Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition

by Beau Riffenburgh

  Mackay, who was most outwardly disturbed by this 'hole-and-corner business', wrote a formal letter of protest because of his 'fear that a strong effort will be made to make this finishing up of the expedition a colonial business, to the discredit and dishonour of the British members of the land party.' In fact, Mawson - at Shackleton's wish - had already been selected to head a wintering party of six, the initial makeup of which does appear to have been non-British, and therefore to have included several of the crew. Mackay's protest led to two of these being replaced by Priestley and Mackintosh, and later, 'as a sop to Shackleton, Joyce was added . . . as a seventh man to look after the dogs'. Despite his protests, however, Mackay was not to remain, being supplanted by Dr Rupert Michell, Nimrod's Canadian surgeon. This probably was in part Mawson's decision, as Mackay was told that 'several members of the party in the hut at Cape Royds had declared that they believed I was mad'. Mackay's treatment of David late in the journey had come back to haunt him.

  While this infighting was going on, however, nothing was done to help the Southern Party. A search party was not sent south, a watch was not kept at Observation Hill and the Discovery hut was not manned, all of which Shackleton had ordered. Rather, the ship remained in 'absolute inactivity' near Glacier Tongue.

  Thus, when Shackleton and Wild arrived at Hut Point on the night of 28 February 1909, they appeared to be on their own. But they would not give up. Hoping against hope that someone aboard Nimrod would see, they tried to burn the magnetic hut, but could not get it lit. They then ran up the hill to Vince's Cross - commemorating George Vince, the sailor who died on Scott's expedition - and tried to tie the Union Jack on to it. But their fingers were so cold they could not manage the knots. Overwhelmed by cold and hunger, the two men retired to the hut, where they improvised a cooking pot and made a dinner from the supplies stored there. They were utterly exhausted and had no sleeping bags, so they found a piece of roofing felt, wrapped it about themselves, and spent a miserable night 'almost paralysed with cold'.

  Morning on 1 March brought with it warmth and hope at Hut Point. At 9.00 a.m. Shackleton and Wild were finally able to set the magnetic hut afire and they put up the flag. At Glacier Tongue, there was no such faith, and Nimrod sailed south to land the wintering party, in order, according to Evans, to find the bodies. They had, however, Harbord wrote, 'almost overlooked the fact that we were in the Land of Surprises, but we were reminded of it very forcibly when we saw two men on Hut Point waving a flag.'

  Mackay and several others were in the wardroom when they heard a yell and a clatter of feet above. 'We all tumbled out, and rushed for'ard to the foc'sl head,' he wrote. 'There was a crowd there, some saying that they had seen a flash signal, and some a figure beside Vince's Cross. Soon we could make out two figures plainly, and the excitement was tremendous. We all danced about and cheered and waved our arms, and then fell to punching each other.'

  The men on the land were equally delighted. 'No happier sight,' Wild wrote later, 'ever met the eyes of man.'

  They had been saved, but not quite. There were still two men out on the Barrier, and Shackleton meant to rescue them - himself. As he and Wild boarded the ship, he immediately took charge, all questions of authority having ended. He ordered that a party be formed to collect Adams and Marshall, and while this was being done, he and Wild dined on bacon and fried bread, at the same time telling the crew the essence of the Southern Party's achievements.

  Shackleton had been on the move for most of two days, with no proper sleep for fifty-five hours. But he had no intention of letting others do his job. He had hoped to take the dogs back for Adams and Marshall, but they had been transferred to Cape Royds. So, leaving Wild behind because he thought one of them had to stay in case of accident, he took Mawson, Mackay and McGillion - whom he did not know, because the man had not been on the first voyage south - and headed back across the Barrier. They marched for seven-and-a-half hours before halting for a dinner that Shackleton prepared while the others rested. After a short sleep, they were up again at 2.00 a.m., going full speed until they reached Adams and Marshall in the early afternoon.

  Marshall was now well enough to help pull the sledge, and after lunch the party moved north. By mid-afternoon on 3 March, they had reached the ice edge, where Shackleton had told Evans to wait. But Evans had not followed orders, meaning once again the men had been left stranded.

  One might have understood the ship not being there if it had been engaged in other important duties. But at the moment, it was sitting calmly at Glacier Tongue, leaving, according to Harbord, 'the party who had made a forced march from the South to get to the Hut as well as they might'.

  In fact, after Shackleton left, Evans steamed to Cape Royds to load as much on to the ship as possible. For twelve hours, starting at 8.00 p.m., the shore party and the dogs pulled stores on sledges from the hut to a low ice cliff at Backdoor Bay, where the materials were lowered by ropes to boats. But with large quantities remaining, the sea became too rough, and Evans ordered that only men and dogs be brought back. One boat was able to return, but the next - holding Harbord, Murray, Mackintosh, Brocklehurst and a load of sailors and dogs - was unable to escape from where the cliff was deeply undercut. One of the oars broke, and, according to Brocklehurst, 'the waves were dashing over us & we were constantly dashed under the ice, as we were getting weaker every minute we were in a very dangerous & hopeless situation.' The sea pounded the boat broadside and the wet, freezing men would not have survived had they not been able to make fast to a line from an anchor that had been left near the cliff. A rope was then thrown down by the remaining men on shore Priestley, Marston, Day and Joyce - who hoisted up first the dogs and then the men.

  For the next twenty-four hours they were all trapped ashore. Most of the bedding had been transferred to the ship, and Priestley only 'managed to get a little sleep by using a couple of dogs as stomach and back warmers'. On the morning of 3 March, boats were put in the water, and the men and dogs taken off, although the remaining stores and personal equipment were left behind. The ship then returned to Glacier Tongue.

  That afternoon Shackleton abandoned a sledge and tent at the ice edge and led his party towards Pram Point and around Crater Hill to the hut. They arrived shortly before 10.00 p.m. without any cooking supplies. 'Here Shackleton's resourcefulness came out,' Mackay wrote, 'for he soon had an excellent hoosh cooked for us in an old butter-tin.' Shortly thereafter, as the rest of the party turned in, Shackleton and Mackay went up to Vince's Cross with the making of a carbide flare, although they did not take any water with them, which needs to be applied to generate the gas for a flame. 'We burnt a flare,' Mackay wrote, 'by simply bursting open a tin of carbide, pump-shipping [urinating] on it, and setting a light to it. It went off with a slight explosion.'

  Nine miles away, Mackintosh spotted the flare, and it was not long before Shackleton and Mackay could see Nimrod. The Boss collected Adams and they were the first to be taken to the ship, although not without a final incident. Adams, who had just donned new finnesko, stumbled at the ice edge, and just caught himself part way over. He was forced to hang on to the edge until rescued by the boat. 'Never was there such a return as when we climbed on Nimrod again,' he wrote. 'We had been given up for 10 days past & killed in a hundred different ways.'

  Most remarkable had been the last five of those days, when Shackleton had been on the go virtually non-stop and had covered unimaginable distances, in the process walking into the ground such doughty figures as Mawson, Mackay and Wild. Back on the glacier, five weeks before, he had collapsed, but with a safe return in sight he seemed a man possessed, showing a capacity for sheer will to overcome physical limitations that is unmatched in the history of polar exploration.

  By 1.00 a.m. the rest of the party was aboard. Shackleton was now as worried about ice conditions as Evans, and wanted to head north as quickly as possible. Never the less, later that morning they steamed past Cape Armitage towards Pram Point in order to pick up the abandoned
sledges, which held the geological samples from the southern journey. As they went, they could see young ice forming over the calm water, so after they brought the sledges aboard Shackleton ordered all steam towards the north. They had hoped to pick up the anchor and small boat from Backdoor Bay, as well as the remaining personal items, but the wind prevented Nimrod from coming close in. Later, heavy ice stopped them reaching the geological samples at Depot Island. At neither location did they challenge the elements. None the less, according to Shackleton, they were more than a bit wistful as they passed Cape Royds:

  We all turned out to give three cheers and to take a last look at the place where we had spent so many happy days. The hut was not exactly a palatial residence . . . [but] it had been our home for a year that would always live in our memories. We had been a very happy little party within its walls, and often when we were far away . . . it had been the Mecca of all our hopes and dreams. We watched the little hut fade away in the distance with feelings almost of sadness, and there were few men aboard who did not cherish a hope that some day they would once more live strenuous days under the shadow of mighty Erebus.

  But for now, after months of hardship, the members of the Southern Party could rest. 'I have just been back a week from the journey & have already put back on 12 lbs of the 24 I lost,' Adams wrote to a friend shortly thereafter. 'JBA weighing 8½ stone was a poor sight but I'm truly grateful to Providence at being able to get back at all . . . It still seems too wonderful to be true.'

  There was, however, one final effort still to make. No ship had ever succeeded in penetrating far in the heavy pack west of Cape North, so when they passed Borchgrevink's old camp at Cape Adare, they steamed west along the pack ice bordering north Victoria Land. Shackleton had hoped to link this unexplored part of the continent to Adelie Land far to the west, but heavy ice quickly showed such dreams to be unrealistic, although Nimrod did push farther west than any previous expedition.

  But that was it. On 9 March 1909, with ice closing in, they headed north. It was almost too late. Within hours their progress had been halted by a seemingly impassable pack. That afternoon, however, a lead was discovered and Nimrod scooted through it. They were in the open sea and on the way back home.

  22

  HEROES RETURN

  It was almost as if the members of the shore party had suddenly reverted to childhood. Their screeches and laughter could be heard all the way to the ship as they kicked water at each other, rolled half-naked on a deserted stretch of beach and floundered in the shallows trying to flip the colourful fish out of the water. As the sun heated their little haven, men slowly made their way into the luxuriant hardwood forests filled with tree ferns and a carpet of orchids. In a small cave near a patch of impenetrable bushes, Mawson found a little axe of green stone.

  They could not have wished for a more delightful location for their first landfall since they had retrieved the sledge near Pram Point. It was 22 March and Nimrod was anchored in Lord's River on the nearly deserted south side of Stewart Island, just off the South Island of New Zealand. The men were having a glorious reunion with trees, flowers, colourful birds and water in which they could comfortably stroll. Although the next day they would be scratching where they had been mercilessly bitten by sandflies, for the moment they were in heaven.

  There was one man notably missing from the celebrations ashore. Shackleton sat in a cabin carefully composing a detailed 2,500-word account. When he had made an agreement to send an exclusive report to the Daily Mail, it had been determined that he do so from Oban, the small village on Half Moon Bay, north Stewart Island, at a prearranged time. Ten days earlier the New Zealand government had sent down a special Morse operator to await his return and dispatch the message. The day Nimrod reached Stewart Island, it was too late for the message to be sent, so Shackleton kept the ship in seclusion.

  At 10.00 a.m. on 23 March, Adams, Joyce, Marshall, Wild and Brocklehurst rowed Shackleton ashore in Half Moon Bay. While his companions waited silently in the boat, The Boss sent a coded message to the Daily Mail, followed by the longer account; he then sent several other messages. They returned to the ship to find it surrounded by launches, although all locals had steadfastly been refused permission to board. With him, Shackleton brought the thing his colleagues wanted most: news.

  'We got the news of the result of the Burns-Johnson fight,' Brocklehurst wrote excitedly, 'the first thing we asked for!' It had been Boxing Day - appropriately - in Sydney, after Nimrod had sailed south, that American Jack Johnson had toyed with world champion Tommy Burns of Canada - knocking him down twice in the first two rounds - before being awarded a victory in the fourteenth. It would forever change the sport that Brocklehurst and Shackleton loved: a black man had become heavyweight boxing champion of the world. To those on board, according to Brocklehurst, it was the most exciting news imaginable, but two days later when they entered Lyttelton, they found that everyone else had other ideas, and the greatest thrills were coming from a ship named Nimrod.

  Shackleton's efforts at secrecy could not have been more successful, and the Daily Mail had an enormous scoop, a double scoop actually, as next to Shackleton's report was a message of congratulation from Queen Alexandra, who had also been notified because of her gift of the Union Jack. Within hours of its release, the story had gone round the world, and by the time the party reached Lyttelton, they had become international celebrities. 'Steamers came out to us crowded with people, guns firing and flags waving,' Brocklehurst recorded. 'A boat came along side us & people crowded onto the Nimrod. We were flooded with questions from News reporters.'

  It was just the beginning. When Shackleton walked off Nimrod, he stepped directly into a role of imperial hero, and immediately became the centre of a storm of patriotic fervour and public adoration. His striking looks, effervescent, charismatic personality, powerful speaking voice and honest, direct nature made him a favourite with men and women alike. He also came equipped with a tale of endurance, determination, grit and dash, and raw courage, all leading to achievement against the odds. It was exactly what the public wanted - and Shackleton was just the showman to give it them.

  But more than anything else, he was the elixir that the Empire needed for self-doubts brought about by the debacle of the South African War, for concerns about the thunderclouds slowly forming over Europe, and for the loss of economic and physical supremacy that happy breed of men had so long maintained. Throughout the Empire he was praised in the same fashion as in The Sketch, the day following his arrival in Lyttelton:

  It is one of the symptoms of this age of nerves and hysteria that we magnify everything, that our boasts are frantic and our scares pitiable, that we call a man who plays well in a football match a hero, and that all successes are triumphs . . . but Lieutenant Shackleton is in that rank of heroes whose names go down to posterity . . . when we are all feeling a little downhearted at seeing our supremacy in sport and in more serious matters slipping away from us, it is a moral tonic to find that in exploration we are still the kings of the world.

  And king Shackleton was for the next three weeks in New Zealand. A thanksgiving service was given at Canterbury Cathedral for the expedition's safe return. The Lyttelton Harbour Board donated free of charge any services that might be needed for Nimrod. Shackleton was swamped with invitations to gala affairs and speaking engagements. Finally, on 14 April, Prime Minister Sir Joseph Ward and his Cabinet gave a farewell luncheon in Wellington before Shackleton sailed for Sydney. Overall, it could not have been more glowing if they had reached the Pole. 'So long as Englishmen are prepared to do this kind of thing,' it was proclaimed in The Sphere, T do not think we need lie awake all night every night dreading the hostile advance of "the boys of the dachshund breed".' It was virtually forgotten that the four men actually had turned back short of their destination.

  Although the public cared little that Shackleton had not claimed the Pole itself, there were those who thought he might have claimed too much. Chief among them was that
inveterate lover of intrigue, whispering and malicious intervention: Sir Clements Markham. 'He was a scurrilous old man,' the famed scientist Frank Debenham later stated. 'I had two hours with him once in which he told me more scandal than I'd heard before from anyone . . . if he took a fancy to anyone he could do no wrong, and if he took a dislike to a person he could do no right.'

  Markham now took a dislike to Shackleton. Why is uncertain, although he had proven both friend (to his face) and foe (behind his back) previously. Despite Shackleton's troubles with Scott, he and Markham seemed to have been on excellent terms when he had left England. At that point, in October 1907, Markham had written: 'We have been such good and intimate friends for so long, that I am sure you will know that I am really sincere . . . when I wish you God speed . . . not only my most cordial wishes for your success will accompany you, but also a well founded hope.' Then, upon Shackleton's arrival in New Zealand in March 1909, Markham dashed a letter to Keltie, directing his former subordinate to 'put me down at once as his proposer for the Patron's Medal. . . My proposal is for reaching 88 degrees 23 minutes South and securing exceptionally valuable geographical results.'

  But by April Markham had reconsidered. 'As I am responsible for having started all this Antarctic business,' he self-importantly and inaccurately wrote Major Leonard Darwin, the new president of the RGS, T think it right I should send you a note of what I think of recent developments.' He then launched a frontal assault:

  Shackleton's failure to reach the South Pole when it could have been done by another, and is really a matter of calculation, rather aggravates me. They will rouse ignorant admiration if the trumpets are blown loud enough, which they are sure to be. But I cannot quite accept the latitudes. For 88.20 they must have gone, dragging a sledge and on half rations, at the rate of 14 miles a day in a straight line, up a steep incline 9000 feet above the sea, for 20 days. I do not believe it.