It was December 15^th 1903. On the wild expanse of Antarctica’s Victoria Land a small party of explorers fought against the bitter cold and gale force winds. It was summer in Antarctica and the members of the British Antarctic Expedition, led by Commander Robert Falcon Scott, were struggling to complete their scientific goals in the long and relatively warm summer days before their intended return to Britain.

They had done reasonably well today and were now making their way back to the small depot at the aptly named Desolation Camp, where they would find shelter from the wind and food to warm and nourish them after their 70 days of manhauling their eleven-foot sledge.

It was Captain Scott himself who led this three-man team which included seaman Evans and Stoker William Lashly. Between them they hauled a 600lb load, the three men harnessed together to provide the pulling power needed. They had just survived one small mishap when the sledge had jolted to a halt on a particularly rugged stretch of ice, spilling valuable possessions and emergency rations into the snow. But such events were part of everyday work and they retrieved what they could and pressed on, Scott in front and his two harnessed colleagues on either side and a little further back.

It had been nearly two years since the Discovery had landed on the shores of Antarctica with its party of 50 men and many months of hard practice had taught them how to move about the frozen landscape relatively safely. But the death of Able Seaman George Vince during an early attempt at making progress across the unforgiving terrain in bad weather was never far from their minds. As they crossed the homeward stretch the sledge began to skid and William, responding quickly to Scott’s shout, pulled wide to steady it. Scott’s diary records what happened next:

“He had scarcely moved out in response to this order when Evans and I stepped on nothing and disappeared from his view; by a miracle he saved himself from following, and sprang back with his whole weight on the trace; the sledge flashed by him and jumped the crevasse down which we had gone, one side of its frame cracked through in the jerk which followed, but the other side mercifully held…I saw at once what a frail support remained, and shouted to Lashly to ask what he could do, and then I knew the value of such a level-headed companion; for whilst he held on grimly to the sledge and us with one hand, his other was busily employed in withdrawing our skis. At length he succeeded in sliding two of these beneath the broken sledge thereby making it more secure."