ir Clements--I thought much of him and never regretted him
putting me in command of the _Discovery_.

Message to the Public

The causes of the disaster are not due to faulty organisation, but
to misfortune in all risks which had to be undertaken.

1. The loss of pony transport in March 1911 obliged me to start later
than I had intended, and obliged the limits of stuff transported to
be narrowed.

2. The weather throughout the outward journey, and especially the
long gale in 83 deg. S., stopped us.

3. The soft snow in lower reaches of glacier again reduced pace.

We fought these untoward events with a will and conquered, but it
cut into our provision reserve.

Every detail of our food supplies, clothing and depots made on the
interior ice-sheet and over that long stretch of 700 miles to the
Pole and back, worked out to perfection. The advance party would
have returned to the glacier in fine form and with surplus of food,
but for the astonishing failure of the man whom we had least expected
to fail. Edgar Evans was thought the strongest man of the party.

The Beardmore Glacier is not difficult in fine weather, but on our
return we did not get a single completely fine day; this with a sick
companion enormously increased our anxieties.

As I have said elsewhere we got into frightfully rough ice and Edgar
Evans received a concussion of the brain--he died a natural death,
but left us a shaken party with the season unduly advanced.

But all the facts above enumerated were as nothing to the surprise
which awaited us on the Barrier. I maintain that our arrangements
for returning were quite adequate, and that no one in the world would
have expected the temperatures and surfaces which we encountered at
this time of the year. On the summit in lat. 85 deg. 86 deg. we had -20 deg.,
-30 deg.. On the Barrier in lat. 82 deg., 10,000 feet lower, we had -30 deg.
in the day, -47 deg. at night pretty regularly, with continuous head
wind during our day marches. It is clear that these circumstances
come on very suddenly, and our wreck is certainly due to this sudden
advent of severe weather, which does not seem to have any satisfactory
cause. I do not think human beings ever came through such a month as
we have come through, and we should have got through in spite of the
weather but for the sickening of a second companion, Captain Oates,
and a shortage of fuel in our depots for which I cannot account,
and finally, but for t