Hardship in Shackleton’s Antarctic

Press, 18 January 1986, Page 20

Hardship in Shackleton’s Antarctic

Shackleton’s Forgotten Argonauts. By Lennard Bickel. MacMillan, 1982. 230 pp. $19.95.

Shackleton: His Antarctic Writings Selected and Introduced by Christopher Railing. 1983. 263 pp. $29.95. (Reviewed by Malcolm Laird) In these days of relatively easy access to the Antarctic continent, living conditions down there which include hot showers, large steaks, and every flavour of ice-cream, it is all the more important that records of the privations of the early Antarctic explorers be made readily available. The first of these two books is the record of the Ross Sea party of Ernest Shackleton’s doomed Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914, whose exploits were overshadowed by the well-known saga of the “Endurance” which was crushed in the Weddell Sea pack-ice. This, too, is the story of castaways, marooned in McMurdo Sound when their ship “Aurora” was tom from her moorings during a storm shortly after their arrival, leaving the expedition without any of the essential supplies and equipment needed.

Using Captain Scott’s old bases they scrounged enough discarded food and equipment to prepare for their arduous southern depot-laying journeys, still

determined to lay down precious supplies halfway across the continent for Shackleton’s Weddell Sea party, which never came. In this they succeeded, in the face of incredible hardships: six men, assisted by four surviving dogs, in the course of eight month’s sledging, established depots across the Ross Ice Shelf up to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier, but not without loss of life before their return to base.

The rescue of the survivors came after two long years without soap or a change of clothes, and after what has been described as a journey that was “without parallel in the annals of polar sledging.” The story related in this book is based largely on the contents of two diaries written by participants, one of which surfaced only in 1981, and interviews with one of the survivors by the author. The book makes gripping reading, and is an essential complement to accounts of the “Endurance” epic.

The second book, “Shackleton,” is totally different in content and style, being essentially a study of the man through his writings, including private letters and poems as well as his own books. The author has quoted copiously from the published volumes “Heart of the Antarctic,” and “South,” with. • linking passages where background

information is available from other sources.

In this way we learn, for instance, details of the written agreement which Shackleton made with Scott before his 1907 “Nimrod” expedition not to use Scott’s McMurdo Sound base or work to the west of meridian 170 degrees west. In the event, circumstances forced Shackleton to break both of these commitments, to Shackleton’s private anguish and Scott’s bitterness. Even more revealing are excerpts from the diaries of the four men who reached furthest south. Shackleton’s published diary describes graphically enough the physical hardships they were undergoing, but it tells us little, if anything, about their personal relationships. From surviving diaries of the other members of the party, however, we learn of considerable interpersonal conflict and sharp differences of views.

In short, the book is not a gripping tale of adventure like the first, but provides a thoughtful insight into the conflicts between Scott and Shackleton, and between Shackleton and some of his men. It is illustrated by some excellent black and white colour photographs, but I found the few maps disappointingly short on detail. A rather blatant error on the endpaper map is the misnaming of Marie Byrd Land as “Bird Land.”