Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition

by Beau Riffenburgh

  The final two men in that small cabin on Runic had been hired for very specific talents. Bernard Day had trained in motor engineering and had been employed by Beardmore's Arrol-Johnston Motor-Car Company. When Shackleton was given the motor-car, the twenty-three-year-old Day was more or less offered as part of the package as electrician and driver. The other specialist was William Roberts, selected as a result of the problems with the cook on Discovery. Roberts, at the age of thirty-five, had had extensive experience as a cook both on land and at sea, most recently serving as the pastry chef at the Naval and Military Club. He was obviously a man of different faces, as Priestley commented, 'not least from the point of view of entertainment value', whereas Brocklehurst thought Roberts 'was the only one who couldn't appeal to the ordinary man . . . he was a bit rough . . . he knew and felt it, and was very antagonistic for that reason. He never liked anybody.'

  Brocklehurst himself was the last member of the party to leave Britain, departing on 7 November 1907. He crossed the Channel, caught an overnight train from Calais to Marseilles, and then sailed on Omrah, on which he had booked a first-class stateroom. His leisurely cruise included a stop at Pompeii, viewing the eruption of Stromboli, a passage through the Suez Canal, and a visit to Colombo in Ceylon before arriving in Australia. He then delayed his trip to New Zealand in order to see the Test Match in Sydney, before finally catching up with his shipmates in Christchurch.

  Shackleton had taken much the same route - without the first-class ticket or relaxed pace - a week before Brocklehurst. During the previous months, much of his time had been spent on financial affairs, and in August he had optimistically written to Emily that:

  I have already made arrangements with Heinemann to publish the book on my return and it means £10,000 if we are successful: and that is quite apart from all newspaper news . . . the book can pay off guarantees if the people really want them but I am of the opinion that they will not ask for them if we are successful: I think it will be worth about £30,000 in the way of lectures alone.

  This was typical of Shackleton's rose-coloured view of the future, but success was far from certain, and in the meantime he had many bills, but no money. He was temporarily rescued by a gift of £4,000 from his cousin William Bell, but when this proved not enough, the Brocklehurst connection again saved the day. The help came in the form of a donation by Campbell Mackellar, a close friend of Sir Philip and his mother. Mackellar was a verbose, and at times overwhelming, Scotsman and a strong supporter of the expedition, who wrote that upon meeting Shackleton, 'the opinion I formed then, and at once, of Shackleton as an ideal leader I never wavered in . . . and I was fully justified in my belief.'

  Now, as always when he departed, Shackleton's mind focused not so much on what lay ahead as on what was waiting behind. 'Your dear brave face is before me now and I can see you just as you stand on the wharf and are smiling at me,' he wrote to Emily on the train across France, adding:

  My heart was too full to speak and I felt that I wanted just to come ashore and clasp you in my arms and love and care for you: Child honestly and truly it was the worst heart aching moment in my life: If I failed to get the Pole and was within 10 miles and had to turn back it would or will not mean so much sadness as was compressed into those few minutes.

  On no account, he continued, would he 'run any risk for the sake of trying to get the "Pole" in the face of hard odds. I have not only myself but you and the children to consider and always remember that and . . . if inclined to do anything rash I will think of my promise to you and not do it.'

  During the next weeks, Shackleton thought constantly about Emily. 'It seems years already since I left and it really is only just over a fortnight,' he wrote as RMS India neared Colombo. 'Oh it is hard indeed to be away from it all and the only compensation that can be will be the doing of the work and then the homecoming never never again for us to be separated.' As usual at such times, Shackleton thus denied his nomadic nature. But he did acknowledge that, 'I want the glory of the Conquest for ourselves and for the country and I want to make this great in the golden world for you my Queen.'

  But soon his mind was again turning away from Emily and back to his venture. He had written to her from Aden that he had lectured aboard ship and 'was glad to do it as there are some rich Australians on board who now seem interested in the Expedition'. As he reached Melbourne at the beginning of December, Shackleton was hoping that two public lectures he was scheduled to present there and in Sydney would assist his still struggling finances. In fact, they would help bring credibility and success to the entire expedition.

  The stage was now set for the entrance of a man whose contributions to Antarctic scientific research cannot be overstated. Tannatt William Edge-worth David would not only be a key performer in a variety of roles on the British Antarctic Expedition, but would later influence Scott's final expedition and, through his relationship with Douglas Mawson, have a profound impact on the development of Australian Antarctic research.

  Born in St Fagan's, near Cardiff, in January 1858, David had early been educated at home by his father, the local rector, and then at Magdalen College School, Oxford. The award of a classical scholarship - after placing first out of more than seventy candidates from public schools - allowed David to enter New College, Oxford, where he intended to take Holy Orders. But it was at 'The Other Place' - as Cambridge men such as Brocklehurst and Marshall would have called it - that David discovered a subject that thrilled him like no other: geology. Despite a breakdown of his health, the treatment for which was a round-trip to Australia on the sailing ship Yorkshire, he graduated in 1880 and immediately began the study of the geology of St Fagan's and the local district.

  David's independent work and subsequent papers quickly attracted attention, and in 1882 he was appointed to the position of assistant geological surveyor to the government of New South Wales. For the next eight years he carried out extensive fieldwork, made important discoveries of tin and coal deposits, and built an enormous scholarly reputation. In 1891 he was appointed professor of geology and physical geography at the University of Sydney, where his lucid, inspiring lectures soon drew students from all fields of study. 'As a lecturer he has rarely been surpassed,' wrote Griffith Taylor, one of his students who was a member of Scott's last expedition. David had a deep melodious voice that, Taylor wrote, 'would ring out like a clarion', combined with such a power of delivery that, according to Mawson, 'his students were at times held spell-bound'.

  As early as 1895 David had shown a strong interest in the ice of the polar regions, and by 1907 he was one of the world's most respected glaciological experts. In September Shackleton, aware that David's immense academic reputation was equalled by his powerful political connections, invited him to accompany the expedition to King Edward VII Land to advise Priestley and Brocklehurst before returning to New Zealand with the ship. David immediately agreed and threw himself into preparations, including laying the groundwork for Shackleton's speaking engagements in Australia.

  On 3 December, Shackleton gave his public lecture in Melbourne. Three days later, before a crowd of more than 4,000, he repeated it to a series of standing ovations. He desperately needed the money that he earned from these presentations, but he was so moved by the appreciative audiences that, in spontaneous gestures, he presented the fees to local charities. This on-the-spot generosity was one of the charming, if unpractical, aspects of Shackleton's personality. 'His heart was always bigger than his pockets,' James Dell, who had been on Discovery and would later join Shackleton for his final expedition, once said. 'He never worried about money, did he, not for one moment.'

  The public response to Shackleton was overwhelming, and David seized the opportunity to write a letter to Alfred Deakin, the Prime Minister of Australia, asking for financial aid for the expedition. Shackleton had counted on an additional £4,500 coming from William Bell; due to bank failures in the United States, this had not materialised. In a lengthy letter, David spelled out the numerous
gains to world knowledge, and more specifically the advantages to Australia, that would accrue from the expedition. 'In view of the fact Lieutenant Shackleton and his friends have contributed so liberally to a scientific expedition which so intimately concerns Australia,' he concluded, 'it would be a gracious act on the part of the Commonwealth Government to help this British Antarctic Expedition in its present need by granting a liberal contribution.'

  Such was the regard in which David was held, that when the official proposal for a grant was made, the Leader of the Opposition was reported to say, 'If Professor David says he wants it, that ends it.' The Australian government awarded Shackleton a grant of £5,000, to which was soon added a grant of £1,000 from the government of New Zealand. These allowed not only an increase in expedition staff, but more stores and equipment to be purchased and last-minute alterations to be made on Nimrod.

  Money was not all that David was to contribute, however. The day before arriving in Melbourne, India docked in Adelaide, and Shackleton was met by one of David's former students, Douglas Mawson, a lecturer in mineralogy and petrology at the University of Adelaide. Mawson asked if he, like David, could sail down and back with Nimrod. 'My idea,' he later wrote, 'was to see a continental ice-cap in being and become acquainted with glaciation and its geological repercussions.'

  Shackleton said that he would consider it, but when he received the grant from the government, he promptly wired Mawson that he had been appointed physicist for the duration of the expedition. Although caught off guard because he was not a physicist, and by the length of the appointment, Mawson accepted.

  Meanwhile, when Shackleton arrived in Sydney, David prepped him for his lectures. He also laid out a schedule for official calls to prominent individuals and organisations. David then raised the issue of other potential members of the expedition, starting with Leo Cotton, whom he wanted as his assistant because 'the possible usefulness of any work I might do would be more than doubled if I had Cotton's assistance'. David felt strongly enough about the intellectual but physically rugged Cotton that 'I am quite prepared to pay any reasonable personal expenses that may be charged to Cotton if taken.' It was a request that Shackleton could hardly turn down, and Cotton joined the growing number of scientists on the expedition.

  Two other individuals mentioned by David did not go south, including Lawrence Hargraves, who ran a kite laboratory that David was hoping would supply three kites for research purposes. The other was Peter Close, whom David referred to as a 'strongman'. The place he might have occupied was filled by another Australian, Bertram Army-tage. Thirty-eight years of age, and therefore older than most of the expedition members, Armytage had been at Jesus College, Cambridge, as an undergraduate, rowing in the first boat at the Lent races of 1888 when Jesus finished head of the river. After leaving Cambridge, he moved back to Australia, and then served with distinction with the 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers) in South Africa, winning the Queen's Medal and three clasps. An avid hunter, Armytage went deer-stalking in New Zealand before joining Shackleton's venture as a general helper, with special attention to the ponies.

  Thus, as Shackleton hurried on to New Zealand in mid-December, it appeared that the final shape and size of the shore party had been determined. It had not.

  Once in New Zealand, Shackleton made another addition, moving second officer y&ieas Mackintosh to the shore party. Only a few days before Nimrod sailed south, Arthur Harbord joined her as auxiliary second officer. With a Square-rigged Extra Master's Certificate, Harbord held the highest qualification possible in sailing ships as well as those driven by steam. This emphasis on sail was unexpectedly very important, because in Lyttelton Shackleton had suddenly realised that Nimrod would have to be under sail a good deal of the time - she would not be able to hold enough coal to get to the Ross Ice Shelf and back. In fact, without good winds the expedition might never get to King Edward VII Land at all, or, worse yet, it might never come home.

  12

  A PROMISE BROKEN

  Ballast. It was one of the most fundamental foundations of the maritime world, but it threatened to destroy the entire British Antarctic Expedition. As the date of departure from Lyttelton - New Year's Day 1908 drew closer, and Nimrod was loaded heavier and packed tighter, Shackleton realised that it was simply impossible to cram everything aboard the tiny vessel. Most important was the coal, both the lack of it and, ironically, the inability to use what there was.

  When Shackleton first appreciated that there would not be enough coal for a trip to and from the Great Ice Barrier, he turned to the wind as his saviour. However, it soon became apparent that this would not solve the problem of getting Nimrod back to New Zealand. Much of the coal might have to be used to force through the pack ice around the Ross Sea, both on the way south and then again north. Even a plan to allot just enough coal to get through the ice on the return, and sail the rest of the way was not feasible, because the coal was serving a dual purpose: as fuel and ballast. Were all of it consumed, there would be nothing to prevent the ship from capsizing in heavy seas, as no new source of ballast could be guaranteed.

  This oversight - due a great extent to Shackleton's inexperience in command - must initially have been a devastating blow. However, he was always at his best in a crisis, and now he devised a creative new plan. He would have Nimrod towed to the Antarctic Circle, thereby preserving the coal and allowing her to return under steam with the excess providing the necessary ballast.

  As he had with the Australians, Shackleton had been taken to the hearts of New Zealanders, who took great pride in bestowing official recognition and public support. He now turned this to his advantage and asked for help from the New Zealand government, which offered to pay half the cost of a tow to the edge of the ice. The other half came via the good graces of Sir James Mills, chairman of the Union Steam Ship Company, which also provided the towing ship. Mills appointed Captain Frederick Pryce Evans to be in charge, and Evans selected for the task Koonya, a steel-built steamer of 1,093 gross tons, which had been trading between Dunedin and Wellington.

  That resolved, the stowing of Nimrod continued, although a variety of items had to be left behind. These included five of the fifteen ponies, which had made the trip from Tientsin to Hong Kong to Sydney to Quail Island, the New Zealand quarantine station. There, under the guidance of Mackay, they had been broken to handling and introduced to pulling sledges. The ten best were selected for the journey and put in narrow stalls on the deck. Nearby, packed carefully in a protective crate and strapped down tightly, was the motor-car. By the day of departure, the decks were heaving with supplies that had not found a place in the hold: sledges, tins of carbide fuel for lighting the hut, bales of maize for the ponies, excess coal and, virtually unnoticed, the nine dogs that Joyce had selected from the descendants of the Siberian huskies left on Stewart Island by Borchgrevink in 1900. To the shore party, the successful mustering of all these materials undoubtedly seemed a feat of which to be proud, but such would not have been the thoughts of Nimrod's merchant sailors, uncomfortably treading the deck knowing that, beneath them, the Plimsoll line was two feet under water.

  The first day of January broke warm and clear, and as morning changed to afternoon the people of Christchurch came to bid farewell to the small group of adventurers. In a remarkable outpouring of goodwill, 50,000 people descended on the small harbour town of Lyttelton, packing the wharf and making it almost impossible to approach the ship. With the time of departure drawing near, two men fought their way through the crowd, desperate to reach Nimrod. The first of them was a thin, unremarkable-looking man soon to be fifty years old, who, having finally reached the ship, was now confronted with his most serious challenge. 'In getting on board the Nimrod, with both my arms full of breakable packages,' Edgeworth David wrote of the incident to The Daily Telegraph of Sydney,

  I was gently impelled backwards over the naked gang plank by the steady pressure of a stout lady moving resolutely in the opposite direction; she was for the shore, let
who would be for the Pole. Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for some of my fellow-men, I fell on to their heads on the deck . . . I had hoped that my ignominious embarkation had escaped detection, but even before I had time to straighten myself up again, I was disillusioned by the mellow tones of Shackleton's voice from the bridge.

  The second man was a last-moment addition. George McLean Buckley was a wealthy sheep-farmer who had donated £500 to the expedition. While saying his farewells, Buckley had suddenly asked if he could accompany the ship as far as the ice pack and return on Koonya. Shackleton consented, and Buckley was off, catching a train to his club in Christchurch, picking up a few toiletries, and dashing back to push through the seething crowd with just minutes to spare. He was now heading to the Antarctic with only a thin summer suit by way of polar gear.

  At 4.00 p.m. Nimrod cast off and made her slow way through a flotilla of passenger ships and private yachts. Brass bands played 'Auld Lang Syne' and 'Heart of Oak', and Priestley noted that several excursion steamers had decidedly unsafe lists due to the passengers pushing to the side on which Nimrod passed. When they reached three ships of the Royal Navy's Australian fleet, hundreds of men rushed to the bows and rent the air with three cheers.

  Having passed out of the harbour, they picked up the towline from Koonya: a four-inch-thick wire hawser made of steel. It was shackled to Nimrod's chain cables, which were then let out thirty fathoms, hoping to ensure that the great weight on the cables - coming from riding far under the water - would give protection from sudden stresses. However, it was soon apparent that the tons of cable would force the small ship to attack every wave with her bow pulled down into the sea.