AUCTION OF THE MONTH 26th February, Travel and Exploration, Bonhams
Every February in London, Bonhams holds a sale associated with celebrated feats of travel and exploration. Last year, a sledge from Ernest Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition to the South Pole in 1907-09 went under the hammer. This month’s auction is no exception and continues the Shackleton theme.
One outstanding item that has been catalogued for the sale is a newly discovered deluxe presentation album of Frank Hurley’s photographs documenting the expedition to Antarctica between 1914-16, showing Shackleton and his team on board the ship Endurance (est £30,000-£40,000). A few miles from Antarctica, the ship became trapped in ice in the Weddell Sea.
Australian Frank Hurley was the official photographer for the expedition, joining
Endurance in Buenos Aires on 12th October 1914. When the ship became stuck, Hurley photographed the activities of the crew and the dogs (who were moved off the boat and housed in kennels built into the ice), who had to make camp on the frozen landscape, occupy themselves and survive as the months passed. When the ship began to disintegrate in October 1915 after being crushed, Hurley spent almost three days outside trying to capture the vessel’s final moments.
‘It’s an awful lot of pictures in one album,’ says Matthew Haley, Head of
Books and Manuscripts at Bonhams. ‘We usually sell individual Hurley photographs. What’s also exciting is that this is a newly discovered presentation album. There were only six recorded – including one in the Royal Collection that was delivered to the king, and two at Dulwich College. This one has been owned by a private UK collector and it’s been in her family for 40 years. She doesn’t know where it came from.
‘The images are in a chronological sequence, beginning with penguins in South Georgia and the ship entering the pack ice, ending with the vessel being crushed by ice and the final rescue of the crew. It’s almost time-lapse photography of the ship being gradually destroyed.’
Hurley had to choose, with Shackleton, 120 plates to keep, before smashing the remaining 400 as they would have been too heavy for the crew to carry, along with other supplies and stores recovered from the ship.
This album contains 79 prints, including photographs of the crew on board, spectacular images of the stranded ship surrounded by blocks of ice, the departure of Shackleton and five others in the James
Caird whaler heading out to seek rescue, and the last photograph taken of the wreck as it succumbed to the sea. Bonhams, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 1HH. 020 7393 3900; bonhams.com