It was to prove a painful journey. The energy of the dogs soon waned, and there has since been debate about whether they had enough fresh meat in their winter feed, while the stockfish carried for them on Nansen’s advice was both inadequate and partly contaminated due to previous poor storage. They soon began to die, forcing Wilson to feed the dead to the living and begin killing the weaker ones for the same purpose. Wilson rapidly became agonisingly snow-blind from his unwise habit of sketching, and Shackleton developed an ominous cough, eventually spitting blood. Scott’s impatience also began to grate on the others as they crossed the featureless Barrier, with Wilson finding himself a moderating influence. Scott had also miscalculated the amount of pemmican they needed, and soon both hunger and scurvy began to bite. On 30 December, after celebrating Christmas with a miniature plum pudding brought by Shackleton, they had to turn back at 82°17’ south, still 660km (410 miles) from the Pole. Having killed the last dogs, by then they were hauling their remaining sledges until, about 240km (150 miles) from home, Shackleton became incapable of doing more than stagger along on his own, occasionally sitting on the last sledge to act as a brake. In this desperate state, on 3 February they met Skelton and Bernacchi, who had come south to find them. In all they had travelled about 1,368km (850 miles), had been away for 93 days and had completed the longest sledging journey yet in Antarctica, as well as far exceeding the record for furthest south. They were all suffering from scurvy, exhaustion and malnutrition, and Shackleton’s rapid decline had raised serious questions about his basic constitution and fitness.
Wilson and Scott at the camp set up at their furthest south on 30–31 December 1902. They had mapped 483km (300 miles) of new coastline. Photograph by Shackleton.
‘Long beards, hair dirty, swollen lips & peeled complexions, & blood-shot eyes [that] made them almost unrecognisable’ was how Scott, Wilson and Shackleton were described on returning to Discovery. Unknown photographer, 3 February 1903.
On return to base they found that the Morning had arrived with orders for Discovery to sail for Lyttelton. However, she could not be broken from the ice and, rather than persist, Scott decided to spend another southern winter at Hut Point. When Morning sailed on 2 March she took eight men with her and Shackleton, whom Scott ordered home on medical grounds. However, this was much against Shackleton’s wishes and was perhaps prompted by personality tensions that had begun to emerge on their southern journey.
During Scott’s absence, Armitage had discovered a way up through the coastal mountains to the ice sheet of Victoria Land and the following October, 1903, Scott led a party up on to it. Again, blizzards reduced temperatures to -50°C and broken sledges caused a false start. When they set out again, they lost a vital navigational handbook in bad weather and took a risk in continuing beyond the safe limit of their supplies, eventually up to a height of 2,700 metres (8,900 feet). In mid-December, with the party now divided into two, Scott, Lashly and Evans refound the Ferrar Glacier (which they had ascended to reach the plateau) by the expedient of falling 90 metres (300 feet) down one of its upper slopes. Fortunately no one was hurt and Scott and Evans had an even more miraculous escape when they fell into a deep crevasse lower down, from which Lashly helped both to escape. They returned to Discovery on 24 December after 81 days and 1,767km (1,098 miles) of successful sledging – significantly, without dogs – to find that various other parties had also done well in other directions: Wilson to Cape Crozier investigating Emperor penguins; Royds and Bernacchi east over the Barrier; and Armitage surveying the Koettlitz Glacier. Lieutenant George Mulock, who had replaced Shackleton from the Morning, had surveyed more than 200 mountains, consolidating the picture of the 480km (300 miles) of coastline that the expedition as a whole added to the map.
Scott’s worry was now whether Discovery would be freed from the ice to sail with Morning, when she again arrived from Lyttelton. There were about 32km (20 miles) of it between her and open water at the beginning of January 1904 when he and Wilson made a sortie northwards to investigate. What they found on 5 January was not only the Morning but also another ship, the larger Terra Nova, accompanying her, both sent by the Admiralty following much debate and anxiety at home about the expedition’s safety. Scott now received firm orders that if the ice persisted, Discovery was to be abandoned. It proved to be touch-and-go, with the ship still beset by about 3km (2 miles) of ice in early February. Then on 14th, the combined effects of ocean swell and explosives allowed the relief vessels to reach her. Two days later Discovery was completely free, the last alarm being when a gale drove her pounding onto a shoal as they were manoeuvring out round Hut Point on 17th. For Scott, ‘the hours that followed were truly the most dreadful I have ever spent’, but the situation was saved by a shift of current and the ship sustained only relatively minor damage. All three ships headed north for New Zealand, with Morning under sail since Captain Colbeck (Borchgrevink’s companion) had given up much of her coal to Discovery. They entered Lyttelton together to a rapturous welcome on Good Friday, 1 April 1904. The expedition had made the first long-distance penetration of the Antarctic continent and the scientific results – geographical, geological and biological, as well as in areas such as magnetic surveying and meteorology – were substantial. They filled many volumes, and the existence today of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge is, in part, a longer-term legacy of the work done under him on the Discovery voyage.
Four men preparing explosive charges to blast a route through sea ice to free Discovery. Photograph possibly by JD Morrison, January–February 1904.
A triple explosion of guncotton in the pack ice to break it up. After a period of about six weeks the Discovery was finally freed. Photograph possibly by JD Morrison, January–February 1904.
Scott on skis returning from Morning, one of two relief ships sent to free Discovery or abandon her and take off the expedition crew. Photograph by William Colbeck, January–February 1904.
Nimrod, 1907–1909
On Shackleton’s return to England in June 1903, he was quickly drawn into the row caused by Scott’s decision to spend two winters in Antarctica. This had not been the approved original intention unless unavoidable, and some saw the failure to free Discovery from the ice as incompetence or conspiracy. It became a public issue when, with expedition funds exhausted, the Admiralty felt obliged to underwrite a relief voyage, not only for Morning but to buy and send the Terra Nova as well. Under Markham’s guidance, Shackleton publicly defended the expedition and helped fit out Terra Nova, but he declined to sail with her.
The only comment he made to me about not reaching the Pole, was ‘a live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn’t it?’
Emily Shackleton, 1922
Shackleton had been born in County Kildare, Ireland, on 15 February 1874, to a landed Anglo-Irish Protestant family. From 1880 they lived in Dublin and in 1884 his father, now a doctor, moved them to Sydenham, south London. Ernest was the second child and, like Scott, the elder of two brothers, though with eight rather than four sisters. Like Scott, he was educated at home until he was 11 and went on to Dulwich College, the local middle-class public school. He was not academic but loved reading and poetry, especially Browning’s, which he was later wont to quote endlessly. He was well-liked, addicted to tales of adventurous romance, often in mild trouble and famously inventive in talking himself out of it. By 16 he had decided he wanted to go to sea and in an attempt to rid him of this desire, his father’s cousin found him a berth as ship’s boy on a square-rigger outward bound for Valparaiso round Cape Horn. It confirmed rather than cured his seafaring streak: he signed on, spent the next four years in the same ship and gained a second mate’s certificate. He then transferred to steam tramping, mainly to the Far East, and in April 1898, aged 24, obtained a master’s certificate. The following year he joined the Union Castle Line on the South Africa run, also becoming a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) as a matter of personal interest in exploration.
Shackleton’s fi
rst mate’s certificate, 1896. He had a varied early career in sailing and steam merchant shipping before signing up for the 1901 British Antarctic expedition.
Shackleton was third mate of the Tintagel Castle when he met Cedric Long-staff, son of the Discovery expedition’s main private sponsor, going out on the ship with his regiment to the Boer War in 1900. By this time he had also fallen in love with Emily Dorman, a friend of one of his sisters, whose prosperous solicitor father liked him but did not approve of him as a match. A combination of restlessness, the appeal of patriotic adventure and the wish to distinguish himself and win Emily led him to volunteer for Scott’s expedition, obtaining an introduction from young Longstaff to his father – also a keen Fellow of the RGS.
Scott’s decision to order Shackleton home in 1902 was an affront both to his aspirations and his professional self-esteem. It called his fitness into question and implied he had not been frank about it when joining the expedition. This was a sensitive point, for Shackleton avoided medical examinations if possible. Though physically and mentally tough, he seems to have had or developed an inkling that his constitution was suspect, but refused to acknowledge it. After the southern journey, Koettlitz formally examined him at Scott’s request and inconclusively suggested asthmatic tendencies. Only after his death in 1922, aged 47, was it discovered that he also had long-standing coronary heart disease. When this began is unknown but neither his smoking nor the privations he willingly endured would have helped either of these conditions.
By 1902 Shackleton had also witnessed Scott’s qualities as a leader. Scott was a conventional, class-conscious naval officer whose social charm masked ambitiously devious traits. His authority was based on position rather than personality and, even allowing for his polar inexperience, he had made a number of serious mistakes. By contrast, Shackleton had an easy, charismatic rapport with most of the expedition – both officers and men, as in his other ships – and a more innate confidence in his own leadership abilities. He had no doubt that Scott felt his leadership had been challenged and that Shackleton’s temporary breakdown was a useful pretext on which to banish him. This was confirmed when Scott returned home. In a major lecture and the published account of the Discovery expedition, he subtly blamed Shackleton’s health for their failure to get further south in 1902, minimised his own and Wilson’s debilities, and overstated how they had had to pull Shackleton to safety as a passenger on the sledge. This was humiliating to Shackleton, though he did not show it in his relations with Scott. He had not, of course, dwelt on his own problems and now had a reputation – in fact several – to maintain. In the interim he had become Secretary of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, was briefly a parliamentary candidate and a journalist, and was involved in various other uncertain business ventures in which his self-presentation was his main asset. He had also at last married Emily, to win whom he had, in part, originally joined Discovery.
A 1907 hand-drawn sketch by Shackleton outlining his original proposed route to the South Pole from the opposite side of the Ross Sea to where Scott intended to operate.
Almost as soon as he returned, Shackleton unsuccessfully urged Markham to help him mount his own expedition to reach either Pole as a deliberate aim rather than under scientific cover. This would be his vindication. He and Scott remained civil in public but were henceforth to avoid each other. However, Scott’s undermining (as Shackleton saw it) was not his sole spur: others included the dramatic Argentine rescue of Larsen and Otto Nordenskjöld from the Weddell Sea in 1903 after their ship Antarctic was crushed by ice; the Scottish explorer WS Bruce’s return to the Clyde (and a welcome that Shackleton organised) from a successful private expedition in the same area; and Amundsen’s first traverse of the North-West Passage in 1903–1906. In the background, too, were ongoing American plans to reach the North Pole.
By February 1907 Shackleton had his wish and launched an entirely private Antarctic expedition on a sea of large commercial hopes and rather less ready money. A loan of £1,000 from an eccentric lady admirer, a £7,000 guarantee from the Scottish industrialist William Beardmore – for whom Shackleton briefly worked and whose wife was a close confidante – and the promise of backing by a mining speculator who would obtain mineral rights to any such resources found, were the three main elements. Further returns were to come from the articles, lecturing, books and even the film that Shackleton saw himself producing on his return.
The ‘British Antarctic Expedition 1907’ was organised with astonishing speed, not least because Shackleton unsuccessfully asked both Wilson and Mulock to join him and found out from the latter that Scott was already thinking of a second expedition. Shackleton realised that he would stand to lose in a public confrontation with Scott and he sought to avoid one. In this his main disappointment was to find Wilson’s moral weight firmly behind Scott’s demand that he abandon his plan to use the McMurdo Sound base, to which Scott claimed exclusive rights. His greatest mistake, when Scott grandly extended his proprietary claims to the entire Victoria Land side of the Ross Sea, was to sign a written promise to base himself on the eastern side and under no circumstance stray west of the 170th meridian.
Shackleton’s preparations were similar to Scott’s yet also unlike them. Rather than scientists and regular naval men, he recruited adventurers. Some, like himself, were of respectable background, but most were restless and unconventional. He visited Norway to obtain equipment and consulted Nansen, now Norwegian minister in London, but then ignored his and other Norwegian advice to use skis and dogs. The only dogs he took were nine picked up at the last minute in New Zealand. Instead he was persuaded by Frederick Jackson to buy 12 Manchurian ponies, despite the fact that Jackson’s own work with horses in Franz Josef Land had not been successful. This and his intention to walk rather than ski were more remarkable because his original idea was to march beyond the Pole dragging a light boat, with which he planned to rejoin his ship at a rendezvous in the Weddell Sea. The boat was accidentally left behind but even Shackleton had by then realised that crossing the continent was impractical. Beardmore, however, did give him a specially adapted car – the first to be used there. It did not live up to his hopes: while it worked to a useful degree on firm ground, it was hopeless on snow. He remained bedevilled by inadequate finances, not least when his minerals backer failed to deliver. A final bizarre threat to his public credit arose when his shady businessman brother and adviser, Frank, was implicated in a high-profile scandal surrounding the theft of the Irish coronation regalia. As for a ship, all he could afford was a 40-year-old, 300-ton auxiliary sealer called Nimrod, which sailed from London on 30 July 1907 under command of Rupert England, previously first mate of Morning.
A postcard of the expedition ship Nimrod, with an inset portrait of Shackleton. Such items illustrate the public interest in Antarctic expeditions and their leaders.
Scott’s well-funded expedition had been two years in the making, while Shackleton’s hand-to-mouth one took barely seven months to prepare. By royal command, Nimrod stopped in the Solent during Cowes week under the guns of the Home Fleet drawn up in massive review. Edward VII and Queen Alexandra came aboard and Shackleton, like Scott, was awarded the Royal Victorian Order and presented with a Union flag by the Queen. Nimrod then sailed for New Zealand. Shackleton followed by steamer from Marseilles via Suez to Australia, after a last desperate round of fundraising and a guilty farewell to the understanding Emily, who was left to manage on her own modest private means with two small children.
In Australia, Shackleton was an immediate public hit, gaining much-needed support. Scientific credibility was boosted by his recruitment of an eminent Welsh-born geologist, Professor Edgeworth David, whose influence secured him a £5,000 grant from the Australian government. With him came an old pupil, Douglas Mawson, whom Shackleton nominated as expedition physicist. Both had only originally asked to sail out and back on Nimrod, and David’s intention to remain throughout was concealed until he was beyond reach. Both men went on to gain A
ntarctic fame and knighthoods, and Mawson found himself at the head of later expeditions. New Zealand supplied £1,000 and half the cost of towing Nimrod to the Antarctic, once it became clear she was already too overloaded to carry enough coal and had to leave five ponies and other stores behind. The tow, by the Koonya under Frederick Evans, was an epic of skill, storm and appalling discomfort, ending on 15 January 1908 just inside the Antarctic Circle.
Shackleton’s resolve to base himself on the eastern side of the Ross Sea was immediately broken, to his own great regret and with later public recriminations of bad faith from Scott and his supporters. The Barrier ice front had totally changed since 1902. Barrier Inlet, where they had made the balloon ascent, had vanished, while pack ice and lack of coal prevented an extended search for a landing anywhere other than McMurdo Sound. Shackleton set up a base at Cape Royds, Ross Island, as Nimrod was unable to reach Scott’s anchorage at Hut Point because of ice. He and England seriously disagreed over the latter’s handling of Nimrod in the difficult landing conditions, and on his return to Lyttelton, England found that the sealed orders he was carrying from Shackleton dismissed him. When this news and that of the broken promise to Scott reached home, they combined with embarrassing revelations about both Frank Shackleton’s affairs and Ernest’s irregular use of expedition loans. Shackleton was now more than geographically isolated: debts were mounting, sponsors alienated and for a while even money for his relief by Nimrod was lacking.
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