Cecil Meares

Cecil Henry Meares (February 14, 1877– 12 May 1937) was the chief dog handler and Russian interpreter on the Terra Nova Expedition, the British expedition to Antarctica that took place from 1910 to 1913. Born in County Kilkenny, Ireland, the son of an army officer, Meares was an adventurer and linguist: a man of action who liked to have fun, which made following the orders of Robert Falcon Scott, the expedition leader, difficult at times. Before his involvement in the expedition, he was a British military officer, a fur-trader in Kamchatka and Okhotsk in Siberia, a fighter in the Russo-Japanese War and the Boer War and a traveller to various places including Tibet.

Cecil Meares

Early life

Cecil Henry Meares was born in Inistioge, Ireland on 14 February 1877 to Major Meares and his wife, Helen (née Townsend).[1] He had lived in Ireland until around 1880, when he went to live with relatives in England. Meares had taught himself to read at four years old and was educated at schools in both Scotland and England. [2] Having been denied a place in the army due to failing his medical exam, Meares spent the next decade traveling around Europe. It was during this time that Meares would start learning different languages. In 1894 he studied Spanish, in Bilbao, Spain and a year later had traveled to Torrepillece in Italy to learn Italian.[3] From 1896 and into the first few years of the 20th century Meares traveled extensively. He worked at coffee planting in India and later traded furs in Russia and across Manchuria.[3] Meares would also be involved in the Boxer Rebellion during his time in China.

Terra Nova Expedition

In 1910, Meares joined Robert Falcon Scott on his expedition to the Antarctic, donating £1,000 (£110,000 in 2018) to Scott's funds. Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Lawrence Oates also donated the same sum, allowing the expedition to take place.[4]

Meares's tasks included selecting and purchasing the 34 dogs and 20 ponies for the expedition and then transporting them from Siberia to New Zealand via Japan where they were to join up with the expedition. Meares knew little about ponies, but nevertheless followed Scott's orders and went to Nikolayevsk, Siberia to select the dogs. There he met Dimitri Gerov, an experienced dog driver, who helped him choose the dogs required for the sledging tasks and who was subsequently recruited as a dog driver for the expedition. Meares also recruited Russian jockey Anton Omelchenko as groom on the expedition. They then travelled to Vladivostok where the Siberian ponies were purchased. Scott specifically wanted white ponies for the expedition because during the 1907 Nimrod Expedition, Ernest Shackleton observed that the white ponies outlived the dark ponies. Oates, the British Army Captain on the expedition whose role was to look after the ponies, was disappointed in Meares's selection as they had "such deficiencies as: narrow chests, knocked knees, …aged" and were the "greatest lot of crocks I have ever seen". Once the Terra Nova Expedition began, Meares and Gerov looked after the dogs. After setting off as part of the support team on the journey to the South Pole in early November 1911, Meares and the Russian Gerov turned back north with the sled dogs on 14 December at the foot of the Beardmore glacier.

Meares clashed with Scott throughout the expedition. Meares refused to follow one of Scott's orders during the Depot Journey regarding the retrieval one of the dog teams that had fallen into a crevasse.[5] He eventually resigned from the expedition months later for unsubstantiated reasons[6] and returned home on the Terra Nova in March 1912.

Some controversy surrounds Meares's "unavailability" for further Barrier (Ross Ice Shelf) work for the 2 months prior to his boarding the Terra Nova to return home, while the base camp was under the command of George Simpson and then Edward Atkinson. Meares's return to civilisation before the Antarctic winter of 1912 was not unexpected (in Scott's instructions to the commanding officer of the Terra Nova written before his departure for the pole he stated that Meares might return on the ship, depending on letters from home), but it remains unclear as to why he was not available to undertake sledge work with the dogs during the autumn season, nor why Simpson or Atkinson did not force him to do so, given that the expedition was run on strict naval terms. In a letter to Apsley Cherry-Garrard in 1919, in the closing days of World War I, Atkinson wrote of the controversy surrounding Meares during the expedition:[7]

I think you might make trouble with Meares by insisting that we know his orders but have no proof in writing of them. You and I know that he disobeyed orders....if you [Cherry-Garrard] make a statement to that effect and if it was challenged, you would have to sutstantiate it in writing... The Owner [Scott] unfortunately never kept copies of his orders.

In the book Beneath the Shadow: Legacy and Longing in the Antarctic, author Justin Gardiner also weighed on the controversy with Meares. Gardiner stated that he believed Meares' negligence in following Scott's orders resulted in a huge part of the failure of the Polar Party returning alive.[8] Gardiner believed that Meares' arrival back at base two weeks later than expected despite Scott's orders to travel further south with the dogs teams, coupled with Meares' anxiousness about missing the ship home, was one of the reasons for the Polar Party's demise.[9]

Later life

During World War I, he joined the Royal Flying Corps, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In 1915, Meares married Anna Christina Spengler (1891-1974).[10] Following the end of the war, he traveled to Japan and assisted the Japanese Naval Air Service as part of the British Air Mission.[11]

After his return from Japan, Meares and his wife later moved to Victoria BC, Canada. The couple lived a quiet life there and involved themselves in various community gatherings. Meares died in Victoria in 1937. His wife, Annie, died in September 1974. She bequeathed a lot of Meares' possessions and letters to the Royal British Columbia Museum.

Notes
  1. Bosher, J.F. (14 May 2010). Imperial Vancouver Island. p. 490. ISBN 978-1450059633.
  2. Bosher, p. 490.
  3. Bosher, p. 491.
  4. E.G.R.G. Evans: South With Scott Collins London 1952 p.25
  5. Gardiner, p. 208-209.
  6. There are differing accounts as to why Meares resigned. Huntford (p435) claims a row with Scott. Fiennes (p340) says Meares had to return to England to deal with his late father's affairs.
  7. Strathie, Anne (2015). From Ice Floes to Battlefields: Scott's 'Antarctics' in the First World War. The Mill, Briscombe Port, Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press. p. 175. ISBN 978 0 7509 6178 3.
  8. Gardiner, Justin (2019). Beneath the Shadow: Legacy and Longing in the Antarctic. University of Georgia Press. p. 208. ISBN 978-0820354958.
  9. Gardiner, p. 209.
  10. "Series MS-0455 - Cecil Henry Meares papers". BC Archives. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
  11. "Cecil Henry Meares - in charge of dogs, Russian interpreter (1877 - 1937) - Biographical notes". Cool Antarctica. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
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