In 1909, Evans finally succumbed to the lure of the Antarctic, and announced – with Markham's blessing – that he would organise an expedition to explore
King Edward VII Land. He planned an expedition to the Pole, but as a secondary objective; "the circum-navigation of the great Antarctic continent appealed to me far more". Evans initially sought support in Cardiff for a Welsh National Antarctic Expedition. Around the same time, Scott began planning a new expedition in response to Shackleton's recently completed
Nimrod Expedition – the two were by this time rivals – and on hearing of this Evans abandoned his own project, transferring his funding and support to Scott. In return, Scott appointed him second-in-command. Evans brought so much Cardiff and Welsh sponsorship that Scott named Cardiff the home port of the expedition ship,
Terra Nova and made Evans Captain. Despite this partnership, the two were never close, with the clash between Scott's reserve and Evans' openness accentuated by the difference in rank and age. Scott later described Evans in his diary as carried by "boyish enthusiasms" and "well-meaning, but terribly slow to learn", deeming that he was much more capable as a sailor than an explorer on land, and probably would never be suited to command his own expedition. The expedition landed on the west side of
Ross Island on 4 January 1911, at a site Scott named
Cape Evans in Evans' honour. Evans joined the main shore party, leaving the
Terra Nova in the hands of Lieutenant
Harry Pennell, and worked to establish a series of depots along the
Great Ice Barrier for the use of the Polar expedition later in the year. After wintering in the
Cape Evans hut, the party began to prepare for the main journey in August and September. Evans was given command of the Motor Party, which was to leave first, taking four men and two tracked motor sledges south onto the Barrier with supplies for the main expedition, which would follow with dogs and ponies. In the event, the motor sledges failed to work as planned; the engines proved unreliable, frequently refusing to start until heated, or stopping after a short distance. The first broke down permanently on 30 October, five days after starting, and the second followed a day later. The four men reorganised their loads and pushed south pulling a single sledge with of equipment and supplies. They managed about the same speed as before the breakdown, and made the rendezvous six days ahead of the main party, who caught up with them on 21 November. Two of Evans' party (the motor mechanic and an assistant) returned north, and the Motor Party was reorganised as the "Man-hauling Party". with Evans leading Chief Stoker
Lashly, Surgeon-Lieutenant
Atkinson and
C. S. Wright, a Canadian physicist. The group pushed onwards until 5 December, when they were halted by a blizzard for four days, working through their supplies but unable to press south. The remaining ponies from the main expedition had to be shot before moving on. On arriving at the
Beardmore Glacier on 10 December, their route off the Barrier, the dog parties were also sent back, leaving the entire expedition to be man-hauled. At this point, the expedition was made up of three groups of four men, all man-hauling their sledges. However, two of the groups were relatively rested, whilst Evans and Lashly had been pulling a sledge since 1 November. This began to tell, with the group dropping behind and causing tensions with Scott, who grew frustrated and impatient with Evans' perceived carelessness and disorganisation. On 20 December, the first supporting party turned back, leaving eight men to press onwards; Evans' team was reorganised comprising himself, Lieutenant
Bowers, Lashly, and Petty Officer
Crean. On 3 January, Scott announced that Evans would not continue to the Pole, but would take his team, the Last Supporting Party, back north. Evans privately attributed this to his physical exhaustion – he and Lashly had pulled a loaded sledge for six hundred miles by this stage – and recorded his reactions stoically, though Bowers described him as "frightfully cut up". The groups parted emotionally on 4 January, and Evans, Lashly and Crean turned to head back, only from the Pole – Bowers had remained with the main party. The journey back was difficult, as until this point the sledges had been handled by four-man teams, and the reduction to three slowed them considerably. In an attempt to save several days, the party descended from the plateau by sledging several hundred feet down the deeply crevassed
Shackleton Icefalls onto the Beardmore Glacier, rather than take the slower and safer climb down the mountainside. The three emerged battered but without major injury, despite having reached speeds that Evans estimated at close to sixty miles per hour. Once on the glacier, however, Evans began to suffer severe physical problems. He was initially afflicted with snow-blindness, making him unable to see clearly, and later began to develop the early signs of scurvy. These signs rapidly multiplied, leaving him weakened and constantly in severe pain, and within a couple of weeks he had deteriorated to the point that he was being pulled on the sledge by Lashly and Crean. Evans was the only one to develop scurvy to this degree, and a number of arguments have been put forward as to the reason. However, it seems likely that the root cause was that unlike the other explorers, Evans had apparently tried to avoid eating
seal meat (in particular seal liver) during the winter, which he disliked but which was a rich source of
Vitamin C. As his companion
Frank Debenham put it many years later, "Teddy really was a very naughty boy and wouldn't eat his seal meat". On 13 February, Evans attempted to order them to abandon him, but they refused, in what Evans later called "the first and last time my orders as a naval officer were disobeyed". They were finally forced to halt by a blizzard on 17 February, thirty-five miles from the base camp at Hut Point, when it became clear that the two men would no longer be able to pull the sledge. Lashly remained to look after Evans while Crean headed north; after walking for eighteen hours, he arrived at the hut where he met Atkinson with an assistant and a dog team. They headed south as soon as the weather cleared, finding Evans near to death, and carefully brought him back to the camp. He arrived there a few days before the
Terra Nova returned, and he was returned to the ship to be nursed back to health. He remained bedridden until April, when he arrived in New Zealand. After meeting Amundsen, recently returned from the Pole, and being reunited with his wife, Evans headed back to England, where he spent the northern summer of 1912 recuperating and raising funds for the Expedition. There, he met
King George V, who promoted him to the rank of commander. Returning south later in the year, Evans commanded the
Terra Nova on its relief journey; it arrived at McMurdo Sound on 18 January, the anniversary of Scott's arrival at the Pole, to be greeted by the news of the polar party's death. Recording his "overwhelming sorrow" at the news, Evans assumed formal command of the expedition in lieu of Scott, and organised the final departure of the expedition from the continent. Evans' wife, Hilda, became ill with
peritonitis on board the
Oranto on 14 April 1913 whilst on her way to England with her husband after his return from Scott's second and fateful expedition. She was operated on by the ship's doctor on 15 April. Conscious when the ship reached
Naples on the 17th she stayed on board but after setting back to sea, she died at midnight of 18 April. Hilda was buried in Toulon, France. A memorial to Hilda Evans is to be found in
Linwood Cemetery, Bromley, Christchurch, New Zealand at Block 46 Plot 205 – the Russell family grave. In 1921,
Collins published Evans' first hand account of the
Terra Nova Expedition under the title
South With Scott. A century on, Evans' account has been re-examined in the light of a recovered cache of correspondence dealing with the expedition. Issues canvassed were: whether Evans took crucial supplies from food and fuel depots that had been had laid out in advance thus leaving Scott perilously short during his return journey, whether Evans impeded plans for a dog team rescue mission that Scott had planned should he be late in returning from the Pole, the obfuscation of when Evans fell down with scurvy, and the degree of personal animosity between Evans and Scott. ==First World War==