Almost a year later, his political fling over, Shackleton re-approached Beardmore and was given a position. It is obvious from Shackleton's letters that he thought the job might be the first step towards a company directorship and financial ease. It is equally apparent that Beardmore (who later became Lord Invernairn) realised that the likeable young man was not designed for life in an office or factory. Never the less, he was made the secretary of a committee examining the design of new gas engines. Aside from keeping the minutes of committee meetings, Shackleton was effectively given a roving commission that involved charming Beardmore's clients and entertaining his professional colleagues, both in London and at Parkhead.
In some senses, he was perfect for the new position, because of his remarkable personal magnetism. 'It's one of the things I remember so well,' Emily later told their daughter Cecily. 'He didn't have to lift a hand or a finger to get service in a restaurant. Poor old . . . clicking his fingers and getting half out of his chair, trying to get somebody to come and take his order . . . Your father never had to do that. He only had to raise his head for somebody to be standing beside him.'
Despite his natural flair for it, Shackleton must have realised that the position would not lead him to unqualified prosperity. 'A fine fellow,' A.B. Macduff, Beardmore's assistant, said years later, 'but it wasn't in any way a really important job in connection with the business.'
Regardless, his status in Beardmore's company was increasingly unimportant to him, because Shackleton had realised that neither this nor the other business opportunities were truly for him. His life's work, he now felt, was elsewhere. In a way seen again and again in the history of exploration, the wild, untamed, far-away regions had taken over the heart and mind of one who had dared journey to them. As with Burton in Africa or Nansen in the Arctic, in an indefinable way Antarctica had now become an essential part of Shackleton's psyche. It is only when this is realised that one can understand his relentless efforts through the rest of his life to return to the far south - the overwhelming drive that kept him making new plans and setting new goals when to many there appeared to be no point in his continuing.
Shackleton's preoccupation with the Antarctic likely received a boost late in 1906, when newspapers announced Robert E. Peary's claim to have attained a farthest north. But Shackleton's absorption with the Antarctic had actually been building since his premature return on Morning. At the beginning of October 1903 he had visited Markham, who gave little encouragement despite recording that the young man was 'full of plans for another expedition'. Throughout 1905 and into 1906 Shackleton had made efforts to interest potential sponsors in an Antarctic expedition, and some time either shortly before or after the election he had printed a four-page document entitled 'Plans for an Antarctic Expedition to proceed to the Ross Quadrant of the Antarctic with a view to reaching the Geographical South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole.'
Presumably produced in an effort to obtain sponsors, this shows many of Shackleton's earliest thoughts on an expedition. Although he indicated that there would be a modicum of scientific work, the clearly stated goal was the attainment of the Poles, both geographical and magnetic. This, Shackleton indicated, could be accomplished with the use of three modes of transport: some sixty dogs, several ponies and a specially designed automobile. As Shackleton had not mastered dog-driving, and as neither ponies nor automobiles had ever been tried in the Antarctic, the confidence of his statement, 'I am quite certain the South Pole could be reached' was remarkable.
Shackleton's unrealistic optimism showed through in other aspects of the document. He estimated that the entire expedition - including building a small, schooner-rigged vessel - would cost only £17,000. Fitted with a forty-horsepower engine, his ship would be able to make five knots under steam, and, although small, 'Ammundsen [sic] is attempting the North-West Passage with a specially built vessel only half this size'. Further, he indicated that he would need a party of only ten men, including five scientific observers and three with specific knowledge of working the engine (although whether that of the ship or the automobile, he did not say). 'By the time the vessel reaches New Zealand,' he wrote, his head firmly in the clouds, 'every one on board would be capable of managing the ship'. Yet how the ship was to be managed prior to reaching New Zealand seemed of no concern.
With such a plan, it is not surprising that Shackleton did not gain any significant backing. When his efforts went nowhere, he wrote to Mill that he had 'put a black mark' against the names of some seventy rich men who refused to help him.
But not all was discouraging. In the summer of 1905 or 1906 depending on whose memory one wishes to trust - the Shackletons were staying in a bungalow near the Forth Bridge when HMS Berwick anchored nearby. Several days later, on a Sunday afternoon, one of the officers, Lieutenant Jameson Adams, was preparing to go ashore to play golf. 'No you aren't,' his commanding officer told him, 'you're going to call on Shackleton. He called on the ship last Thursday.'
So, according to Adams, he and several of his fellow officers 'went and called on Shackleton at tea-time, and we stayed there till ten o'clock at night, talking about his expedition and his ambitions and so on, and as we were going over the side, I said to Shackleton, "If you go again, will you take me with you?"' Shackleton immediately agreed, and it must have given him great pleasure to find someone who wished to be more than a willing listener.
But talk alone could not satisfy him, and throughout 1906 Shackleton became progressively more restless and uninterested in his job at Parkhead. 'I could see he was getting a bit unsettled,' Macduff recalled. 'I came to the conclusion he wanted to get away. And I had a talk with him, and he said "Yes, I want to go on a further expedition soon. This time I want to command it myself."'
9
A SOUL WHIPPED ON BY THE WANDERFIRE
One of the remarkable contradictions of the massive territorial expansion of the British Empire in the late nineteenth century was how little the government, and therefore the tax-payers of Britain, actually spent on exploring, conquering and expanding into the white spaces on the map. Clever, visionary, occasionally reckless entrepreneurs such as Cecil Rhodes and George Goldie had shown how private military force, economic bullying and subsequent royal charters would allow the take-over of huge sections of Africa.
Although there were numerous other such examples of British exploration and expansionism being driven by industrialists or rich amateurs, gaining this kind of backing in the polar regions had proven difficult. Few businessmen could be convinced that wealth could be gained from the Antarctic, although both Borchgrevink and Shackleton used this argument (unsuccessfully) at times. Funding for polar exploration had traditionally been based - in both Britain and the United States - on motives more nationalistic or personal than economic.
Therefore, it was somewhat surprising that when Shackleton finally did obtain a backer for his long-desired Antarctic expedition it was the stern, no-nonsense captain of industry by whom he was already employed - William Beardmore.
The Antarctic had never been far from Shackleton's mind, but as 1906 grew old, his plan began to actively occupy his thinking. On 26 December, only three days after his daughter Cecily was born, he wrote to Mill, 'I see nothing of the old Discovery people at all. We are all scattered, and the fickle public are tired of the polar work at present. What would I not give to be out there again doing the job, and this time really on the road to the Pole!'
It was not long after, pushed into action by rumours of French and Belgian expeditions, that he approached Beardmore. Despite having become prosperous by being careful and hard working, Beardmore had a generous nature, as had been shown by his handsome treatment of Shackleton. Moreover, Shackleton had become close with Beardmore's wife Elspeth, who most probably lobbied on his behalf. Thus, despite Shackleton's previous assurances that he had given up the idea of leading an Antarctic expedition, the industrialist agreed to help.
Beardmore was not, however, so overwhelmed by Shackleton's c
harm that he was willing to donate a large sum, as Newnes had to Borchgrevink or Longstaff to Markham. His unwillingness was probably reinforced by Shackleton's casual way with money. Beardmore could not have helped but be aware that his employee had not even bothered to draw his salary regularly. 'He left the salary with us and forgot all about it for five months,' Macduff recalled later. 'Then it suddenly dawned upon him that he was due for some money.' Such tales of fiscal irresponsibility dot Shackleton's career, and they may be why Beardmore ultimately chose to guarantee a loan at Clydesdale Bank rather than to risk his own capital. Shackleton eventually signed a guarantee for £7,000, agreeing that:
the first profits of the expedition shall be given to you up to an amount which will release the guarantee and also that you are to be cleared of this guarantee in three years from this date. Also that the vessel I propose purchasing for the expedition is to be your property but that you are to lend me the same for the period of the expedition, and that the vessel is to be entirely under my control during that period.
By the standards of what some earlier explorers had received, it was not a huge sum, but it was enough for Shackleton to sweep into action. With a previous promise of £1,000 from his old champion Elizabeth Dawson-Lambton and, he thought, support via an investment with Douglas Steuart of the City firm Poore, Pettit and Steuart, consulting mining engineers, he could now publicly announce his intentions - as soon as he broke the news to his wife.
Perhaps the most difficult part of launching the expedition was telling Emily. Through most of his planning, he had kept her in the dark in order not to worry her. Now, with a baby only weeks old, he had to tell her that he would be leaving for one to two years. That part of his reason was in order to prove his worth to her and to create a fortune on which she could live comfortably did not make the deed any easier, nor her any less distressed.
'You can imagine that it was with mingled feelings that I sent the wire to you that the Expedition was settled,' he wrote to her.
Darling the main thought was sadness and I am afraid that when I got your wire so full of feeling and sweetness that I broke down. My own dear Heart you are a thousand times too good for me and I am feeling it very much now but it will only be one year and I shall come back with honour and with money and never never part from you again and we have nearly 10 months together now Sweeteyes; those words 'Best love' were the sweetest you have written to me ever; Darling I am full of distress mingled with great desire to do a great thing and you have risen like the real woman and real friend that you are and I am just longing to hold you and tell you that you will be a part of history, well can I dedicate my book to one who is the best of all.
Throughout their life together, Emily was always Shackleton's greatest support, and this time was no different. 'She wasn't feeble, she had tremendous character and strength,' Cecily stated years later. 'But then she subjected herself entirely to what she felt was my father's life of exploration. She was never the woman who wanted to raise a finger to make it difficult for him to go.'
So Emily agreed to remain behind and support his assault on the Pole, an effort that he guaranteed her would make them rich and happy, and that would be the last time he would ever leave. Certainly by now she understood his nature well enough to doubt such promises, but, she recalled later:
I never wittingly hampered his ardent spirit, or tried to chain it to the domestic life which meant so much to me. He used to say he went on the Discovery 'to get out of the ruck' for me! - it was dear of him to say it because I cannot flatter myself that it was only for me - it was his own spirit 'a soul whipped on by the wanderfire.'
Monday 11 February 1907 was a very special evening for the Royal Geographical Society and those interested in polar exploration. The headline event of a busy agenda was the lecture by Roald Amundsen about his remarkable completion of the Northwest Passage. After three centuries of efforts to navigate through the Canadian archipelago, he had done so in a tiny ship with only six companions. The same evening, the Society's Kosmos Dining Club was the venue of the official announcement of the plans for not one, but two, Antarctic expeditions. One of them was Henryk Arçtowski's Belgian expedition that had helped set off Shackleton's recent burst of energy.
The second project was Shackleton's. The previous Friday evening, Beardmore had finally given his consent to guarantee the loan, and Shackleton was wasting no time in warning off any competition from his own destination. In an announcement reported in a variety of newspapers the next day, Shackleton indicated that his party would leave that very year and would winter at the old hut on Ross Island. His ship would return to New Zealand to avoid being frozen in, and would pick them up the next summer. In the meanwhile, efforts would be made to reach both the geographical South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole, the wandering location where the south-seeking end of a dip needle (a bar magnet suspended freely on a horizontal axis) points vertically downward towards the Earth's centre. 'It is held that the southern sledge party of the Discovery would have reached a much higher altitude [sic] if they had been more adequately equipped for sledge work,' the newspapers stated.
In addition to dogs, Siberian ponies will be taken, as the surface of the land or ice . . . will be eminently suited for this mode of sledge travelling. But a new and novel feature is to be introduced . . . modern in method and, according to the opinion of many Polar explorers, absolutely feasible - the use of a motor-car.
Shackleton's speech set off a wave of publicity that must have pleased him immensely, but he none the less left London a touch mystified. Both J. Scott Keltie, the secretary of the RGS, and Sir George Goldie, who two years before had succeeded Markham as its president, had been lukewarm to his requests for support. This was not totally surprising from the unreadable Keltie, whose job it was to be positive to everyone without committing to anyone, but Shackleton must have thought his plans would appeal to Goldie, who had the heart of a buccaneer himself. Although now sixty years old, as a young man Goldie had matched his brilliant wit, logic, vision and powers of persuasion with equal parts of recklessness, debauchery and self-centred dissipation. Goldie - who had described himself as 'a human powder magazine' had once aimlessly disappeared for three years into the mysterious reaches of the Sahara before executing a volte-face and, with insightful observation, precise planning and resolute action, single-mindedly establishing himself and his Royal Niger Company as the economic and political power in the vast region that would become Nigeria. Yet, despite the assistance he had given Markham in the intrigue leading to the British National Antarctic Expedition, Goldie did not evince an equal interest in the Antarctic, and he saw less of a kindred spirit in Shackleton than vice versa.
Puzzled as he no doubt was, Shackleton could not take the time to dwell on the lack of enthusiasm. He needed help to pull together an expedition if it were to leave within a matter of months, and he turned first to old colleagues from Discovery. Immediately upon his return to Edinburgh, he wrote to Wilson, then serving as a field observer for the Board of Agriculture's Commission on the Investigation of Grouse Disease, offering him second-in-command. Wilson reluctantly refused, stating that 'I am in honour bound to carry this grouse work through . . . it would be unfair to the Committee to make them find a new man, and waste all that they have spent on me and my work.' He expressed confidence in Shackleton's chances of success, and acknowledged that 'it is an intense disappointment to have to refuse . . . I would dearly love to have a hand in the work, and eventually with you in the book, but there you are.'
Shackleton, equally disappointed, followed with a series of telegrams and letters indicating that Wilson's decision should be 'the country before the grouse' and that he would gladly have his backers write to Lord Lovat of the Commission in an effort to get Wilson released. Wilson, however, was unmoveable. 'I must refuse entirely on my own, knowing what is the right thing to do . . . please take this as final - & don't waste more money in long telegrams.'
At the same time, Shackleton purs
ued other of his former colleagues, including asking Barne to command the Magnetic Pole party, which he envisioned wintering separately along the Victoria Land coast. Barne's negative, but enlightening, response was not returned promptly, however, due to Shackleton's letter being delayed. In the meantime, Armitage, Skelton and Hodgson all indicated they could not participate. Thus it was not until Shackleton heard back from George Mulock, the former officer of Morning who had replaced him when he had been invalided home, that the attitudes of Keltie, Goldie and the members of Discovery began to become clear.
'I wish you all good luck & would like to be coming with you,' Mulock wrote on 19 February 1907, 'but I have volunteered to go with Scott.' This spurred Shackleton to buttonhole Keltie, who said, 'Oh! Mulock has let the cat out of the bag.' Keltie then explained that Scott was considering again going south, but that it was a secret and that the RGS was uncertain either of the timing and if financial considerations would allow him to go at all.
It must have been trying for Shackleton, as, with the unveiling of Scott's intentions, he faced not just a vague possibility of competition but a distinct threat. 'I certainly should have been much annoyed if that fellow Arçtowski had gone poaching down in our preserves,' Markham wrote to him, 'but. . . Foreigners never get much beyond the Antarctic Circle.' At the same time as dismissing Arçtowski (who did not, in fact, ever acquire the needed funding), Markham had thus hit on the two major points now facing Shackleton: a serious competitor for the Pole and an issue of priority regarding domain.
Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition Page 14