Lawrence Oates
Lawrence Edward Grace Oates (March 17, 1880 – March 17, 1912) was a British Antarctic explorer.
Background
Oates was born in Putney in 1880, and educated at Eton College. He saw military service during the Second Boer War, as an officer in the dragoons. His uncle was the naturalist and African explorer, Frank Oates.
Terra Nova Expedition
Oates went down in history for his famous last words:
- "I am just going outside and may be some time."
These words, as recorded by Robert Falcon Scott, have caused Oates to be remembered as the epitome of the English upper-class hero. Oates was nicknamed Titus in reference to Titus Oates, famed for his role in the Popish Plot.
In 1910, he applied to join Scott's expedition to the South Pole, and was accepted on the strength of his experience with horses and his ability to make a financial contribution to the expedition. Scott selected him as one of the five-man party who would travel the final distance to the pole, but Oates himself had little desire to go to the pole and was additionally suffering from an old war wound which was aggravated by scurvy.
Oates clashed with Scott many times on issues of management of the expedition, and once wrote in this diary "Myself, I dislike Scott intensely and would chuck the whole thing if it were not that we are a British expedition.... [Scott] is not straight, it is himself first, the rest nowhere..."
On the way back from the pole in January 1912, the party faced impossible conditions. After the loss of one man, Edgar Evans, Oates became a burden on the others through his refusal to admit defeat after he had fallen into a physical condition from which recovery was impossible, coupled with the unwillingness of his three remaining companions to leave him behind. Eventually Oates, recognising the need to sacrifice himself in order to give the others a chance of survival, left the tent to die in the snow. It was his 32nd birthday. However, his gesture came too late, and Scott and his remaining men perished eleven miles short of their food depot. Ironically, had Scott taken Oates' earlier advice on the placing of the depots, he might still have survived. Oates's body has never been found.
Trivia
Brenda Clough's 2001 fish-out-of-water science fiction novella "May Be Some Time" has "Titus" Oates transported to the year 2045 where he is healed via advanced medicine.
On TV series The O.C., Seth Cohen names his imaginary friend and toy horse after "Captain Oates".
A biography ('I am Just Going Outside: Captain Oates - Antarctic Tragedy', Spellmount Publishers 2002) has confidently alleged that Laurence Oates fathered a daughter as the result of a brief affair with an 11-year-old Scots girl named Ettie McKendrick. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,811382,00.html.
References
- Smith, Michael I Am Just Going Outside. ISBN 1-903464-12-9
- Preston, Diana: A First Rate Tragedy. ISBN 0-618-00201-4
- Huntford, Roland: The Last Place on Earth. ISBN 0-689-70701-0
- Scott, Robert Falcon: Scott's Last Expedition: The Journals. ISBN 0-413-52230-X
- McCaughrean, Geraldine: The White Darkness. ISBN 0-19-271983-1