Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition

by Beau Riffenburgh

  The situation was, however, unresolvable. Normally Shackleton was able by force of personality to convince or overwhelm those with whom he disagreed. But he could not persuade England, nor could he remove him until they reached a port of call. Therefore, he asked England to stand down from command on the grounds that he was ill.

  England refused. In a letter to his fiancee, he acknowledged the strain and confided that his anxiety was increasing. And well it should have: the ship was proving difficult to handle as, due to being hurriedly unloaded, it was becoming progressively more unbalanced. England clearly found the burden of commanding the unwieldy vessel home an onerous one, particularly as, should he not arrive safely, no one would know where the expedition had landed. Never the less, Nimrod was his command, and he felt that he was successfully carrying out his duties. The test of wills would continue.

  For the time being, however, some understanding must have been reached, because the work of discharging the ship continued. In fact, Nimrod now spent three days within reach of the shore, despite having to be moved from one landing point to another due to the ice breaking up. To speed up the operation, the ponies were brought on to the ice to haul the loads, and the ship's crew joined the efforts of the land party. As Alf Cheetham, the third officer and bosun, wrote of the work:

  all hands called at 5.30 a.m. and starting sledging the store while part of the men were putting it on the ice we had to rush the work along on account of the ice breaking up and there was very Large Cracks dangerous for the ponies the ship had to keep shifting as she was sometime in Great Danger of being crushed with Large ice Berg we worked on till 10.30 p.m. and landed 30 ton of store by hand beside sledging it a great Distance.

  At midday on 10 February the moving ice forced England to take Nimrod farther into the small bay south of the winter quarters. Some 350 yards along the shore were cliffs towering fifty feet over a narrow snow slope. This became a new landing area, the stores being slowly hauled up by a boom and tackle at the top of what was named Derrick Point. This site was not suitable for hauling up the coal needed for heating and cooking, however, so it was taken still farther along the coast to a cove with a gentle slope, called Back Door Bay. Here several tons of coal were left on the ice near the shore.

  The ponies had expedited the off-loading of the ship, but continuing to use them on the ice almost proved disastrous the next day. Cheetham recorded that:

  At 8 a.m. the Ponies was brought to the ship and the sledges loaded with Coal the first two sledges . . . were waiting for there Load when the Whole of the ice Between the ship and the shore parted and left Large Gaps so that neither the Ponies or ourself Could get ashore here we were in a strange predicament . . . But on turning back Chinaman refused to cross over a Crack and began Bucking & rearing till he Became unmanageable and got into the water Between the ice floes and was in great Danger of being Crushed to Death here a great struggle began between man and beast which ended in 4 men actually Lifting the Horse Bodily out of the water the next then was to get them on shore, so the ship Head was put up against the ice her Engine started Full speed and the ice pushed in the Bay again and after two hours pushing the Ponies got safely on shore Chinaman none the worse a Bottle of Brandy was poured down his throat to prevent him from catching Cold.

  This movement of the sea ice forced England to take the ship to a safer location and ended three days of furious discharging. It did not end the work, however. A widening crack threatened the safety of the stores that had been unloaded and left on the fast ice near Derrick Point and Back Door Bay, so Shackleton signalled that all hands who could possibly be spared should immediately be sent ashore. The men work ing on the hut were also transferred to the ice, and virtually the entire ship's complement laboured until after midnight moving the stores to safety. 'Every man jack worked like a bally nigger,' Harbord wrote through his exhaustion early the next morning, 'but he got more than a nigger's praise from Shackleton, who was delighted to see everybody come right up to scratch in such an emergency.'

  It was just as well that Shackleton had formed his emergency party. That night most of the remaining sea ice broke out. The next day heavy winds prevented Nimrod from coming close to shore, although the work went on as, according to Davis, 'with twenty-four hours of daylight to each day, men worked until they were completely exhausted . . . this period of our lives became one continuous working day, a veritable day without end, and thirty-six hours at a stretch was almost a normal shift.'

  When the winds continued on 13 February, Shackleton requested England to land supplies at Glacier Tongue, a long, floating spit of ice extending far into McMurdo Sound approximately half way between Cape Royds and Cape Armitage. Such a depot could be of assistance to the sledging parties at a later point. By the time Nimrod returned a day later than expected, however, the shore party was once again fed up, and it took intervention by David to prevent a quarrel.

  A debate now occurred between the captain and Shackleton over the remaining coal. They finally agreed that England would keep ninety-two tons, and that the rest would be landed for the shore party, although this would be far less than what Shackleton had counted on. But although the sea ice had broken away from the shore, it had not left the vicinity altogether, and England became more cautious than ever. Refusing to go within a mile of the landing area, he condemned the men transporting the coal to agonisingly difficult labour. A party consisting of David, Mawson, Cotton, Armytage and Michell rowed and poled back and forth for more than twelve hours straight.

  'First about 20 strong canvas bags, with eyes or loops of ropes at the top corners, would be let down into the boat (about 24 bags go to the ton),' David wrote.

  we would pull for about half a mile across a nearly ice free sea; then we would reach the belt of dense floe ice . . . The heaving of the sea scrunched the floe-ice together every now and then, so that Davis had to choose, and choose quickly, from moment to moment down which opening to force our boat . . . the little lanes, or rather paths, of water were so narrow that they were barely wide enough for the boat itself; indeed, we frequently had to force the floes apart in order to make room for the boat, so that the blades of the oars had nothing on which to catch but the soft snow or an occasional lump of ice frozen down on to the top of the ice floe . . . After much meandering and skilful steering, but not without a few slight scrunches, Davis piloted us at last safely to the landing place.

  This was the other point at which a confrontation between Shackleton and England might have involved the telegraph to the engine room. Something certainly seems to have occurred. 'Shacks had a bit of a dust up with England, so its said,' Brocklehurst wrote. 'The ship came nearer into the bay but turned out again. She keeps a long way out, four loads were humped in four hours.'

  Despite Shackleton's exhortations to bring the ship closer in, the following days were mind-numbingly difficult, as the party worked beyond exhaustion rowing the coal to the shore and lugging it up the slopes. When their human limitations forced them temporarily to stop, David observed that: 'Byron's description of the host of Sennacherib after the Angel of Death had breathed in the face of the Assyrian foe, as he passed, about fitted them . . . They had all fallen asleep, dead to the world, in all sorts of grotesque attitudes.'

  This labour, more closely resembling that of a Stalinist Gulag than of free men, was interrupted on 18 February when a howling southeaster blew in at a hundred miles an hour. England stood out, but this was no ordinary storm: for the next two days Nimrod steamed full ahead into it, yet was steadily blown in the opposite direction, finally reaching a point fifty miles north of Cape Royds. Worse than the frighteningly heavy seas and the intense winds was the drop in temperature, from 17° to - 16°.

  Hour after hour the gale shrieked at those both on land and aboard ship, and members of each party wondered if they would ever see the others again. The base was covered with water that immediately froze into rock-hard ice, and the decks of the ship were swamped. Davis and Harbord were held ov
er the rails so that they could chop away planks of the bulwarks with axes in order to free the ship of the freezing water collecting aboard. Meanwhile, the cliffs far behind the camp were coloured white with frozen spray, and the men supposedly safe in the new hut were aghast to find that three feet from the stove the temperature registered thirteen degrees of frost.

  After four days the blizzard finally blew itself out, and on 22 February Shackleton and the other members of the shore party who had been caught aboard ship returned to find the hut still standing but tons of supplies covered under feet of ice. Now the most urgent requirement was landing the remainder of the coal, and again they worked all day, increasing the shore party's load to eighteen tons, enough, with economies, to make it through the winter. They had, according to Dunlop,

  lost about eight days and burned a lot of coal unnecessarily. However, poor England is not to blame, as his health went bung, but its pretty hard luck that four of the best years of our leader's life should be messed up by the lack of nerve, and I think cussedness, of an individual who should have been his right-hand man.

  Shackleton agreed with all Dunlop wrote, except that England was not to blame. He now wanted to be free of the man who had become his nemesis, so, as the shore party had enough coal - just - he ignored the sledges and other supplies still aboard Nimrod and told Davis that the ship could head north. Ironically, the weather was perfect, the water was almost calm, and the filthy, coal-dust-covered rowers reached their destination in what seemed a flash. England did not need to be told twice by Davis, and within minutes the normally cautious captain had the ship steaming north as the lowering sun bathed the mountains and the sound in golden rays.

  'Amidst cheers from ship and shore we sailed towards the known world and civilization,' wrote Mackintosh, still wishing he were remaining with those cut off from all other humanity. 'The last we saw of the shore-party was one solitary figure silhouetted against the sky, gazing after the ship with thoughts mingled with pain, no doubt.'

  Young Ernest Shackleton and his siblings. This picture was taken around 1894, when Ernest was about 20. Standing, from left. Clara (1881-1958), Ernest (1874-1922), and Eleanor (1879-1960). Seated,/rom left: Kathleen (1884-1961), Ethel (1878-1935), Frank (1876-1941), Amy (1875-1953), Alice (1872-1938), Gladys (1887-1962), and Helen (1882-1962).

  Emily Dorman a number of years before she married Shackleton. Emily proved a tower of strength for Shackleton and supported him emotionally throughout all his adventures.

  Shackleton prior to the British Antarctic Expedition. His good looks combined with his breezy, naturally easy manner would make him i favourite with audiences around the world.

  The 'three polar knights' at the start of the southern journey on Scott's first expedition, 2 November 1902. Shackleton (left) and Robert Falcon Scott (centre) had high hopes of attaining the South Pole, but Edward Wilson (right) was much less confident about attaining that level of success.

  Sir Clements Markham was the 'father' of the British National Antarctic Expedition on Discovery, and the man who selected Scott to lead that expedition. Markham was one of the most irascible, headstrong men of his time, and was a master of manipulation and political wrangling.

  On their way to New Zealand at the beginning of the British Antarctic Expedition, eight members of the shore party were crushed into one cabin on Runic, a single-class emigrant ship of the White Star Line. Here they developed a camaraderie only possible amongst those obliged to live in close proximity to others. Seven of them posed for this picture aboard ship; standing, from left: Raymond Priestley, Eric Marshall, Bernard Day, and George Marston. Seated, from left: Frank Wild, Ernest Joyce, and William Roberts. Missing from the picture was Jameson Adams.

  Once the Manchurian ponies arrived at Quail Island, the quarantine station off Port Lyttelton, they had to be broken in to handling and hauling sledges. This procedure was carried out under the guidance of Alistair Mackay, one of the two members of the shore party to sail all the way to New Zealand on Nimrod.

  When Nimrod departed from New Zealand, more than fifty thousand well-wishers descended on Lyttelton Harbour to say farewell. So many crowded on the local excursion steamers — and then rushed to one side as Nimrod sailed past — that the boats listed dangerously far over into the water.

  In the heavy seas and stormy conditions that plagued the expedition after the departure from New Zealand, all that the men on Nimrod could see was the funnel and tops of the masts of Koonya, which was towing them south. The wave shown about to break over Nimrod did considerable damage to the little ship.

  Sir Philip Brocklehurst, the youngest member of the British Antarctic Expedition. By contributing to expedition funds in order to be selected as a member of the shore party, he set a precedent later followed by Captain L.E.G. Oates and Apsley CherryGarrard on Scott's last expedition.

  Three key members of the expedition aboard Nimrod. From left: second officer Æneas Mackintosh, expedition second-in-command and meteorologist Jameson Adams, and Bertram Armytage, who was in charge of the ponies. Armytage committed suicide a year after the expedition returned to civilisation; Mackintosh died while participating in Shackleton's next expedition.

  Members of the expedition taking soundings near a grounded iceberg to see if it was safe for Nimrod to anchor in that area. Shackleton himself carried out the task of sounding when examining the approaches to Cape Royds.

  Nimrod held up in the ice. When the ice was heavy, neither steam nor wind power allowed the tiny ship to force her way through. But Shackleton's party tended to be relatively lucky with the ice in the McMurdo Sound region — something that would prove not to be the case in the Weddell Sea on his next expedition.

  The shore party unloading stores from a boat at the first landing place after the ice-foot had broken away. Each container — some 2,500 of them made of Venesta board — had to be hauled up individually.

  At Cape Royds before the completion of the hut. From left. James Murray, George Marston, Frank Wild, Sir Philip Brocklehurst, Harry Dunlop, and Ernest Joyce.

  Nimrod had to steam away to a safe distance when the ice began to break up around Cape Royds. The large pieces of ice led to Captain England keeping the ship much farther from shore than some of the shore party or crew considered necessary.

  'The Boss' at Cape Royds. Several of his colleagues later said that Shackleton's pose in this photo — with hands (or fists) on hips — was the most characteristic of the expedition leader.

  The conquest of Mount Erebus was the first major triumph for the members of the British Antarctic Expedition. Shown at the summit of the higher, active crater are Alistair Mackay, Eric Marshall, Jameson Adams and T W Edgeworth David. Steam can be seen rising on the left.

  Improving equipment and clothing was one of the most important tasks during the long winter at Cape Royds. Here Frank Wild works on the runners of a sledge, while other members of the shore party look on.

  George 'Putty' Marston, the expedition artist and unofficial clown. Marston shared his cubicle in the hut — known as 'the Gables' — with Bernard Day. He was one of Shackleton's personal favourites, and later accompanied 'the Boss' on Endurance during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

  The hut at Cape Royds. Some of the supplies were scattered around the vicinity of the hut as insurance against fire. Others were never released from the ice that gripped them after the terrible storm that began on 18 February 1908.

  Few aspects of the British Antarctic Expedition generated more interest in advance than the use of the Arrol-Johnston motor-car, which had been donated by William Beardmore. Bernard Day came along as the electrician and motor expert, but none of his hammerings and tunings were able to make the motor-car run efficiently on a snow-covered surface. Although it was useful for travelling on smooth sea ice, it was of no value on the snowy, uneven terrain of the Great Ice Barrier.

  The start of the southern journey at the ice edge south of Hut Point. The four ponies —from left, Socks, Grisi, Quan,
and Chinaman — each pulled a sledge, and the support party man-hauled the other.

  The Christmas camp in the middle of the Plateau, where the men had a special dinner and then decided to further reduce their rations in order to be able to reach the South Pole. From left: Adams, Marshall, and Wild.

  The farthest south, at 88°23'S, 162°E on 9 January 1909. Marshall took the picture of (from left) Adams, Wild, and Shackleton.

  The Lower Glacier Depot, which marked the end of the longest, hardest march the members of the Southern Party had to make. On 27 January, Marshall left his exhausted companions and went ahead to collect food that he could bring back to them. The stores had been buried in the snow near the rock in the foreground, and Marshall had to dig them out.

  'There burst upon our vision,' wrote Shackleton after ascending Mount Hope, 'an open road to the South.' It was breathtaking in its vastness and magnificence, and what they would call the Great Glacier would lead the Southern Party to the Plateau. Here is what Shackleton saw, as he looked south from Mount Hope, with the Glacier running off to the left of the photograph. To the right of the centre, under the rock casting the long shadow, is where they would establish the Lower Glacier Depot.