Shackleton: A new biography

A new Shackleton biography is out this year, by explorer Ranulph Fiennes. (Shackleton, the biography, 2022, Pegasus). It joins a crowded field of books about Shackleton’s exploits and because of its scale, promises a tour de force by its length alone.

Shackleton, 1908. Wikimedia Commons

The new biography of Shackleton

I haven’t read this Shackleton biography but when I do, I’ll compare it to Shackleton’s Boat Journey by Frank Worsley. I’ve read many accounts of Shackleton’s exploits, and Worsley’s book, about Shackleton’s famous daring escape from the Antarctic Peninsula to South Georgia island in 1915. That is the book I recommend. Worsely was the captain of Shackleton’s ship the Endurance and was along on that boat journey that saved them all.

Shackleton’s ship was found under two miles of ocean

The publication of this latest book just barely pre-dates the biggest recent news about Shackleton. What happened was the discovery of his ship Endurance, resting quietly under two miles of ocean at the bottom of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea only a few weeks after the Fiennes book came out (read BBC web post). I admit I was amazed by this on several points. First, it was found almost exactly at the location where it sunk in 1915. This attests to the accuracy of the navigation at that time, or more likely, the skill of the navigator, Worsely. And second, even considering it is a wooden ship, it appears barely touched by chemical decomposition and munching of bottom-dwelling creatures. They have to be scarce, maybe due to oxygen-poor bottom water. I’ll wait for some scientific explanation of why that is so.

My visit to Shackleton’s Ross Sea hut

I have some first-hand experience with Shackleton; not in person of course. Because my encounter was decades after Shackleton’s adventures. During my first trip to Antarctica in 1989-90, our small team made a shakedown trip out of McMurdo Station north to Shackleton’s hut at Cape Royds. Seven of us traveled over the gray sea ice by snowmobile towing heavy cargo sledges (sleds) filled with our camping gear and food. We slept overnight (in tents—no housing anywhere nearby!) at Cape Evans where Robert Scott had built a hut to house his 1910-11 expedition that sought the Pole. His team achieved the South Pole but didn’t return here to the cape. They ran out of provisions and starved only eleven miles from their nearest food cache.

The next day we drove north to Cape Royds where Shackleton had established his Nimrod expedition hut in 1907. His objective was also the South Pole. Shackleton didn’t make it to the Pole because he knew his team was running out of supplies. They had no choice but to turn back. This expedition was before Scott’s fatal one and before Shackleton’s famed and doomed 1914 Endurance expedition on the opposite (Atlantic) side of Antarctica.

Inside Shackleton’s Nimrod Hut

We stopped our snowmobiles on the edge of the sea ice and the volcanic ash of the cape. Unkinking our cold and stiff legs, we walked over low black hills and through a penguin colony to the hut. To my surprise and shock, one of my team had obtained permission to enter the hut and had the key. Our team entered and stood without speaking at the far end of a large room containing bunks, skis, boots, blankets, and provisions on shelves along the walls. What could we have said in a moment like that? In the far corner was a dark, partly enclosed space with a blanket hung as a privacy curtain; it had to be Shackleton’s room.