Henry Robertson Bowers

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Henry Bowers (October 1911)

Henry Robertson "Birdie" Bowers (born July 29, 1883 in Greenock , † March 29, 1912 , Ross Ice Shelf , Antarctica ) was a British polar explorer . He took part in the Terra Nova Expedition (1910-1913) under Robert Falcon Scott . Bowers died along with the other four members of Scott's Pole group on their way back from the geographic South Pole .

Early life

Bowers was born in Greenock in 1883 to a family of Scottish descent and raised by his mother after his father died in Rangoon when Bowers was three years old. He went to sea for the first time as a cadet in the merchant fleet, where he was trained on the HMS Worcester and sailed around the world five times on the Loch Torridon . In 1905 he was hired by the Royal Indian Navy , was promoted to sub-lieutenant while serving in Ceylon and Burma, and commanded a gunboat on the Irrawaddy River . He later served on HMS Fox , where he fought arms smuggling in the Persian Gulf .

Terra Nova Expedition 1910–1912

Bowers joined Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition in 1910 after reading reports from Scott's previous Discovery Expedition and Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition . He had no previous polar experience, but was recommended to Scott by his mentor and former President of the Royal Geographical Society , Sir Clements Markham . Markham had met Bowers aboard HMS Worcester and was so impressed by him that Scott invited Bowers to the expedition without looking. When they first met, however, Scott was not very impressed with the short, stocky man. Scott said, "Well, we have him with us now and we have to make the most of it."

Bowers was initially only scheduled for the ship's crew. However, he quickly proved to be a gifted organizer, so that Scott soon promoted him to a member of the landing group, which was responsible for the landing, the management of the goods, the navigation and the packing of the sled rations. This was where Scott's extraordinary memory proved particularly helpful.

Scott had originally not planned to include "Birdie" Bowers in his polar group. Bowers was a member of the sled group led by Scott's deputy Edward Evans and the final support group accompanying Scott and his team's march south. However, on January 4, 1912, with this support group imminent, Bowers was accepted into the polar group by Scott. Apparently this was a spontaneous decision. On the other hand, some experts such as the Antarctic explorer Ranulph Fiennes come to the conclusion that this was a logical decision by Scott in the sense of faster progress. Apparently Scott also came to the realization that he needed another skilled navigator to confirm their position on the South Pole and avoid a controversy such as that over the claims of Frederick Cook and Robert Peary on the North Pole .

However, just a few days earlier, Scott had ordered Edward Evans' men to deposit their skis. As a result, while Scott, Edward Wilson , Lawrence Oates, and Edgar Evans were on skis (even if they were incomplete), Bowers had to continue on foot. In addition, five men now squeezed into the tent designed for four people and the rations originally designed for four men now had to be redistributed to five.

On January 16, 1912, as Scott's group approached the Pole, it was Bowers who first saw the black flag marking Roald Amundsen's camp, which had been set up about a month earlier . It was then that they realized that they were defeated in the race for the South Pole. On January 18, they reached the South Pole and encountered the Polheim camp, which Amundsen had left behind . There the men learned by a dated note that Amundsen and his companions had already reached on December 14, 1911 35 days earlier.

Their return trip soon turned into a deadly race against the exceptionally bad weather. Edgar Evans was the first to die on February 17, 1912, presumably due to a brain injury that he had suffered when he fell into a crevasse while descending from the polar plateau over the Beardmore Glacier onto the Ross Ice Shelf . On March 16, Lawrence Oates, suffering from his frozen feet, left the shared tent in a snowstorm in order to go to his death and so not to hinder his comrades on their further march. Together with Scott and Edward Wilson, Bowers marched on for three days until, after a further 20 miles, they were stopped by a snow storm on March 20, at a distance of 10 miles from the nearest depot. This blizzard lasted for several days, longer than their food and fuel supplies. The men, marked by hunger, cold and scurvy, were too weak to fight their way forward. Bowers, Wilson and Scott died in their tent, 150 miles from their base camp, on or soon after March 29. Their bodies were found the following spring - November 12, 1912 - by a search party. The tent was folded over them and a snow mound was erected over it, the top of which was surmounted by a cross made of a pair of skis.

The Bowers Mountains , Mount Bowers and the Bowers-Piedmont Glacier in Antarctica are named after Bowers .

Appearance and nickname

Bowers was about six feet tall, making him relatively short. He had red hair and a protruding beak-like nose, which soon earned him the nickname "Birdie" among his comrades. He was known for his toughness, reliability and cheerfulness. Apsley Cherry-Garrard , another member of the Terra Nova Expedition, noted that his “work capacity was amazing” and that there was “nothing subtle about him. He was recognizably simple, straightforward, and selfless. ”In his diary, Scott wrote of Bowers that he was“ the most persistent traveler to ever go on a polar voyage, and one of the most intrepid ”and that“ when the troubles brewed over us, his intrepid shone Mind even brighter and he remained happy, hopeful and indomitable until the end ”.

literature

Web links

Commons : Henry Robertson Bowers  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World , Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1922, p. 213
  2. ↑ Apsley Cherry-Garrard, p. 213
  3. ^ Online Reader - Project Gutenberg
  4. ↑ Apsley Cherry-Garrard, ibid , p. 214
personal data
SURNAME Bowers, Henry Robertson
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bowers, Birdie (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Greenock
DATE OF DEATH March 29, 1912
Place of death Ross Ice Shelf , Antarctica