Shackleton, the grisly fate of a ship’s cat ... and the betrayal of Chippy McNish
When the legendary explorer’s ship got stuck in the Antarctic ice, a humble Scots carpenter saved the day. Yet his reward was the cruel loss of a beloved pet – and a snub that lasted a lifetime. As a new hunt for the wreck of the Endurance begins...
survival. After finally making it to Elephant Island, McNish was tasked with making seaworthy the James Caird, the lifeboat that would take an advance party to South Georgia to safety, which he did by using a mixture of seal blood and flour.
Shackleton wrote disparagingly that it looked like ‘stage scenery’ but later admitted the crew would not have survived without it.
The full truth of McNish’s insubordination remains disputed. Neither he nor his captain, Frank Worsley, ever wrote about the incident, and Shackleton mentioned it only in his diary, remarking: ‘Everyone working well except the carpenter. I shall never forget him in this time of strain and stress’.
When Shackleton returned to the UK he requested that four men on the expedition not be recommended for Polar Medals. One was McNish. Even at the time, the decision caused concern.
Alexander Macklin, one of the ship’s surgeons, wrote that he was upset at McNish not being included. ‘Of all the men in the party no one more deserved recognition than the old carpenter... I would regard the withholding of the Polar Medal from McNish as a grave injustice.’
McNish returned to the Merchant Navy, and eventually found his way to Wellington, where he worked on the wharfs with the New Zealand Shipping Company until his career was ended by injury.
Destitute, with no family and few friends, he was reduced to sleeping in the wharf sheds under a tarpaulin and would live on monthly collections by dock workers. Eventually, he was put in a care home.
In 2015, Rennie travelled to Wellington where he met then 90year-old Baden Norris, an Antarctic expert and historian who had campaigned for McNish to receive the Polar Medal.
As a young boy Norris, who died in 2018, met McNish, and recalled being taken to visit him in the care home by his father shortly before he died. It was a visit that was to resonate for the rest of his life.
‘The little boy was a bit apprehensive, and described him as this frightening looking chap lying in his bed,’ says Rennie. ‘McNish looked at the boy and said “Shackleton shot my cat!” ‘The boy broke into tears. He’d never heard anyone speak with such force or, indeed, in a Scottish accent. Baden remembered it for the rest of his life.’
It was clear that the loss of Mrs Chippy still affected McNish, and those who knew him on the docks said the one thing he had never forgiven Shackleton for was Mrs Chippy’s death. Alone and miserable, he was also homesick.
In his diaries, now kept in a library in Wellington, he recalled happier times at home in Glasgow.
‘Some of his writing is really quite poignant,’ says Rennie. ‘On Hogmanay he wrote that he was thinking about New Year in Glasgow and cakes and glasses of wine, and the firesides that he remembered, and where he would be welcomed back in Scotland. It was really quite moving.’
MCNISH died, penniless, in a Wellington hospital on September 24, 1930, aged just 56 – his body having never fully recovered from spending so many months at the Pole in extreme conditions. The New Zealand Navy, recognising his significant role in Antarctic exploration, gave him a hero’s funeral.
A naval cortege pulled by horses escorted his body, accompanied by dozens of Navy officers in full uniform. A Wellington politician who knew McNish’s story arranged for the New Zealand government to pay for a plot in Karori cemetery, where he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.
In 1957 the New Zealand Antarctic Society bought a headstone, and the British Antarctic Survey later named a small island near South Georgia after him.
In 2004 the statue of Mrs Chippy the cat was added by artist Chris Elliott, who said he wanted people to come upon the grave ‘and be surprised to find a cat resting, its face alert, its body relaxed as if he were lying on McNish’s bunk’.
Today, visitors lay flowers at the cat’s paws, or string tinsel round its neck. Some leave cat toys. The Polar Medal may still elude McNish, but it is heartening to know that in death, his beloved cat has finally been returned to his side.