Shackleton's Heroes (2 page)

I
N THE BOOK
South
, the story of his attempt to cross Antarctica in 1914–17, Shackleton wrote: ‘I think that no more remarkable story of human endeavour has been revealed than the tale of that long march.'
1

He was not referring to his retreat from Antarctica when, from January 1915 until April 1916, with his ship the
Endurance
trapped in the ice in the Weddell Sea and then crushed, he led his men, finally escaping in three lifeboats to Elephant Island.

His comment was unrelated to his famous 800-mile boat journey across the Southern Ocean.

And he was not alluding to his own efforts to trek across South Georgia to reach a whaling station so he could rescue his men stranded on Elephant Island.

Shackleton was referring to a march on the Great Ice Barrier of Antarctica by the ‘Mount Hope Party'. This party of six men were members of his support team based on the opposite side of the continent to the Weddell Sea. The Mount Hope Party consisted of five Englishmen: the leader, Captain Aeneas Lionel Acton Mackintosh, ex-Petty Officer Ernest Edward Mills Joyce, Petty Officer Harry Ernest Wild, the Reverend Arnold Patrick Spencer-Smith, and Victor George Hayward; and an Australian, Richard ‘Dick' Walter Richards.

The ‘march' Shackleton referred to was a 360-mile return journey made
by these men from Mount Hope at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains to the safety of Hut Point at McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea. This is what Shackleton was describing as a remarkable story of human endeavour.

After the conquest of the South Pole by Amundsen in December 1911, Shackleton had written: ‘…there remained but one great main object of Antarctic journeyings – the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea.'
2

In an attempt to cross Antarctica, Shackleton planned the 1914–17 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which involved the use of two ships, the
Endurance
and the
Aurora
. The
Endurance
would take Shackleton's party to the Weddell Sea and Shackleton would set off across the continent. His aim was to reach the South Pole and then continue on to McMurdo Sound, on the opposite side of Antarctica, coming down the Beardmore Glacier.

He would have a supporting party in the second ship, the
Aurora
. This party would sail from Australia to McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea, establish camp there and lay a series of vital supply depots out across the Great Ice Barrier to Mount Hope at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. These depots would support Shackleton's final step, his last 360 miles crossing the continent.

Shackleton's own story is well known. In early 1915 his ship the
Endurance
became caught in the pack ice in the Weddell Sea and, with the men, camped on the ice; the ship was squeezed, then smashed and broken up before it disappeared below the ice. The pack ice drifted slowly north before Shackleton and his men escaped in their three lifeboats, landing on Elephant Island, a mountainous, ice-covered and barren island off the coast of Antarctica. From there, in April 1916, Shackleton and five of his men set sail for help in one of the lifeboats, across 800 miles of the Southern Ocean to the island of South Georgia. After being forced to land on the opposite side of the island to a whaling port located there, Shackleton, with two of his men, crossed the mountains and glaciers on the island to reach the port, and assistance, so he could arrange for his men at Elephant Island, and two still on South Georgia, to be picked up.

Not knowing of Shackleton's aborted attempt to land on the opposite side of the continent, his supporting party established base at a hut in McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea and made preparations for their sledging journey. They planned to lay two depots in the late summer of 1915 (January to March), one at 70 miles south of their base, at latitude 79°S, and the other 70 miles further south, near latitude 80°S. Then, after the winter of 1915, their plan was to lay more depots, at 81°S, 82°S, 83°S, then a final depot for Shackleton at 83° 30´S, next to Mount Hope by the Beardmore Glacier. This depot would be 360 miles from Hut Point.

There have only been a limited number of books written on the experiences of the Mount Hope Party, possibly because the story was dwarfed by Shackleton's tale, which even today remains the classic story of adventure. Moreover, the Mount Hope tale can first appear to be little more than a story of wasted efforts to lay food depots that were not needed.

Two members of the Mount Hope Party did write books of their exploits. In 1929 Ernest Joyce's book,
The South Polar Trail: The Log of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition
, was published. It is a loose transcript of his field diary. Many years later, in 1962, Dick Richards wrote a slim volume titled
The Ross Sea Shore Party
. In forty pages he covers his appointment by Mackintosh to join the expedition through to meeting with Shackleton when finally rescued. Like Joyce's book, it is one man's opinion and take on events. It was 2001 before the journalist Lennard Bickel wrote
Shackleton's Forgotten Men
(originally titled
Shackleton's Argonauts
), a novel about the Mount Hope Party. However, at his time of writing only a few primary source documents were available. In 2004, Richard McElrea and Dr David Harrowfield wrote a complete and accurate account of the entire Ross Sea Party story, titled
Polar Castaways
. Their book covers the period from 1914 to 1917 so there is limited space available to describe in full the critical three months, January–March 1916, when the six men returned from Mount Hope. In 2006 Kelly Tyler-Lewis also wrote of the Ross Sea Party in her book
The Lost Men
but only a small number of pages covered the months of January–March 1916. In Shackleton's book on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition,
South
, he devoted a significant proportion (almost a third of his book) to the exploits of the men of his Ross Sea support party. He used selected diary extracts from only two of the men, Mackintosh and Joyce, to describe events, rather than his own words.

We see that the epic struggle of the six men to return from Mount Hope has been barely documented… In addition, as well as the books of Joyce and Richards, we have a number of interviews with Richards later in his life (with Bickel, his son-in-law Peter Lathlean, Phillip Law, the first Director
of Australia's Antarctic Division, and ABC radio), and letters he wrote to various Antarctic historians.

Having access to every diary from the one expedition in the Scott–Shackleton exploration era is exceptional and it allows us to glimpse a truer picture of life than would be obtained from the diary of one man, or when only one person's recollection of events is given. In bringing many of these diaries from obscure library storage to published volume we also honour the courage and spirit of these lesser-known, but equally brave and heroic, Antarctic explorers.

Apart from Mackintosh, who as the leader had an obligation to write up a daily record of events, the other men had no duty to catalogue their achievements, but fortunately they did write, when times were good and bad. When they were sledging they wrote their notes at lunch stops, when they had finished for the day or while waiting out a blizzard. On most occasions they wrote while inside their tent and lying inside their sleeping bags. Through the diaries we read a remarkable story of six men and their dogs in a battle with nature in a bitter and hostile environment with many illuminating human touches. The diaries not only bring to light their innermost thoughts at times of great stress and conflict but they also give us an insight into all aspects of their life, from their hardships when
man-hauling
sledges in deep snow to their admiration for their dogs. We read of their thoughts of home and of their dreams while on the Great Ice Barrier. We see the different way each man handles crises and how they react when pushed to the limit. They describe their joyous early days in Antarctica and then later the misery of their final days when they wondered if they would survive. We are privy to an insider's view; a vivid picture of how six men lived and worked together as they strived to achieve their goal of laying supply depots, which they believed were critical for Shackleton's survival.

Although it is not always clear from their diaries, distance measurements would appear to be in geographical miles, not statute miles, which is the measurement we normally use, on road signs and maps for example. A geographical mile is one-sixtieth of a degree of a great circle of the earth. Geographical miles are multiplied by approximately 1.14 to obtain the statute miles. For example, between Hut Point and Cape Evans the distance
was given as 13 (geographical) miles, which is 15 statute miles. (For kilometres, the metric equivalent of miles, multiply the miles figure by 1.853. The distance out to Mount Hope is usually quoted as 360 miles and that is 670 kilometres.)

Heights were recorded in feet, for example Mount Erebus was stated by the men to be about 13,000 feet high, and that is 3,962 metres. (To convert feet to metres, multiply by 0.3048.)

Temperatures were always in Fahrenheit. (To convert to centigrade, subtract thirty-two and then multiply by five-ninths. For example: 32°F is 0°C, 20°F is -7°C, 0°F is -18°C, -20°F is -29°C, -40°F is -40°C.)

Weights were recorded in imperial measures.

The metric and centigrade equivalents are not shown in parenthesis throughout the book because there are so many references, especially to distances and temperatures.

The diary quotes are shown exactly as they were written at the time.

In preparation for this book, not all the repetitive routine of the early days of sledging is included and some irrelevant or inexplicable quotations are not shown, but no important event has been omitted. The diary pages published here are unedited and in the main are shown indented. The spelling, punctuation, abbreviations and grammar are left intact as they add to the charm of the words. The men used rounded brackets in their diaries – any square brackets indicate a word edited in.

The maps are stylised and three-dimensional to give the reader some feeling for the topography of the Antarctic landscape. They are not drawn to scale but give a clearer picture of the distance travelled than would be obtained from a traditional two-dimensional map.

As a starting point, and to put the diaries in perspective, we begin with background information of the men of the Mount Hope Party, their recruitment in England and Australia and then their voyage to Antarctica. Diaries were issued to the men when they arrived. Most of the six men started their diaries immediately and continued recording notes right through to the end. The vast majority of the book covers the period from when they first set foot on Antarctica, in January 1915, up to the time they finish their depot-laying work in May 1916.

E
ARLIER BRITISH EXPEDITIONS
to Antarctica had a marked influence on how Sir Ernest Shackleton organised his Mount Hope support party. There were three in particular: Captain Scott's National Antarctic
Discovery
Expedition of 1901–04, Shackleton's own Antarctic
Nimrod
Expedition of 1907–09 and Scott's Antarctic
Terra Nova
Expedition of 1910–13.

These expeditions were all based in McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea. The southerly tip of the sound is the closest part of Antarctica to the South Pole reachable by ship so it was the logical place for previous
expeditions to establish base, and for Shackleton to locate his 1914–17 support party.

McMurdo Sound is an inlet about 30 miles long by 20 miles wide pointing towards the South Pole. At its most southerly shore is Cape Armitage and nearby is a 750-foot high hill, Observation Hill, named for its use as a lookout for returning sledges in Scott's
Discovery
Expedition.
1
The eastern shore of McMurdo Sound is Ross Island and the active volcano Mount Erebus (12,448 feet) dominates the region. Also on Ross Island are three other (extinct) volcanoes: Mount Bird (5,900 feet) at the northerly end, Mount Terra Nova (6,988 feet) and Mount Terror (10,700 feet).

Two significant landmarks on Ross Island are Hut Point, a rocky peninsula at the base of McMurdo Sound, and Cape Evans, a sheltered inlet to the north of Hut Point. These landmarks would become highly significant for the Mount Hope Party. Huts had been built at each of these two places, which were only 13 miles apart, but to travel between these two locations was difficult.

Icebound rocky cliffs and impassable glaciers follow the coastline from Hut Point round to Cape Evans and make it almost impossible to travel between the huts via that route. Travel between the two locations by ship is only possible for a few weeks in February, when there is water at the base of McMurdo Sound. At that time strong southerly winds push the ice in the sound northward into the Ross Sea, leaving open water or very thin sea-ice in the southerly tip, but only for a limited time. For the other eleven months of the year McMurdo Sound is largely frozen over with sea-ice. This means that for the majority of the year there is only one practical way to travel between Cape Evans and Hut Point, and that is on foot over the sea-ice. Only in the winter months of June or July when the sound completely freezes over with sea-ice about 10 feet thick is it a safe journey. In addition, any trek is made somewhat arduous and difficult by a floating 100-foot-high glacier, Glacier Tongue, which blocks the direct route between these two locations. This mile-wide glacier is surrounded by sea-ice and extends out into the sound for more than 5 miles. These conditions had a huge impact on the Mount Hope Party, who had to travel frequently between Cape Evans and Hut Point.

A second feature of Shackleton's planning was for the
Aurora
to be wintered at McMurdo Sound, as Scott had with the
Discovery
in 1901–03. The ship would serve as living quarters and in addition his Mount Hope Party would also make use of huts that had been built by previous expeditions. However, it eventuated that the men did not live on the ship. They used two huts, one at Hut Point and the other at Cape Evans.

In Scott's 1901–04 expedition,
Discovery
hut was erected on the location designated as Hut Point.
2
The hut was essentially a wooden shell, prefabricated in Sydney, Australia with an open veranda surrounding it on three sides. It was built entirely from Douglas fir and Scots pine with a pyramid-shaped roof. Unfortunately the hut was too hard to heat and was never used as a base; only as a storeroom, a shelter, for recording scientific observations and for ‘theatrical performances' by Scott's men. They lived on board their ship, which was frozen into the sea-ice.
Discovery
hut was to become a refuge of safety for the Mount Hope Party when returning from their depot-laying journeys in 1915 and 1916.

On Scott's second expedition, the
Terra Nova
Expedition, he set up their base at Cape Evans and the hut built there was far more substantial than the one at Hut Point. It was 50 feet by 25 feet in size, with Ruberoid on the roof, floor, walls and ceiling for insulation. Additional insulation, finely shredded seaweed known as Gibson quilting, was placed on the walls. Lighting was by acetylene gas, and heating from coal-burning stoves.
3
Shackleton's support party would use this Cape Evans hut as their main base. There is also a third hut at Cape Royds, about 5 miles to the north of Cape Evans, which Shackleton built on his
Nimrod
Expedition. This hut was not lived in by the Mount Hope Party.

A third aspect of Shackleton's planning was that his support party would lay depots out to Mount Hope on the same route that he and others had pioneered on previous expeditions.

A ship cannot go south beyond Hut Point, the southerly tip of McMurdo Sound, because of the Ross Ice Shelf (also called the Great Ice Barrier or simply the Barrier).
4
The Barrier is a permanent sheet of ice, 160 to 200 feet above the water and about 1,100 feet thick, that spreads southward from near the foot of McMurdo Sound to the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. It is attached to land and is constantly fed by glaciers.
5

On the
Discovery
Expedition, Scott, Edward Wilson and Shackleton took a journey south onto the Barrier and they reached a position approximately 260 miles to the south of Hut Point before turning back north. They saw and named Mount Discovery (8,794 feet) on the Trans-Antarctic Mountain range and Minna Bluff, a 3-mile-wide peninsula that extends into the Ross Ice Shelf from Mount Discovery. Scott named it ‘Minna' in honour of the wife of Sir Clements Markham, who was then President of the Royal Geographical Society. These landmarks would be used by the Mount Hope Party some fifteen years later. They used Mount Discovery as a reference point and at Minna Bluff they would place a large food depot, which became instrumental in saving their lives.

A more significant southerly expedition was Shackleton's
Nimrod
Expedition of 1907–09. Shackleton, in his quest to reach the South Pole, had hoped the pole would be located on the Barrier. He initially described the Barrier as ‘level as a billiard table, with no sign of any undulation or rise'
6
but as his party went further south, now some 300 miles from Hut Point, they saw mountains, well over 10,000 feet high, that had been to the west but slowly curved to cut straight across their path. As the days wore on, mountain after mountain came into view but Shackleton was hopeful that they ‘may find some strait' that would enable them to go through them and continue further south. When they reached the mountains they found them entirely clear of snow, with vertical sides and not less than 9,000 feet in height. After following the mountain range for two days they saw a red hill about 3,000 feet in height which they climbed so as to gain a view of the surrounding country. They named the hill Mount Hope and from the top of a ridge they saw their way forward, to the south. Shackleton wrote in his diary: ‘There burst upon our view an open road to the south, for there stretched before us a great glacier running almost south and north.'
7
Adjacent to Mount Hope they found a snow-filled pass flanked by great granite pillars at least 2,000 feet in height which they called the Gap; a gap through the mountains to the glacier, later named the Beardmore Glacier (after a sponsor). It would be at this gap that the Mount Hope Party planned to lay their final depot for Shackleton in 1916 so that it would be visible by the party descending the glacier.

Shackleton was able to recruit two men who had been on these past expeditions. Ernest Joyce was a member of the supporting parties that laid food and fuel depots for Scott, Wilson and Shackleton to use on their trek back to Hut Point on the
Discovery
Expedition. A few years later Joyce was a member of the shore party on Shackleton's
Nimrod
Expedition. Also on the
Nimrod
was a man who would later be appointed leader of Shackleton's 1914–17 support party, Lieutenant Aeneas Mackintosh.

The final aspect of Shackleton's planning for the Mount Hope Party was to copy the methods of depot-laying used on previous expeditions. Small teams of men would work together, sharing a tent, food and equipment, and they would be able to travel quite independently of other parties. Dogs were taken, not ponies; no doubt as a result of the success Amundsen had over Scott in their race for the South Pole. Their food and clothing remained virtually unchanged from previous British expeditions. Teams of men would lay food and fuel depots out to the south so a final southbound party would not have to carry supplies for the whole journey, a system Shackleton had used before. For example, while his team was on their southern journey on the
Nimrod
Expedition, Joyce was in charge of a party which included Mackintosh. This party was responsible for laying support depots for Shackleton's return and a major depot was located near Minna Bluff, 70 miles from Hut Point. Supplies would be laid at the same Minna Bluff location by the Mount Hope Party in 1915 and 1916.

Shackleton had his Mount Hope Party travel to McMurdo Sound and use the huts at Cape Evans and Hut Point. They would base themselves at Cape Evans hut but also use
Discovery
hut at Hut Point, initially as a place to store supplies, but it ended up being lived in for many winter months. They were to lay food depots along the same route Shackleton had used, all the way out to the Beardmore Glacier. Depots were to be placed about a week's travel apart, at each degree of latitude, which is close to 70 miles apart.

According to Shackleton: ‘This programme would involve some heavy sledging, but the ground to be covered was familiar, and I had not anticipated that the work would present any great difficulties.'
8

Instead, what transpired was one of the most harrowing and torturous feats of courage in the history of polar exploration. The men of the Mount Hope Party travelled over 1,500 miles, with few dogs, poor equipment, insufficient food and tattered clothing to lay the depots for Shackleton.

The six men of the Mount Hope Party appear to be an ill-assorted lot. There were five Englishmen and one Australian and only two had any experience in Antarctica. Their backgrounds and education were quite varied; a padre, a clerk from London, a school teacher from Australia and navy men, two of which were lower-deck sailors, from a different stratum to their captain.

• Aeneas Mackintosh was the leader of the party. From photographs, he was clearly a handsome man, although not tall, possibly only a few inches over 5 ft. His privileged early upbringing in India and his commissioned officer rank would have set him apart from the two non-commissioned navy men, Joyce and Wild, as would his manner of speaking in what A. P. Spencer-Smith termed an ‘Oxford' voice.
  9
  The other men often referred to him as Captain, O.M. (Old Man), Mack or Skipper in their diaries.
   
  
• He was born in India to British parents in 1879.
  10
  The Mackintosh family
  papers show that his father was an ‘Indigo Planter' and that his mother Annie left India with her six young children, moving to Bedfordshire in England when Aeneas was a young boy. His father had Bright's disease and remained in India. Aeneas never saw his father again but remained fond of him, writing regularly; his father kept every letter but sadly they were found unopened when his father died.
  11
  As a young teenager in the 1890s Mackintosh lived with his mother and his younger brothers and sister in England. He attended Bedford Modern School, an independent school in Bedfordshire, from 1891 to 1894.
  12
   
  
• In 1895, at fifteen years of age, he left school to go to sea to become a commissioned officer in the Merchant Navy, serving as an apprentice on the full-rigged sailing ship
  Cromdale
  . (The Merchant Navy deals with mostly cargo and civilian transports.) His naval papers state that he joined the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), a British commercial shipping company, in 1900.
  13
   
  
• In 1907 Mackintosh's Antarctic experience commenced when he was recruited by Shackleton as second officer on the British Antarctic (
  Nimrod
  ) Expedition of 1907–09.
  14
  On this expedition he lost his right eye. In January 1908 the
  Nimrod
  arrived in Antarctica but while unloading stores at Cape Royds a crate hook attached to a barrel swung across and struck him on the face. Ernest Joyce, also on the
  Nimrod
  Expedition, happened to be there at the time helping with the unloading. After the accident Mackintosh was sent back to New Zealand in the
  Nimrod
  , but twelve months later he returned, with a glass eye, and helped to lay depots out on the Great Ice Barrier.
   
  
• After the
  Nimrod
  Expedition, Mackintosh was given clerical duties in England because the loss of his eye precluded him from being appointed to any of the P&O Company's ships.
  15
  He remained on-shore until he joined Shackleton's expedition in 1914. His naval records show that after the
  Nimrod
  Expedition he held the rank of 3rd Officer, which is below a normal captain's ranking. However, as the officer in command
  of the
  Aurora
  , he held the higher rank of Captain, being in charge of the ship, and his men, including Shackleton, referred to him as Captain Mackintosh.
   
  
• He was the only married man of the Mount Hope Party, having married Gladys Campbell at Holy Trinity Church in Bedford, England. His best man was Dr Eric Marshall, one of the doctors who operated on his eye in the Antarctic. The Mackintoshes' first daughter, Pamela, was born in 1912 and Gladys, their second, in 1914.
  16
   
  
• We have Mackintosh's personal diary from late 1914 to January 1915 and his 1915 sledging diary, up to September 1915. Every day he writes up an accurate recording of events and on many days he pens 300 to 400 words. He includes meticulous notes on a myriad of issues with odd comments interspersed within his daily log. Examples of his ‘unusual comments' include one on the health hazard of carbon fumes emanating from seal blubber burning in a stove and another, on more than one occasion, of the number of days since he last washed. He writes often on the unpleasant aspects of sledging and the difficulties of living, cooking and sleeping in a tent on the Great Ice Barrier in freezing conditions. It is an enlightening document.