by Chris Turney
Magnetic observations were a focus of investigation. Although some had been taken on Borchgrevink’s expedition, the location of the South Magnetic Pole remained uncertain, making it difficult to verify calculations of the Earth’s magnetic field. To try to avoid the problems Ross had complained of more than half a century before, a specially designed wooden ship capable of making precise magnetic measurements was made. Called the Discovery, this vessel was Britain’s first purpose-built craft for scientific work since Halley’s Paramore. Lieutenant Albert Armitage, the expedition’s deputy and in charge of the observations at sea, complained about the storage of tinned provisions immediately below the instruments, alongside ‘unconsidered trifles such as a parrot-cage, a sporting-gun, and various assortments of enamelled ironware’, forcing the vessel to be swung just as Ross had done with his ship to ensure accurate readings. But at least it was designed like a Scottish whaling vessel, providing a heavily reinforced oak hull that made short work of the Ross Sea ice.
By the time the Discovery left Britain, in 1901, £92,000 had been raised, the largest sum yet collected for a polar expedition. Establishing a base on the McMurdo Sound side of Ross Island, Scott’s team spent the next two years exploring the region. Even today, though, the expedition’s success is fiercely debated.
Undoubtedly, there were some tangible results. Exploration by the Discovery gave an eastern limit to Ross’s Great Ice Barrier with the finding of ‘rock patches’, which were christened King Edward VII Land. On the barrier itself, the expedition located the bay Ross had described as full of whales and flew a hydrogen balloon above it, taking the first aerial photograph of this new continent over what became known as Balloon Bight. Magnetic measurements were made both on shore and at sea, providing a revised estimate of the location of the South Magnetic Pole, which implied it had moved in an easterly direction since Ross’s 1841 visit. A party made the first successful ascent of the mountains of Victoria Land and reached a plateau of ice, some three thousand metres high, which suggested that both the geographic and magnetic poles lay at a considerable altitude. Continuous weather observations, painstakingly taken several times each day, showed the climate was like nowhere else on Earth, with temperatures plummeting at the end of summer to around -30° Celsius and staying there until the start of the following summer. On the other side of Ross Island, at a spot called Cape Crozier, the first colony of emperor penguins was discovered, and to much amazement were found to have well-developed chicks in early summer, indicating they had hatched during the harsh winter. A unique land was finally being revealed to the rest of the world.
Much like the Belgian effort, though, the British had their share of controversy. The expedition suffered for a time from scurvy. And while attempting to reach the South Geographic Pole, Scott, the assistant surgeon Dr Edward Wilson and third lieutenant Ernest Shackleton only reached a disappointing furthest south of 82°11’S, among much later-reported acrimony. Most importantly for the British authorities, the Discovery was locked in sea ice for two years, rather than the publicly declared plan of one. There was a justifiable fear of escalating costs. By the end of the second season the authorities’ patience snapped and they sent two vessels south to recover the men, with orders to abandon the Discovery if it could not be released. At the last moment the expedition ship escaped its icy grip, helped by the judicious application of explosives.
And yet, Terra Australis Incognita had been shown to be real and Captain Cook’s earlier pessimism unfounded. The National Antarctic Expedition returned home to much fanfare and, notwithstanding some mutterings of discontent, Scott was proclaimed a hero. But there was no rush of expeditions south to build on the British work. To understand why, we have to turn our attention to a member of Scott’s team: one of the most inspirational explorers of all time, Ernest Shackleton.
Hypothesised former land bridges from A. E. Ortmann’s Tertiary Invertebrates (1902).
CHAPTER 2
AN AUDACIOUS PLAN
Ernest Shackleton and the British Antarctic Expedition, 1907–1909
Yes, they’re wanting me, they’re haunting me, the awful lonely places; They’re whining and they’re whimpering as if each had a soul; They’re calling from the wilderness, the vast and God-like spaces, The stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole.
ROBERT W. SERVICE (1874–1958)
In January 1904 a prematurely old-looking middle-aged professor of geology stood up in a packed hall in the New Zealand city of Dunedin and gave one of the most controversial but least reported lectures in the region’s history. The Welsh-born Edgeworth David, known affectionately as the Prof, was president of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. David believed science was pitted against a significant foe, one that threatened the antipodean colonies’ ability to contribute to the British Empire. To the assembled he calmly proclaimed: ‘It should, I think, be one of the aims of this Association to discover and destroy the microbe of sporting mania.’
Not only was sport directing effort away from the advancement of scientific knowledge, he argued—it was also threatening the quality of education. ‘When we worship in the cricket or football fields the wood and the leather,’ he said, ‘we must remember that they are but idols, and must not let them occupy the chief shrine in our hearts.’ Science was suffering. Antarctic exploration promised some answers, but ‘geography’, he declared, ‘like charity, should begin at home: the real scientific geography of the interior of Australia is at present almost unknown’. Shortly afterwards, a flamboyant Anglo-Irishman changed the Prof’s mind about the value of scientific work in the south.
The early Antarctic incursions of de Gerlache, Borchgrevink and Scott had set the scene for the greatest schoolboy hero of them all, the most charismatic of Antarctic leaders, Ernest Shackleton. Born in 1874 in County Kildare, Shackleton moved with his family to London when he was ten years old. Though keen for Ernest to pursue a career at sea, the family could not afford the price of a commission in the Royal Navy. Instead, Shackleton signed up for the mercantile navy and eventually joined the Union-Castle Line operating between Southampton and Cape Town, ferrying passengers, mail and, later, troops for the Boer War. During one of the crossings he met a young army officer whose father, Llewellyn Longstaff, was one of the primary backers of Scott’s Discovery expedition. With the bold confidence and good fortune that would define his career, Shackleton introduced himself to Longstaff senior when next he was in London. The old man was impressed and insisted Scott take the young officer south in 1901.
Little love was lost between Shackleton and Scott: both were strong characters with opposing leadership styles. Nevertheless, they apparently got on reasonably well at first. So much so that when Scott made his attempt on the South Geographic Pole, in 1903, he chose Shackleton along with Edward Wilson to accompany him. It is not clear what happened on this trip but Scott’s second-in-command, Albert Armitage, wrote some years later that ‘Wilson and Shackleton were packing their sledges after breakfast one morning. Suddenly they heard Scott shout to them: “Come here you BFs.” They went to him and Wilson quietly said: “Were you speaking to me?” “No Bill,” said Scott. “Then it must have been me,” said Shackleton. He received no answer. He then said: “Right, you are the worst BF of the lot, and every time you dare to speak to me like that you will get it back.” Before Shackleton left he told me he meant to return to prove to Scott that he—Shackleton—was a better man than Scott.’
Opinions differ about whether Armitage was telling the truth, so many years after the event and when all the protagonists were dead. But regardless of what was said during the aborted attempt on the South Geographic Pole, Shackleton fell gravely ill and Scott had the young officer invalided home before the end of the expedition. As the relief vessel Morning departed a young sub-lieutenant, Edward ‘Teddy’ Evans, wrote: ‘We watched till Scott’s men vanished out of sight, when poor Shackleton…broke down altogether and wept.’
Years later Shackle
ton was asked by a journalist why he was drawn back to the Antarctic when he might have resumed work on a shipping line. ‘Men go out into the void spaces of the world for various reasons,’ he responded. ‘Some are actuated simply by a love of adventure, some have the keen thirst for scientific knowledge, and others again are drawn away from the trodden paths by the “lure of little voices,” the mysterious fascination of the unknown. I think that in my case it was a combination of these factors that determined me to try my fortune once again in the frozen south.’
On Shackleton’s return to Britain, in 1903, he was feted as a polar hero. At first he seemed content to try different jobs and bask in the glory of his exploits on the ice. He tried to raise expeditionary funds in 1905 but it came to naught, and there the matter seemed to rest. Then Shackleton heard on the Royal Geographical Society grapevine of a future Antarctic expedition. Henryk Arctowski, from Belgium, was proposing to use Ross Island as a base for an attempt on the South Geographical Pole.
This news seems to have spurred Shackleton into action. By February 1907 he had managed to secure support from his then employer, the Scottish industrialist William Beardmore, whose wife appears to have been having an affair with Shackleton at the time. The story has it that, shortly after, Shackleton ran into Arctowski, who told him he intended to announce the Belgian project at the RGS dinner that evening—the venue of choice for aspiring Livingstones to first propose their expeditions. Shackleton managed to get up before Arctowski at the dinner and announce his own plans, much to the Belgian’s chagrin. Shackleton was an incredible opportunist, but the strategy worked.
The British announcement was reported in newspapers and came as a bombshell to Scott, who was planning a return to the south himself. If this wasn’t enough, the papers suggested Shackleton intended to use the Discovery’s old Ross Island base. Since Scott’s return, relations between the two men appear to have been largely cordial, even after the 1905 publication of a popular book on the Discovery expedition that laid bare Shackleton’s illness during their failed attempt on the South Geographic Pole. Scott, though, was horrified at the newspaper reports and sent several letters to Shackleton the next day. ‘I needn’t tell you that I don’t wish to haunt you and your plans but in one way I feel I have a sort of right to my own field of work in the same way as Peary claimed Smith’s Sound and many African travellers their particular locality…PS I feel sure with a little discussion we can work in accord rather than in opposition,’ he wrote—and, later that day: ‘Well goodbye for the present. The subject is very close to my heart so please write openly and freely.’
Scott asked Edward Wilson, as a mutual friend, to negotiate different areas of operation in Antarctica. His preference was for Ross Island, with Shackleton to base himself further east along the Great Ice Barrier—perhaps King Edward VII Land, first spotted from the deck of the Discovery just a few years earlier. In many respects it was an outrageous proposition: Shackleton was well within his rights to work anywhere he pleased, just as Henryk Arctowski was. Shocked, and apparently unaware of his former leader’s plans, Shackleton soon found Wilson siding with Scott. A few days later Shackleton telegrammed his old leader at Gibraltar: ‘Will meet your wishes regarding base please keep absolutely private at present as certain supporters must be brought round to the new position.’
By March 1907 Shackleton had sufficiently developed his plans to present them to the RGS. He would set about a three-pronged attack on the new continent. While assiduously avoiding naming his base, he stated his intention to send one team south, to strike for the geographic pole; one east, walking across the barrier to King Edward VII Land; and a final team west, for the magnetic pole. The geographic pole was the main target—but ‘I do not intend to sacrifice the scientific utility of the expedition to a mere record-breaking journey,’ Shackleton wrote. ‘I shall in no way neglect to continue the biological, meteorological, geological, and magnetic work of the Discovery.’ He intended to take scientific observations across all the natural sciences and claim both poles in one fell swoop for the British Empire: an audacious plan.
Press coverage of the funding drive for Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition reached across the Empire and beyond. Shackleton somehow managed to secure an old wooden sealer, the Nimrod; refit it, secure sponsorship, purchase supplies and equipment; and depart for the voyage south—all in less than six months. But he was in trouble. The expedition was massively in debt, and the scientific team was largely a token force. To give themselves the best possible chance, the British Antarctic Expedition dispensed with irksome committees and had no intention of allowing the Nimrod to be frozen in the ice. This ‘would render the use of a relief ship unnecessary, as the same vessel could come south again the following summer and take us off’. It would save Shackleton money he did not have.
After reading the newspaper announcements, Edgeworth David wrote to Shackleton requesting to join the Nimrod and visit Antarctica on the first leg of the expedition, returning with the vessel at the end of the summer, before the onset of winter darkness. In Antarctica, the new continent, and in Shackleton, the dynamic explorer, David saw a chance for science to compete with sport. Shackleton was delighted, and in typical style wrote back immediately, welcoming David and offering him a berth. David gave the expedition much-needed scientific credibility: until then it had only a geology undergraduate, Raymond Priestley, and a respected, self-taught biologist, James Murray.
Privately, Shackleton was not confident he could get to the South Geographic Pole, writing to Reginald Skelton, a friend from the Discovery expedition: ‘now with the change of base, to King Edward VII’s Land, the future prospects of getting South are somewhat hypothetical.’ The finances were not in nearly as good shape as had been made out, and public aims had to be presented bullishly if Shackleton was to secure enough money. When first he approached the RGS, in early 1907, Shackleton claimed he had pledges of £30,000—but this was far from the truth. In fact, shortage of money would be a theme for all of Shackleton’s voyages.
Much like other explorers before him, though, Shackleton recognised the lucrative possibilities of offering rich benefactors prospective mineral wealth and a stab at immortality—all they had to do was open their purses. New landmarks would be named after those who had wisely invested in his expedition. Industrialists and newspaper barons could have their names engraved on the world, alongside those of monarchs.
A friend later remarked of Shackleton that he was ‘unique in his love of talking big and his ability to do big things. The two qualities rarely go together.’ The wealthy responded. William Beardmore confirmed an earlier offer of £7000, and others soon followed: not so much that the expedition was awash with money, but enough for Shackleton to launch a credible assault on Antarctica.
En route, Shackleton’s request in Australia for expedition funding found willing listeners. In the previous two decades there had been calls to scientifically explore the Antarctic region that lay to the immediate south of Australia. Early on the Victorian state government was keen, and offered to jointly fund a British expedition. In Britain the learned societies were strongly supportive. But the British Treasury was wary of the exercise, and quashed the proposal.
Victoria cast around for another partner. By 1889 the state had an offer from Baron Adolf Nordenskjöld, who offered to lead an Australian–Swedish expedition south. Nordenskjöld was something of a catch for the Australians. In 1879 he had become the first to find a route through the Arctic sea ice and bergs to the Pacific—not along the Canadian coast favoured by Franklin and others, but instead via the lesser known Northeast Passage, tracking northern Scandinavia and the Siberian seaboard.
Despite the controversy surrounding its handling of the Burke and Wills expedition, the Royal Society of Victoria was keen to continue expeditionary work and, with Nordenskjöld’s offer in hand, established an Antarctic Committee. Sister societies across the pre-Federation colonies were enthusiastically supportive and there seemed a real
prospect of an Australian expedition departing in 1890. All that was needed was £5000 to match the money being put up by the Swedes. Pledges came from the different societies, and appeals were made to the colonial governments and public. In 1889 the Tasmanian deputy surveyor-general, Chas Sprent, published an impassioned plea for Australia to take a lead in exploration, arguing that ‘there is more lasting honour to be gained than in fighting the battles of the Old Country against half-armed savages,’ and concluding, ‘The scientific world is anxious to see a renewal of Antarctic exploration, and nothing would be more gratifying to them, nothing will be more calculated to give the world an earnest [impression] of our desire to help, than for Australia to take up this work.’ But by late 1890 the many committees involved had sucked the life out of the enterprise, and the planned expedition fizzled out.
In Australia, Shackleton realised that David was well connected and capable of appealing to the same sentiments that had so nearly ensured an Australian expedition not twenty years earlier. The academic was thrust into the funding spotlight; those on the team, Shackleton reasoned, could use their own contacts. On 10 December 1907 David wrote to the prime minister of Australia, Alfred Deakin, outlining why the recently federated country needed to help finance Shackleton’s expedition.
David changed his tune from his 1904 lecture, and waxed lyrical to Deakin on the value of Antarctic research, listing a string of points, including the new continent being Australia’s nearest neighbour, its probable control on weather conditions across the country, the changing magnetic conditions that govern navigation in southern seas and the promise of mineral resources. Reaching the South Geographic Pole was point five on the list. Given David’s scientific reputation and his having vouched for Shackleton, the federal government awarded £5000. Last-minute appeals in New Zealand secured a further £1000. Shackleton had no British government support, but he had his expedition.