South (2 page)

Shackleton did not write
South
on his own. He dictated it to a ghost writer, Edward Saunders, a New Zealand journalist who had worked with him on his previous book,
The Heart of the Antarctic.
This was not unusual practice; many polar explorers had a horror of the dull mechanics involved in writing and it had been common since the 1850s for them to leave the job to a professional. Frequently this produced a book that sacrificed accuracy for style. In this instance, however, Saunders and Shackleton made a good team: Saunders admired Shackleton’s “command of vivid, forceful English”; Shackleton, meanwhile, respected Saunders’s literary abilities—“I cannot speak too highly of him in every way.” Shackleton’s confidant and adviser, Leonard Tripp, gave an insight into the collaborative process. “I shall never forget the occasion,” he wrote. “Shackleton walked up and down the room, smoking a cigarette, and I was absolutely amazed at his language. He very seldom hesitated, but every now and then he would tell Saunders . . . he had not got the right word.” For Shackleton it was an emotionally draining experience. On his return he had volunteered immediately for active service in the war but Tripp had insisted that he dictate the most vital parts before he left. Everything, therefore, was unpleasantly fresh in his memory. “I watched him,” wrote Tripp, “and his whole face seemed to swell—you know what a big face he had, and you could see the man was suffering. After about half-an-hour he turned to me, and with tears in his eyes he said, ‘Tripp, you don’t know what I’ve been through, and I am going through it all again, and I can’t do it.’” Every now and then he would walk out of the room as if he intended to quit, only to continue five minutes later as if nothing had happened.

In a genre packed with tales of derring-do, there are few to match that of Shackleton’s boat journey from Elephant Island and his subsequent traverse of South Georgia. When
South
was published towards the end of 1919 it sold well—or, at least, better than attendance at the Philharmonic Hall might have suggested. Shackleton received his due share of praise from the critics; and fellow explorers came out in his support, echoing the sentiments already expressed by Roald Amundsen in 1917. “Do not let it be said that Shackleton has failed,” Amundsen had written. “No man fails who sets an example of high courage, of unbroken resolution, of unshrinking endurance.” To those with experience of polar travel it did not matter that Shackleton had failed in his intended quest; if he had not traversed Antarctica he had still made a journey that few others could have brought to such a successful conclusion. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who had been a member of Scott’s expedition, wrote glowingly of his leadership qualities. “I know why it is that every man who has served under Shackleton swears by him. I believe Shackleton has never lost a man: he must have had some doubts as to whether he would save one then. But he did, he saved every one of them.”

That explorers felt it necessary to show their support, however, was merely a confirmation of what Shackleton feared. In his own eyes and in those of many others, he had failed—failed bravely, but failed nonetheless. Perversely, he had also failed to fail in the proper manner, the unspoken comparison being between himself and Scott, the myth of whose martyrdom was burgeoning rapidly. Moreover, Shackleton failed even to make money from his story. Normally, explorers could expect to raise a tidy sum from lectures, book sales, and merchandising: it was not uncommon for toys, souvenirs, and clothes to be marketed under the hero’s imprimatur (the Fridtjof Nansen fly button being perhaps the most surprising example, followed closely by the New Brunswick Hosiery Co.’s advertisement for “The Underclothes Peary Wore to the Pole”). But Shackleton refused on principle to accept payment for lectures made during the war; he earned not a penny from
South,
having assigned its copyright to his creditors; nor was there a great rush to have his name attached to any product. He was no stranger to the money-spinning potential of exploration: as he explained to Vilhajmur Stefansson, the rewards could be great, “particularly when you come home from an expedition with a big hurrah.” The trouble was, this time there was no big hurrah. Nor would there be one in the future.

Desperate for acclaim, Shackleton tried and failed to launch an Arctic expedition. Then, in 1921, he returned to the south aboard the
Quest,
ostensibly to circumnavigate Antarctica. In reality, he had embarked on a funeral voyage. Before his departure he had written to a friend, “We . . . go into the ice into the life that is mine and I do pray that we will make good.” But the crew noted that he lacked his usual fire, seemed uncertain and uninterested. On reaching South Georgia he admitted that he did not know what to do next. Weakened by years of Antarctic service, Shackleton’s heart finally gave out on 5 January 1922. He was buried at the whaling station of Grytviken on South Georgia Island.

Now, of course, the hurrahs are clamorous. By the time of this writing Shackleton has become a demigod. At least two films are being made of his journey. An exhibition at London’s National Maritime Museum has drawn such record crowds that it is being extended for an indefinite period. Books emerge at terrifying speed covering every aspect of the man, his methods, his companions, and his expedition. There is even one about the ship’s cat, “Mrs. Chippy.” Shackleton has become a corporate icon. A multinational investment bank has appropriated him as role model, encouraging its myrmidons to emulate his stamina and leadership in their battle against the free-market tempests; their wives, meanwhile, are lectured on the vicissitudes they must endure as consorts to warriors. (In Emily Shackleton’s case these included her husband’s absence and his adultery.) The definitive collection of Frank Hurley’s photographs has been published by the Royal Geographical Society and the Scott Polar Research Institute. No stone of Shackletonia has been left unturned. He has become the man of the moment. But why? Little new has come to light in recent years. Where were the hurrahs when Roland Huntford published his prize-winning biography in 1985? Are we victims of hype, or are we giving a brave explorer the recognition he deserves?

Shackleton was, without doubt, an exceptional leader and a born survivor. On reading
South,
Apsley Cherry-Garrard wrote that “Through it all, one seems to see Shackleton sticking out his jaw and saying to himself that he is not going to be beaten by any conditions which were ever created.” Which was perfectly true. But when one examines
South
in a less partial light, his failings are exposed. Theoretically it was possible to traverse Antarctica in the manner he suggested. But he was running a frightful risk. The Weddell Sea was notoriously hostile and he had no clear expectation of reaching land. He had no idea if the
Aurora
team, on the other side of the continent, had been able to lay the depots on which his survival depended. His plan was posited on luck and failed to take account of delays caused by adverse weather and disease. The
Aurora
side of the expedition did, in fact, manage to lay the required depots but it did so at awful cost—most of the sledgers contracted scurvy, one man died of it, and their return to base camp was little short of a miracle, despite access to supplies laid down by previous expeditions. Their problem was a shortage of fresh meat, a proven anti-scorbutic. Shackleton would have faced the same problem on a journey of greater length, more than half of which was over unfamiliar terrain. Reading the accounts of the
Aurora
survivors—which are similar to those of Britain’s disastrous, scurvy-ridden expedition to the Arctic in 1875-76, and not very different from those of Scott’s—one cannot but wonder what on earth Shackleton thought he was doing.

None of this should detract from what he eventually did. If, however, one takes a successful expedition to be one that achieves its objectives and returns without fatality, then the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition was not a success. In total three people died; all, admittedly, members of the
Aurora
team whose lack of preparedness Shackleton criticizes in
South;
but he still had overall responsibility for their deaths. As for the expedition’s goals, meteorological observations confirmed a connection between Antarctic weather systems and those of the southern hemisphere, but the scientific findings were as nothing to those which had been initially proposed. No new ground had been crossed and the Pole had not been reached. If Shackleton is to be praised for this expedition alone, then it is more as a leader than as an explorer. Given the number of equally capable leaders, who have excelled in different fields but who have not received similar praise, the conclusion is that we adulate Shackleton only because we have been encouraged to do so.

Yet, in this respect we are no different from the public of the time. An explorer’s reputation rarely stood on the success of his expedition alone; it was also the product of publicity. Journalists frequently accompanied expeditions; sometimes they led them; it was not unknown for press barons to select an obscurity and send him into the ice for the sole purpose of creating a hero who would boost circulation; marketing and merchandising, as mentioned above, were employed both to raise cash and to boost an explorer’s standing; and journals were published always with an eye to sensation and sales. Public opinion could make or break a man far more effectively than anything he did or did not do. An outstanding example was the dispute of 1909, in which Robert Peary and Frederick Cook claimed simultaneously to have been first to the North Pole. After a protracted controversy, the newspapers came out in favor of Peary. In fact, neither man had reached the spot. They were both liars; but Peary was the more skillful self-promoter. While Cook skulked in disgrace, his fellow fraud was greeted as a hero and conqueror. Peary’s publicity machine was so powerful that when he departed for the North Pole, newspapers suggested he was engaged in a race with Shackleton, who was currently marching towards the South Pole. Although the race existed only in Peary’s imagination, he won it all the same. Both came within the same distance of their respective goals; but Peary was able to fabricate his conquest while Shackleton, accompanied by trained observers, was not.

There exists a photograph taken in 1912, at a banquet given in honor of Amundsen’s conquest of the South Pole. There stands Peary, a towering figure clad in a fur-collared coat, grinning wolfishly at the camera. Beside him stands tiny Shackleton: a tubby, unsmiling man, buttoned into his Titanic-era suit. It is a unique portrait of triumph and disappointment—one, though, that has Ozymandian resonance. At the time Peary was one of the most famous people on earth, Shackleton the eternal also-ran, doomed always to stand in the shadow (here, quite literally) of others. Now Peary is the forgotten man, the discredited impostor, while Shackleton is the hero. If Shackleton does owe his current standing to hype, then there is a glorious justice to it—a justice, moreover, that has a quaintly British flavor: in a world that worships success, we are glorifying a man who was a failure. And, frankly, why not?

TO
MY COMRADES
WHO FELL IN THE WHITE WARFARE
OF THE SOUTH AND ON THE
RED FIELDS OF FRANCE
AND FLANDERS

Preface

After the conquest of the South Pole by Amundsen, who, by a narrow margin of days only, was in advance of the British Expedition under Scott, there remained but one great main object of Antarctic journeyings—the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea.

When I returned from the
Nimrod
Expedition on which we had to turn back from our attempt to plant the British flag on the South Pole, being beaten by stress of circumstances within ninety-seven miles of our goal, my mind turned to the crossing of the continent, for I was morally certain that either Amundsen or Scott would reach the Pole on our own route or a parallel one. After hearing of the Norwegian success I began to make preparations to start a last great journey—so that the first crossing of the last continent should be achieved by a British Expedition.

We failed in this object, but the story of our attempt is the subject for the following pages, and I think that though failure in the actual accomplishment must be recorded, there are chapters in this book of high adventure, strenuous days, lonely nights, unique experiences, and, above all, records of unflinching determination, supreme loyalty, and generous self-sacrifice on the part of my men which, even in these days that have witnessed the sacrifices of nations and regardlessness of self on the part of individuals, still will be of interest to readers who now turn gladly from the red horror of war and the strain of the last five years to read, perhaps with more understanding minds, the tale of the White Warfare of the South. The struggles, the disappointments, and the endurance of this small party of Britishers, hidden away for nearly two years in the fastnesses of the Polar ice, striving to carry out the ordained task and ignorant of the crises through which the world was passing, make a story which is unique in the history of Antarctic exploration.

Owing to the loss of the
Endurance
and the disaster to the
Aurora,
certain documents relating mainly to the organization and preparation of the Expedition have been lost; but, anyhow, I had no intention of presenting a detailed account of the scheme of preparation, storing, and other necessary but, to the general reader, unimportant affairs, as since the beginning of this century every book on Antarctic exploration has dealt fully with this matter. I therefore briefly place before you the inception and organization of the Expedition, and insert here the copy of the program which I prepared in order to arouse the interest of the general public in the Expedition.

“The first crossing of the Antarctic continent from sea to sea via the Pole, apart from its historic value, will be a journey of great scientific importance.

“The distance will be roughly 1800 miles, and the first half of this, from the Weddell Sea to the Pole, will be over unknown ground. Every step will be an advance in geographical science. It will be learned whether the great Victoria chain of mountains, which has been traced from the Ross Sea to the Pole, extends across the continent and thus links up (except for the ocean break) with the Andes of South America, and whether the great plateau around the Pole dips gradually towards the Weddell Sea.