Perhaps due to Marshall's badgering, Shackleton decided to try once more to reach King Edward VII Land. On the night of 24 January, having spent several hours convincing England that the attempt was viable, Shackleton headed east. Less than twenty-four hours later, the immovable pack again stopped them. At 6.30 p.m. on 25 January, Nimrod altered course for McMurdo Sound.
In the aftermath of Shackleton's decision, virtually everybody aboard Nimrod agreed with Harbord, that it 'was dictated by common sense in the demanding difficulties of ice pressure, shortage of coal, pressing time and the lack of any sure base nearer than McMurdo Sound. There is no doubt in my mind, as a seaman, that the decision to seek winter quarters in McMurdo Sound was right.'
Even Marshall wrote grudgingly, 'at any rate, we have had a try for it.' The surgeon, however, never truly forgave the decision, or perhaps it was part of a long-term bitterness he felt for Shackleton - due to believing himself the better man, the one who should have been the leader. Regardless, some forty-five years later, the decision still preyed on his mind when he wrote about 'Shackleton's "double cross" in breaking his promise to Scott by using his old Base when other alternatives were available if he had had the guts to take a risk and land at the Bay of Whales.'
Alternatively, it has been speculated that the decision was not even Shackleton's, that, as master, England had the final say. The notion of England making such a decision unilaterally is unrealistic, however. Certainly he had been getting progressively more nervous and had urged Shackleton to turn west. But he would have sought Shackleton's blessing before altering course, and this he received. Shackleton acknowledged the soundness of England's judgement in a long, self-justifying letter that he wrote to Emily after the decision had been taken:
. . . after a long talk with England who put the seriousness of my position frankly before me; by the attempt; the shortage of coal which even then was only sufficient to ensure the arrival of the ship at New Zealand: the strained condition of the vessel: the fact that even if we eventually arrived at King E VII Land I might not be able to find a safe place to discharge and would probably have to abandon it in view of the enormous masses of land ice and hummocked up pack that was breaking away which would make the ship's position untenable: my duty to the country and King since I was given the flag for the Pole and lastly but not least my duty to all who entrusted themselves to my keeping: I myself recognised the weight and truth of all he said.
Set on the scales against all of this was 'my private word of honour my promise given under pressure was the one thing that weighed in the balance against my going back.' There was, in terms not only of human life but of moral responsibility, only one decision to make, and there can be little cogent argument that Shackleton did not make the proper one. Never the less, a promise was a promise, and he had to live with breaking his word; in the following hours, 'I felt each mile that I went to the West was a horror to me.'
Like much of Victorian and Edwardian society, Shackleton was driven at a basic level by duty and honour. The one he had lived up to; the other he felt had been tarnished. 'My conscience is clear but my heart is sore,' he wrote to Emily,
but I have one comfort that I did my best; if I had gone back without risking and trying all I did and if eventually I got the Pole from MacMurdo [sic] Sound Base it would have been ever tarnished and as ashes to me but now I have done my best and if the whole world were to cry out at me which I am sure they would not even then I would not worry myself for I know in my own heart that I am right.
Telling himself and Emily that, Shackleton watched the Barrier slowly pass as Nimrod made her way west through this weird, white world. An unexpected ordeal was over, he must have thought with a strange mixture of sadness and relief. But soon there would be another unanticipated challenge, and it would again threaten the existence of the expedition.
13
CAPE ROYDS
The first reference to a developing problem had appeared in Mackintosh's diary on 20 January, as Nimrod made her way toward the Great Ice Barrier. 'We are all very annoyed with the Skipper because he will not start the engines, although the sea has moderated and we could easily steam in to it,' the second mate had recorded, 'instead of which we are drifting helplessly about and rolling too. The poor horses are suffering terribly again.'
Although he did not sign off the Ship's Articles and on to a personal agreement with Shackleton until two days later, Mackintosh was already thinking like a member of the shore party. And, as were others with whom he was supposed to winter, he was developing ill will toward England, whose caution was viewed as a serious issue. This attitude had grown widespread with the captain's reluctance to attempt to reach King Edward VII Land. As Nimrod headed into McMurdo Sound, the problem was to increase manyfold.
On 28 January, Mount Terror and Mount Erebus were sighted in the distance. They were passed that evening during a party to celebrate David's fiftieth birthday. The next morning the little ship steamed through the terrain that Shackleton, Wild and Joyce recalled so well, before, sixteen miles north of Hut Point, they were stopped by an unbroken mass of ice. Efforts to ram through the decayed pack gained only a matter of yards as each effort left the ship stuck in the thick, sludgy ice without creating a crack. The operation was halted while Shackleton assessed the situation.
There was no doubt that reaching Hut Point was a high priority. It was the solid ground that Shackleton had decided was necessary. It was immediately adjacent to the Barrier. And it was the farthest southern point attainable on the only known road to the Pole.
The fundamental question, therefore, was when the ice might break up and allow them to disembark. Six years before, Discovery had sailed all the way to Hut Point in early February. The following year, when Shackleton was invalided home, Morning had not been able to reach it at all, getting only within five miles by March. Then, in January 1904, there was about twenty miles of ice blocking Morning and Terra Nova, but by the middle of February, this had broken away completely. So, they wondered, how much pack would the summer gales blow away this year, and how soon?
Shackleton had estimated that Nimrod could remain in the Antarctic until the beginning of March before being frozen in. If he could reach Hut Point, the ship could be unloaded in days. Under normal circumstances, this would have allowed him a month to see if the ice would start blowing out of the sound. These were not normal circumstances, however. Throughout the journey, England had proven far more nervous than Shackleton had expected. This had meant that several times Shackleton had been obliged to cajole England - his employee into a specific course of action.
This strange situation was brought about by the circumstances regarding the command of a vessel. Shackleton was the expedition's leader; however, even when working directly for a superior, the captain of a ship is her master, with responsibility for her safety. When orders or directives endanger the ship, it is the captain's duty to think of safety first, regardless of the consequences to other plans. Some of the ship's company felt this had led England to be overly cautious, and, sitting at the edge of the ice, the issue arose again. England hoped to be away as quickly as possible, but Shackleton decided to wait several days to see if a good blustery storm or, better yet, a swell from the south could change the situation with the ice.
England was not Shackleton's only concern, however. He was desperate to get the ponies to land: they had been shipbound for a month, and the constant pounding had been hard on them. This was underlined on 30 January when the pony Nimrod was found to be in such bad shape that Shackleton ordered him put down. 'He was one mass of sores that he could scarcely walk,' seaman Sidney Riches wrote. 'The frost had taken effect on them, and our Doctor gave up hopes as they would never heal in this cold weather . . . so Nimrod was shot and his body consigned to the deep.' The number of the all-important ponies had dropped to eight.
While they waited for the ice to move, the stables were partially dismantled and the motor-car was unpacked, as Shackleton hoped to use b
oth means of transport to haul supplies to Hut Point. 'Day is quite the most important man here at present and he has been all day getting the motor ready for action,' Priestly wrote. 'At present when we speak to him we take off our hats but someone suggested that in a few weeks if the motor-car did not come up to expectations our attitude towards him will be changed so much that when we wish to attract his attention we shall throw a brick at him.'
Such doubts proved prophetic. Several days later, after much intricate tinkering by Day, the motor-car was taken off the ship and dragged half a mile to where it could be tested on the ice. The company was cheered when the engine turned over, but, wrote Mackintosh,
alas! It kept up the alleged peculiarities of its kind, went a few feet and stopped dead, pulsating violently, until Day, moved no doubt by a feeling of pity, soothed it by a series of hammerings and screwings. After a brief rest, the machinery was started again, and the after wheels in duty bound turned violently round in the snow, burying themselves to such an extent that the car moved not an inch.
Several hours later the disgraced machine was hauled back to the ship. Yet, that Mackintosh was even able to record these events was remarkable. On 31 January, while removing sledging gear through the aft hatch, a crate hook, released from a beer cask, swung across the deck and struck him in the eye. He was taken to England's cabin, where Marshall found 'what appeared to be portion of retina protruding through eye. Joyce tells me that when he fell he saw lens lying on his cheek.' That afternoon Marshall, with the assistance of Mackay and Michell, successfully excised Mackintosh's eye with instruments that included a retractor made from rigging wire. 'Mackay's Edinburgh method of giving anaesthetics with a towel added to the difficulties,' Marshall wrote. 'Mackintosh lay on the cabin floor, on which we knelt, and the only light was a single oil lamp.'
When he awoke after the surgery, Mackintosh was more distraught about having to go back to New Zealand than about the loss of his eye. Never the less, his mind immediately returned to his duty, his first question being, 'Who is going to take my watch?'
It was now that the expedition could have dissolved, with the disappointment of not reaching King Edward VII Land and the inability to attain Hut Point followed by the killing of Nimrod and Mackintosh's accident. But Shackleton, according to Harry Dunlop, the red-headed chief engineer, 'saw that he must not give way to disappointments and accidents. If he gave way to the blues, everybody else would, so he was around all the time with a smile and a cheery word for everyone. He is a marvellous man, and I would follow him anywhere.'
Within several days, Shackleton had determined to where Dunlop and the others would follow him. On i February he had sent Adams, Wild and Joyce to man-haul to Hut Point to check the condition of the hut. They returned from the gruelling journey on the morning of 3 February, and reported it still in excellent condition and virtually clear of snow. In the meantime, Shackleton and England had tentatively skied over a broad expanse of ice, looking for cracks to assist Nimrod in making her way south. When none appeared, Shackleton decided to find a different site for the base without delay.
In the afternoon of 3 February, Shackleton began his search, and Nimrod headed up the coast of Ross Island toward Cape Barne and the small hook north of it: Cape Royds, a rocky promontory where Scott and Wilson had camped in 1904 while awaiting the relief ships. The small bay extending south from the tip of Cape Royds was almost entirely covered with fast ice, but very near that tip - later named Flagstaff Point - was a natural dock, formed by a portion of the ice having broken away.
Shackleton, Adams and Wild took a boat out to sound the uncharted waters near the shoreline. The approaches proved to be of sufficient depth for the ship to enter the little dock and discharge its stores directly on to the ice foot - the fringing line of ice that remained attached to the coastline after the fast ice had broken out. The three scrambled up a smooth, snow slope about fifteen yards wide to reach a large area of bare rock. Some 200 yards inland was a dip protected from the slopes of Mount Erebus by several rocky ridges. Nearby lay a freshwater lake around which were hundreds of Adelie penguins, forming, although Shackleton's party did not know it, the southernmost breeding site in the world for the species. Shackleton immediately decided he had found his wintering site.
Within an hour Nimrod docked at the ice foot, and the party hastened to get as much ashore as possible, while Marshall brought out the cinematograph and started the first filming ever in the Antarctic. The motor-car was followed by a lifeboat, the dogs - which were tethered to rocks - foundations for the hut, and a large supply of pony fodder. For five hours they engaged in some of the heaviest lifting and pulling any of them had ever done, breaking off at 3.00 a.m. for a rest. Before they could return to work, however, the wind picked up and the ship began dragging anchor. Fearing for her safety, they 'cut and run', as Harbord wrote, eventually returning to where they had been the past several days.
Now began a fortnight that combined sustained and difficult labour with periods of sheer frustration. The cause of that frustration was the continuous string of interruptions that dangerously slowed the unloading; the source of it was England's excessive caution.
All day on 4 February Nimrod was buffeted by heavy winds at the ice edge, before returning briefly to Cape Royds the next day. 'It got on my nerves witnessing the extreme precautions which were taken nearing our base,' Dunlop wrote.
He convinced our leader that it was not safe to take our ship alongside, so we steamed back to the bay ice again; needless to say, I was disgusted . . . Here we were burning coal and doing nothing, and we had a ship which was considered able to stand a few bumps. I firmly believe we would have been quite safe to go alongside and get on with discharging.
Never the less, it was not until the evening of 5 February that England was willing to come near the landing site, following, as Marshall wrote, a 'terrible waste of time & bad seamanship'. And even then, according to Mackintosh, 'the Captain did all sorts of extraordinary manoeuvres with the ship & eventually took to a place which meant a mile to drag the stores - instead of 100 yards, which we could easily have done.'
For the next eighteen hours the shore party worked like slaves, hauling ashore large quantities of stores via the first landing site, which became known as Front Door Bay. Meanwhile, Dunlop supervised laying the foundations for the hut. Most urgently, the ponies were finally brought to land. One by one they were put in a box, which was lowered over the side of the ship, and taken up the slope to where they were picketed fifty yards from the hut. 'We thought that this would be a good place,' Shackleton later wrote, 'but the selection was to cost us dearly.'
As a precaution, Adams, Brocklehurst, Marston, Mackay, Joyce and Wild were assigned to stay ashore to look after the ponies, and they immediately moved into two tents close to the foundations of the hut. The dogs were more able to take care of themselves, and one night Scamp and Queenie got loose and ravaged more than a hundred penguins. Queenie was so frenzied that she disappeared over a cliff into the sea, never to be seen again.
By the afternoon of 6 February, the foundation piles for the hut had been finished, but when the wind suddenly freshened from the southeast, Dunlop was called to the ship. 'All hands were ordered on board . . . and off we steamed once more to the bay ice,' he wrote. 'We all gave vent to our feelings again, as the water was quite smooth. We did not let Shackleton hear us though.'
This was because Shackleton had already reprimanded Marshall for complaining about England - calling the captain a 'rotter' - and had threatened to send home anyone who did so again. The problem was that many of the members of both the wintering party and the ship's crew agreed with Marshall. England had, according to Wild, 'entirely lost his nerve, & is, in fact off his rocker.'
It was almost forty-eight hours later that Shackleton was finally able to coax England back, but when the ship did eventually approach the ice, it was even farther away than before. 'Being at this distance off meant hard work dragging the sledges and unnece
ssary long distances, when it could have been done with much less labour,' Mackintosh wrote in disgust. 'This disheartened the whole party & everyone felt while they were doing there [sic] utmost & willing to do more they were being made to do what was ridiculously unnecessary.'
In addition, those who had stayed ashore were boiling over by the time Shackleton reached them. He was horrified to hear not only that the members of the shore party believed England was unfit to command, but that, as Shackleton had given in so regularly to him, they were beginning to lose confidence in him as well. But before Shackleton had a chance to placate the men, Nimrod again bore off into open water. He was forced to signal for a boat and to go as quickly as possible after the ship.
The incident that may have followed was to cause enormous controversy in the future, and yet it is impossible to determine if it actually occurred right then, or at a point a week or so later, around 16 or 17 February. The ship's log does not mention an altercation, and the diaries and letters of the ship's officers and the members of the shore party are not consistent in reporting a specific date when a possible confrontation occurred between Shackleton and England. Neither of the participants wrote about any conflict, except to members of their families. Never the less, there are enough references to it to be able to reconstruct what happened.
Shackleton raced to the bridge to persuade England to bring the ship back into what the others viewed as calm water. England refused, saying that the risk was too great. Exasperated, Shackleton put his hand on the telegraph to the engine-room to signal 'full speed ahead'. England put his hand over Shackleton's and altered the order to 'full speed astern'. Facing a stand-off, the two men left the bridge to settle their differences.
Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition Page 20
