Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition

by Beau Riffenburgh

  The weather continued to be exceptionally fine, but that was not necessarily a benefit, as once they had to strip to pyjama trousers, singlets and shirts due to the heat, and their heavy perspiration caused a fluid loss that was difficult to replace due to limited oil for melting water. 'Hope there won't be more than a day or two of this killing heavy work,' Marshall wrote. But there was - and worse. On 12 December their progress dropped to three miles, a distance that, according to Shackleton, 'expresses more readily than I can write it the nature of the day's work . . . the worst surface possible sharp edged blue ice filled with chasm and crevasses, rising into hills and descending in gullies: in fact a surface that cannot be equal in any polar work for difficulty in travelling.'

  Frustration began to show - at least in their diaries - as each blamed another for slowing the pace. 'Following Sh. to Pole is like following an old woman,' Marshall wrote. 'Always pausing.' The surgeon was not free from criticism himself. 'We were all dead tired tonight, except perhaps M. who does not pull the weight of his food, the big hulking lazy hog,' Wild wrote without bothering to use his cipher.

  Yet remarkably, at a point when tempers were fraying and anger being easily expressed, a close relationship was being formed. Wild had always appreciated Shackleton as a helpful colleague and a determined leader, but now he began to see him as much more. 'Had a long yarn with S. today,' he wrote, 'find he is not such a — as I thought.' A week later, he noted, 'Am waiting for another yarn with S.' Within days Wild was confiding to him and cheering him on in his diary. 'S. pulls like the devil,' he wrote. 'I would tell M. and A. what I thought of them only for the sake of poor old S.'

  Throughout the expedition Shackleton had been developing more techniques for dealing with others. His early method had been to dominate or override lesser men by sheer force of will. Now, in the midst of the greatest dangers they had faced, his innate traits of leadership came to the fore. He showed an energy that went beyond his physical strength: a calm, measured decision-making ability; a continuing cheerfulness; and, most importantly, the talent to inspire. Adams, for one, became a firm believer in The Boss. 'He was the greatest leader,' Adams later recalled, 'that ever came on God's earth bar none, there's no doubt of that.' At the same time, Wild and Shackleton were also totally won over - by each other. As they marched up the glacier, Wild found in Shackleton the leader he had sought, and Shackleton found in Wild his greatest disciple.

  In the ensuing days, they began to take the full measure of the Great Glacier - and vice versa. Neither was willing to give in to the other: the men persevering relentlessly, ever recording their hopes that the morrow would bring the beginning of a level plateau, but the glacier continually rising higher before them. They ascended for more than a week but nothing changed: the slick, rippled ice that made walking in finnesko a menace each moment and the threat of slipping constant; the huge, cracked pressure ridges splitting out in all directions; the occasional rotten moraine; and ice falls they had to climb and then haul the sledges up with a rope hand over hand.

  At lunch on 15 December their hopes rose anew, as stretching out in front of them was a long, wide plain. Through the afternoon they crossed a hard neve. 'Plateau practically in sight then for the rush,' Marshall wrote. He was thinking along the same lines as Wild, who recorded:

  We hope to make a depot tomorrow of food and oil and all the gear we can spare . . . By the look of things we should be on the plateau the day after tomorrow, and then 20 days of good going ought to put us at the pole. We are now very hopeful of doing the job and of getting back in time to catch the ship. S. is in the best of spirits, and I must say has been so all along.

  But the next day came and went and, despite fourteen miles to the good, they found themselves still far from an ice fall that they hoped would be at the head of the glacier. On 17 December, near 85°S, they pulled hard for a nunatak they thought to be four miles away, but by late in the day when they reached it, they had travelled more than eleven. There, at what they measured as more than 6,000 feet above sea level, they named the last rocky outcrop they expected to see on the way south Mount Buckley. Near this obvious landmark they established Depot E, leaving behind what they thought they could spare, including all their clothes except what they had on. 'We have burnt our boats behind us now,' Shackleton wrote, intending to make an unimpeded dash for the Pole. Marshall agreed: 'Hope to gain plateau tomorrow. Then for it.'

  It was not to be. Two days later, at an altitude of 7,888 feet, Wild recorded:

  Another disappointment, and also another hard days work. We are not clear of pressure and crevasses yet; all day long we have been slogging away uphill, mostly soft snow. The first part was too steep for two sledges, so we had to relay. We have crossed hundreds of crevasses . . . most of them snow bridged . . . while the rest of us were tearing our hearts out up the steep slopes, M. was walking along with a slack trace, once it was so slack that S. fell over it . . . I really believe A. does his best, but it is a very poor best. Poor S. works away like ten devils.

  That same evening, Marshall viewed Shackleton a different way, recording laconically, 'Sh. rather done'. He also noted that, for a group of individuals obsessed with food and constantly hungry, they were making a dismal move: 'Tomorrow we cut short another biscuit at breakfast, leaving 1 only.' The food allowance they were living on had become dangerously inadequate. Worse, for the past several weeks they had not actually been eating as much as the small amount rationed, because the cook of the week would put aside bits for their special Christmas feeding. Their breakfast had been reduced to a pannikin of hoosh and one biscuit. For lunch they had four biscuits, a bit of chocolate and some tea with plasmon. And dinner consisted of only a small pot of hoosh, three biscuits and a pannikin of cocoa. It was no more than 2,500 calories per day, and men doing equivalent physical labour should have been receiving at least 6,000.

  But that was not the worst of it. After weeks of brilliant weather, it began to turn nasty. A hard, cutting wind picked up from the south, and day after day it blew directly into their faces. Now Shackleton's decision to purchase furs only for sleeping bags, feet and hands came back to haunt him. The ill-chosen Burberry jackets and separate hats did not protect their faces and necks as fur anoraks would have done. They were also not as efficient protection from the falling temperatures. T can easily imagine that I am on a spring sledging journey,' Shackleton wrote on 22 December,

  for the temp is — 5 and a chill SE wind blowing and finds its way through our tent which is getting worn: All day long . . . we have been hauling our sledges in relays up the pressure mounds . . . Behind us lies a broken sea of pressure ice. Please God ahead is a clear way to the Pole.

  But there was no celestial response, only a reprise of past days at an ever-increasing elevation now measured at more than 8,800 feet. There was also a continuation of unspoken bitterness among them. T sincerely wish he would fall down a crevasse about a thousand feet deep,' Wild wrote of Marshall. 'He certainly does not pull the weight of the extra tent and his kit, and that leaves the weight of his food for us to pull.'

  Wild was more charitable on Christmas Day. 'May none but my worst enemies ever spend their Xmas in such a dreary God forsaken spot as this,' he wrote. 'Here we are 9500 ft above sea level, farther away from civilisation than any human being has ever been . . . with half a gale blowing, and drift snow flying, and a temperature of 5 20 of frost, and yet we are not miserable.' This was because, despite ploughing ahead more than ten miles, they had had their best feed since Cape Royds. Both breakfast and lunch had included extra. Then for dinner they had a double allowance of pemmican thickened with biscuit and the last of the Maujee ration and flavoured with Oxo, a plum pudding boiled in cocoa water and flavoured with a drop of medical brandy, cocoa, a spoonful of creme de menthe and a cigar. 'For the first time for many days I feel replete,' Wild continued, 'and therefore I will not make any nasty remarks about anyone, although I should very much like to.'

  In this mood approaching g
enerosity, the four sat in one tent after Christmas dinner and assessed the situation. They were just short of the eighty-sixth parallel, some 280 statute miles from the Pole. They did not have the food to attain their target and return. So they arrived at a simple solution: they once again would cut their intake. 'We are going to make each weeks food last 10 days and have 1 biscuit in morning, 3 midday & 2 at night,' Shackleton wrote. 'It is the only thing to do for we must get the Pole come what may.' He also noted another worrying fact: 'Marshall took our temperatures tonight, we are all 20 subnormal.'

  On the morning of Boxing Day they ditched everything they possibly could, including the runners that they had taken off the second sledge when they abandoned it two days previously, and items they had felt indispensable at Mount Buckley. With their limited food supply, they now needed to average fourteen miles per day, which still left no margin for safety. But for the moment, the lightened load seemed to help: despite the continuing uphill march, they slogged fourteen and a half miles. And finally they seemed to have left the glacier. 'As we have not crossed any pressure or crevasses all day,' Wild wrote on 27 December after again attaining their target distance, 'I think it is safe to assume this is the Plateau.'

  Yet they continued to make a slow ascent - passing 10,000 feet according to the hypsometer. Shackleton and Adams both suffered from the height, enduring prolonged headaches and giddiness. In addition, they were confronted by virtually every problem imaginable: a strong head wind, more than forty degrees of frost, a horrible surface and a sledge becoming progressively more deformed and difficult to pull. Then, on the evening of 29 December, Marshall found all of their temperatures to be between three and four degrees below normal. 'Reverting to regular hoosh,' he wrote, having determined that they simply were not eating enough to maintain their basic core temperatures. 'Shall depot all return food & make a rush for last degree.'

  But there was no rush. The four weakened men turned out on 30 December only to be chased back into their tent after four miles by the first real blizzard since they had passed White Island. 'I cannot express my feelings,' Shackleton wrote. 'We lie here and think of how to make things better but we cannot reduce food now . . . We will and are doing all humanly possible. It lies with Providence to help us more.'

  It was too much to ask. Even Providence could not help these four scarecrows, freezing, starving and stumbling through soft, foot-deep snow against a bitter head wind. Their tents were wearing out, their poorly designed clothing needed regular repair, and their rime-filled sleeping bags were damp, cold and insufficient to protect them against temperatures dropping to —150 despite it being the height of summer. Their food did not give them even the strength they had possessed coming up the glacier, and at this extreme altitude they were suffering from dehydration, as decreasing fuel limited the ability to melt snow. 'We are so tired after each hour's pulling we throw ourselves on our backs for 3 minutes spell,' Shackleton recorded. Meanwhile the mental strains and rifts became worse than ever. 'Neither A. nor M. have been pulling worth a damn, and consequently S. and I have to suffer,' wrote Wild on the final night of the year. T am beginning to be doubtful of success, as I don't think we can make our food supply last long enough. If we had only had Joyce and Marston here instead of those two grubscoffing useless beggars we would have done it easily.'

  Never the less, on the first day of 1909 it was not the grubscoffing beggars but Shackleton himself who was the weak link. His headache was so debilitating that even Marshall felt for him and called a stop at 5.30 p.m. They were only a mile short of the record for the highest latitude ever reached on the planet, Robert E. Peary having claimed a farthest north at 87° 06' in 1906. It was a sign of their fixation with that record and their latitude in general that each of them simultaneously started recording their advance in geographic rather than statute miles and that their current location began to appear more frequently in their diaries.

  The following morning Peary's record was beaten, as on a day in which 'every inch an effort' they plodded ahead for ten and a half geographic miles (twelve statute miles). But it was still short of the average they needed. 'God knows we are doing all we can but the outlook is serious if this surface continues and the rise,' Shackleton wrote, adding:

  For we are not travelling fast enough to make our food spin out and get back to our depot in time: I cannot think of failure yet I must look at the matter sensibly and the lives of those who are with me. I feel that if we go on too far it will be impossible to get back over this surface and then all the results will be lost to the world. We can now definitely locate the South Pole on the highest plateau in the world and our geological work and meteorology will be of great use to science: But all this is not the Pole and man can only do his best and we have arrayed against us the strongest forces of Nature.

  It was the first note of defeat sounded by Shackleton, the first time that he let on, even to himself, that the bone and muscle and sinew of man might be vanquished, even if the spirit were not. Still, he would not flinch in front of his comrades. And for a brief spell the next morning, they made excellent time and it looked as if there were still a chance. But it did not last. 'Hopes raised high by spell of good surface but again on came soft stuff,' wrote Marshall. And, combined with the ill-effects of an altitude above 11,000 feet, that was that.

  On the night of 3 January the four men held another council of war in a wind-rocked, frozen little tent at 87°28'S, 152 geographic miles from the Pole. One might assume that logic, or the threat of impending disaster, would have left them only one avenue to follow. Yet, despite the acknowledgement that the Pole was beyond their grasp, they agreed to one last throw of the dice - or was it simply a final postponement of the decision to turn back? It is not known if the determination was unanimous. Certainly Shackleton wanted to continue until the last possible moment, and Wild had by now unreservedly thrown in his lot with The Boss. Adams, too, seems to have been willing to follow Shackleton as far as he would lead. Yet Marshall, according to Adams, was doubtful about Shackleton's physical ability to continue. It is likely, therefore, that there was a split vote. Regardless of the dynamics of the decision, they would continue. 'We have now come to the conclusion that we cannot get to the Pole, so we are making a depot of sufficient food and oil to take us back to our last depot at the head of the glacier at 1/2 rations,' Wild wrote that night, 'and taking on only one tent and lightening our sledge as much as possible, do our best with the 10 days food we have left; five days out and five back.' Shackleton, he added in his cipher, 'is very disappointed.'

  On the morning of 4 January 1909 Shackleton and his three companions set off on their riskiest gamble - and the one with potentially the lowest return. It was clear they could not reach the Pole, and equally obvious it would be a touch-and-go struggle to reach Cape Royds. Never the less, they kept their faces towards the south, hoping to get within 100 geographic miles of the southernmost place on Earth. It was irrelevant that for virtually the entire journey they had been thinking, planning and worrying in statute miles, and that in those terms their new goal would actually leave them 11 j miles shy of the Pole. Now their entire beings revolved around degrees and minutes of latitude.

  It was brutal progress. At an altitude of 11,200 feet, and with the temperature dropping to — 200, they struggled against drift driven straight in their faces. At noon Marshall took their temperatures, and three of them did not register on his clinical thermometer, which went down to 94°. It was accepted at the time that no lower temperature was required on a medical thermometer, because anyone lower than that had already died. And so the walking dead continued, their core temperatures slowly dropping and with no way of getting warm even at night. 'We had depoted our extra underclothing to save weight over 3 weeks ago and are now in the same clothes night and day,' Shackleton wrote, 'one suit of underclothing and a thin gabardine Burbury now all patched. No trousers and 2 guernseys. Our heads get iced up with moisture on the march.'

  In these conditions the
y battled for twelve and a half miles. 'Found we could do no better with our 70 lbs than we did a fortnight ago with 200,' wrote Wild, 'which shows how we have all weakened.' In fact, they were so overcome with the effort that they agreed to increase their food consumption and continue only three more days.

  But it was not only the road south that occupied their thoughts. They had left their remaining food and oil depoted on the greatest ice surface in the world, a featureless plain with no mountains or other landmarks to help fix its location. They were now too weak to build cairns to point the way for their return, and they had gone south 'trusting to our tracks to find our return depot'. They could only hope that the ferocious winds would not erase their footprints.

  The next day was more of the same. They sank eight inches with each step, their feet coming to rest on sharp ice furrows. The wind increased and the temperature dropped. Never the less they achieved thirteen miles. But the worst had been saved for last. On 6 January the temperature fell to fifty-seven degrees of frost and the wind reached blizzard proportions, making them all gasp for breath in the swirling drift. 'I think today has been the worst we have yet experienced,' Wild wrote, echoing his colleagues. 'We have found it utterly impossible to keep ourselves warm, and we have all been frost-bitten . . . we had to camp at 4:30, or I really believe we should have collapsed.'