. In March 1912, returning from the Pole, he walked willingly to his death in a blizzard, to try and save his comrades, beset by hardships. This note is left by the Relief Expedition of 1912."