by Angie Butler
A hundred years ago Sir Ernest Shackleton’s hopes of traversing Antarctica evaporated when the Endurance caught in an icy grip finally sank leaving 28 men facing an appalling battle to survive on both sea and ice. On the opposite side of the continent the Ross Sea party were facing their own horrors. Their well-stocked ship, the SY Aurora, was torn from its moorings, taking with it most of their supplies. Unaware that the Endurance men were stranded, they resolutely scavenged enough provisions to lay depots for Shackleton’s advancing party – a party that would never arrive. Their story remains as one of the greatest accounts of self-sacrifice in the annals of Polar history.
That the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914-1917 (I.T.A.E. as it was known) failed to accomplish its objective, is a mere fleeting shadow. At the very heart of the expedition is the courage shown by Shackleton and his men, a heroism that continues to burn ever brighter in today’s world.
As a polar history devotee and co-owner of this small but perfectly formed company that takes people into Polar Regions, I have been to Antarctica on many occasions but none as important as three years ago.
I took the ashes of Frank Wild, Shackleton’s right hand man, to be buried along side his beloved ‘Boss’ on the island of South Georgia. After seven years of research and writing a biography on Wild, I had discovered his remains in a vault in Braamfontein cemetery in Johannesburg and knowing that he wanted his final resting place to be beside Shackleton whom he had accompanied on three expeditions to Antarctica, I was able to fulfill his wishes. By uncovering what had happened to Wild during his last 16 years in South Africa, several more pages were added to Edwardian polar history.
Through Frank Wild I had been invited to join the committee of Friend’s of SPRI (Scott Polar Research Institute) in Cambridge and they were looking for a flagship event to launch the next three years celebrating one of the greatest polar leaders of all time. Thus the Shackleton Centenary Voyage was born. Our remit was that the voyage had to be very, very special. We had a ship to fill with some 90 passengers and 20 months to do it in.
The first stage was to try and find as many descendants as I could to join us and hopefully the first generation of sons and daughters who today, are few and very elderly.
On a trip to South Africa I met John James living quietly in Cape Town. His father Sir Reginald James was the physicist on the Endurance and wrote one of the few accounts of the 22 men stranded on Elephant Island while Shackleton with five of his men took to the James Caird life boat and crossed the Southern Ocean to South Georgia in search of help. The 800 mile journey is considered one of the greatest accounts of human endurance and navigational feats in maritime history.
Reginald James once described his first interview with Shackleton (who was known for an idiosyncratic method of hiring men) whether he had good teeth, no varicose veins and could sing! He must have answered in the affirmative as he was appointed the expedition’s physicist.
Twenty years after the Endurance expedition, in 1937 James and his wife moved to South Africa and was appointed Professor of Physics at Cape Town University. From 1953-57 he was Vice Chancellor and Acting Principal of the University. In 1955 as recognition for his scientific work he was elected a fellow of The Royal Society.
John James and his brother had both been down to Antarctica several years earlier, where they had had the fortune of making landfall on Elephant Island. The swell and rocky shores of this desolate and forbidding island seldom offers such an opportunity. It was disappointing they would not venture South again.
I still had another card up my sleeve. I learnt that Sir James Wordie’s granddaughter, Pippa, was also living in Cape Town. James Wordie acted as Shackleton’s geologist and chief of scientific staff. In his latter years he was chairman of the Scott Polar Research Institute(SPRI) and President of the Royal Geographical Society. Pippa had also been down to Antarctica but she couldn’t resist ‘the call of the little white voices’ the need to return, often described by explorers. She announced that she would be bringing with her a sister, two cousins and a nephew. The ghost of James Wordie would be garlanded with four grand children and a great grand child.
Further good news was that Shackleton’s granddaughter, Alexandra would be joining us. She had accompanied me when taking Frank Wild’s ashes to South Georgia.
It took nearly a year but finally I had gathered 12 descendants including a first generation descendant Richard Hudson son of Huberht Taylor Hudson the navigator of the Endurance. Huberht Hudson was considered the best penguin catcher on the expedition but had been accused of not pulling his weight when the men were forced to take to lifeboats in a desperate bid to reach Elephant Island. He had been horribly weakened by an abscess on his backside that was eventually lanced and produced two pints of foul smelling liquid. In short the poor man had septicemia. Hudson was killed in action in 1942 at age 55 on HMS Eaglet when the ship was torpedoed and sank.
His son Richard, well into his 80’s and frail, was determined to pay homage to his father and put the record straight that his father was not a slacker but a man who simply was too ill to do his fair share of work. It was not to be. Sadly, Richard died suddenly seven months before we sailed.
One of our special guests would be Henry Worsley the only man in history to have sledge hauled the two routes forged by Shackleton in 1907 and Roald Amundsen the Norwegian who beat Captain Robert Scott to the Pole in 1911. Interestingly, Worsley is attempting a solo walk across Antarctica this year. Three grueling months sledge-hauling in the footsteps that Shackleton never made.
Finally, 93 passengers had signed up and on the 21st November 2014 we dropped the lines of the almighty Russian crewed Akademik Sergey Vavilov and sailed down the Beagle Channel leaving the town of Ushuaia that clings to the southern tip of Argentina behind us.
The dreaded sea crossing of the Drake Passage known for the ‘Drake Shake’ was kind to us and two days later we were sitting amongst the tussock grass of West Point Island in the Falklands surrounded by black-browed albatross and Rockhopper penguins. A day in Port Stanley was followed by a reception on board for Colin Roberts CVO, the Governor of the Falklands.
Sea legs were required for two more days as we sailed the Scotia Sea before sailing into King Haakon Bay on the south side of South Georgia and making landfall on Peggotty Bluff. It takes a steady hand and razor-sharp concentration to navigate the bay. Several years earlier the Polar Star had run aground on rocks but we were in the safe hands of Captain Beluga who did not need further instruction from one of our passengers, the former Captain of the modern day HMS Endurance, Rear Admiral Nick Lambert who had previously charted the area.
Peggotty Bluff guarded by jaggered snow-packed mountains is the spot where Shackleton, having survived the Weddell Sea crossing, set up camp. He would soon set off on a precipitous land crossing of South Georgia taking with him Crean and Worsley, leaving McNish, Vincent and McCarthy behind to await further rescue.
Steeped in history this inlet would be a mecca for polar fanatics if only King Haakon Bay was easily accessible. That we were able to make landfall with Peter McCarthy, Tim McCarthy’s great nephew and the ‘boss’s’ granddaughter Alexandra Shackleton, gave the occasion a profound resonance.
The first encounter of the deafening cacophony of the King penguin colonies on South Georgia, stretching kilometers into the distance remains with you forever. It is a melee of preening, squabbling, and screeching. A feather-strewn mass of hatching, feeding and moulting birds all at various stages of development. Other than the crèches of juveniles in their brown fluffy overcoats, you have no idea who is who.
In the Whaler’s church in Grytviken, the whaling station much loved by Shackleton and his comrades, the passengers joined in a stirring service held in recognition of the men that returned and those that forfeited their lives in Antarctica.
One of the many readings included a letter written by Hubert Hudson to his father. ‘Dear old Dad, Just a line before we sail. This is the last port before the South. We have had a very good time so far, and I think we shall do well. I hope to be home again within 19 months and, if I can manage it, go straight to the front. What a glorious age we live in!’ Ironically, some of the survivors went on to lose their lives in the WW1.
Leaving South Georgia and edging our way to the Great White Continent itself brought a change in mood. We could now looked forward rather than back. It was time to marvel at the ocean dotted with ghostly, tabular icebergs, the remnants of fractured ice shelves. Alpine mountains corrugated with glaciers swept down onto pebbled beaches littered with gargantuan elephant seals and belligerent heel snapping fur seals. Chinstrap, Adelie and Gentoo penguins corralled stones into nests and the albatross continually swooped overhead as if to safe guard the ship.
Ice in the Lemaire channel signaled it was time to turn north. Captain Beluga ordered the Bridge to be closed to all passengers and for his first class crew to fire up the bow thrusters. It was time to turn for home.
Everyone had a story to tell, personal stories that grew into a collective narrative. One that never lost sight of the achievements of ‘the Boss’ and his men, one that held in awe the ferocity of the Southern Ocean, the King penguin colony on Salisbury Plain, the splendor of the South Shetland Islands, the stillness of Paradise Bay and the heart stopping beauty of Antarctica.
It raises the questions as why it is so important for some to travel to the ends of the earth to pay their respects to these men of a bygone age. By acknowledging their bravery, do we strangely mitigate their suffering? By stepping lightly in their footsteps do we have a better understanding of the isolation, the cold and how easily this dazzling yet wholly unforgiving continent reminds us of our mortality?
I believe 93 of us did.
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