During the Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic, Edward Wilson travelled with his two companions Apsley Cherry Garrard and Birdie Bowers to a distant Emperor Penguin Colony to collect eggs. It was winter in the Antarctic, it was dark throughout the day and night, and the weather was atrocious. The journey became known as "The Worst Journey in the World". On 23 July Wilson celebrated his 39th and last birthday, he died with Scott and Bowers at the end of March the following year on his way back from the South Pole.
From Wilson's diary:
"Sixth Sunday after Trinity and quite the funniest birthday I have ever spent. The wind was terrific. It blew almost continuously with storm force - there were slight lulls occasionally followed by squalls of very great violence, and at about noon the canvas roof of the hut carried away and we were left lying exposed in our sleeping bags without a tent or a roof. The storm continued all day with unabated vigour. There was no choice for us now - we had decided this before in the event of our roof being blown off - we had to remain lying there in our bags till the blizzard stopped. We had had two days of it, but here at Cape Crozier Royds in 1902 was laid up with his party for 5 days - and I with mine for 8 days out of 11. So we could only hope that this was not going to continue quite so long. If it did our best chance was to allow the snow drift to cover us up, which it was doing already, in order that we might at any rate keep warm. We could always eat biscuit and cold pemmican in our bags and we all had biscuits in our pockets.
When the roof went Birdie and I were both out of our bags, for we were trying to stop the flap and the chafe of the canvas which began when the snow blocks were blown off the roof. The weakest spot was where the door came, but we had anchored it with very large stones. These stones the wind acting on the canvas joggled about like so much gravel and they gradually shifted out of place. We did all we could to jam them tight, but to no purpose, for while we were still at it the canvas ripped out all along the lee end of the hut with a noise lika a battery of guns going off. In a second the canvas was ripped in about 10 places and it flapped to bits from end to end in a few minutes - leaving a ragged, flapping end attached to the weather wall which then went on bang, bang, banging for hours till the wind eventually dropped. The noise was most distressing, and we hardly noticed the rocks that fell in, or that the sledge was at once flapped off and fell in also across our three bags. We were at once in a perfect smother of drift when the canvas carried away, and Birdie and I bolted our bags taking an enormous amount of snow in with our clothes to thaw out at leisure. We were not really so much disturbed as we might have thought, and we had time to think out a plan for getting home again now without our tent - in case we couldn't find it - and without the canvas roof of the hut which had gone down wind in shreds the size of a pocket handkerchief. We still had the floor cloth of the tent, and this we were lying on so it couldn't blow away. We could build a snow hut each night on the way home and put this over the top; or we could always dig a burrow in the Barrier big enough for the 3 of us, and make a very good roof with canvas flush with the surface - if there was wind it couldn't then be blown away. We had no doubts about getting back so long as this blizzard didn't last till we were all stiffened with the cold in our bags. The storm continued all day and on until midnight unabated."
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