Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition

by Beau Riffenburgh

  Mawson took some photographs and the party began its descent. On the way, they made a traverse of the main crater, took levels for constructing a geological section, and collected specimens. Reaching their camp, they had a hurried lunch before continuing their retreat, Brocklehurst struggling due to his damaged toes. When they reached an ice slope, they hurled their loads down before them, sat and slid down. 'We all reached the bottom of the slope safely', David wrote, 'and fired with the success of our first glissade, and finding an almost endless succession of snow slopes below us, we let ourselves go again and again, in a series of wild rushes towards the foot of the main cone.'

  Their progress was rapid, but not without difficulties. Each time they threw provisions ahead of them, they had to stop their slides part way down and cut across a steep ice face to fetch them. 'Very steep & tiring,' wrote Marshall. 'Arrived safely pretty done . . . Pushing bag, glissading, following up, recovering it, dragging, shoving, soaked through.' Never the less, that night they reached the depot. Rising at 3.00 a.m., they made good time to their first camp, where, fearing a building southeasterly would turn into a blizzard, they stowed the sledge and headed on with all speed. 'Fell roods of times,' Marshall wrote. 'Bruised all over dead tired lost bearings. Arrived hut n am nearly dead.'

  Marshall might have felt almost dead, but he quickly recovered. A number of the ponies were not able to recuperate so well, and when they appeared nearly dead, they soon expired. While both surgeons were on Erebus, Sandy died. Joyce and Day cut open the poor creature's stomach, which turned out to contain twelve to fourteen pounds of volcanic sand. Without salt in their diets, the ponies had been eating the sand, which had been covered with salt water during the three-day blizzard in February. The others were quickly moved to a new shelter, but the delay had been fatal. On 13 March Billy died, again due to the sand. 'If we lose many more ponies our chances of getting to the Pole will become chimerical,' wrote Priestley. Yet four days later another was gone, as Mac was in such distress that he was shot. Shackleton had projected that he needed a minimum of six ponies for the southern journey - there were only four remaining.

  Things were not going well for the expedition in the outside world, either. On 8 March Nimrod reached Lyttelton, where England was informed of his 'resignation'. Although he did not dispute Shackleton's orders publicly, someone else related a very different tale.

  On 11 March, under the headline 'Explorers Fight', the Daily Mail - the paper to which Shackleton had contracted to send reports - gave provocative details of serious dissension between the leader and his captain. 'Shackleton, when the ship was in a dangerous position,' the article stated, 'tried to take charge of the vessel . . . a personal struggle ensued . . . one of the combatants being knocked down.' The tale had evidently come from one of the ship's crew, upset by the forced resignation. Although England and Kinsey both denied the story, it received increasingly dramatic attention in Britain and New Zealand for more than a fortnight, and the next month it was taken up again when Henry Bull, who had been at the wheel at the time of the incident, gave The Sydney Morning Herald an expanded version.

  This bad publicity was followed by more when Nimrod proved to be unfit to carry out magnetic and oceanographic surveys that Shackleton had promised in the aftermath of the Australian and New Zealand governments' generosity. A flurry of righteous indignation came from the New Zealand press, and, although it was acknowledged that neither government had based its grant on the survey work, the public was left with a certain unease about the explorer's handling of money and the differences between his statements and actions.

  Shackleton's reputation was taking a similar beating in Britain. For one thing, his finances were unravelling, as there were still numerous debts. Most important was the loss of any further backing from Beardmore. Shortly before leaving Britain, Shackleton had borrowed £1,000 from the Scottish industrialist on a short-term basis. When the money had not been repaid, Beardmore refused to have anything more to do with him.

  There were also those who were indignant about Shackleton occupying McMurdo Sound. Scott was far more than indignant. 'I have been getting some copies made of Shackleton's letter to me,' he heatedly informed his mother. 'His breach of faith is so emphatic that I propose to let certain persons see the letter.'

  Undoubtedly these 'certain persons' included the hierarchy of the Royal Geographical Society, but they, like everyone else north of Cape Royds, were incapable of doing anything. Despite Scott wailing that Shackleton was a 'liar', Keltie remained outwardly removed, as was Keltie's way in a controversial situation. 'It is certainly very painful to read of the dilemma in which your husband was placed,' he wrote smoothly to Emily, 'between what he regarded as the safety and success of the expedition, and his loyalty to his agreement with Capt Scott. Under the circumstances as described by him it was difficult to see what he could have done otherwise.'

  Keltie was more straightforward with Markham. 'Personally I am all with Scott,' he wrote, 'but don't you think it places the Society in an awkward position, supposing Shackleton should return successful, that is . . . having reached the Pole or somewhere near it.'

  Despite his own preference for Scott, the political animal in Markham forced him to agree. While evidently encouraging Scott's agitation, he wrote to Emily of his efforts to hush up the entire business.

  I strongly advised Dr. Keltie not to put anything in the RGS journal about the reasons for giving up King Edward VII Land, and he has taken my advice. The reason is that an excuse would be implied; when the public are not aware that any excuse is needed. It is a pity that Ernest worded his promise so strongly, and now the best thing is that nothing more should be heard of it.

  Holding Shackleton at arm's length the RGS might have been, but there was one old friend true to the last. 'It is in a way unfortunate that King Edward Land could not be reached,' Hugh Robert Mill wrote to Emily,

  but I for one never saw the reasonableness of looking upon the McMurdo Sound route as reserved for a possible future expedition which had not even been planned. It seems to me . . . that region is absolutely open and free to any one who has the courage, perseverance and good luck to reach it, and whether my friend Shackleton brings back the South Pole or not I am quite sure that he will bring back a splendid record.

  It was on 22 June that Mill wrote to Emily. On another continent, in another hemisphere, on what could have been another planet, it was midwinter. Time was passing slowly in the darkness of the south, but soon the light would return in the sky, a bit of warmth to the wastelands, and with them a glorious challenge would open to the men clinging to the vestiges of land at the edge of the unknown.

  Plan of the hut at Cape Royds. The cubicle closest to Shackleton's was occupied by Adams and Marshall. That with the printing press housed Marston and Day, and next to them were Brocklehurst and Armytage. On the opposite side, next to the coal box, were Mackay and Roberts, and immediately adjacent to them Priestley and Murray. Wild and Joyce shared a space with the printing machine, and David and Mawson were closest to the dark room. From Shackleton, E.H. 1909, The Heart of the Antarctic. 2 vols. London: William Heinemann.

  15

  WAITING OUT THE WINTER

  There were numerous rooms at Swythamley Park, near Leek in north Staffordshire - where Philip Brocklehurst had been raised - that were considerably larger than the hut at Cape Royds in which fifteen men planned to spend the next seven months. Even Sir Philip's rooms at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, would have put to shame the living conditions he and his companions were about to experience. Yet they quickly adapted to the new environment; so much so that five months and six days after they sailed from Lyttelton, Brocklehurst recorded with no embarrassment, 'Washed my head first time since leaving New Zealand; Day & Wild also had washes & looked quite different.'

  Considering that Shackleton had no experience living in a hut in the far south - the men of Discovery had wintered aboard ship - the new quarters at Cape Royds showed remarkable foresight and
planning. The hut had been placed so as to face northwest; across Pony Lake, which lay directly in front of it, was an impressive view of McMurdo Sound and the western mountains. Next to Pony Lake was a flat sheet of ice that soon became snow covered, and thereby allowed the men to exercise the ponies daily throughout the winter, as well as to play football and hockey. This quickly became known as Green Park.

  The hut itself was rectangular, thirty-three feet by nineteen, with eight feet to the eaves. It had been built of sections of fir timber and lined with match-boarding. The external walls and roof were covered with heavy roofing felt, a one-inch layer of tongue-and-groove boards, and then another layer of felt. In order to provide further insulation against the cold, the four-inch space between the match-boarding and the inner felt was filled with granulated cork. For added protection, a wall six to seven feet in height was built of provision cases around the back of the hut, which faced the prevailing southerly winds. Next to the leeward side were the stables, one wall made of a double row of maize cases, the other of bales of fodder, and a ceiling of canvas tarpaulin.

  The entrance to the hut consisted of a small porch between double doors. To the right of this, constructed of biscuit cases, was a storeroom. On the other side was a room intended to be Mawson's laboratory. However, it lacked significant insulation, so it was invariably the same temperature as the outside. The invasion of warmer, moist air from the hut therefore caused everything inside to become covered with ice crystals, making it unusable as a laboratory and leading to it becoming a second storage room.

  The inside of the hut was divided between a communal area and the cubicles that provided a bit of privacy to the occupants. In order to save space and weight on the ship, Shackleton had brought virtually no furniture, assuming it could be built out of packing crates. One of the first items to be constructed was a long dining table built by Murray from the lids of the cases and set in the centre of the hut. When not in use, the table could be hauled above head level by ropes, creating a work area. Beyond this were a small cook's table and the four-foot-wide stove. The stove burned anthracite coal constantly, not only allowing Roberts to produce three hot meals and fresh bread daily, but to melt ice for drinking water for the men and ponies. Although the stove had not kept the hut warm during the blizzard in mid-February, it was discovered that several important parts had not been properly installed. When they were, it maintained the temperature sixty to seventy degrees above that outside.

  On a platform above the area immediately inside the porch was an acetylene gas plant that Day installed and daily recharged with carbide. Flexible steel tubes connected to the tank allowed the use of four portable lamps, which helped make up for a lack of inside light due to the hut only having two windows - which were partially blocked by the stables.

  To the right of the entrance door was a small separate room complete with interior roof, which served as Shackleton's quarters, as well as housing the library. Shackleton felt it important that he not be lodged in the main room, so that the men would not feel constrained by his presence. Like various others, he made his bed from fruit boxes facing the outside, so that, when emptied, they could serve as storage lockers.

  Ranged around the interior of the main part of the hut were cubicles six feet wide by seven feet, each housing two members of the shore party. These were separated from one another by walls of packing boxes, or sacking hung from wires, and from the central area by blankets. Each cubicle had distinctive features, reflecting the work and personalities of its inhabitants. Closest to Shackleton's room was that occupied by Adams and Marshall, which was so tidy and ordered that it was known as 'No. 1 Park Lane'. Adams' shelves housed a complete set of Dickens as well as books about the French Revolution and Napoleon, whereas Marshall's were dominated by medical supplies, as the small area also served as the local surgery. On the dividing curtain, Marston had drawn life-size portraits of Napoleon and Joan of Arc.

  The next cubicle, 'The Gables', was shared by Marston and Day. The boxes forming the shelves were made of Venesta board - a forerunner to plywood made of triple layers of chestnut or oak glued together that had been stained brown with permanganate of potash. Marston had painted the curtains to include a vase of flowers on a mantelpiece and a fire burning in a grate. The cubicle also included a lithographic press that was to be used to produce pictures for a book Shackleton intended to print during the winter. Next along was 'The Shruggery' of Brocklehurst and Armytage, which was minimally furnished, and beyond that a small pantry.

  On the opposite side was the cubicle of Mackay and Roberts, both of whom unsuccessfully tried to make beds out of bamboo. Adjacent to this, and not divided by the usual curtain, Priestley and Murray lived in the 'Taproom', a name that was a 'somewhat indelicate reference' to the diarrhoea from which Murray suffered much of the winter. Priestley complained that his area was encroached upon by both Mackay and Murray, but he in turn filled much of the cubicle with rocks, geological hammers, chisels and other tools of his trade.

  The next compartment, occupied by Joyce and Wild, was known as 'Rogues' Retreat' for a sign that Marston had painted above its entrance. The elaborate picture showed two rough customers drinking beer out of pint mugs. The two veterans of Discovery were joined in their room by a printing press and type case. The final cubicle, known variously as the 'Pawn Shop' or 'The Old Curiosity Shop', was occupied by Mawson and David and was full of a confusing collection of scientific instruments and specimens. The Professor, according to Shackleton, 'made a pile of glittering tins and coloured wrappers at one end of his bunk, and the heap looked like the nest of the Australian bower bird.'

  In the corner nearest Mawson's bunk and opposite Shackleton's room, was a photographic dark room constructed of fruit cases and lined on the inside with roofing felt. Mawson carefully fitted out the room with all the necessary equipment for developing and printing both glass-plate negatives and film. Although photographs had been taken by Borchgrevink's and Scott's parties, the emphasis was much greater on the British Antarctic Expedition.

  Shackleton had purchased nine still cameras of varying types including a stereoscopic model and one with a 'telephotographic apparatus' - as well as a cinematographic camera. A number of the men also brought their own cameras, and at least nine of them took photographs using no fewer than fifteen cameras. Marshall, who was in charge of the cinematograph, later estimated that 4,000 feet of film were shot. Despite the introduction of roll-film cameras, a high proportion of serious photographers still used bulky, dry-plate cameras, and there were several of these on the expedition. There were also smaller, portable, roll-film cameras.

  Regardless of which camera was used, photography was not an easy process in Antarctica's freezing temperatures and long periods of darkness. Marshall found that when the temperature dropped to thirty degrees below freezing, cameras stopped functioning because the oil had frozen. He therefore made a point of removing the oil from all of them. The temperature similarly affected other stages of the process. Most of the developing and printing was carried out by Brocklehurst or Mawson, both of whom found glass plates easier to work with because film became brittle in extreme cold. One of the best places to develop photographs had been aboard ship, because sea water proved better as a stop for the developer than fresh water. This brought its own risks, however. Shortly after developing photographs of the Ferrar Glacier, Brocklehurst noted, 'put them in a bucket & lowered them into salt water till after lunch and then washed them in fresh water . . . but when I was away for a short time a piece of floe ice drifted against the bucket & crushed it so I lost all those plates.'

  Taking photographs in the winter was also difficult due to the long exposures required, something affecting more than just the photographers. A famous photo of Murray and Priestley in a trench at Green Lake was taken in June 1908 by the light of hurricane lamps. 'The temperature was — 22°F and we sat for ten minutes,' Priestley wrote, 'such agonies will ordinary mortals undergo for the pleasure of having their faces
perpetuated.'

  Throughout a seemingly endless winter, the fifteen men experienced agonies far worse than having a picture taken at — 22°F. Their diaries record how the cold, wind and darkness interfered with every aspect of life, from taking scientific measurements to exercising the ponies to preparing meals. When combined with a forced proximity on a day-today basis, this at times created an atmosphere of tension and hostility.

  In fact, even some of the 'good times' brought stress. In March, most were greatly amused when, coming back from various jobs, they were greeted by Marston, 'dressed up as a woman,' Priestley wrote, 'and behaving very affectionately to the whole expedition. He was so pressing in his attentions in fact that Mackay had to tell him that he would spit at him unless he took himself off.' As his colleagues were finding out, Mackay was quick-tempered and not a man to tease; Marston's efforts at light relief might have ended in violence without Shackleton's presence.

  'This amalgamation of (it must be admitted) somewhat strangely assorted men was made possible by Shackleton's particular form of control, based on his almost supernatural intuition for selecting men who believed in him implicitly,' Adams later wrote, continuing:

  The Antarctic winter, with its four months of complete darkness and its month of twilight at both ends was indeed a testing time. There were days on end during blizzards when no-one left the hut save for a natural purpose or to feed the ponies or take meteorological observations, but I never heard an angry word spoken during the whole of that period . . . Shackleton did not insist on excessive formality towards himself; he was accepted as, and addressed as, The Boss . . . His exceptional powers of leadership were just as much in evidence during the sometimes tiresome and intimate life in the hut as they were on the sledging journey to the Pole.