Lawrence Oates

Who is Lawrence Oates?

Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates, known to his companions as "Titus," was a British Army cavalry officer who joined Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition (1910-1913) as one of the five men in the polar party that reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912. On the punishing return journey, Oates suffered severely from frostbite and an old war wound that left him barely able to walk, and he became convinced that his failing condition was slowing his companions and endangering their survival. On the morning of 16 March 1912, during a blizzard, Oates is recorded as having voluntarily left the tent, telling the others he was "just going outside," in an apparent act of self-sacrifice intended to give his companions a better chance of reaching safety. His body was never found. Scott recorded the moment in his diary, and the line became one of the most famous utterances in the history of exploration, remembered as an emblem of quiet, understated courage. Oates was thirty-two years old.

Sources: Robert Falcon Scott, diary entry, 16-17 March 1912, published in Scott's Last Expedition (1913)