In the last issue of The Hambledonian Christine Trickett wrote a splendid profile of her famous relative Chief Stoker William Lashly, who had accompanied Captain Scott on both of his expeditions to the Antarctic. Her grandfather was a cousin of William Lashly. This is the Centenary year of Captain Scott’s Last Expedition to the South Pole in 1912 and it is regrettable that the lower Deck members of the expedition have been so neglected. Only Petty Officer Edgar Evans, who died on the return journey, has been remembered.
Among the neglected is our famous citizen William Lashly. He has been almost wholly forgotten. To Help us remember him better I have reprinted below the ‘Appreciation’ of William Lashly written at the time of his death in 1940 and included in the Polar Record of that year. It was written by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a companion on Scott’s Expedition, and the author of the famous book The Worst Journey in the World. It really brings William Lashly to life.
”Lashly is dead. He was a Chief Stoker in the Navy and he was one of the last survivors who Served on both of Scott’s Antarctic expeditions. Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Titus Oates, Atkinson and Wild – all are gone; and Crean who died about a year ago, and Pennell as good as any of them.
On the Discovery Lashly was one of Scott’s companions who travelled westward over the newly discovered plateau. On the Last Expedition he was on the last supporting party. He saw the polar party as little black dots vanish into the southern horizon: and he did one of the longest man-hauling journeys on record, dragging a sick man part of the way.
Atkinson told me that he doubted if Lieutenant Evans could have lived another day, and that the best nurse in the world could have done no more than Lashly did. He had just brought him from the Barrier when I saw him. Crean helped him, that had not been man-hauling so long.
Lashly looked nothing out of the way till he was stripped. He stripped big and looked small: was tough as nails rather than muscular; and neither drank nor smoked. Behind that kindly smile, that half-filled the engine-room hatch on the Terra Nova, there were bottled up great reserves of quiet energy. He had much self-control; but he could burst like a sleeping volcano. He was good with animals, and the mules were left in his charge the last year down South. With them he came with us on the journey on which we found the bodies of the polar party. So now he lies at peace. No more facing the utmost physical toil, starvation and death together: no more knowing you can’t go on and going on all the same: no more continual hunger awake or asleep; just peace.
When I was trying to write a book more than twenty years ago, I asked Lashly whether he could tell me anything about his journey back with the Last Return Party. He scratched his head and said he didn’t know that he could, but he thought he had some old bits of paper with some notes on. He sent me a diary which must be known all over the world and one of my greatest difficulties when publishing it was to prevent the compositor altering the spelling. It ends – as he got into his sleeping-bag the evening the rescue party reached him: ‘We are looking for a mail now. How funny we should always be looking for something else, now we are safe’.
So perhaps he is now looking for a good whack of pemmican: and still singing that cheery little ditty with which he used to end his day’s work on earth.”
Nick Bailey