Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Made the worst journey in the world for three penguin eggs and spent his life asking what it was for
Apsley Cherry-Garrard was a wealthy young Oxford graduate with such poor eyesight that he could barely see without spectacles, which are useless in a blizzard. Scott turned him down for the Terra Nova expedition twice. He offered a thousand pounds towards the costs anyway, was accepted, and turned out to be a hard worker who did not complain.
In the winter of 1911, in continuous darkness, he set out with Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers to collect emperor penguin eggs from the rookery at Cape Crozier, which meant hauling sledges for five weeks through temperatures that fell to minus 60 degrees. Their sleeping bags froze solid, their teeth cracked from chattering, and at the rookery a gale blew away their tent. They found it by luck, brought back three eggs, and Cherry-Garrard's teeth were shattered.
The following spring he was sent with dogs to One Ton Depot to meet the returning polar party. He waited a week, then turned back as instructed, not knowing that Scott, Wilson and Bowers were dying eleven miles further south. He was in the search party that found their tent. The question of whether he could have saved them followed him for the rest of his life, and he suffered long periods of depression.
His account, The Worst Journey in the World, was published in 1922. It is unsparing about fear, cold and error, and is still regarded as one of the finest books of travel ever written.