Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition

by Beau Riffenburgh

  Remarkably, despite Shackleton's efforts to avoid overlapping with Scott's goals and even to eschew potential contributors, Scott showed that, to him, the Antarctic was not big enough for the both of them. 'I have always wished to retreat round Cape North for a second season,' he wrote to Darwin, about just the area Shackleton had mentioned, 'and possibly to establish meteorological stations on that coast.'

  But the honesty of Scott's statement was questionable because he had already rejected the chance to do exactly that. Shackleton's proposed expedition had actually been worked out by Mawson, who in January 1910 had tried to convince Scott to incorporate it in his overall scheme. Scott, according to Mawson, 'said that he had decided that he could not include a landing party on the N. coast', although he had suggested Mawson join his expedition, promising that he would be one of the final polar party. Mawson in turn had refused, in part because he believed there to be little of scientific value in a dash to the Pole, and in part, as he wrote without elaborating, 'I did not like Dr Wilson'.

  Mawson thereafter decided to lead his own expedition, and he turned for guidance to Shackleton, who was 'warmly enthusiastic when the scheme was laid before him, and planned to lead the undertaking himself.' Mawson was most generous in phrasing it this way, as in reality he was rather taken aback when Shackleton appropriated his ideas and offered Mawson the position of chief scientist. Never the less, faced with the problems of funding, the younger man 'decided to fall in with him'.

  By now, however, Scott's feud with Shackleton had reached a thoroughly inconsistent point. 'I don't want any objection from him to my going there,' Scott wrote to Darwin about the area he had already rejected. 'I want it settled before I leave that I am free to go where I please without the reproach that I am trespassing on his ground.' Scott had thus dismissed any notion of being bound by the rules that he had tried so vigorously to force upon Shackleton and that had been the basis of his proprietorial argument three years previously.

  It undoubtedly reinforced Shackleton's contradictory feelings for his former commander. Although he avoided saying anything negative in public, those who knew him intimately were treated to occasional glimpses of his true feelings. T knew there was no love lost between him and Scott,' Shackleton's nephew Geoffrey - the son of Herbert Dorman - later said. 'For when Scott's last expedition was overdue, Uncle E said one evening at dinner at our house at Sydenham that he had been approached to lead a relief expedition, and if he had any trouble with Scott he'd "put him in irons".'

  Meanwhile, for a variety of reasons, Shackleton gave up the idea of leading the coastal expedition. He was, however, invaluable in helping raise funds for what became Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-14), which not only provided exceptionally valuable scientific and geographical results but gave the public another story of heroism and endurance. Mawson completed an epic journey by himself after one of his two companions died in a crevasse 310 miles from base, their tent and the majority of their food going down with him. The other died on the return journey, and Mawson spent a lonely month, weak and ill, struggling back to base, to find that the ship had left only hours before and that he had to remain in the Antarctic for another year.

  Meanwhile, Scott's 1910-13 expedition did not reach the area over which so much disagreeable spleen had been vented. The main base was set up at Cape Evans, between Cape Royds and Hut Point. Then the members of the Eastern Party, after being unable to reach King Edward VII Land, stopped any effort to establish quarters on the Barrier when they found Roald Amundsen ensconced at the Bay of Whales, where Shackleton had once declined to land. That party of Scott's men, which included Raymond Priestley, wintered instead at Cape Adare, before spending a second winter in perhaps the most primitive conditions in the history of Antarctic exploration.

  The story of Scott's journey to the Pole and of the tragic deaths of the polar party on their return is well known. Throughout the journey south, the effort smacked of imitating Shackleton, from the transport following his unfortunate selection of Manchurian ponies - to the route itself. Shackleton was seemingly never far from Scott's mind: he took The Heart of the Antarctic to Cape Evans, and he had a copy of Wild's diary records of Shackleton's progress on his southern journey. Scott's diaries are littered with references to Shackleton and comparisons of their distances and times. He finally defeated the spectre that so obviously dogged his every step on 9 January 1912, three years to the day after Shackleton's farthest south. 'We made a very steady afternoon march,' he wrote, adding condescendingly, 'This should place us . . . beyond the record of Shackleton's walk.'

  It was a far different response from that of Amundsen, who a month before had passed the same latitude. He, for one, had never changed the opinion that he formed immediately after the news broke of the Southern Party's record in 1909. 'What Nansen is in the North Shackleton is in the South,' he had written to Keltie. Bursting with enthusiasm, the normally restrained Norwegian had unhesitatingly declared: 'The English nation has by the deed of Shackleton won a victory in the Antarctic exploration which never can be surpassed.'

  The death of Scott in 1912 did not end the bitterness that had accompanied his relationship with Shackleton. Markham continued his small-minded campaign for the rest of his life. At the Dundee meeting of the British Association in late 1912, he read a paper in which he praised Scott for both his expeditions while virtually ignoring Shackleton. In the following discussion, Marshall defended the British Antarctic Expedition and its achievements. Such arguments had little influence on Markham, however, and his later history of Antarctic exploration, The Lands of Silence, showed even more disregard for the feats of Shackleton's men. Markham himself died on 30 January 1916, after his bedclothes were accidentally set alight by the candle by which he read in bed. His room was supplied with electricity, but he had stubbornly followed this practice since his days as a midshipman.

  Markham was not the only one who could hold a grudge. In July 1909 Shackleton showed a measure of vindictiveness of his own in a letter about the awarding of medals by the RGS. 'I do not see that I could recommend England,' he wrote to Darwin. 'I do not think that he should be entitled to it after viewing all the points of the case . . . it would at once put him on an equality with the members of the Expedition who were satisfactory and did their work throughout.'

  Remarkably, Shackleton felt differently about Evans, who, according to virtually all of the shore party, had hampered all rescue efforts. Shackleton seems to have accepted Evans' version of events for the final days before his return, because when he saw the shore party he 'tore them off a hell of a strip for not sticking around'. This caused great offence to Murray, who believed that the account in The Heart of the Antarctic indicated he was responsible for the failure of relief to be sent. 'You left me in charge because you trusted me, and I believe that I deserved your trust,' Murray wrote to Shackleton, requesting changes to the second edition. 'How I carried it out you have been told (though I am not sure that you believe it) . . . I was prevented from sending a relief party, with Joyce and the dogs as arranged, by Evans's point-blank refusal to allow me the use of the ship to convey them to Hut Point.' It is unknown if Murray ever received a response, and the passages were not changed.

  Murray was not the only member of the expedition who felt aggrieved. Others complained about their wages, and it did not help that Shackleton was turning hundreds of pounds over to charities. All were not paid off even after the government grant. It contributed to a growing distance between members of the expedition. 'We didn't see a lot of each other, because the whole party, I think they thought they were a bit hardly treated on the money side of the business,' Adams recalled later. 'I kept calling his attention to the fact that he did owe something to those chaps who had been with him, and that his promises should be kept . . . Of course money meant nothing to him, you see; he didn't know the meaning of the word money except spending it.'

  Brocklehurst also encouraged The Boss to pay his men, although Shackleto
n's reticence did not trouble him deeply. In fact, in 1913 Shackleton was the best man at his wedding. That showed the extremes of feeling to which Shackleton drove those around him. He was equally capable of making men mistrusting, critical or antagonistic - as in the case of Marshall - or enthusiastic, forgiving, even devoted, as were Brocklehurst and Wild.

  One reason Wild remained close to Shackleton was that, after brief unsuccessful excursions in everyday life, they both always refocused their dreams on the Antarctic. Like migrating birds, they returned to the far south again and again, seemingly unable to stop the forces driving them. After trying his hand at a variety of businesses, in late 1913 Shackleton reverted to form with the announcement of a new plan. The project was named the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, and the goal was to cross the Antarctic continent from the Weddell Sea to Ross Island via the South Pole. Remarkably, the long-suffering Emily once again showed the patience of a saint, blessing his effort with the simple words, 'How could you keep an eagle tied in a back-yard?'

  Even the start of the First World War could not keep Shackleton and his contingent from the Antarctic, where they headed in August 1914 with Admiralty blessing. However, his plans evaporated when both his ships, Endurance in the Weddell Sea and Aurora in the Ross Sea, were caught in the ice. The saga of his travails after Endurance was crushed and sank - including keeping his men alive on the ice, getting them to Elephant Island, making an open-boat journey to South Georgia, crossing the mountains of that island, and finally rescuing his men has been the subject of many studies. Four years after his return in September 1921, he headed south again, in command of the Shackle-ton-Rowett Antarctic Expedition in Quest. It was to have no happy conclusion, however, as early in the morning of 5 January 1922 Shackleton died of heart disease. At Emily's wish he was buried at Grytviken in South Georgia. Emily outlived her husband by fourteen years, the last seven residing in a grace-and-favour apartment at Hampton Court Palace, which had been granted her by Royal Warrant in 1929.

  Wild, meanwhile, became the most experienced Antarctic explorer of his time. After turning down a place on Scott's expedition, he was named leader of the Western Party of Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition. He was then appointed the second-in-command of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition and was left in charge of the men on Elephant Island, keeping them together through an incredibly difficult period. After Shackleton's death, Wild took command of Quest, but the expedition lacked the fire provided by its departed leader and accomplished little. In 1923 WTild moved to Natal to take up cotton farming, but within several years this failed, costing him his savings. The last decade of his life saw a sad run of poor-paying jobs that forced him to stay in South Africa long after he hoped to return to England. In August 1939 he died of pneumonia in the Transvaal.

  Two other of Shackleton's men also participated in the Imperial TransAntarctic Expedition. Marston joined Endurance as expedition artist and remained with Wild on Elephant Island. Upon his return to England he taught for several years before joining the Rural Industries Bureau, of which he eventually became director. He died in 1940 of coronary thrombosis, at the age of fifty-eight. Joyce selected the dogs for Mawson's expedition, but after joining the party in Hobart was dismissed shortly before it left Australia. He remained in that country until he was invited to join the Ross Sea Party - which was sent to lay depots out to the Beardmore Glacier to provide for Shackleton's crossing. He disappeared from public view after that expedition, although he did publish a book entitled The South Polar Trail in 1929. Like Marston, he died in 1940, being found dead in his sleeping bag in a hotel room.

  Many of the other men were not, in the long run, as close to The Boss. The first to part ways were Day and Priestley, who left the fold by joining Scott's expedition. Priestley had hoped to serve on Shackleton's proposed venture in 1911, and in the interim he worked with David in Sydney on the expedition's geological results. But David recommended him to Scott, and when Priestley realised it might be his only chance to go south again, he accepted, despite it meaning, as he later reflected, 'giving up my connection with Shackleton'. Following the First World War, Priestley turned to academic administration at the University of Cambridge, where he and Frank Debenham, a fellow geologist on Scott's expedition and one of David's former students, were the primary forces in the founding of the Scott Polar Research Institute. Priestley later served as vice-chancellor of Melbourne University and then of Birmingham University, a post he held for fifteen years, during which he was knighted. From 1955 to 1958 he was acting director of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (now the British Antarctic Survey), while its director, Vivian Fuchs, led the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which fulfilled Shackleton's dream of crossing the continent. Priestley's last major office was as president of the RGS (1961-63). He died in 1974 shortly before his eighty-eighth birthday.

  Day's career was as low-key as Priestley's was significant. After being in charge of the motor transport on Scott's expedition and serving in the First World War, he moved to Sydney, where he continued to work as an engineer. He died in the aftermath of a street accident in 1934.

  Australia was also the scene of the first death amongst Nimrod's shore party. After returning to Britain, Armytage tried to obtain a job at the War Office in London, but was turned down as being too old. In January 1910 he went back to Melbourne without his wife and daughter, because, according to a local newspaper, 'He seems to have longed for something definite to do.' However, a complete lack of success drove his depression to a critical stage, which reached a climax on 12 March 1910. After writing about his intentions to a friend, Armytage went to his room at the Melbourne Club, put on his full dinner dress and several silver medals he had been awarded, and, according to reports, set his other medals for his service in Africa and the Antarctic where he could see them. He then spread the counterpane from the bed on the floor, lay carefully down on it with two pillows under his head, and shot himself in the forehead. It was an act that devastated his old companions.

  'We were awfully upset here about poor old Armytage's sad death,' Priestley wrote to Brocklehurst, continuing

  He came over to Sydney to see the Prof & myself but we were up in Queensland & just missed him. We can neither of us get rid of the feeling that if we had seen him we could probably have saved him . . . I have little or no doubt that if any of us had seen him & had pointed him out some way in which he could do useful exploring even in a small way it would have made all the difference to him. He was plainly much oppressed by the idea that he was no use in the world. He was a peculiar chap, very introspective but one of the best.

  In the next decade three more of Shackleton's key men died - all of them in the polar regions. In 1913 Murray and Mackay joined Vilhjalmur Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition. In the autumn their ship Karluk was beset in the ice, and in January 1914 she was crushed and sank in the Chukchi Sea north of Siberia, leaving the men stranded on the ice. On 5 February, with the party wracked by dissension, Murray, Mackay and two others attempted to reach the mainland. They disappeared without trace.

  Two years later, Æneas Mackintosh showed that the deaths of his friends and his own experiences off the coast of Ross Island had not taught him about the dangers of crossing sea ice. In 1914 he had been appointed the leader of the Ross Sea Party, with the task of laying depots to the Beardmore Glacier. They were plagued by bad luck from the start, including the expedition ship Aurora being blown out to sea, leaving the men without full provisions. Never the less, depots were laid as far as Mount Hope. On 8 May 1916 Mackintosh and a colleague ignored the advice of their comrades and left to cross the sea ice to their main base at Cape Evans. Soon thereafter the weather turned ugly, and, unlike in 1909, Mackintosh was not able to effect a marvellous escape. The two men disappeared, and their bodies were never found.

  The other members of Nimrod's shore party lived to ripe old ages (except possibly for Roberts, who simply fell out of sight after 1909, and about whom lit
tle is known). David spent years writing up the scientific results of the expedition - working closely with Priestley - and wrote much of the second volume of The Heart of the Antarctic, covering both the journey to the Magnetic Pole and the geological findings. With typical foresight, he had also left a message at Cape Royds to tell future explorers what the expedition had accomplished. 'The door of the porch had carried away, but the inner door was standing,' Griffith Taylor, one of Scott's geologists, later wrote of the first visit to the hut since Shackleton's party left. 'A foot of ice sealed it at the bottom, but hanging to the door was an envelope addressed in Professor David's hand, "To anyone who may visit Cape Royds." It did not enter his mind that an old student of his would be the first to see this.' Taylor was yet another of the many exceptional scholars trained by David, and it was the success of his students as well as his own research, teaching and administrative contributions that led to David eventually being called the 'father of Australian geological science'. He was knighted in 1920, and when he died in 1934, he received a state funeral. Perhaps no tribute was more succinct than that by John King Davis, who wrote: 'He had that rare gift of ennobling all he touched.'

  Twenty-four years later, David's greatest student also received a state funeral. Mawson had been knighted on his return from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, and he later became professor of geology at the University of Adelaide. In 1929-31 he led the British, Australian, New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE), which served as part of the basis for Australia's eventual claim to vast areas of Antarctica. Mawson remained a key figure in Antarctic and Australian science for decades and was so esteemed that the government granted him arguably the highest of all honours: placing his image on the national currency, the $100 note.