In May 1907, feeling the pinch of the purchase and refitting of Nimrod, Shackleton followed through on his promise and accepted Brocklehurst, enclosing at the same time his instruction for the young man to guarantee £2,000 through his bank. Brocklehurst became the first subscribing member of an Antarctic expedition, a status followed three years later by Captain L.E.G. Oates and Apsley Cherry-Garrard on Scott's expedition.
Although Brocklehurst left Cambridge without taking a degree and was far more interested in his commission in the Derbyshire Yeomanry than in science, Shackleton hoped to get more than capital out of him. He sent instructions for the period prior to departure. 'Take up a course of practical surveying,' he directed. 'Learn to use the theodolite for usual angles and survey of a country. Learn to take your latitude and longitude with the theodolite. Learn to take bearings with the compass . . . Learn to take a survey with a plane table.' Then, perhaps remembering that he had named him assistant geologist, Shackleton added, 'Take up a course of field geology. Learn the particular formations of rocks . . . Learn to recognise the particular sedimentary, volcanic and igneous rocks.'
Brocklehurst turned to these tasks with a will, but it was for something far different that his usefulness was next proven, and it rescued Shackleton in a time of desperate need.
11
UNDERWAY AT LAST
At 3.00 p.m. on Sunday 4 August 1907 the little ship that for most of its career had been visited only by seals dead and dying received a collection of guests of a totally different calibre. It was Cowes Week, and those aboard Nimrod had become part of a spectacle that in memory seems to epitomise the proud, ostentatious, far-away days of Empire. Every year the Isle of Wight played host to this glorious gathering - part parade, part regatta, part obeisance to England's magnificent maritime history. It was one of the great occasions of the social season and the climax of the entire year for the yachting set, who turned out with their opulent cruisers and windjammers and J-class cutters showing acres of gleaming, snow-white canvas.
In 1907 Cowes Week was also a chance for the Royal Navy's grand review of its wares. Stretching for miles down the calm waters of the Solent was the Home Fleet, nearly 200 warships, the most powerful naval force in the world. Conspicuous as a giant among smaller siblings was the first of a new class of battleship that would alter all previous naval strategy - HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906 and completed just months before. Floating regally at the head of this mighty armada and flying the Royal Standard was His Majesty's own Victoria and Albert; only a cable's length away from her, in the place of honour, was the former Newfoundland hunter.
The first to be piped aboard Nimrod from the Royal Yacht's pinnace was King Edward VII, decked out in fashionable yachting clothes. He was followed by Queen Alexandra, the Prince of Wales (later King George V), the Princess of Wales, the Duke of Connaught, Princess Victoria and Prince Edward (later King Edward VIII). The King asked Shackleton to introduce him to his officers and shore staff; he then asked many questions about the scientific instruments and the plans for the south.
Meanwhile, expedition members were detailed to entertain different guests. The second mate, /Eneas Mackintosh, thought it particularly unfortunate that his lot fell to a taciturn fellow who evidently knew nothing about the polar regions and seemed to evince little interest in ships. Mackintosh, who had joined the expedition from the P&O Company, began to amuse himself by spinning tall tales of life at sea. Finally his soliloquy was interrupted by a grunt and a slap of his visitor's hand on the rail. 'I have my own ship,' he said, to let the mate know that he knew something of things maritime. The man nodded toward HMS Dreadnought. 'That's my ship. I built her.' With horror, Mackintosh realised he had been allotted Admiral Sir John Fisher, First Sea Lord and architect of Britain's new fleet.
As the royal visit ended, the King turned to Shackleton and, in front of the ship's company, pinned a medal on him. 'When Captain Scott left in the Discovery I conferred the Royal Victorian Order on him,' he announced. 'I now do the same to you as an incentive to scientific research and exploration.' That he had thus equalled Scott in his sendoff must have pleased Shackleton immensely. But there was more. Queen Alexandra presented him with a flag, attached to which was a note that read, 'May this Union Jack, which I entrust to your keeping, lead you safely to the South Pole.' In modern history, such a gesture had not previously been made to a British explorer by a monarch: Shackleton had earned a unique status.
The King's visit to Nimrod was of enormous import in giving the British Antarctic Expedition a cachet with potential backers. This was significant because Shackleton was still trying to gain financing for his venture. Only two weeks before Nimrod had sailed from the East India Docks, he had found himself without the money to pay for the final work. He turned in desperation to a philanthropist he had never met, Edward Guinness (of the Irish brewers), the Earl of Iveagh. In an endeavour that showed Shackleton's charm and drive at their most effective, he convinced the Earl to guarantee £2,000 on the condition that the explorer came up with other guarantees taking the total to £8,000. Within a week and a half, with a strong helping hand from his enthusiastic new devotee Philip Brocklehurst - that is, from his mother - Shackleton had managed to do so.
The new loan did not mean Shackleton's financial troubles were over. Long before Nimrod departed, he knew that a number of expedition members would remain in England, continuing with preparations and raising funds. It was obvious that such efforts would be helped considerably by the public and press approval to be gained by the King's patronage, so in late July he had turned again to the Brocklehursts for assistance. In this case it was to the baronet's slick and well-placed cousin.
John Fielden Brocklehurst (later Baron Ranksborough) was ample proof of the success that could come in Victorian times if one were handsome, charming and socially skilled. Not graced by birthright to a mammoth inheritance, he entered the army after graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge. His contacts allowed him to gain a commission in the Royal Horse Guards, which, as part of the Queen's bodyguard, were based in Windsor. In 1882, Brocklehurst participated in the first foreign service for the Horse Guards since Waterloo, in Wolseley's victorious Egyptian campaign.
Two years later, promoted to brevet major, Brocklehurst served in the effort to relieve Khartoum. This was a very personal cause, as he was one of Gordon's dearest friends and the two had dined together at the 'Blues' Mess on the general's last night in Britain. In a letter smuggled out of Khartoum, Gordon told Wolseley that he prayed daily for two men: Wolseley and Brocklehurst. In 1894 Brocklehurst became commander of the Royal Horse Guards, a position he held for five years until sent to Natal as colonel in charge of the Third Cavalry Brigade at the beginning of the Boer War. There, unfortunately, he was caught in Ladysmith with General Sir George White, where he apparently fell afoul of the ever-present Colonel Henry Rawlinson. Throughout his career, few could help being charmed by Brocklehurst, but Rawlinson tersely noted that 'Pogglehurst' had neither 'the dash nor the brains' to command cavalry.
Brocklehurst had both aplenty for a position in court, however, and shortly before leaving for Natal, he was appointed Equerry to Queen Victoria, a role that after her death he followed with an analogous one for Queen Alexandra. This gave him the ear of the Queen and a certain input with the Royal Family (in fact, he later became Lord-in-Waiting to King George). It is highly likely that, although he was unable to obtain the King's patronage for the British Antarctic Expedition, he played a significant part in the command for Nimrod to proceed to Cowes for Royal inspection. This order had reached Shackleton in the Thames estuary, the day after they had sailed. It is also not unlikely that Brocklehurst initiated the Queen's unprecedented gesture of giving a flag to the man who had invited her Equerry's cousin on the expedition. The Brocklehursts had clearly validated Shackleton's decision to take Sir Philip; it was not to be the last time.
Early on the morning after the King's inspection, Nimrod sailed quietly into the Channel
. In the hours immediately following His Majesty's visit, numerous other men of distinction had been welcomed aboard and a message wishing success had been received from Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the famed botanist who was one of the last surviving members of James Clark Ross' expedition of two-thirds of a century before. A day and a half later, the ship arrived at Torquay, to be met by Emily, who had not been at Cowes. That night the Shackletons gave a farewell dinner for the officers and crew. 'Shackleton sat at his wife's right hand with the Queen's flag placed behind him and everyone felt proud, excited, and full of hope,' first mate John King Davis later wrote about the occasion. It was the last time for more than four months that all of the members of the expedition would be together, as Shackleton and most of the shore party disembarked for weeks of further preparations.
Nimrod finally departed England on 7 August 1907, sailing from Torquay across the rough waters of the Bay of Biscay to hot, dry Sao Vicente in the Portuguese sugar colony of the Cape Verde Islands. After re-coaling, they made the passage to Cape Town, where, seven years before, Davis had run away to sea. Then came Nimrod's long haul across the Indian Ocean, driven by powerful westerlies that took them to Lyttelton, New Zealand. For sixteen long weeks they made agonisingly dull progress, the most excitement coming from the oceanic dredging operations lovingly carried out by two Scots who were the only members of the shore party still aboard, Murray and Dr Alistair Forbes Mackay.
One of two surgeons selected to winter in the Antarctic, the twenty-nine-year-old Mackay was a tough, muscular hothead who responded with action as quickly as words. The son of a colonel in the Gordon Highlanders, he studied medicine at Edinburgh University before enlisting in the City Imperial Volunteers after the disasters of Black Week. He then served as one of Robert Baden-Powell's police, and later returned to Edinburgh to complete his medical education. Mackay had been a naval surgeon for four years before resigning to join Shackleton's expedition.
In October, as Nimrod bobbed her way to New Zealand, eight more members of the shore party left Liverpool crammed into one small cabin on Runic, a single-class emigrant ship of the White Star line. Today, someone forcing his employees into such a restricted space would claim it was an exercise in 'team-building'; Shackleton made no pretence that it was anything but an effort to save money. In the next six weeks the men came to know each other better than they would ever have wished and, as Raymond Priestley, the youngest of them, later wrote: 'we formed a solid block with esprit-de-corps laid on with a trowel and . . . with deepest cleavages among ourselves which later developed to advantage when sharing out the work and picking out the sledge parties.' The eight men in the room demonstrated a wide variety of abilities, interests and personal habits, and long before they reached New Zealand, friendships and rivalries had been made that would only be terminated by death.
Although two of them - Wild and Joyce - had previous Antarctic experience, the man nominally in charge was Jameson Adams. He had been one of the first to volunteer to go south with Shackleton, when several officers from HMS Berwick had spent the evening chatting to the would-be explorer while their ship was anchored near his summer home. In 1907 Adams, then twenty-seven, was still a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve after a dozen years of service, when suddenly the chance of a lifetime appeared. His commanding officer told him to prepare his best uniform because the next day he would be given 'a permanent commission in the Royal Navy with the requisite seniority, and your career is made'. This was a virtually unheard of opportunity, and Adams 'went down to the ward-room to celebrate this with the greatest joy in the world'.
It was a brief celebration. Within minutes, according to Adams, he received a message from Shackleton: 'Will you come as my second in command?' He immediately returned to the bridge and told his captain, 'Sir, I've changed my mind already: this is my offer and I'm going to take it. The Navy can go by.'
Adams worked with Shackleton at the office almost from the start, and he was present at the interviews of many applicants. He knew that although Shackleton had unusual selection methods, he had subtly sized up the character of those being interviewed and 'had great intuition as to whether the fellows concerned had the qualifications required'. But to many, Shackleton's appointments seemed impulsive. Certainly none came about in an odder set of circumstances than the hiring of Priestley, the geologist who was just finishing his second year at University College, Bristol.
Shackleton had neither great interest in nor knowledge about the scientific work that his party would carry out. When he had first spoken to Brocklehurst, he had explained the expedition as a dash to the Pole without any science at all. However, he was aware of the need for a scientific facade to obtain publicity and financial support. Unlike Scott, he did not want to spend time either selecting scientists or overseeing their work, so, early on, he sought the advice of noted scientists such as Sir John Murray and Arthur Schuster, the professor of physics at Manchester University.
As geologist, Murray recommended an individual at the Bristol Museum who had been on the Challenger Expedition and who reluctantly agreed to be interviewed but then 'refused with some decision'. Coincidentally, Priestley's older brother Bert, a botany lecturer, came into the interview room just at the end of the process, at which point he was asked in an off-hand way if Raymond would be interested. Shortly thereafter, as he passed through the library where his sibling was studying, Bert asked, 'How would you like to go to the Antarctic, Ray?' Priestley responded, 'I'd go anywhere to get out of this place'. He soon had a telegram from Shackleton asking him to come to London.
Although he spoke to Shackleton, Priestley assumed that he had no chance for the position, because 'I was not academically qualified, and I discovered later that at least a dozen Honours graduates had been after the job.' Moreover, Priestley thought the interview rather strange, as Shackleton did not ask many geological questions, the notable exception being, 'Would you know gold if you saw it?' Priestley made no bones about that. Shackleton's other questions were about such things as whether he could play a musical instrument, to which he replied in the negative, although 'I was not bothered for I did not then understand the significance'. Priestley departed uncertain of whether he was being taken or not, but ten days later he received a telegram from Shackleton asking why he had not started collecting his equipment. The expedition had found its geologist.
An equally unusual story has been passed down for years about the hiring of the expedition artist, George Marston, a bulky twenty-five-year-old whom Priestley described as having 'the frame and face of a prize-fighter and the disposition of a fallen angel'. According to an article Shackleton later wrote for Pearson's Magazine, Marston was given the job because he was the only one of three final candidates to show up for a hastily scheduled interview, having interrupted a walking holiday in Cornwall to do so. It was a lovely story but, Marston's letters show, sadly not true. In fact, Marston, who trained in art at London's Regent Street Polytechnic, was part of a social circle of young artists and art students that also included Shackleton's sisters Helen and Kathleen, the latter of whom became a professional artist. While at a friend's studio, the sisters suggested that Marston apply for the job.
He did so but obviously tired of waiting for an answer, because on 4 August, the day the King inspected Nimrod, Helen Shackleton needed to encourage him not to give up:
you simply must not chuck the idea of the Antarctic job, just because you haven't yet had Ernest's decision . . . I feel, and I believe (in his innermost heart) that Ernest feels that this expedition will reach the South Pole, & think how sick you would feel, if, before learning E's decision, you told them that you had changed your mind - and think if they reached the S. Pole! . . . I really feel that if you are passed you ought to go.
A week and a half later, their brother offered the position to 'Putty', as Marston quickly became known. Shackleton was progressively drawn to Marston, not only for his artistic skills but his physical strength and satirical, lampooning sense of hum
our. They both enjoyed donning unusual clothes and making their comrades laugh by impersonating other people. According to Shackleton's niece he once even fooled his family when they were on a picnic. 'They were all sitting around,' she recalled years later, 'and this awful old tramp came along, filthy, and said things like "Come on, dear, give me a kiss" and the children were all terrified, and suddenly someone recognised Uncle Ernest dressed up.' In Eastbourne, Shackleton was said to have borrowed one of Emily's dresses, a hat and false curls to successfully impersonate a beautiful and charming woman. Several times during the expedition, Marston put on women's clothes and makeup to bring light relief to his colleagues.
Similarly, it was a social contact that introduced Shackleton to the expedition's senior surgeon, Dr Eric Marshall, a powerful man with the physical ability to row for Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and then be a rugby forward for St Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1906 they had met at a party in London, and Marshall had been impressed by Shackleton's enthusiastic banter. He volunteered on the spot, and it is apparent that almost from the word go Shackleton intended him to be the surgeon and cartographer for the polar party. Although Marshall was to serve well in both capacities in addition to being one of the primary photographers, the selection was not in all respects one of Shackleton's better ones. Marshall had the inflexible, unforgiving manner that often marked the evangelical true believer; this he certainly was, having entered Emmanuel planning on taking Holy Orders, before leaving after a year to pursue medicine. A bitterly sardonic attitude, combined with an arrogant superiority, made it difficult for him to become close to other members of the expedition.
Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition Page 17
