On the evening of 5 August, the very day Lucy's article appeared in the Daily Express, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith sent for Shackleton. The man visiting the Prime Minister had stood against his party at the previous election, but Asquith had not reached his position by misunderstanding the public, and the issue of assisting the explorer moved quickly through Cabinet and into the Commons. On 19 August Asquith wrote to Shackleton:
With reference to the interviews which we have had on the subject of the liabilities incurred in connection with the British Antarctic Expedition commanded by yourself, I am pleased to be able to inform you that the Government have decided to recommend Parliament to make a grant of £20,000 to meet a portion of the expenditure.
The grant did not solve all of Shackleton's financial worries, but it allowed him to redeem the bank guarantees and to pay off a good number of bills. It also added immeasurably to his respectability, as at one stroke he was recognised by Parliament and saved from his creditors. 'Isn't it splendid!' he wrote to Emily. 'Just think of your Boy getting £20,000 from the Country: What Oh!!'
Shackleton was now on top of the world, the recipient of popular, governmental and royal praise. He was a wildly fancied speaker, his appeal extending through every social class, financial strata and age group. Among the most dedicated of his partisans were wide swathes of children, to whom he seemed not only heroic, but, in his conspicuously laddish way, one of their own. When asked to participate in an honours day at a boys' school, he horrified the headmaster but delighted the pupils by commenting, as he presented one of the awards, 'This is the nearest I've ever got to handling a prize.' His sense of humour, which had easily won over men of different backgrounds on expeditions, vast crowds when standing for election, and mixed audiences at talks about his exploits, extended to teasing youngsters, with whom he was able to communicate throughout his life.
'My father knew we wore gym dresses and we had this elastic round our bloomers underneath,' Cecily later recalled about school uniforms that otherwise had no place for handkerchiefs. When a group of her friends came to meet her famous father, he was at his most mischievous.
We were all sitting with very good behaviour facing him, and he'd been a little shocking, and he made some remark which I thought was very dubious, and then he suddenly gave a very loud false sneeze, and said 'Anybody got a handkerchief?' and of course everybody's skirts immediately came up . . . well, I had to send him out of the room and apologise for him. He really was very, very naughty.
Despite Shackleton's obvious charm, however, there were those who still refused to be won over. Beardmore was one. The loan of £1,000 that Shackleton had not reimbursed had been the breaking point for the Scottish entrepreneur. Business was business, and to him Shackleton had gone beyond the pale. The repayment in August of both that loan and the £7,000 guarantee would not bring forgiveness, nor would the eventual naming of the Great Glacier the 'Beardmore'. It was a relationship that had been broken forever.
Another breach was with Edward Wilson, who had set himself firmly in Scott's corner before Shackleton went south. Following Shackleton's return to England the two met. What was said went unrecorded, but shortly thereafter Wilson wrote to Shackleton criticising his decision to go to McMurdo Sound and insisting that he clear the way for Scott's planned expedition. 'I allow that you were in a very difficult position,' Wilson acknowledged,
But I wish to God you had done any mortal thing in the whole world rather than break the promise you had made . . . My opinion as you know was that you ought to have throwrn up the whole show, that, you said was out of the question. But why in the name of fortune did you promise to do the second best thing, & then do the very worst!
Wilson obviously believed that Shackleton's promise to Scott should have outweighed all his other commitments and undertakings and promises to the dozens of individuals who had contributed to the expedition funds, were taking part in it, or were supporting it in some other way, including the Queen. It was, by almost any standard, a thoroughly unreasonable position. But it did not stop there.
'You took Scott's job practically out of his hands against his wish & knowing that he was hoping to finish it,' Wilson wrote. 'Frankly admit that you have had your turn . . . No one but you can at the present moment clear the way for Scott. But you can, & what's more to the point, you should. Play the game now by him as he has played the game by you.' Again, it was a demand so one-sided as to be laughable. Certainly Scott had the right to return to McMurdo Sound - as Shackleton had had the right - but Wilson wanted Shackleton publicly to grant Scott everything he had been so vehemently denied by the Scott-Wilson coterie two years earlier. Yet remarkably, such was his feeling for his old Discovery comrade, that Shackleton again wrote to Scott renouncing his claim to McMurdo. Whether it was coincidence or reward, within a week of Shackleton writing the letter, Scott met with Wilson about assuming the position as Head of Scientific Staff for Scott's expedition.
What transpired personally between Shackleton and Wilson thereafter is again uncertain, but as with Beardmore, no efforts by Shackleton were to bring forgiveness. 'As for Shackleton I feel the less said the better,' Wilson wrote to a friend in August, adding:
I am afraid that he has become a regular wrong'un . . . In fact I have broken with him completely and for good, having told him in a somewhat detailed letter exactly what I thought of him and his whole business. I consider he has dragged Polar Exploration generally in the mud of his own limited and rather low down ambitions.
Wilson was not the only one of Scott's associates unhappy with Shackleton. Markham's behaviour had already been duplicitous. After disputing Shackleton's claims, he had invited the explorer to dinner with the hypocritical words, 'receive my very cordial welcome as coming from one who has watched your career with the interest of a very sincere friend.' But his final verdict seems to have been reached during the summer, as in early September he wrote to Darwin that T felt very strongly that Shackleton's observations ought to have been closely scrutinised and examined, both for lat:, and courses and dists:, before the Society was committed to them. We ought not at once to have taken him at his own valuation and that of the Daily Mail.' He then stated the bold untruth that Shackleton's Master's Certificate had been awarded without exam for his participation on Discovery, before trying to damn the explorer by stating he had taken no observations on the southern journey.
Today one can see these comments for the bitter, twisted misrepresentations of what Debenham called 'a dangerous old man'. This is even more obvious when one realises that at this time Markham petulantly crossed out or amended all favourable entries about Shackleton in his extensive personal account of the Discovery Expedition. The reality was that Shackleton had earned his Master's Certificate by examination long before joining that expedition. And although Marshall had been in charge of determining their position and mapping the lands through which they travelled, the observations were checked not only by the members of the Southern Party but by A.E. Reeves, the Royal Geographical Society's map curator and navigational expert. Reeves recomputed the latitudes using the most up-to-date refraction tables and found that none of the results differed from those obtained by Shackleton's party by more than a minute, and that the farthest south observation was within a few seconds. In fact, Marshall's map would be validated on Scott's trip to the Pole.
The major issue behind Markham's attack, of course, was whether the Southern Party had truly reached 88° 23'S, or had fiddled the figures to break the hundred-mile barrier. Following Reeves' report, there could be little argument about Marshall's sun-sight of 3 January, which gave a noon latitude of 87° 22'S. During the remainder of that day and the next three, the whole numbers of the sledgemeter daily totals (5, 12, 13 and 13) had added up to forty-three geographical miles, putting them at 88° 05'S. When the fractions of each day were added to the total (including more than three-quarters of a mile on 3 January), the distance was recalculated as 88° 07'S. So the key questions were: unencumbered
by the sledge provisions they normally pulled, could the four fatigued men actually march sixteen - or for those dubious of the re-assessed starting figure, eighteen - geographical miles directly south in five hours, and, if so, had they done it?
Adams later recalled proceeding at a 'jog-trot' throughout the day, indicating such a distance could be covered. Marshall recorded they 'marched hard'. The firm surface would have allowed swift progress. Certainly the men were worn from weeks of sledging, but they were giving their final push for the last goal they had decided was attainable. They would prove on their way back that unyielding determination and the human spirit can lead to miraculous achievements - there is no reason to think that such results could not have been reached at this time as well.
So did they reach 88° 23'S? Different historians have arrived at different conclusions (undoubtedly for different purposes), but to a balanced observer the key factor should surely be that all four men agreed throughout their lives that they had done so. In the accepted cases of false claims, such as those by Frederick Cook, Robert E. Peary and Richard E. Byrd to have attained the North Pole, there was only one man present who had the instrumental ability or information to determine location. As the size of parties with knowledge increased, the ability to fabricate results decreased. In this case, all four men were capable of making a judgement, and they all agreed upon the result, including recording it immediately in their journals. None of these men ever gave the slightest reason why one should doubt his word, so to doubt all four would seem to be a remarkable endorsement of negative faith. This is particularly true of Marshall, whose entire nature bespoke contempt for an abhorrence of insincerity, cant or dishonesty.
Suffice it to say that all four men honestly believed that they reached a point ninety-seven miles from the Pole. Equally important, so did the British public.
The weeks following the awarding of the government grant saw a further intensification of the public's exposure to the polar regions. On 1 September, Nimrod reached the East India Dock, where, under the direction of Joyce, she was prepared for an exhibition. Later in the month, she was opened to the public at Temple Pier, and thousands paid to traipse through her and see sledges, tents, cooking equipment, polar clothes, stuffed seals and penguins, and a vast array of other materials, including photographs. Near the beginning of November she proceeded on tour, although the financial success in the other cities Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle - did not equal that in the capital. As he had in New Zealand and Australia, Shackleton donated much of this money to local charities.
Meanwhile, on 2 September public interest in the other end of the planet was reinforced when The New York Herald announced that Frederick Cook had reached the North Pole. Five days later, Robert E. Peary's cable from Labrador claimed he had attained the Pole. The geographical societies, the popular press, and even the Congress of the United States were thrown into a long, ugly debate about who had been the first to what Peary pompously and erroneously called 'the last great geographical prize'.
The very next week, on 12 September, Scott made the official announcement of his next expedition. It might have been painful for Shackleton to realise that Scott - of all people - could eclipse his record, but he must have had some satisfaction in knowing beyond doubt that his former commander would simply be following in the path he had pioneered. Some of the distress was also likely taken away when he received a command to give a second lecture to the King, this time at Balmoral on 27 September, only days before his lecture tour was to begin on the Continent. 'The King enjoys a joke very much,' he wrote to Emily with great admiration. 'He asked me a lot about Cook and Peary and Scott: he seems to know everything that is going on.'
The admiration was mutual, and early in November it was proven publicly. On 9 November, the Honours List for the King's birthday announced that Ernest Shackleton would receive a knighthood. 'It is safe to say,' the Daily Mirror recorded with impressive accuracy, 'that none of the honours will be more popular with the general public' This was also true of the book that became available that same week, Shackleton and Saunders having finished it in record time. The appearance of The Heart of the Antarctic, which was timed to coincide with Shackleton's British lecture tour, came on 4 November; it was quickly proclaimed by The Manchester Guardian as 'The best book of Polar travel which has ever been written.' Positive reviews poured in from around the world, the two-volume work having been published simultaneously not only in Britain and the United States, but in French, German, Italian, Hungarian, Finnish and Swedish editions.
A month later, on 14 December 1909, Shackleton paused in the midst of a grinding series of what would eventually mount up to at least 123 public lectures on two continents, the price he had to pay for leading his expedition. That day, at Buckingham Palace, he was knighted by King Edward VII, the two swashbuckling figures meeting for the final time. After the investiture, Shackleton presented the members of his expedition to the King, who awarded each the Polar Medal, silver for the members of the shore party, and bronze for the officers and some of the crew of Nimrod.
Through the pomp and glitter of the glorious days of summer, Shackleton had always been surrounded by his comrades, Brocklehurst, Armytage, Adams, Wild, Joyce, Priestley, Day and Mackintosh being the most conspicuous. By the time Shackleton's lecture circuit was under way, however, they had long since scattered to different parts of the country or Empire. When, having reunited so briefly, the men of the British Antarctic Expedition left the palace that afternoon, no such gathering among them would ever occur again.
EPILOGUE
On 16 July 1910 Scott sailed on RMS Saxon for Cape Town, to join his expedition ship Terra Nova. The crowd bidding him farewell at the platform for the boat train from Waterloo Station to Southampton included not only Scott's close associates, but Sir Ernest Shackleton. As Shackleton called for three cheers for his former commander, neither knew it was to be the final time they would see each other.
There was certainly no love lost between these two men with ambitions so similar and personalities so disparate, but each knew the role he had to play for the public. Thus, just as Scott forced himself to spout words of praise for his nemesis, Shackleton felt obliged to return the gesture. The reality was that regardless of what he said for mass consumption, Scott seems to have continued to think of Shackleton as 'a professed liar', a man who had stolen a march on his own plans by under-handed play. Shackleton, in return, likely thought Scott to be disingenuous, as proven at the Savage Club the week Shackleton returned to Britain. In an after-dinner speech that was supposed to praise the achievements of the British Antarctic Expedition, Scott urged that an Englishman be the first to the South Pole, and stated that he was willing 'to go forth in search of that object'. He then said, with a subtle twist of the knife, 'All I have to do now is to thank Mr Shackleton for so nobly showing the way.'
Coincidentally, that same day Admiral Sir Lewis Beaumont, vice-president of the RGS, wrote a letter indicating his opinion that the Society should stay out of any impending clash between the two explorers. The RGS, he felt, should encourage Scott to lead a scientific expendition without an emphasis on the Pole. 'All of this long story is to incline you to put Scott off from making what I think will be a great mistake,' Beaumont wrote to Major Darwin, 'that is, competing with Shackleton and organizing an expedition to go over the old route merely to do that 9j miles.'
The ninety-seven miles, however, were central to Scott's agenda, and he continued planning an expedition that included just such an attempt. He also wanted to keep Shackleton out of the area he still believed was rightfully his, and therefore he wanted the interloper to clarify his intentions. Not unreasonably - having been home for only a brief period of time - Shackleton had no concrete plans. Never the less, still feeling guilty about breaking his earlier promise, and with Wilson again taking a leading role in badgering him for an answer, Shackleton wrote Scott that T understand you have already your expedition in preparation, and it will not interfere wi
th any plans of mine.'
Scott had leave to use McMurdo, as well as King Edward VII Land, and that should have been enough, particularly as Darwin soon made clear his view: 'Every explorer should in future be at liberty to go exactly where he likes, without, at all events, any liability to an accusation of breach of faith.' But it was not enough. In February 1910, Shackleton informed Scott, the Royal Society and the RGS of his tentative plans, which were for
a purely Scientific Expedition to operate along the coast of Antarctica commencing in 1911. The Easterly base is Cape Adare and the farthest west Gaussberg . . . I am particularly anxious not to clash with your Expedition, nor in any way to hinder your pecuniary activities. With this object in view I have decided not to appeal for public funds, either Government help or for donations from Societies . . . The Expedition is purely Scientific, and . . . I shall be very glad to co-operate with your Expedition.
Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition Page 36
