Welsh Journals

Honour to Edgar Evans: eighty-two years later by Gary Gregor On February 17th 1994 Petty Officer Edgar Evans of Middleton, who had perished returning from the South Pole in 1912 (see Gower XLIV, 1993), was honoured at a Civic Ceremony at the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea. His obituary notice in The Cambrian newspaper of February 1913 had called for "some permanent memorial to the honour of Petty Officer Evans, who thus links this locality with one of the most heroic exploits of the British race." Although a memorial plaque was erected by his widow Lois in January 1914 in Rhossili church, where they had been married, and where Edgar had been baptised as a child, official recognition in his home city only came on the eighty-second anniversary of his death. I would suggest that there are three main reasons for this long delay in recognising Edgar Evans his rank as a seaman, the feeling that he had neglected his family, and the circumstances of his death. Firstly, his rank as a seaman. The other four who perished returning from the Pole were all of officer or similar status. Lawrence Oates, who crawled out of the tent to his death a month after Evans died, was a Captain in the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons. Of the three who perished during a blizzard a fortnight later, Henry Bowers was a Lieutenant in the Royal Indian Marine, Doctor Edward Wilson a zoologist and chief of scientific staff on the British Antarctic Expedition, and Robert Falcon Scott a Royal Naval Captain and leader of the Expedition. By contrast Edgar Evans was "merely" a seaman, the only member of the lower deck: in fact he was a Chief Petty Officer, very much an integral member of the Expedition. Photographer Herbert Ponting described him as "one of the leader's towers of strength Nobody ever doubted, all through the winter, that Petty Officer Evans would be one of the ones chosen for the Pole. The party selected by Captain Scott were the four men who possessed the most striking personalities." Writing a month before they reached the Pole, Scott described Evans as "A giant worker with a really remarkable headpiece. It is only now I realise how much has been due to him. Secondly, his alleged neglect of his family. During Scott's previous Antarctic expedition, in the 'Discovery' from 1901 to 1904, Evans had been a single man. By the time the 'Terra Nova' sailed from Cardiff in June 1910 he was married with three children, the