It’s easy to see why Shackleton is widely known as a heroic expeditionary leader. There are dozens of books on the man, all claiming in their back-cover summaries that Shackleton is the focal point and star of the Imperial Tran-Antarctic Expedition – one of the greatest instances of human survival, motivation and innovation. But with a little effort we can overcome the image that Shackleton and his publishers created of Shackleton and his expeditions, and we can see his widely known character-trait is false. Like The book Endurance, The Ross Sea Party also shows Shackleton’s true character was egotistical, his methods were manipulating, and his goal was fame.
The Lost Men,” by Kelly Tyler-Lewis, is the story of the Ross Sea Party. The Ross party was to be the group of men who met Shackleton at the 2/3s mark as he crossed Antarctica – they were to set food and supply huts to allow Shackleton and his men to survive as they passed the South Pole. The story is not a success story. The sad truth is that men died horrible, painful and slow deaths during this expedition… Across the continent, Shackleton himself, along with his crew of 28 explorers and sailors shared a similar tale, though luckily without deaths. We wrote about the book Endurance and the adventures of the other party in a previous blog, HERE. Now we will write about the adventures of the Ross Sea Party, and of how Shackleton must ultimately take responsibility for the loss of life and prolonged suffering experienced by the crew of two separated vessels and the men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914.
Unlike the book Endurance, which focused solely on the team which landed in the Weddell Sea and the ship that was ice-locked and eventually sunk there, The Lost Men goes into 1) Shackleton’s preparations for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 2) the excruciating pains it took Macintosh (the superior officer) to get his mission underway, and 3) the horrible tragedies that befell the Ross Sea Party. This blog goes into those three points, and explain why Shackleton is accountable and how his manipulating methods caused the great losses.
Shackleton devised the plan to reach the South Pole. Just before the outbreak of World War 1, when nationalism was hitting mainstream ideology across Europe, expeditions served as a way to influence and unite a nation’s people. England sponsored many expeditions at the poles pre-WW1. Nations in general still do this at great lengths – whether it’s through the space race, technology race, sports or some other uniting goal. Unfortunately for Shackleton, his objective to reach the South Pole first failed when Roald Amundsen reached it in 1911. Instead of giving up, Shackleton devised a separate mission to cross the Antarctic continent. This new goal was not as glorious as the original goal, so from the start Shackleton lost much needed government support and funding for his mission. Though this did not stop the man. Shackleton raised money for the adventure by selling the rights to the post adventure story.
From England, the two teams parted ways, each heading for the opposite side of Antarctica. One was to lay over in Brazil and the other Australia. In Australia, Captain Macintosh found his ship in dry dock without the funds to complete the needed work and without the funds to hire crew or launch his vessel. He pulled every string in the book to meet the needs of the mission. He recruited unskilled men with money he did not have. He bargained with local science and new organizations in exchange for pieces of the mission. He scraped pennies together to have his ship launch. Shackleton had set up Macintosh for failure from the start. He had lied and manipulated the situation, which forced Macintosh to go outside of his own ethical and leadership style to pull the mission together. If Macintosh failed to make it to his designated outpost in Antarctica, then Shackleton and his men would die of starvation. Shackleton wanted a story to publish, and a successful and safe journey was arbitrary to that goal.
Macintosh set sail in December of 1914 and landed at The Aurora’s prearranged destination at Ross Island. The team split up. One side was to manage the boat and ensure it lasted through the winter. The other side began planning to move the goods across Antarctica to build supply huts and supply them. Late by weeks, Macintosh took the command of the sled-dogs away from their rightful leader, Ernest Joyce, and order the dogs to begin pulling all the weight plus some 100s of pounds without the proper conditioning.
All of the dogs but two died within weeks. The mechanical sled failed. The sled teams were forced to split apart due to ill tempers. On foot, two teams of three pulled the 1000s of lbs of salted pork across the frozen tundra, 1800 miles. They made it days after their initial arrival date. They actually made it. It took 200 days on foot in the frozen Antarctic to accomplish the mission, and one death occurred in the process, that of Spencer-Smith. Not knowing Shackleton had failed on his end, their efforts were in vain. They limped back to base, loosing Spencer-Smith on the way to scurvy. Upon arriving to the Bay, they found their ship was gone. As it had to sail back to Australia due to storm damage and to replenish on coal. The men were scurvy beaten sailors, stranded and Antarctica. There was a stone hut at the far end of the Bay, but three of the team of 5 did not think the Bay ice would hold if a storm approached and they refused to go. A storm blew in and the two members who went, including Macintosh, disappeared for good. Out on an ice flow, blown into the Oceans. The foot prints were found days later ending at the edge of the ice…
The remaining three men made it to the hut a week later. They found more of the Aurora’s crew waiting and they all hunkered down for the unknown to happen. For the winter months they waited, not knowing the fate of their ship. Had it sunk? Was Shackleton alive? Would he show up and demolish their food supplies? Would they live until a rescue vessel arrived? World War 1 had started before they left England. What was happening? Holy shit it’s cold.
Shackleton made it to Australia and was able to get the Aurora back underway. They made it to the stranded Ross Sea Party on January 10, 1916. A total of three men had perished.
Shackleton came out a hero. An exemplary leader, so his publishers said! His story was a saga of Man at his best….
I barf when I hear people say Shackleton was a hero. What the Fuck.
