Some tales of heroism and self-sacrifice take a long time to be told. This is one such story, which has finally been given the treatment it deserves 90 years after the event.
Ernest Shackleton was an ambitious and determined man whose failure to reach the South Pole in 1909 rankled, not least because he believed he was at least the equal of Robert Falcon Scott as a polar explorer. Scott's death on his last expedition had marked him in the public's estimation as both a leader and a martyr, leaving Shackleton deprived of the pole as a goal to ensure his rightful place in history. Since Shackleton had only ever paid lip service to science, this could not be the basis for another expedition, and so it was with enthusiasm that he seized upon the idea of making his mark by being the first to cross the Antarctic continent. Entitling his effort ‘The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition,’ he set about organising and funding it. Unlike Scott, he was outside the charmed circles of the establishment and so faced enormous battles both to get the endorsement of the Royal Geographical Society and the interest and support of the British government. His problems became much worse once he concluded that the traverse was only possible if the crossing party was supported on the leg from the pole to the Ross Sea by food dumps put in place by a second party working out of Ross Island. This substantially increased the number of men needed and, crucially, required a second ship. So was born the planning for the Ross Sea shore party, a disaster in the making from start to finish.
Kelly Tyler-Lewis has shown remarkable persistence in her search for the details of this story. The tale had already been told in part in Shackleton's South, where he devoted five chapters to the party; in The South Polar trail by Ernest Joyce (which was anything but dispassionate); and in the rather fragmentary account compiled from his diary by Richard Richards as The Ross Sea shore party. Many believed that there was little in the way of other written records available that had not been used, but as Tyler-Lewis followed up leads around the world it became clear that there was a great deal of material to work with, which she has skilfully woven into a gripping narrative.
Of course, what the public and most polar readers remember is the dramatic failure of the crossing party, the loss of Endurance in the ice, the remarkable voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia in James Caird, and the final rescue with not a man lost. Shackleton's account of this in South is one of the most gripping polar narratives and overshadows the account there of the travails of the Ross Sea party. Shackleton's reputation as a leader in the field has been increasingly consolidated down the years based on the adventures of the two parties he led personally. What Tyler-Lewis shows us clearly for the first time is that Shackleton signally failed the leadership test for the Ross Sea party, in recruitment, in planning, and most of all in adequately financing the work he expected them to do. Here is a story of corner-cutting, of selecting the wrong people, of bad decisions, and finally of risking the lives of others for the glorious goal he had set for the expedition.
In this carefully researched book we discover that Shackleton paid far too little attention to the details for the Ross Sea. Whilst agreeing that dogs were essential, the quality of dogs purchased was dreadful, and nobody in the shore party had extensive experience driving them. Shackleton was, strangely, far too optimistic in his estimates for depot-laying, allowing only 12 days for bad weather in a period of four months, thus putting the shore party under immense pressure to get the depots into place whatever the conditions. Joseph Stenhouse, who became master of Aurora, was only 27 years old, and the leader of the shore party, Æneas Mackintosh, was woefully short of experience. Indeed, as Tyler-Lewis shows, Shackleton's appointments were generally based on expedience and loyalty rather than experience, and his instructions for mooring the Aurora were, as John King Davis later remarked, absolutely wrong and would have been over-ridden by a more experienced master.
Three men died, and the remainder were only rescued because of the forced assistance of the governments of Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Even in this Shackleton's attempts to over-ride the governments who were paying all the bills nearly scuppered the rescue. When he reached New Zealand to join Davis on the relief voyage, Shackleton charmed away much of the bad feeling and was even forgiven by many of the shore party, in due course, for his obvious managerial failings. Alexander Stevens, the geologist, was however not so forgiving about the organisational failings, which had threatened to kill them all.
Tyler-Lewis brings out the personalities of the protagonists very clearly and shows just how the tensions between Mackintosh and Joyce affected decision-making. She provides a very useful epilogue on what happened to each of the major protagonists after the expedition. Whilst I am sure she was reading between the lines for some of the diaries, she has been careful to provide extensive and detailed documentation in the notes for all of the key events. The annotated notes and bibliography run to 65 pages, and I am certain that even the most expert readers will find previously unknown information within these. This is a very well written and researched volume that makes an important addition to our knowledge of one of the most important expeditions of the Heroic Age. You will enjoy reading it.
