In the shadow of Shackleton

Sarah Peasley, Special to the News

Published May 5, 2006 at midnight

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Adventurers: If you want the memory of your expedition to endure - even if it's a flop - you'd best have a flair for showmanship and a first-rate photographer on board. That worked for Ernest Shackleton, whose attempt to lead his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition across the South Pole 90 years ago on sledges failed miserably. It never even landed on Antarctica.

Nonetheless, Shackleton's memoir sits next to dozens of breathless books and DVDs about the abortive mission, nearly all featuring legendary Australian photographer Frank Hurley's stark images of the team's 22 months floundering at sea.

But there was a much more compelling story of a successful mission unfolding simultaneously on the other side of the continent, and it's finally been told in gripping detail in The Lost Men: The Harrowing Saga of Shackleton's Ross Sea Party. We can thank historian Kelly Tyler-Lewis for bringing the full account to light because it's an inspiring story that deserves to be told.

In 1914, Shackleton and his team of 27 men set sail from South Georgia Island aboard the Endurance with their sights on Antarctica's Weddell Sea, from which they intended to begin their trek. At the same time, a support team of 18 men traveled aboard the wooden-hulled Aurora from Australia to Antarctica's Ross Sea, the Shackleton team's ultimate destination. The Ross Sea Party's mission was to set up depots for the last quarter of Shackleton's trek to sustain them during their final slog.

Tyler-Lewis gained access to the extensive contemporaneous journals of the Ross Sea Party, interviewed their families, scoured newspaper stories from the day and mined numerous other sources to piece together this thorough and thoroughly enjoyable account.

Yes, it's enjoyable reading, despite the incomprehensible suffering, deprivation and death you know is coming.

Tyler-Lewis paints interesting, complete characters, including the Sea Party's leader, one-eyed Capt. Aeneas Mackintosh, and Ernest Joyce, a brash, able seaman. She avoids clichés and distracting rhetorical flourishes and gives a complete story, from the parading of the 99 motley, ill-suited Canadian sledge dogs down the streets in London to generate publicity for the trip, to accounts of what happened to the Ross Party survivors in later life.

From the start, both sides of the expedition were hobbled by lack of funds. (Shackleton's primary motivation in taking Hurley along was to be able to sell photo, film and story rights in advance.) World War I had begun and many questioned the wisdom of putting money into exploration. In Australia, Mackintosh had to bully the accountant back in Britain and beg for local support to recruit the Ross Party's final members, and refurbish and stock the shabby Aurora.

Once they landed on the continent, eight men remained on the ship, while 10 set out to fulfill the mission. The poorly outfitted group of scientists and seamen used structures and hundreds of pounds of clothing and food left close to the coast by Capt. Robert Scott, who died along with his men in a trip to the Pole years earlier.

Overcoming inexperience and frequent blizzards, dodging deep crevasses and shifting sea ice, the group was driven by honor and a fierce sense of responsibility to the Shackleton party - whose fate they did not know, of course. They learned quickly that they couldn't depend on their senses or their tools to navigate their way.

Tyler-Lewis describes one storm that engulfed a small group ferrying supplies on a sled in this way: "Sky and ground became indistinguishable, while the compass needle dipped hard and dragged due to the proximity of the south magnetic pole, making it impossible to stay on course. They became hopelessly lost."

The original plan had called for the Aurora and its eight-man crew to leave the coast, where shifting sea ice constantly threatened the wooden ship, and to winter farther out in the Antarctic waters, then return to pick up the rest of the team in the spring. But even that ice was too treacherous, and the Aurora fled to Australia.

Astonishingly, Shackleton ultimately met up with the Aurora there and returned to the Ross Sea 24 months after the ship had dropped off the team, where he found that three of the landing crew had perished. Mackintosh was among the dead. The team's Australians were leery of Shackleton, blaming him for their misfortunes. But he won them over with his warmth, storytelling and attentive listening.

"Grudgingly, Joyce conceded that Shackleton had 'nearly put up with as much hardship' as themselves and granted that the 800-mile journey in the James Caird (the Endurance lifeboat) was 'simply miraculous.' "

Despite its difficulties, the Ross Sea Party reached its goal in two summer seasons of hard work. Its members trudged more than 1,700 miles back and forth from its bases near the coast, hauling and depositing more than 4,000 pounds of provisions in the process. They also collected valuable weather and other data. No other group had come close to the 200 days they spent sledging on Antarctica's Barrier.

In doing so, the men suffered from scurvy, snow blindness, exposure and, just as significantly, the psychological strains of boredom, terror and social isolation.

In short, the Shackleton team's mere survival pales compared to the Ross team's survival as it fulfilled its ultimately futile mission. Let's hope that expedition now gets the recognition it deserves, even in the absence of a glorious photographic record.

Sarah Peasley is a freelance writer living in Littleton.

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