When Your Life Depends on It

by Brad Borkan

  Wild’s daily instructions also reinforced the idea that a routine was important for maintaining morale. More importantly, it reinforced the expedition hierarchy. Wild might be in charge on Elephant Island, but Shackleton was still the expedition leader, and ultimately they all answered to “the Boss.”

  On Elephant Island, meal times were fixed. There was a designated seating arrangement for each meal, enabling the men to shift around in a sequence so each day they each would have one meal when they were closest to the fire, and the other meals that day further away from the warmth. Afternoon time was allocated to catching penguins and other activities. Saturday nights were reserved for Hussey’s banjo and topical songs that made fun of members of the team. If someone objected to what was sung about them, an even more critical song was composed for performance the following week.

  Frank Wild also tried to reinforce the belief in their eventual rescue by reducing the amount of seals and penguins they stockpiled for the winter. This plan proved to be as controversial as it was inspiring as time slipped on from one month—to two months—to three months—and still no sign of Shackleton. However, the men stayed jelled as a team, intent on not letting “the Boss” down if and when he ever returned.

  Structure, purpose, and belief

  Survival depends on so many factors, both at an individual and team level. Those most capable of surviving are not always the ones who look physically strong. Mental toughness, coupled with a sense of purpose, can be a far more important ingredient.

  That the men on Elephant Island did not descend into anarchy, madness or murder was due to leaders who instinctively understood how to keep them motivated in extreme conditions.

  Frank Wild inspired them, but he did so much more. The best qualities of leadership are not something that can be taught. They must be grown into as a process of maturing through a wide variety of experience.

  Wild was not a born leader. Small of stature and mild of manner, he did not seem destined for command. He started off his Antarctic career as a low ranking man on the Discovery in 1901, but showed then that when the circumstances demanded some measure of leadership, that he could step into the role without a second thought. He faced every extreme demand with the same cool detachment, as though it were something he did every day. Years later, when Mawson put him in charge of five men set on the shore fifteen hundred miles (2,400 km) from any other human beings, to chart and explore that shore, he rose to the task. Every expedition he ever took part in served to hone that capacity. Yet he never aspired to the overall leadership of an expedition. He knew the place he wanted—that of the best sort of lieutenant, to carry out the expectations of those who planned and executed the expeditions.

  Wild was not the only man who proved himself able to step into the role of deputy leader when circumstances demanded it.

  Chapter 7 shows how Tom Crean and William Lashly stepped in and made the decisions when Lt. Evans was felled by scurvy. In Chapter 8 we see how Ernest Joyce, a man who never aspired to leadership, rose to the challenge far out on the Barrier when the nominal captain Aeneas Mackintosh could no longer lead the team.

  When facing challenging decisions in business, there are many lessons that can be applied. Do you have a Frank Wild on your team? If so, have you given your able lieutenant free range to make the very best decisions in the moment, or is he or she hampered by complex or conflicting instructions?

  When you are either in business or personal relationships involving a challenging team situation, can you do what Wild and Shackleton did, and create structure, purpose, and belief?

  In addition to having an able lieutenant, it is important to have the best team members possible. The next chapter explains how this was achieved. Some of the selection criteria might surprise you!

  Chapter 6

  Who Is On Your Team?

  Choosing the best from the best available.

  The question is apt in almost any endeavor, across any era in history, and in any place in the world. Who is on your team?

  Ideally, every single person has been interviewed, vetted, and put through a meticulous process to identify just the right one for the position. This is certainly true of those who took part in the exploration of the Antarctic in the early days. Everyone—each biologist, geologist, meteorologist, explorer, doctor, photographer, cook, able-bodied seaman, and officer who found himself there for the first time had been specifically chosen for the job.

  Most of the expedition leaders had hundreds or thousands of applicants to choose from, assessing each with due care and caution, and seeking the most qualified and most adaptable. This time-honored and generally successful approach works well in any business.

  Under duress, however, some of these choices proved less than satisfactory in their leaders’ eyes. Scott, after the first season’s work in the Discovery Expedition, decided to take over the plateau exploration from Lt. Armitage, and to send Shackleton home after he had physically collapsed on the return of their southern journey. Amundsen had his bout with Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen—a famed Norwegian explorer in his own right—and decided to leave him behind to survey the area east of the Framheim base, taking another in his place for the glory of being first to the Pole. Shackleton had to deal with a near mutiny on the ice initiated by one or two of the men after the Endurance sank.

  When looking at all the expeditions, it becomes clear that some men rose to the challenge, and some were diminished by it. Are these the results of inadequate vetting from the comfort of a home or office, or of misinformation by applicants who may have overstated their qualifications? No doubt some of each, but by and large the leaders of these early expeditions—Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen and Mawson—were quite astute when it came to deciding who would be a part of their team.

  Apocryphal stories abound of Shackleton’s often whimsical and certainly spur-of-the-moment selections of who would accompany him into the frozen unknown. Wordie’s spectacles attracted him, as did Hussey’s banjo and the fact that he “looked funny.” Yet, remarkably, Shackleton’s quick assessments led to a diverse and skillful team. Scott took mostly Royal Navy men for the crew of the Discovery. They were already accustomed to the naval hierarchy and ready to follow orders without question. Seaman Tom Crean joined the expedition in New Zealand almost on a whim, when an opening presented itself which he volunteered to fill. Frank Wild had already proven himself on the long voyage the Discovery took from London to New Zealand en route to the Antarctic. The merchant sailors among the crew were less adaptable, and ready to return with the relief ship, the Morning, after their first winter-over.

  Amundsen likewise chose his officers from the Norwegian Navy, who were already versed in ice navigation and ship-keeping in polar conditions. His carefully detailed plan called for a “quick” run to the Pole and back. To that end, he included a ski champion, Olav Bjaaland, and skilled dog drivers, Helmer Hanssen and Sverre Hassel, to manage the 116 dogs he would be landing on the ice. To fill the all-important role of cook for the ship and the Antarctic base camp, he brought along Adolf Lindstrøm, a veteran of his historic 1906 transit of the Northwest Passage.

  Most of those who journeyed to the Antarctic in the early expeditions had yet to be wed, and seized upon the opportunity to enhance their academic or military standings, or pursue the science to which they were already betrothed. The Discovery carried some young scientists (such as Hartley Ferrar, a geologist) who were just beginning their careers. The same can be said of the young officers, who were moving up through the ranks while charting a strange new world for the armchair travelers at home. Even the seamen, with smaller chances of advancement through the ranks, gained at least a trove of adventures with which to regale their fellows in the mess deck.

  Whatever their role, more than a few found themselves drawn to the place for a second, third, fourth, and even fifth time. Knowing its dangers and adversities after their first expedition, they had chosen to go back there, to this inhospitable place, to meet and conquer it
s challenges, together. For some, their presence became a validation of the Victorian poet Tennyson’s call in Ulysses, to prove in these unequal trials, “one equal temper of heroic hearts.“

  Not every man was up to the task. Some found these trials to be too much, and the rewards too few. But those who were, and committed their physical and spiritual energy to the massive enterprise at hand, gave and received rewards not to be found at home.

  The same is true in all walks of life. Beyond the obvious physical and educational requirements of a position, often unseen forces drive us; logic fails and aspiration fills the gap. Those with like-minded aspirations combine forces and risk it all in business, in love, in war, and in exploration. Who is to be on the team? Who wants to be? Who will be?

  Hints to travelers

  Every era has boundaries to its known world, and yields a place of honor to those who cross those boundaries to open up vistas once only imagined. And those who venture forth seldom go alone; the work is too great to be undertaken by a single person. Some of these men came back again and again, growing in maturity of years and polar experience. They became the senior members teaching the new recruits who were filling the ranks of the expeditions that followed.

  The transmission of hard lessons from mentor to raw recruit allowed one expedition to build successfully on the results of those preceding it. There was a continuum of shared knowledge and experience across expeditions led by Scott and Shackleton, who were rivals in their quest for the Pole. This is nowhere more evident than in the Discovery Expedition’s very first overnight foray out onto the Great Ice Barrier when six men set off man-hauling a sledge laden with one three-man tent and a cooker that no one knew how to light. Such misapprehension of life on the trail was slow to dissipate, but by the end of the ship’s two-year stay at Hut Point, Scott was confident enough in their abilities to lead two men out over the featureless plateau, with limited navigational aids, and was certain that they would safely return.

  Five weeks out from Hut Point and seven thousand feet up the Ferrar Glacier, he had arrived with his full supporting party of twelve to the edge of the plateau. A flat, featureless plain lay before them, slowly rising in the distance from their high camp just beyond the last nunataks (exposed ridges) marking the head of the glacier.

  In an unfortunate accident, their copy of the book, Hints to Travelers, containing the necessary tables to compute longitude, had been blown away somewhere back along the trail. Without it there would be no sure way of finding their way back out of the plateau, to the exact spot where their highest depot of food and supplies would be waiting. Scott, ever resourceful, suggested an alternative—a penciled copy of data drawn from memory and written down on the spot. On this, his own life and the lives of the advance party would entirely depend. That two men would voluntarily risk their lives on such a flimsy record says much about their faith in their leader, and his faith in them. From that moment forward they were simply three men in a tent, equal to each other in every way but that of leadership.

  They marched outward into the frozen desert for ten days, covering 160 miles (257 km) after the other nine men had turned for home. Cold, hard work and a shortage of rations were taking their toll, and fuel for the Primus stove was running low. Scott determined they had reached the end of their tether, and the time had come to turn for home. It was on that return that a snow bridge without notice broke away from beneath their footsteps and two of the three men suddenly disappeared into a yawning crevasse. William Lashly, caught off-guard on the surface, threw himself on the ground and hauled back with all his might on the sledge. Twelve feet down, Scott and Petty Officer Edgar “Taff” Evans (unrelated to Lt. Edward Evans whom you will meet in Chapter 7) dangled at the extremity of their harnesses, slowly spinning in the air between the blue-white ice walls of the crevasse, reassuring each other in matter-of-fact tones that they were, indeed, all right.

  Above their heads, the broken sledge lay like a bridge across the mouth of the crevasse; the position was still gravely dangerous. And the moment Lashly relaxed his grip, the sledge slipped further. The two men dangling below would not last long in the cold there, nor would Lashly, who was striving with all his might to keep the sledge from dropping into the crevasse. There was no one within two hundred miles (320 km)—they would have to save themselves. Death for all three was only minutes away.

  Scott, losing body heat quickly, knew he had to act fast. He swung himself at the end of his tether until he could get a foothold on a small ledge of ice, threw off his mitts and began pulling himself up, hand-over-hand toward the lip of the crevasse. Desperation drove him to the top, and he grappled his way over the lip with superhuman strength. Lashly, pushing back with all his might against the sledge, could only watch.

  Scott did it, but his hands were frozen, white to the wrists. He warmed them for five minutes on his breast, and then turned to help Lashly at the sledge. In another minute Evans too was safe on top. For a few moments, the men could only look at each other. They wasted no time in patching up the sledge and moving onward, still using Scott’s handwritten tables to guide them. By six o’clock that evening, they had reached the first of the depots left on the homeward trail. At that moment, there were no leaders here, and no followers, just three men on an equal footing—saved by the barest margin, thanks to quick thinking and reserves of strength hidden in each before this moment. They, too, were a remarkable team, carefully chosen for their skills and teamwork.

  One of the most interesting aspects of the teams in the Antarctic at that time, was that most men instinctively knew when to follow their leader and when to act independently. But there was always an expectation that the men would be resourceful as a team when they needed to be. Had Scott been a different type of leader, or as found in some businesses today, a micro-manager, the outcome could have been very different.

  Proven in the field

  Petty Officer Taff Evans and Leading Stoker William Lashly were of the lower deck. Young men of twenty-four and twenty-six, they were seamen whose career paths in the Royal Navy were nearing their zeniths, with retirement pensions coming due many years in the future. They so impressed Scott with their unflappable durability and devotion to duty that he wanted them along on his next expedition, which was already germinating in his mind. When asked to join him again on the Terra Nova in 1910, both readily agreed.

  These were two among many of the Discovery who returned to explore Antarctica. Of the seamen, Tom Williamson, Frank Wild, Ernest Joyce, and Tom Crean also came back, in one expedition or another. From the wardroom or officer ranks, there was Dr. Edward Wilson and Lt. Edward Evans of the Morning, and of course, Ernest Shackleton. Some of them came back and died here. Others came back once and then never again. And some, like Crean, Wild and Shackleton himself, could not seem to get enough of the place. This book is filled with their stories and their polar decisions.

  The names of the leaders of these expeditions are of course the best known. That is as it should be. Without their energy, commitment and desire, expressed with wholehearted conviction from the very beginning, the expeditions themselves would never have left the safe shores of home. But while the familiar names belong to those who led, they would be nothing without the additional men who along with the leaders, shared in hauling gear, pitching camp, and walking the long treks, steadfast and enduring. Without them, there would be no leaders. There would be no survivors, and no story to be told.

  On Followership

  One of the key qualities of leadership is knowing the value of competent, dedicated followers who are prepared to step into positions of greater authority when needed. The role of “followership” demands its own set of strengths. During the heroic age, in addition to physical endurance and a well-learned set of survival skills, the most important traits included loyalty, pride of place, a powerful work ethic, honesty and team commitment.

  This included a deep-rooted sense of duty and obligation to a larger cause, often illustrated by personal
effort beyond what might have been expected. It included a sense of discretion, an intrinsic understanding of what must be said and done, and what must not.

  It also included recognition of one’s position in the hierarchy. Not everyone aspired to be a leader. Those who do not, who are happy with their level in the world and the value of the work they do, often go unrecognized. Some of their stories are revealed in this book. There are many more amazing stories that can be found in the diaries of the men who were not leaders.

  Not a perfect art

  There were, of course, some in every expedition who did not fit in well in either role. Their stories are important too, but less often told. In his Discovery Expedition, Scott found it expedient to send home several of the merchant seamen who had never quite got on in the mess deck with the Royal Navy sailors. In the tense days after the sinking of Shackleton’s Endurance, the now under-employed motorman Thomas Orde Lees was widely derided as lazy, and above menial work. He became the butt of jokes, the lowest man in the pecking order of the castaways. Somebody had to fill that role, for the greater cohesiveness of the rest. The carpenter Harry “Chippy” McNish had the temerity to challenge Shackleton with common sense on the ice, and never regained stature after his act of near-mutiny.

  There were others who did not fare well—they were unsuited by temperament or physical stamina for the rigors of the polar winters. They withdrew from the society of their fellows into their private mental sequesters, unable to function well in the tasks for which they had initially been chosen. No one was to blame for this, but everyone had to be able to adapt to changing circumstances.

  The ends of the Earth

  To face the challenges of Antarctic exploration, effective teamwork required more than just a well-chosen core group of members. The leader had to be highly competent in his role. He needed a strong moral compass so his actions would inspire his men to follow him into the unknown and trust that he would bring them all home alive.