Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition

by Beau Riffenburgh

  By January 1901, Shackleton's fortunes were on the rise. Longstaff had spoken to Markham about his desire for Shackleton to be taken on, and Markham had passed this to Scott. According to Armitage: 'Scott said that he had no time to attend to it, so . . . would leave the matter entirely in my hands.' Armitage made enquiries and found that Shackleton was considered 'more intelligent than the average officer . . . a very good fellow, always quoting poetry and full of erratic ideas.' On 17 February, two days after his twenty-seventh birthday, Shackleton was appointed the expedition's junior officer.

  The life to which Shackleton returned in March 1901 showed all the hallmarks of an entirely new era. After nearly sixty-four years on the throne, Queen Victoria died on 22 January, and with her passing an epoch had closed. Swept away seemingly overnight were many of the restrictive mores that had long repressed British society. Victoria's rakish son and heir, Edward VII, brought with him a worldliness gained as much through cards, cigars and scandal as by the perusal of ministerial reports. This change extended to other aspects of the new Britain as well. In October 1900, at the instigation of Joseph Chamberlain, an early election had been called to capitalise on the patriotic emotions of military victories in South Africa and China. The 'Khaki election' had returned the rapidly ageing Salisbury to power, but high-minded students of politics were appalled at the extirpation of 'fair play' in calling an election simply because the government was popular. Similar notions of 'not quite cricket' also blew in from South Africa, where a war that the British public had been assured by Lord Roberts was 'practically over' continued to drag on, with the Boers - and even their wives and children - engaging in a new, unchivalrous form of combat: guerrilla warfare. These new concepts all contributed to Edwardian society's teeming flurry of thought and action.

  Shackleton, working at the expedition office at London University near the centre of the city, found himself in the midst of this seething exuberance, and he immediately melded perfectly with it. 'I thought him extremely boyish and almost extravagantly enthusiastic,' Armitage said about his understudy. 'He had certainly kissed the Blarney stone and would, I believe, have become a great Journalist if he had taken it up . . . He had a great flow of talk, never being at a loss for a word.'

  The father of the expedition was equally impressed by the young man who had been forced upon him. 'Scott was fortunate in finding such an excellent and zealous officer,' Markham wrote. 'He is a steady, high principled young man full of zeal, strong and hard working and exceedingly good tempered. He is remarkably well informed considering the rough life he has led.'

  Shackleton now became an important component in the preparations for the expedition. His virtually limitless energy saw him involved in a multitude of projects, and he was charged with compiling the library, obtaining materials needed for entertainment during the winter and, most importantly, using his merchant marine expertise to oversee the stowing of supplies. Discovery had been launched less than three weeks after Shackleton returned from his Union-Castle voyage. On 14 May her engines were tested in measured conditions off Arbroath, and she responded excellently. Shackleton must have been pleased with the new ship, particularly as, the week before, Tantallon Castle had run aground on Robben Island off Cape Town while trying to navigate through a fog. Although everyone aboard had been rescued, the ship had been a total loss.

  In June Discovery was brought to the East India Dock in London, and, as more supplies arrived, Shackleton increased an already busy workload. Included was a trip to Aldershot, where he and four others were taught how to inflate and operate an observation balloon, a piece of equipment currently proving its usefulness in the Boer War.

  The total cost of the balloon and the sixty gas cylinders needed to fuel it was prohibitive - £1,380. However, Shackleton's charm proved an important adjunct to the expedition. According to one of his sisters, when visitors were being shown around Discovery one day, Shackleton noticed two ladies on their own. He asked if he could guide them through the ship, and they were so impressed and flattered by his pleasing attentions that one asked if there was anything the expedition required. He said they still needed £1,000 for the balloon, and shortly thereafter she contributed that amount. Her name was Elizabeth Dawson-Lambton, and she would reappear to encourage Shackleton throughout his career.

  There is little doubt that Shackleton threw himself into all these new challenges with vigour. And there is even less doubt that in his mind grew the certainty that the expedition would be his making - not only would it lead to fame and fortune, but those, in turn, would lead to Emily. Perhaps the most important consideration of this period was that for the first time he was near her for an extended duration: the Dormans had recently moved to South Kensington. Certainly the courting couple had ups and downs - another, longer-term, suitor was also present - but it was perhaps Shackleton's regular attentions at this time that swung the balance in his favour. By June, Markham recorded that 'Shackleton had his fiancee and her two sisters' visit the ship.

  The great adventure began on 31 July, when Discovery sailed from the East India Dock. Waiting for their brother to pass were Shackleton's three youngest sisters. 'We were armed with semaphore flags (Ernest had taught us signalling),' Kathleen later recalled, 'and as he passed we saw Ernest bring out a white handkerchief, then turn to someone, borrow another, then he signalled three times "Goodbye Helen, goodbye Kathleen, goodbye Gladys" in strict old nursery order of precedence.'

  From London, Discovery proceeded to Cowes, where, on 5 August, King Edward VII, Queen Alexandra, and a number of other dignitaries came aboard to inspect her. Shackleton could have had few prouder moments as he stood in his new naval uniform, Markham having obtained for him a commission as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve.

  He must also have been pleased that participating in a review by the King could only help his pursuit of Emily. Just two days before he had finally written a letter to Mr Dorman asking for his daughter's hand in marriage. In the same letter, he had also opened his heart about his plans and prospects. 'As for me my future is all to make but I intend making it quickly. I would have spoken to you myself before only Emily had not given me a full answer. Now I feel it is all right so am asking you not now but when I have made money or position and money to marry her.'

  It would not be until the post from home caught up with the slow-moving Discovery that he would find Mr Dorman's response had been positive. Now all Shackleton needed was success in the frigid, mysterious south - which was soon to capture his spirit in a way he had never foreseen.

  6

  THE GREAT WHITE SOUTH

  'We set all sail to a fair though light wind,' Shackleton wrote on 16 August 1901, after Discovery left Madeira, 'but found that the ship steered badly, there being too much sail aft, and not enough forward. I am afraid this is unsatisfactory, and will be a serious matter when we get down south.'

  They had left England little more than a week before, but already Shackleton and his colleagues had found to their chagrin numerous 'serious matters' with regard to their new home. Discovery used far more coal than had been planned, and when under sail she was sluggish and difficult to manoeuvre. But the barque's most worrisome problem became a crisis after they departed Madeira. At that stage, she was found to be not only full of faults, but full of water. Charles Royds, the executive officer, had reported leaks numerous times while still in London, but he had been 'poo poohed' and 'told not to worry or cause trouble'.

  On 23 August, however, Royds recorded, 'Shackleton went down into the main hold, and was nearly terrified out of his senses by seeing or hearing water, and ran straight to the Captain, who at once began to panic' The water in the main hold was nearly head-high, and cases of food three-deep had been 'soaking and are now black and slimy and stinking'. Shackleton was put in charge of clearing the holds and restowing the stores, and his long experience stood him in good stead. Throughout the following days, as rain poured down outside, the entire crew, including the scientists,
were pressed into service. It was a filthy and rancid job, particularly as the dockers in London had opened food tins and then discarded them partially eaten into the area where the bilge water gathered, creating a rank, fermenting stench.

  Despite the unpleasant duties, Shackleton maintained his poetic temperament. 'I see wide fields of waving corn, long grasses and budding heads of clover,' he wrote in the midst of reorganising the stores. 'It is dawn and the mists are lying in the valley and on the hillside . . . I feel once more the warm stillness of high noon.' In his mental wanderings, Shackleton was possibly not only hearkening back to home but to the departure, only days before, of a new friend.

  Hugh Robert Mill had been a late, if welcome, addition to the scientific staff of Discovery. The newly appointed director of the British Rainfall Organisation, Mill had been invited to accompany them as far as Madeira to train officers and scientific staff in measurement and data collection. Not only had he been a positive influence on the entire wardroom - the centre of activity for officers and scientists - but he had established a particularly close friendship with Shackleton.

  Mill was a small, delicate man, who had suffered from tuberculosis as a child and was subject to intermittent illness throughout his life. But attached to this frail body with the large, drooping moustache were a shrewd mind, a dry humour and a generous disposition. He and Shackleton quickly discovered in each other a deep love of poetry, a romantic soul and a source of endless enjoyable conversation. And Mill found in the strong, outgoing third officer someone through whom he could vicariously enjoy those adventures for which his brave spirit yearned. They soon developed a friendship that would last the rest of Shackleton's life.

  While aboard, Mill carefully took the measure of his new friend. When, two decades later, he wrote the first biography of Shackleton, he recalled that in learning to measure the density and salinity of sea water, the younger man 'found the minute accuracy required rather irksome, and was long in grasping the importance of writing down one reading of an instrument before making the next.' This impatience and desire for an easily understood result was a basic part of Shackleton's makeup. Mill also clearly comprehended why Shackleton was aboard Discovery in the first place: 'To Shackleton the National Antarctic Expedition was an opportunity and nothing more. He would have tried to join just as eagerly a ship bound to seek buried treasure on the Spanish Main, or to scour the Atlantic in search of the Island of St Brendan.'

  Quite the antithesis of Shackleton was another shipmate with whom he established a close friendship. A Cambridge man, Edward Wilson had studied medicine at Gonville and Caius, but his real interests had tended toward being a naturalist, and his artistic skills in this direction were remarkable. Although Shackleton enjoyed the ordinary pleasures and dissipations of the normal young men of his time, such trifles were not for Wilson, whose life was dominated by the practice of a Ruskinian ascetic ideal and of evangelical Christianity. Wilson was quiet, thoughtful and modest, although not humourless, and he carefully considered both his goals and the correctness of his actions. By any measurement he met the Victorian notion of what a young man ought to be: steady, abstemious and respectable.

  Despite being rejected by the Admiralty Medical Board, which viewed him as not fully recovered from tuberculosis, Wilson's zoological skills and personal attitude were such that, regardless, Scott and Markham offered him the position of assistant surgeon. Wilson jumped at the opportunity - his desire to go was emphasised by his sailing only three weeks after he was married - and once aboard, his suspect stamina turned out to be a phantom, as he demonstrated an unrelenting capacity for work.

  Early on, Wilson noted that Shackleton 'has quite taken me in his charge and puts me up to endless tips and does no end of things for me.' The two also found a mutual passion for poetry, and Shackleton took to rousing Wilson when there was an especially beautiful sunrise. In his more reserved way, Scott also was impressed by Wilson, and he, like Shackleton, found that underneath the cool and rather formal exterior there was an appealing charm.

  Scott and Shackleton do not seem to have had any such mutual bonhomie, although there are indications that Scott was favourably impressed with his junior officer early on. Certainly the two would have been divided both by the traditional competition between Royal Navy and merchant marine and by the differing mentalities and social status of the services. 'There was always that feeling amongst Merchant officers in those days that they were being looked down upon,' James Dell, a naval rating, later said, adding that Shackleton 'was looked upon by all these as just a cargo-shifter'.

  Such a view was not surprising at a time when the Royal Navy was still the pride of the Empire. In the middle of the nineteenth century, it had been the most advanced and powerful force of war that the world had ever known. By the reign of Edward VII, it was still the largest navy on the seas, although it was no longer unquestionably supreme in technology, strategic training or equipment. But the loss of naval hegemony had not yet affected the self-satisfied smugness of the Senior Service and many of its officers, who were happily beleaguered by tradition and former glories. Innovation in line officers had been curtailed by convention and a rigid adherence to decades-old methods. Appearance seemed to count most of all: swords were worn at sea, brasswork was maintained in gleaming condition, and ammunition was occasionally thrown overboard to prevent having to practise with the cannon, as their blast could blister the paintwork. This was the mentality with which Scott, Royds and Barne had reached adulthood. 'There was the Navy, in those days, living on the tradition of Trafalgar and all that sort of game,' Dell recalled, 'and thought of nothing else but bright-work and paint-work . . . it was the same thing with that expedition . . . they were just about as unprepared for that sort of job as they were for the war.'

  Shackleton was thus totally different from his fellow officers, such as Royds, who was described as 'absolutely Navy from top to toe'. Barne later referred to Shackleton as 'a grand shipmate and good company . . . a great raconteur'. But to those on the lower deck, 'he was rather an enigma . . . He was both fore and aft, if you understand, due to the fact that he didn't fall in with all the views of all the Naval officers. And he never did.' It was a distinction that would ultimately be strongly felt.

  To many who have spent time in the Antarctic reaches south of New Zealand, there is no memory as wondrous as the first sight of the pack ice, the wide belt of floating, closely packed sea ice that encloses the Ross Sea and the areas near the coast. To the uninitiated, the pack ice marks a seeming desolation that can feel vaster and emptier than anything else imaginable. It is not, of course: it is teeming with life both in the water and the air. But nothing is more mesmerising than the ice itself, a white surface stretching on and on until it blends into the horizon and one cannot tell what is sky and what is not.

  This was the scene as Discovery ploughed carefully forward in early January 1902, the creaking and snapping of the ice announcing her grudging progress. At other points, she moved slowly backwards, and then thrust ahead at full speed, a violent and sudden stop sending judders throughout, indicating that it would take more than one assault to burst through that part of the pack.

  With all of this around him, it is somewhat surprising that Shackleton did not record his emotions in his usual descriptive terms. Perhaps his mind still dwelt in his homeland; it had only been in late November, upon arrival in New Zealand, that he had learned Mr Dorman had died and Emily was now totally free. Or perhaps it was because, as Louis Bernacchi - the expedition physicist who had previously wintered with Borchgrevink - stated: 'although Shackleton was always alert for any new interest, energetic, full of flashing new ideas (many of them impractical), an omnivorous reader, and earnest student of poetry, an amateur astronomer, chiefly of the stars in a poetic sense, Antarctica to him did not exist.'

  This assessment is not so extraordinary as it might seem. As one studies diaries of polar explorers, one of the most remarkable aspects is how seldom they were touched by th
e beauty or grandeur of the landscape. To most, the remarkable colours of the ice, the unveiling of the mountains blue in the distance, the soft light of the early morning could not compare to the 'picturesque' aesthetic with which they had been raised. As one British explorer wrote, drawing on the picturesque aesthetic, no 'object was to be seen on which the eye could long rest with pleasure, unless directed to the spot where the ships lay, and where our little colony was planted.'

  Not that many explorers had previously reached the area that Discovery now entered - or, indeed, even tried. Antarctica had been a theoretical concept since the time of the ancient Greeks, but through the centuries in which Asia, the Americas, Australia, and the interior of Africa were opened to Europeans, the frozen south remained an enigma. After James Cook was the first to cross the Antarctic Circle in 1773, several waves of exploration helped fix the location of the continent. The most successful expedition was led by James Clark Ross at the same time that French and American efforts mapped other parts of the coastline.

  Little geographical progress was then made until Borchgrevink and his small party wintered at Cape Adare at the northern tip of Victoria Land in 1899. The following spring Borchgrevink made a short trip on the Barrier, during which he had established a farthest south of 78°58'S.

  Now, some two years later, Discovery followed in Borchgrevink's wake. On 9 January the members of Scott's expedition landed at Cape Adare. It was the first time any of them other than Bernacchi had set foot on Antarctica, and the vast Adelie penguin rookery they found on the small shingle spit would not have encouraged those with delicate sensibilities. 'There were literally millions of them,' Wilson recorded. 'It simply stunk like hell, and the noise was deafening.'