GLORIOUS FAILURE
Antarctic explorer went with the floes and became a hero
Sometimes the greatest victories are hidden in defeats.
Sir Ernest Shackleton wanted to be the first man to reach the South Pole, the first to cross Antarctica. He failed at both.
Yet he became a hero anyway and is famous for his explorations.
Ranulph Fiennes’ “Shackleton: The Biography” explains why. Part of an illustrious family (007’s current boss, Ralph Fiennes, is a cousin), Fiennes has been called the world’s greatest living explorer. Being a fellow arctic adventurer gives him “a unique perspective” on Shackleton, he says.
“To write about hell,” he observes, “it certainly helps if you have been there.”
Shackleton couldn’t seem to stay away. Born in Ireland in 1874, Shackleton grew up reading adventure stories and dreaming of the sea. At 16, he told his physician father that he didn’t want to go to university. He wanted to become a sailor.
“No fool,” Shackleton later wrote, “my father thought to cure me of my predilection for the sea by letting me go in the most primitive manner possible, as a ‘boy’ aboard a sailing ship.”
The teenager spent nearly a year on an old three-master, traveling back and forth to the tip of South America. He scrubbed decks and battled dysentery. He sailed through thunderous storms and climbed slippery masts. He loved every day of it.
Far from dissuading Shackleton from the sailor’s life, his father’s plan only convinced him it was his destiny.
Shackleton spent seven years in the merchant marine, sailing around the world. It still wasn’t enough. A new century of exploration had begun, and when the Royal Geographical Society announced an expedition to the South Pole, Shackleton signed on as the third officer.
When they set sail in 1901, his chief duties included overseeing provisions and “entertainments.” Shackleton ran the library, put on plays, held debates, and even published a literary journal. He was an easy, pleasant leader – a far cry from the expedition’s head, Capt. Robert Scott.
“Scott, who had been at sea since he was 13, was more insular in character and more rigid in his approach, being a stickler for Navy codes of discipline,” Fiennes writes. “Shackleton loved the company of people and was a tornado of energy, sometimes to his own detriment. Rules did not particularly concern him.”
Two things linked the men, though. Neither had been to Antarctica before. And yet both were determined to reach the South Pole. Scott sought to further his career in the Royal Navy, and Shackleton wanted to convince the woman he left behind that he was worthy of marriage.
It took nearly six months to reach Antarctica. Once there, Scott chose Shackleton and a scientist, Edward Wilson, to accompany him to the Pole.
It was three months of torture. Their skis proved useless on the uneven terrain. Their sled dogs began to die. Often, the men had to pull the sled themselves, hauling nearly 500 pounds of equipment and provisions.
They still managed to trudge more than 200 miles farther south than anyone had ever gone. But the pole was still hundreds of miles away, and they were slowly starving, suffering from scurvy and bedeviled by frostbite.
They had to turn back.
Yet their courage made them famous. Once back in England, Shackleton married Emily Dorman, his fiancée. A foray into politics flopped. However, he joked, “I got all the applause and the other fellows got all the votes.”
Various business ventures failed to pan out.
He began planning a new expedition – one he would command.
By 1908, after years of tedious fund-raising, Shackleton was back in Antarctica. His team explored the Beardmore Glacier, climbed Mount Erebus, and voyaged even farther South, getting within 112 miles of the Pole.
Yet once again, his men’s rations nearly depleted, and his health failing, Shackleton had to turn back.
When he returned to England, most of the public regarded him as a hero anyway. Knighted for his efforts, he tried to be philosophical about his failure.
“A live donkey is better than a dead lion,” he told Emily.
But soon he needed a new challenge.
The Pole was out; Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had finally reached it in 1911. So Shackleton announced he would march across the entire continent of Antarctica, roughly 1,800 miles.
It was a thrilling prospect – to everyone except Emily, who was weary of being left at home with three children for years at a time. Shackleton saw no other path.
“I am just good as an explorer, and nothing else,” he apologized.
In 1914, he headed back to Antarctica.
Almost immediately, there were huge problems. There was far more ice than expected and only narrow passages of clear water. On Jan. 19, 1915, the crew woke up to find their ship frozen in an ice floe. They were not only stuck. They were being crushed.
“The floes, with the force of millions of tons of moving ice behind them, were simply annihilating the ship,” Shackleton recalled. “The decks breaking up under one’s feet, the great beams bending and then snapping with a noise like heavy fire.”
Eventually, he gave the order to abandon ship.
The situation was grim. It grew grimmer over the next five months. Food began to run low, forcing the crew to kill and eat their sled dogs. The ice beneath their feet began to melt, shrinking their small haven. Yet Shackleton refused to give up.
Loading three lifeboats salvaged from the wreck, he evacuated the crew, finally landing on a rocky, uninhabited isle. Then, outfitting the sturdiest of the three boats, he took five men with him in search of help at South Georgia, a whaling port in the South Sandwich Islands.
It was some 800 miles away. They had a lifeboat, a map and four weeks of provisions. The seas were rough, and the local storms had been known to sink steamships. Of course, this rescue appeared impossible.
And, of course, Shackleton forged ahead anyway.
The extraordinary journey took nearly a month. When Shackleton and his tiny crew reached dry land, they were covered in soot, blood and blisters. When they staggered into town, people ran away in terror.
“Who the hell are you?” shouted the head of the local whaling station.
“My name is Shackleton,” the leader calmly replied.
And then, after hot food, a warm bath and a welcome night’s sleep, Shackleton led a rescue party back to retrieve the rest of his men.
When they finally returned to England, it was to cheering crowds. Once again, Shackleton had failed to do what he had set out to do – and yet, somehow, accomplished a great deal more. And, once again, it wasn’t enough for him.
In 1921 he left on his latest expedition, promising to circumnavigate Antarctica.
He died, onboard, of heart failure. He was 47.
Shackleton left life as he lived it – always going as far as he thought he could go and then pushing himself, one step further, into legend.
“For scientific leadership, give me Scott,” arctic explorer Raymond Priestley once declared. “For swift and efficient travel, give me Amundsen. But when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out — get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.”