Polar Crusader E-Book

Michael Smith

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 632

Beschreibung

Wordie's career as both an explorer and academic geologist opened up his participation in Shackleton's epic Endurance expedition of 1914-1916, where he proved one of the most resilient of those stranded in appalling conditions on Elephant Island. He continued to lead arduous expeditions well into his forties, while building his reputation as an academic and mentor. During the Second World War, he was instrumental in safeguarding British strategic interests in the Antarctic territories, and later rose to be President of the Royal Geographical Society and Master of St John's College, Cambridge. He died in 1962. Michael Smith captures all the drama of an extraordinary life lived at the edge and goes a long way to establishing James Wordie in his rightful place in the pantheon of great British explorers.

Leseprobe

POLAR CRUSADER

A LIFE OF SIR JAMES WORDIE

This eBook edition published in 2012 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QSwww.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © Michael Smith 2004, 2007

The moral right of Michael Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-84158-543-7 eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-491-1

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Dedicated to

CONTENTS

List of Maps and Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Preface

1 Lairds and carts

2 From gold to ice

3 To the Antarctic

4 ‘The fates are against us . . .’

5 Cast adrift

6 The open boat journey

7 Marooned on Elephant Island

8 Closing ranks

9 The Western Front

10 With Bruce to Spitsbergen

11 Conquering the Beerenberg

12 A new era

13 Both ends of the world

14 On Greenland’s unknown shores

15 Perils on Petermann Peak

16 Hopes dashed

17 A last Arctic voyage

18 Top secret

19 A gift for intrigue

20 The final days

Chronology: James Mann Wordie 1889–1962

References

Appendix: James Mann Wordie, Weddell Sea Log, 1914–16

Bibliography

Index

LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

List of Maps

Scotland

The Drift of the Endurance

Elephant Island

Western Front

Svalbard Archipelago

Jan Mayen Island

East Greenland

J.M. Wordie’s Arctic Expeditions

Nordenskjold Glacier & Petermann Peak, East Greenland

Baffin Island, Cambridge Gulf & Clyde Inlet

James Wordie’s last Antarctic Expedition, 1947

List of Illustrations

Fraisgil, the Wordie family home in Montgomerie Drive (now Cleveden Drive), Glasgow

Jane Wordie, mother of James Wordie

John Wordie, father of James Wordie

James Wordie, 1893, aged four

James Wordie, aged 10 and sister Jean, 12, pictured in 1899

James Wordie with the pipe band of the Glasgow Academy Cadet Corps

James Wordie around the time he entered Cambridge University

Gertrude Henderson at the age of eighteen

Wordie, pictured in 1923 with his new bride, Gertrude

The Endurance party prepares to sail for Antarctica in October 1914

Endurance struggles against the crippling ice of the Weddell Sea, February 1915

Wordie with Sir Ernest Shackleton shortly before Endurance sailed into the Weddell Sea

A cross section graphic showing the interior design and layout of the doomed Endurance

Wordie with Robert Clark in ‘Auld Reekie’ on board Endurance

Wordie scrubs a floor on board Endurance with bosun Alf Cheetham and Alexander Macklin

Endurance lurches at a crazy angle as the ice of the Weddell Sea tightens its deadly grip

After a terrible journey away from the ice, the 28 men from the Endurance party reached the desolate Elephant Island on April 15, 1916

The first hot drink after landing at Elephant Island

The men who spent four and a half months marooned on Elephant Island

The entire Endurance party re-united in Chile, September 3, 1916, after the rescue from Elephant Island

A Scottish newspaper, The Bulletin, gave its readers a local angle on the dramatic Elephant Island escapade

Wordie pictured in uniform after enlisting in the Royal Field Artillery, 1917

Wordie and Lethbridge at the top of Mount Beerenberg, August 11, 1921

Mercanton stands at the summit of the Beerenberg with Lethbridge

Returning from Jan Mayen, 1921

Wordie in typical pose in the Arctic during the 1920s

Heimen leaving Bergen, June 1923, on the ill-fated voyage to Greenland

Expedition ship, Heimen, trapped off the east coast of Greenland, July 1923

Wordie in 1926 on his return from his second trip to Greenland

Heimland stopped by the ice off East Greenland

Heimland photographed in the ice alongside the Gotta, August 1929

Wordie’s party nears the summit of Petermann Peak, East Greenland, August 1929

Crossing the Nordenskjold Glacier, East Greenland, after scaling Petermann Peak, August 1929

The conquerors of Petermann Peak on board Heimland off Aberdeen, September 9, 1929

Heimen leaves Aberdeen in May 1934 on Wordie’s disappointing expedition to West Greenland and Baffin Bay

Hunting for game. Wordie during one of his eight expeditions to the Arctic

Wordie at Leith in June 1937 before leaving on his final Arctic expedition

Wordie in relaxed mood with Tom Lethbridge in 1937 before taking his last expedition to the Arctic

Wordie’s expedition ship, Isbjørn, pictured at Leith in 1937 flying the Norwegian flag

Isbjørn fighting the ice near Ellesmere Island in the summer of 1937

Isbjørn at Godhavn, Disko Island, West Greenland in 1937

A portrait of Wordie in 1951 at the height of his powers

Wordie watches as John Hunt gives the Queen some inside information about the successful Everest climb

Wordie examining a model of Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary, John Hunt and Tenzing Norgay

Antarctic Club Dinner, 1959

One of the last photographs of Wordie, taken at the Master’s Lodge, St John’s College, Cambridge, 1959

Wordie photographed in the late 1950s, when the strain of his active life and illness was clearly evident

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A CONSIDERABLE NUMBER OF PEOPLE AND A VARIETY OF LIBRARIES and archives were consulted in the writing of this book and it would not have been possible to chronicle the extraordinarily rich and varied life of Sir James Wordie without their generous assistance. I am very grateful to everyone whose contribution, however large or small, helped me and any omissions are unintentional.

Special mention should first go to the Wordie family, who freely made available the very considerable correspondence, diaries and papers of Sir James Wordie without any pre-conditions or qualifications. I was given free access, even on occasions when my enquiries were a little awkward.

Elizabeth Clarke, George Wordie, Alison Stancer and Peter Wordie, the four surviving children of Sir James Wordie, also willingly shared memories of their father and were endlessly courteous and patient with my questions. I cannot thank them enough for their tolerance and for being so candid.

However, I must reserve particular thanks for Peter Wordie, who worked so hard to achieve his desire of having a biography written about his father. He was a constant source of optimism and understanding, who freely gave me great support and encouragement and never once sought to influence my judgement. I will always be grateful.

The generous assistance of Alan Wordie, a grandson of James Wordie, was important in obtaining access to many documents and photographs held by the family. I am very appreciative of that support.

The considered and painstakingly thorough contribution of Edward Paget-Tomlinson, a nephew of Sir James Wordie, has been essential in compiling this book and I will always be in his debt. He undertook much of the initial research, particularly into the ancestry of the Wordie family, which he gladly passed into my hands and in the best traditions of literary research kindly allowed me to form my own judgements. I owe him much.

I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Anne Savours and Harold King who, at different times, provided a great deal of constructive advice and valuable research to the preliminary work of Edward Paget-Tomlinson. This, too, was freely passed to me and I am indebted to both for their generosity.

This early research was particularly valuable because I was given access to the personal memories of Sir James Wordie provided by people who, sadly, have since passed away. Among those whose written testimonials are used in this book are Sir Vivian Fuchs, Terence Armstrong and Colin Bertram.

I am also grateful to those who allowed themselves to be interviewed by me and provided their personal recollections of Sir James Wordie or willingly supplied useful insight into relevant Polar and academic activities of the time. I wish to record my warmest thanks to Professor John Crook of St John’s College, Cambridge, Tony Daltry, Barbara Debenham, the daughter of Frank Debenham, The Hon. Broke Evans, son of Teddy Evans, Sir Alexander Glen, Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith, Peter Speak, Charles Swithinbank and David Yelverton. I also owe a particular debt to Anders Mattsson for his helpful translation skills.

It is important to place on record my gratitude to the large number of archives and libraries consulted during my researches and to those who have given permission to quote from their records.

I am grateful for the help provided by the following: William Mills and Shirley Sawtell in the library and Robert Headland, the archivist, at the Scott Polar Research Institute; staff at the Manuscripts Division of the National Library of Scotland; Vicki Ingpen at the Journals & Archives Department of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; Julie Carrington and colleagues at the archives and library of the Royal Geographical Society; Fani Karagianni and Joanna Rae in the archives at the British Antarctic Survey; Malcolm Underwood, the archivist and the Master, Fellows and Scholars of St John’s College, Cambridge; Ian Riches at the National Trust for Scotland; Elma Lindsay, local history officer at Stirling Central Library; Iain MacLeod, Deputy Rector at Glasgow Academy; Moira Rankin, senior archivist at the University of Glasgow; British Library; The Glasgow Art Club; National Archives of Scotland; the National Archive (formerly the Public Record Office); Riksarkivet, the National Archives of Norway.

Peter Fuchs kindly allowed me inspect the private papers and journals of his father, Sir Vivian Fuchs, particularly his journal of the 1929 expedition to East Greenland and documents relating to the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition. I am grateful for his help and for permission to quote freely from his father’s papers.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of documents and photographs and accreditation has been given only where it can be properly established. I trust any unintentional omissions will be excused.

Finally, the support of my sons, Daniel and Nathan has been important, notably during odd periods when I struggled to overcome the demons inside my computer. But most of all I want to express my gratitude to Barbara, my wife, who was always enormously supportive and understanding.

PREFACE

THE CALL, WHEN IT CAME, WAS TOTALLY UNEXPECTED. I WAS GAZING idly at my computer terminal one day when an e-mail arrived from someone I did not know, asking a totally unexpected question. The polite enquiry was simple enough: would I be interested in discussing the possibility of writing a book about Sir James Wordie?

My immediate reaction was overwhelmingly non-committal, not from a lack of interest or disrespect, but merely a colossal ignorance of Wordie beyond knowing that he was one of the men on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s dramatic Endurance expedition and one of those unfortunate souls marooned on Elephant Island. Beyond that I knew practically nothing.

But I was curious to find out why anyone thought that Wordie would justify a biography and did some hasty research. More importantly, I arranged to meet Peter Wordie, the son of James Wordie. Over a quiet lunch one day, Peter outlined the extraordinarily rich and varied life of his father and promised to make available his diaries and voluminous personal papers, most of which had never been seen before. I was astounded by what he told me and appalled that, as someone with a respectable knowledge of the history of polar exploration, I knew so little of James Wordie. By the time the main course arrived I had made up my mind to write the book.

What I discovered was that Sir James Wordie was a man of very many parts and that the Endurance adventure was merely the prelude to a remarkable and largely unknown story. Many men would have retired to the shadows after the ordeal of Endurance. But the shattering experience seems to have fired Wordie and ignited his own driving ambition.

The story of James Wordie is that of a prolific Polar explorer, a quiet revolutionary who changed the way that exploration was carried out, and the influential guiding light who nurtured a new generation of young adventurers and built a formidable career as an academic and administrator. He left his mark on British exploration for the best part of fifty years. Wordie was that rare Polar animal who made the successful transition from one era to another. An enormously influential moderniser, he led the way in steering exploration from the romantic and heroic age of Scott and Shackleton into the more functional mechanised and scientific age.

Few can match Wordie’s active career of travelling on nine expeditions to the Polar territories. He made his final visit to the ice at the age of sixty-five when most explorers had opted for their pipe and slippers. But even fewer can claim to have been a crucial figure in shaping two of the great geographical achievements of the twentieth century – the first successful ascent of Everest and the first crossing of the Antarctic continent. His other great influence was to be the father figure of British exploration, guiding and advising many of the important expeditions which left these shores from the 1920s until the late 1950s. He became the elder statesman of Polar exploration and his steely resolve and dedication almost single-handedly ensured that the centuries-old tradition of British voyaging to the ice did not wither and die.

Wordie was in many ways as influential to exploration as men like Sir John Barrow or Sir Clements Markham. But Wordie did not have power base of either Barrow or Markham and his achievements are all the more remarkable. Few expeditions left Britain without first consulting the éminence grise Wordie and his wise counselling helped create and develop the next generation of Polar explorers. The list of young men who were indebted to Wordie’s guidance reads like a Who’s Who of modern polar exploration and includes Vivian Fuchs, Gino Watkins, August Courtauld and John Rymill.

James Wordie’s power base was later extended to national institutions like the Royal Geographical Society and the Scott Polar Research Institute, and for thirty years he was one of the most significant, but under-estimated, figures in guiding British interests in the Antarctic territories, especially the diplomatically sensitive Falkland Islands.

However James Wordie was a shy, reserved figure who did not seek the limelight and was virtually unknown outside his immediate circle. He rarely gave interviews and never wrote a book about his multi-faceted and hugely influential life. This has left the history of exploration sadly incomplete, and a full biography of James Wordie is long overdue. Now, with access to his unpublished diaries and private papers, I hope that my researches will mean this omission can be corrected and a significant gap in the chronicles of Polar exploration can be filled.

Michael Smith

March, 2004

CHAPTER 1

LAIRDS AND CARTS

NOTHING IN THE LONG HISTORY OF THE WORDIE FAMILY PROVIDES a clue to the twentieth-century exploits of James Mann Wordie. He was as much a rarity in the Wordie lineage as he was unusual in the ranks of explorers. The Wordies are an old-established Scots family, hailing mostly from the parishes of St Ninians Torbrex and Cambusbarron around the ancient town of Stirling, which stands geographically and historically at the very heart of Scotland. Generations of Wordies inhabited the same region where men like William Wallace, Robert Bruce, Bonnie Prince Charlie and John Knox left indelible marks on Scottish history.

The Wordies were local landowners and merchants around Stirling with deep roots in the church and an occasional flirtation with the Jacobite cause. Quietly respectable and unassuming, the family lived comfortably until the mid-nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution swept through Scotland and ushered in a new era of wealth and prosperity.

It is likely that the name is derived from Worthy, and later developed into Wordye; the present spelling of Wordie was probably adopted sometime in the seventeenth century. The earliest references to the family can be traced back to 1476 when a John Worthy owned a disputed tenement in the royal burgh of Stirling. A few generations later Thomas Wordye was a friar at the historic Cambuskenneth Abbey and towards the end of the sixteenth century some of the family had settled at St Ninians. It was a member of the Wordie family who in 1682 built Williamsfield House at St Ninians, which stands to this day. The distinctive initial ‘W’ is still visible on the lintel of various houses in the district.

By the eighteenth century, the Wordies were largely merchants and lairds around St Ninians Torbrex and Cambusbarron, a thriving area with a busy woollen industry. But as the first shoots of the Industrial Revolution emerged in the mid-eighteenth century, the family had expanded almost unnoticed into transport – the business that would become synonymous with the Wordie name for the next two hundred years.

It was a modest enough start – the humble task of carrying farm produce by horse and cart from outlying homesteads along the muddy unmade roads to the bustling market in Stirling. Before long the Wordies were loading other types of merchandise onto their carts and the seeds were sown for an enterprise which made Wordie a household name and built a sizeable fortune for generations to come. The family’s first known association with cartage was in the notable year of 1745 when Thomas Wordie, clerk to the Incorporated Society of Carters of Stirling, dutifully recorded the arrival of Bonnie Prince Charlie in the town at the start of the ’Forty-five Rebellion. According to local folklore, the Young Pretender shared a cup of wine at Williamsfield House with another family member, John Wordie.

Cartage operations between Stirling and Glasgow provided a modest, but unspectacular living. One early nineteenth-century ancestor, John Wordie, even supplemented his income by running an unlawful postal service between Edinburgh and London. But he remained a small-time operator and by the 1820s debts and difficulties had piled up. In 1830 the 46-year-old John Wordie collapsed and died while taking a summer stroll, leaving his son, William, with a meagre legacy of unpaid bills and six carts.

William Wordie was only twenty when he inherited the humble operation, but he was a more astute businessman than his father and blessed with the energy of youth. Timing was also on his side and the quick-witted Wordie sensed the huge opportunities for haulage as the tide of industrialisation raced into Scotland, particularly the prospects for servicing the fast-emerging railways. William Wordie was among the first in Scotland to realise that railways urgently needed local collection and delivery of goods. In 1842 he clinched a crucial deal with the newly opened Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway to collect and forward freight from their stations; a little later he arranged a similar agreement with the Central Railway linking Stirling and Glasgow. It was an inspired move and within twenty years Wordie commanded a powerful carting network whose tentacles extended into most corners of Scotland’s vibrant economy.

William Wordie also mixed business with pleasure when, a few days before Christmas 1837, he married a local woman, Janet Jeffrey, whose father was a wealthy farmer-landowner with valuable connections in transport. The Jeffrey family owned a stake in a busy ferry operation at Alloa on the Forth, which provided another important connection to the firm’s network.

Around this time, the entrepreneurial William Wordie took the important decision to abandon the family’s traditional home in Stirling and move closer to the heart of Scotland’s burgeoning heavy industries on the Clyde. He set up home in Glasgow and began raising his own family. Between 1839 and 1853, William and Janet Wordie had seven children, two sons and five daughters.

William’s eldest son, John, was born in January 1839 and firmly established at the core of the family undertaking even before his twentieth birthday. When William Wordie died in October 1874, the struggling undertaking he had inherited in 1830 was a thriving concern with a vast carting network, a stable of around 700 horses and the line of succession firmly in place.1

John Wordie, a solemn-looking figure with a full beard and a receding hairline, was a quiet, unassuming pillar of the community, who mixed his shrewd business dealings with a strong sense of social responsibility. He was a Justice of the Peace, a director of the City’s Maternity Hospital and an elder in the Church of Scotland Hyndland Church. He also presided over the company’s most expansive era and by the early twentieth century could mobilise a huge stable of around 3,000 horses pulling carts to every corner of Scotland and into parts of England and Ireland. The firm was instantly recognised by the slogan: ‘You’ll find Wordie & Co. everywhere you go’. William McGonagall, the poet, saluted the company’s ubiquitous presence with the lines:

Twenty horses in a row

Every one a Wordie & Co.

John Wordie combined his relentless hard work with a lifelong dedication to thrift. He zealously guarded the family fortune and was irredeemably devoted to the cause of never wasting a penny. His wife once scolded a young member of staff who was cutting a piece of string in half. ‘Never waste string,’ she insisted, ‘that’s how my husband made his money.’ The reprimand passed into folklore and anyone contemplating the frivolous waste of string at Wordie & Co. invariably faced the grim warning: ‘Remember Mrs Wordie!’

John was also a strong family man, although he waited until well into middle age before finding a suitable partner. She was Jane Catherine Mathers Mann, whose well-to-do father was a merchant and exporter with the Glasgow firm, Mann, Byers & Co. Jane, at 23, was about half the age of the 43-year-old John when they married in June 1882.

It was a fertile union and their first child, William, was born two years later in July 1884. The first daughter, Jean arrived in 1887 and a second girl, Alison, was born in the autumn of 1894. The youngest son of John and Jane Wordie was born at 8.30 in the morning of 26 April 1889 at the family home at 4 Buckingham Terrace, just off Great Western Road in the Hillhead district of Glasgow. He was named James Mann Wordie.

Wordie Family Tree

Source: Edward Paget-Tomlinson

The four children enjoyed a very comfortable upbringing in a sizeable family home surrounded by servants. However, the Wordies took a fashionably semi-detached view of their offspring and followed the typical example of well-off Victorian families by handing over much of the day-to-day responsibility to a succession of nannies or governesses. John Wordie’s heavy business and personal commitments ensured he was rarely visible at home, while Jane Wordie generally found motherhood a burden. She kept her children at arm’s length, partly because she suffered from a lifetime of poor health.

Despite the slightly distant relationship, young James developed a deep devotion to his father. But there was less affection for his mother, who reserved her limited affection solely for her eldest son, Willie. In later life James Wordie always spoke with great fondness of his father and rarely mentioned his mother.

Jane Wordie was a remote and slightly difficult woman, who may have suffered from an aggravating kidney complaint which only increased her irascibility. She rarely left the comfort of home and spent long periods in her room, even having the servants bring her breakfast in bed away from the family. She, too, possessed a tireless passion for penny-pinching. It was customary in the Wordie household for the servants to take the remains of the family’s Sunday joint for their own meal. But Jane would pointedly visit the servants’ quarters and count the number of slices carved off the remnants of the joint.

Typically the children were steered into their parents’ presence half an hour before dinner and it was only on a Sunday, as they endured the full rigour of the Scottish Sabbath, that the family spent any time together. It was a God-fearing household, and each sombre Sunday John Wordie force-fed the family an uncompromising diet of spiritual duties and regular services from dawn to dusk. The family spent much of Sunday on their knees. Morning prayers in the drawing room were followed by a full service at the nearby church and after lunch the children were marched off to Sunday school before being ushered back in time to attend another full service in the evening. Any spare time between services was devoted to reading ‘good books’, such as The Pilgrim’s Progress. The day’s proceedings were rounded off with evening prayers in the drawing room, where John Wordie invariably ordered all available household staff to dutifully line up on their knees alongside the family.

The closest person to James in his early life was Alice Barbezat, the Swiss governess, who came from Vevey on the north-east shore of Lake Geneva and formed a strong bond with the youngster. Alice was a patient, kindly soul who assumed day-to-day control of the children and effectively became a surrogate mother to James. Her presence in these formative days left a lasting impression and although she left the family when James was six, he remained devoted to Alice for years afterwards. They never lost touch and he respectfully called her ‘Mademoiselle’.

However, the major influence on James Wordie was his intelligent and cultured father, who gave him a deep sense of propriety, a lifelong love of nature and a profound respect for the arts. He also picked up his father’s keen business mind and the trademark partiality for being scrupulously careful with money. Perhaps the only characteristic which James did not pick up from his father was religious fervour. While respectful and conscious of his spiritual duties, James Wordie never embraced the Church with his father’s commitment.

The outdoors, which was to figure so prominently in his later life, was an early feature of James’s upbringing. John Wordie introduced all his children to Scotland’s rugged grandeur by regularly taking a large house near Appin, a few miles south of the historic site of Glencoe. There they wold take vigorous walks among the oaks and ash. James took to the natural environment with great enthusiasm, first going on long walks and hikes with his father and later trekking independently over the hillsides. It was the start of the Lowlander’s lifelong love affair with the Highlands. His fondness for walking also gave him the freedom to escape the stuffy confines of home, where the brooding presence of his mother often made him feel uncomfortable.

From an early age James Wordie also picked up many of his father’s cultural interests. His father was something of an art connoisseur and a book collector, with a particular keenness for etchings and watercolours, which he picked up on frequent visits to the galleries in Paris. His collection included works by Millet, Corot and Rousseau and he owned etchings by Rembrandt, Whistler and Meryon. John Wordie was also associated with the artists who emerged in Glasgow at the end of the nineteenth century and he acted as a governor of the Glasgow School of Art from 1898 until 1905. Occasionally he supported struggling painters and frequently advised galleries on staging exhibitions. By contrast, Jane Wordie took a curmudgeonly view of her husband’s interest in the arts, even going to the lengths of trying to prevent him bringing his prized works into the house. She once conceded: ‘You can smuggle your books into the house easier than a new painting.’2

Jane Wordie’s attitude was especially surprising since she came from an artistic family and was no stranger to art. Her parents were both art lovers and her brother, Alexander Mann, became an accomplished landscape painter, studied in Paris under Carolus Duran and was associated with the Glasgow school. His work, which hung on the walls of the Mann family home, was once described as ‘assured and confident rather than impassioned’.3

The Wordies did not stay long at Buckingham Terrace and it may be that their new home was chosen because it provided a better showcase for John Wordie’s expansive collections. Soon after the birth of James, the family moved to a large house named Fraisgil in Montgomerie Drive (later re-named Cleveden Drive) in the Hyndland area of Glasgow. Fraisgil was a substantial detached home with numerous rooms, a large garden and a spacious conservatory where the family grew orchids. The walls in the study were adorned from floor to ceiling with paintings and etchings and the shelves in the grand library groaned under the weight of John Wordie’s books.

John’s other passion was education. He spent thirteen years as a director of the distinguished Glasgow Academy and ensured that his children would have the best education that money could buy. James Wordie’s first taste of schooling was a carefully chosen but unlikely setting for the youngster. At the age of five, James was taken to Westbourne School for Girls in Westbourne Gardens, Hyndland, which despite its name took in a few small boys as pupils. A classmate was Alexander Lindsay, who later graduated to become Master of Balliol College, Oxford. James spent three years at Westbourne School for Girls before being sent to the Glasgow Academy in 1897, where his elder brother Willie was already in attendance. It was an excellent choice, which propelled the gifted youngster towards the inevitable place at university.

Glasgow Academy, which was founded in 1846, had earned a formidable reputation for educational excellence, turning out a glittering array of young men destined to achieve fame in many fields. A contemporary of James Wordie was John (Lord) Reith, the first director of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and another old boy was J.M. Barrie, the author and creator of Peter Pan. By coincidence, Barrie’s close friend was the Antarctic explorer, Captain Robert Scott, who named his only son, Peter, after Barrie’s best-known character.

James Wordie took to school with zest, driven by his innate eagerness to learn. He excelled from the start, rising to second in his class in the first full year and quickly developing into the golden boy of the school.4

He never fell below second place in class overall and topped his form for six years, picking up a succession of prizes for subjects as varied as writing, gymnastics, mathematics and drawing. General knowledge, probably nourished in his father’s library at Fraisgil, was a speciality. At sixteen he was appointed Dux – a now defunct title meaning academic head – of the classical section of the school. He shone at almost everything he touched. He edited The Glasgow Academy Chronicle and gained his marksman’s badge for rifle shooting.

Even music came easily to the exceptional youngster. He took up the bagpipes, joined the Academy’s Cadet Corp in 1903 as a Pipe-Corporal and within a year was promoted to the Pipe Major of the band. For some unknown reason, he regularly played an unusual set of pipes about three-quarters the size of the common adult type. About the only talent lacking in Wordie was a decent singing voice. It was one of the few vulnerable points in his formidable armoury.

Almost inevitably, there was a touch of arrogant superiority about the teenager with the Midas touch. He became an enthusiastic member of the school’s Literary and Debating Society, but often ignored the theme of the debate to bang on about his own personal favourite issues. The official Academy records note that he was ‘quite indifferent’ to the subject of debate.

James Wordie grew up quickly in this heady academic environment and the starched surroundings at Fraisgil and there appears to have been only a brief interlude between childhood and adulthood. He was precise and proper, always impeccably dressed for the occasion and armed with the formal vocabulary of an adult. He wrote copiously and his writing, even at an early age, displayed a maturity well beyond his years.

At the age of sixteen, when most young men were contemplating somewhat more worldly topics, he chose to address the Academy’s debating society on the gruelling theme of Tariff Reform. Without the merest hint of mockery, he once posed the pretentious question: ‘Does Education Remove Superstition?’

The academic laurels and extramural accomplishments ensured that James Wordie frequently stood out from the crowd, although he was not always as popular with his fellow pupils as he was with his teachers. It was a trait that contemporaries would recognise in later years as Wordie became infamous for his distinctive but dictatorial style. From an early age, James Wordie sincerely believed that what was best for James Wordie was best for everyone.

Wordie’s seemingly unstoppable progress was halted by family tragedy in February 1902 when his elder sister, Jean, was struck down by meningitis and died, aged only fourteen. He was devastated at the sudden loss. It is possible that John Wordie bore the tragedy in mind a year later in 1903 when he took his three surviving children, Willie, James and Alison, on their first trip abroad, a major two-month vacation to the Alps. It was a journey which opened up new horizons and was influential in changing James Wordie’s life. Although the frequent visits to Appin had whetted his appetite for the outdoors, Wordie was overwhelmed by the scale and magnificent splendour of the Alps. In the following weeks among the mountains and glaciers of France and Switzerland, Wordie developed a lifelong interest in rocks and ice.

A busy schedule took the Wordie family from Geneva to Champery, La Comballaz, Clarens near Montreux and finally to Bern. The family quickly established a strict routine of long walks, odd games of tennis and dutiful visits to church. James Wordie was the model of a young Scotsman abroad, causing mild curiosity among the Swiss by proudly wearing his kilt at every occasion. On one occasion at Champery he played the bagpipes and then performed a sword-dance at a concert in aid of a local English church in the area.

Jane Wordie did not participate in the holiday. She was often excused all duties and regularly stayed behind for a quiet breakfast in bed. In the evening she would retire early to bed. Significantly, James took the opportunity to re-establish contact with his former governess, Alice Barbezat. Even though she had left Glasgow eight years earlier, Barbezat was warmly restored to the fold and played a full part in the holiday. While Jane sat quietly in her hotel room, Alice enthusiastically joined James on walks and at other functions. James’s diary of the Swiss holiday is full of references to ‘Mdle Barbezat’ and contains only a few mentions of ‘Mother’.

After a month of regular Alpine exercise, the 14-year-old was considered fit enough to tackle his first serious climb, one of the peaks of Les Dents Blanches above Champery on the border between Switzerland and France. A local guide was hired to steer James and his elder brother Willie through the swirling mist and rain to one peak of 8,881 ft (2,664 m), the highest he had ever stood. It was bitterly cold at the top and they stayed only a few minutes. No one had remembered to wind their watches so it was impossible to say how long the climb had taken.

Wordie made a series of further climbs around Champery, Aigle and La Comballaz during his memorable summer of 1903, beginning a passion for mountaineering which would last for the rest of his life. Touched by the majestic scenery, the young man wrote in his diary: ‘My power of appreciating scenery has sensibly increased after having studied day after day the mighty ridges of the mountains with glaciers plastered over their sides.’5

He followed up the visit to the Alps by spending more time in the Scottish hills, and in 1904 the 15-year-old embarked on his first independent excursion. It was a two-day hike with a cousin through the wet and foggy Dollar Glen, northwards past Drummond Castle and on to Crieff. Hiking and climbing became a regular routine for the teenager. He frequently rose before dawn to catch an early train for a full day trip, accompanied by Willie and Alison, cousins James and Keith Doak, and George Buchanan-Smith, a close friend from Glasgow Academy.

The attachment to the outdoors was not allowed to interfere with studies and the pursuit of a place at university. In October 1906 he matriculated at Glasgow University, having secured the James Lochhead Bursary. It was no surprise that the young man chose to read Geology.

One of the hardest tasks at this time must have been to keep the exceptional youngster’s feet on the ground. So far, everything he touched had blossomed and Wordie’s astute father told his son that he ‘must be careful to fully appreciate the responsibility that lies on you from having gained such an honour’.6 Wordie, to his credit, fully understood his responsibilities and he took to the university, with its rich Scots traditions and scholarly dedication, with typical zeal. It was the ideal environment for the eager and outstanding young student and by chance, it also gave Wordie an early introduction to the increasingly fashionable world of polar exploration.

Wordie’s main influence at Glasgow was Professor John W. Gregory, a distinguished geologist and explorer, who came close to changing the course of British exploration to the Antarctic in the early twentieth century, the heroic age. Gregory possessed all the right credentials to be one of the most significant figures in the drive to open up Antarctica. He was an eminent geologist with valuable first-hand experience of the ice, having made the first crossing of Spitsbergen with Sir Martin Conway in 1896. In 1901, as Britain was putting together the Discovery expedition, Gregory was a prime candidate to play a leading role in the most comprehensive attempt to explore the continent.

Initially, Gregory was asked to lead the landing party from Discovery, which intended to make the first serious attempt to explore the interior of the continent. The ship’s party, which was not scheduled to land, would be under the leadership of an ambitious naval commander, Robert Scott. But the driving force behind the expedition was Sir Clements Markham, the elderly President of the Royal Geographical Society who wanted Discovery to be a naval enterprise, like the earlier British expeditions to the Arctic in the nineteenth century. Markham had been to the Arctic half a century earlier and was implacably opposed to the notion of civilian scientists like Gregory interfering with naval business. The clash of ideals between Gregory and Markham was hugely significant for Britain’s exploration, a classic struggle of old school versus the modernisers. A different outcome might have avoided the undeniably heroic but dreadful climax of this effort with Scott’s tragic last expedition in 1912.

Markham, who was seventy, had learned little from his Arctic experience and resolutely clung to the old-fashioned idea of mobilising cumbersome, large-scale naval operations to explore in the hostile environment. It was a regime which obstinately refused to learn Eskimo methods of survival and involved parties of robust seamen hauling their own heavy sledges over the ice – a system which had failed so spectacularly in the past.

If Markham epitomised the Imperial arrogance of the Victorian age, Gregory had grasped the essentials of modern polar travel and urged a more progressive approach. He argued that Discovery should be captained by an experienced skipper from the whaling fleets, with knowledge of the pack ice, and recommended a small landing party using dog-drawn sledges to penetrate the unknown interior. A decade after Discovery the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, beat Scott’s navy-led party in the race to the South Pole using a small hand-picked crew and teams of dogs, while Scott and four other men died dragging their own sledges over the ice. But Markham won the political battle and Gregory resigned from the Discovery expedition, leaving Scott in full control of both the ship and landing party. Gregory’s contribution to Discovery was purely symbolic – the wooden hut erected at Hut Point on Ross Island was initially known as ‘Gregory’s Lodge’ after its designer. In the event, Scott became a household name and died in appalling circumstances, while Gregory returned to the relative anonymity of academic life. In 1904, as Discovery returned from the Antarctic, he was appointed to the first Chair of Geology at Glasgow University and held the post for twenty-five years until his retirement in 1929.

Gregory’s knowledge and experience were an inspiration to young men like Wordie, his intellectual prowess knitting perfectly with practical and impressive direct experience. He was the ideal mentor for Wordie, a bright young man with a keen interest in mountains and glaciers and a growing interest in exploration.

Wordie flourished at Glasgow, helped by Gregory and his own eagerness to learn. His talents were soon rewarded with the William Hunter Medal in geology and a First Class certificate in mathematics. In 1909 he won a medal in Advanced Geology and a First Class certificate in Natural Philosophy, graduating a year later with an MA with distinction in Geology.

The degree was not enough for Wordie, who wanted to continue his studies elsewhere. He turned his attention to Cambridge, where he applied to be taken on as an advanced student, backed by the heavyweight support of Gregory and Edwin Temple, Rector of the Glasgow Academy. In October, 1910 Wordie was duly admitted to St John’s College, Cambridge to read natural sciences as an advanced student. It was a life-changing decision.

CHAPTER 2

FROM GOLD TO ICE

ST JOHN’S, CAMBRIDGE WAS THE TURNING POINT in James Wordie’s life. By tradition he should have been preparing to follow earlier generations into the prosperous family haulage business. However, carting and geology were simply incompatible to the talented 21-year-old.

His perceptive father also sensed that his youngest son was destined for bigger things than carting. He re-arranged his affairs to ensure that the firm was placed in safe hands and then gave full rein to his gifted son. Wordie & Co., under John Wordie’s assured guidance, had grown rapidly in the late Victorian and early Edwardian era, even expanding away from its established Scottish base into the larger English and Irish markets. As he entered his sixties, John passed day-to-day control of the empire to his eldest son, Willie, and to Archie Watson, a nephew who was sixteen years older than Willie and possessed considerably more haulage experience. This left James Wordie without obligation to the family and free to pursue his academic career and chosen profession of geology.

It was one of the last acts which John Wordie performed for his family. Within months of James going up to St John’s, both his parents were dead. John Wordie had struggled with ill health in his later years, but his condition deteriorated markedly towards the end of 1910 following a tiring journey to look at some works of art in Canada. He died on Boxing Day 1910, aged seventy-one. Less than five weeks later, on 30 January 1911, a second misfortune struck when James’s mother Jane died after a long struggle with illness. She was only fifty-two.

John Wordie left his three children with a sizeable legacy. His estate was valued at almost £186,000 (around £9 million in today’s terms), but well over half was tied up in the carting business and not immediately accessible. The remainder was held in bonds and shares, including a small stake of forty shares in the Glasgow Academy. The family home, Fraisgil, and John Wordie’s admirable collection of paintings, etchings and books were valued at £7,300, or about £350,000 at today’s values.1

The canny John Wordie divided up his estate to ensure that his wealth was well spent. James and sister Alison were awarded sizeable sums of money to accommodate their lives outside the family company, while Willie’s bequest was to retain the lucrative role at the centre of the wealthy business.

James’s bequest was a cash sum of £32,000 (about £1,500,000 today), a generous bounty which would allow him to pursue his academic career in security. Alison was awarded £16,000, worth around £750,000 today.

Alison, who was just sixteen years old, was the most vulnerable to the double loss and Wordie quickly grasped the nettle. With little fuss he quietly by-passed the older Willie and assumed the role of notional head of the family, taking Alison under his wing. It was a role he held for the rest of his life. The pair quickly developed a very close relationship, spending considerable time together walking or skiing. Even when apart they kept in touch through a constant flow of letters, with Wordie exercising a gentle fatherly influence. In contrast, Willie remained the outsider.

Aside from family affairs, Wordie rose to the challenge at Cambridge, claiming more academic honours and demonstrating an insatiable desire to learn. In 1912 he earned a BA when graduating in Part II of the Natural Sciences Tripos and was awarded the Harkness Scholarship in Geology. At the same time he took the first step towards become a tutor in his own right by occasionally assisting John Marr, the renowned Geology lecturer, in supervising young students.

Wordie punctuated his academic development with an increasing enthusiasm for climbing, both at home and abroad. In 1907 he had made a return journey to the Alps and climbed the 12,300ft (3,690 m) Piz Morteratsch, the highest peak so far attained. At home his appetite for climbing rose steadily and while still a teenager he managed to scale about fifty Scottish peaks. On occasions he joined parties led by Professor Gregory and during 1911 he formalised his hobby by joining the Scottish Mountaineering Club.

Wordie gained another honour, an unofficial graduation in ‘University Alpinism’. This was the dangerous pastime of climbing the ancient steeples of Cambridge, which, while much frowned upon by the authorities, has proved an irresistible pastime for students down the ages. ‘University Alpinism’ had initially developed as a means for students to get back into the colleges at night long after the doors had officially been closed. The hazardous practice of scaling the college walls and scrambling over the roofs in pitch darkness later became known as night-climbing and a powerful sense of bravado drove young men to extraordinary feats. Accomplished climbers like Wordie took the peculiar custom to new levels, scaling the most perilous of buildings and concealing their clandestine activities in a strict code of secrecy. Only the climbers themselves were supposed to know of each other’s achievements. Such was the exacting code that night-climbs were only regarded as valid if undertaken during term when the alpinists faced summary expulsion if caught. However, the alpinists diligently followed each other’s exploits; once in later life Wordie was sitting next to the headmaster of Gordonstoun School at a function and astonished the man by asking how he had managed a particularly difficult manoeuvre on a night-climb some twenty years earlier. The man, a former student of Wordie, had never mentioned the climb and was amazed to discover that anyone knew about his feats.

Wordie developed a special flair for ascending the seemingly sheer outside walls of various university buildings. A particular favourite was a daunting climb up the vertical tower of the College Chapel at St John’s. He was in good company since two of the men most associated with ‘University Alpinism’ were later involved with the biggest ascent of them all – Everest. It was said that the first person to ascend the Chapel wall at St John’s was Jack Longland, a highly proficient climber who was a member of the 1933 Everest expedition. Wilfred Noyce, who graduated from college walls to become a member of the successful 1953 expedition, was regarded as the most capable man to tackle the sheer face of St John’s Chapel.

Soon after formally graduating from St John’s, Wordie went to the Sedgwick Museum of Geology to continue his research, and before long he had gained his first experience of the polar landscape. An early part of his research programme took Wordie to Canada for the 13th International Geological Congress in Toronto during the summer of 1913. Part of the programme involved numerous excursions and field trips and Wordie signed up for an opportunity to visit the mountainous Yukon Territories. He was not disappointed and soon became enthralled by the awesome natural beauty of the endless mountains and the immense Malaspina Glacier, which pours into Yakutat Bay.

It was also a moment to get a foretaste of the hazards of exploration. While steaming up Yakutat Bay towards the Russell Fjord, the party’s ship ran aground on a hidden reef. The ship was stuck fast near Disenchantment Bay, an inhospitable place given its uninviting name by the seventeenth-century navigator, Malaspina, who wrongly believed it to be the exit channel from the North West Passage. The passengers were fortunate that the ship struck the reef close to low tide. Had it struck at high tide, the ship would probably have toppled over as the water level fell, leaving the party stranded many miles from civilisation.

Wordie enjoyed the brush with danger. In a telling letter to Alison he offered a light-hearted observation which, only two years later, would have sounded highly apposite. He wrote:

You must try and imagine me a hardy navigator of the good old days, wrecked while pushing westward the boundaries of empire. Here, stranded on an inhospitable coast with my last efforts I draw a chart on a piece of sealskin and use my own blood for ink.2

Thankfully the returning tide enabled the ship to escape the reef and the geologists resumed their trip.

The next stop was an opportunity to visit the old gold-rush sites of the legendary Klondike. Wordie was even tempted to try his hand at panning for gold. But he was no luckier than most old-time gold diggers. The Klondike was the last of the great gold rushes; it erupted in 1897 and fizzled out within about two years. Over 100,000 wild-eyed fortune-seekers poured into the remote region, suffering appalling hardship and misery in the stampede to strike it lucky. But only a few hundred fortunate souls found gold in any reasonable quantities and only a handful managed to hang onto their money long enough to live the high life. Wordie, to the surprise of no one, failed to find ‘pay-dirt’ in his brief quest for gold and joined the multitudes of disappointed prospectors who left the Yukon empty-handed. However, the Yukon trip reinforced his intention to spread his wings further and embark on more serious exploration. The opportunity was waiting for him in the quiet study rooms of Cambridge.

CHAPTER 3

TO THE ANTARCTIC

WORDIE RETURNED TO CAMBRIDGE IN OCTOBER 1913 TO DISCOVER that Polar exploration was the main topic of conversation. Word of Captain Scott’s tragic South Pole expedition did not reach Britain until February 1913 and there was a major public appeal for funds to compensate the dependants of the five dead men. In addition, there was fresh speculation that Sir Ernest Shackleton was poised to return to the Antarctic. Cambridge was bristling with polar interest at this time. The university was both home to survivors of the Scott disaster and the place where Shackleton came to recruit scientific staff for his planned journey. Wordie suddenly found himself at the centre of events.

First-hand accounts of the Scott debacle were freely available from four survivors of the expedition who were at Cambridge busily collating data and writing up their own scientific papers. The men – the geologists Frank Debenham, Raymond Priestley and Thomas Griffith Taylor, and the physicist and glaciologist Charles Wright – quickly struck up a rapport with the eager Wordie. Wordie formed a particular affinity with Priestley, who seemed to match his own ambition of mixing adventurous voyaging with a sound academic career.

The 27-year-old Priestley, the son of a headmaster from Tewkesbury, was already a veteran of two Antarctic missions and had packed more escapades into his few years than most achieve in a lifetime. He joined Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition in 1907 when he was only twenty and travelled with Scott in 1910, surviving an incredible ordeal with a splinter group of six who spent the vicious Antarctic winter in a 12ft by 9ft ice cave. His introduction to exploration was a cameo of the typically cavalier approach to expeditions which characterised – and romanticised – the early era of Polar discovery. Priestley had been studying for his degree at Bristol University when his brother Bert told him that Shackleton was in another room desperately trying to persuade a reluctant man to enlist as geologist on the Nimrod expedition. Bert Priestley casually asked his brother:

‘How would you like to go to the Antarctic, Ray?’

‘I’d go anywhere to get out of this damned place,’ Priestley replied.1 Shackleton subsequently invited Priestley for an interview and floored the apprehensive young man by asking him two perplexing questions: could he sing and would he recognise gold if he saw it? A puzzled Priestley said no in both cases and thought his chance of adventure had evaporated. A few weeks later he received a brusque telegram from Shackleton demanding to know why his new assistant geologist was not preparing to depart for the Antarctic.

Priestley was also the man with some inside knowledge of Shackleton’s forthcoming expedition. Shackleton wanted to take Priestley on his new trip and Wordie began to wonder if he, too, had a chance of venturing south. He chatted at length with Priestley, Debenham and Wright and the idea grew in its appeal. His resolve was further strengthened when Griffith Taylor confidently predicted that Shackleton’s voyage would be the ‘last big expedition to go south’.

Shackleton’s plans for a new Antarctic trip were officially announced during the 1913 Christmas break and Wordie, away with the family in Scotland, had little doubt that he wanted to enlist as a geologist. He took long walks in the hills with Willie and Alison, effectively seeking family approval to join the endeavour. Both gave their blessing, despite some reservations about a journey which might keep him away for at least two years. On 17 March 1914 he formally applied to join Shackleton.

It is likely that all concerned would have had serious reservations had they first studied Shackleton’s highly ambitious plans. Shackleton’s bold plan was to march across the entire Antarctic continent, a distance of around 1,800 miles (2,800 km), deploying two ships and two separate teams of men on either side of the continent, one from the Weddell Sea and another from the Ross Sea. The grandly titled Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was the most audacious Polar enterprise ever attempted and represented a potent blend of Shackleton’s natural self-confidence and his desperation for adventure.

The year 1913 was a highly unsettling time for Shackleton, a restless man who always had his eye set firmly on the next great voyage. He was haunted by the ghost of the martyr Scott and tainted by his flaky brother, Frank Shackleton, who was convicted of fraud at a highly publicised trial at the Old Bailey. Age was also against Shackleton. At thirty-nine, his days as an explorer were clearly numbered, and as he approached his fortieth birthday he admitted to being ‘a bit weary’. The urge to escape to the wide open spaces of the Antarctic had never been greater.

A further irritant was the publication of Scott’s poignant diaries, which heaped yet more attention on his rival and further eclipsed Shackleton as the nation’s most famous explorer. Shackleton and Scott had become bitter adversaries after the Discovery expedition and Wordie was among those who witnessed the lingering ill-feeling which continued even after Scott’s death.

Lady Kathleen Scott, his widow, attended a dinner at Cambridge in March 1914 where the conversation was dominated by Shackleton’s forthcoming expedition. She openly disliked Shackleton and urged Wordie and the others not to join him. Wordie, respectful and in awe of Shackleton’s reputation, was taken aback by the depth of feeling. He recalled: ‘Shackleton is certainly not “persona grata” with Lady Scott, who tried to dissuade all would-be candidates from the thought of going.’2

Shackleton was also concerned at the prospect of other explorers stealing what Polar glory remained. The Austrian Dr Felix Konig had announced plans to explore from a base in the Weddell Sea and in Britain a man called J. Foster Stackhouse had drawn up his own scheme. Stackhouse, a Quaker with a loose connection to the Scott entourage, had a hazy plan to visit King Edward VII Land which, he announced, demanded the ‘finest qualities of British endurance’. However, Stackhouse failed to raise money for his expedition and was subsequently drowned in 1915 when the passenger liner Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine.

Shackleton’s defiant riposte to the encircling adversity was the coast-to-coast trek. It had first been proposed in 1908 by the Scottish explorer, William Speirs Bruce. But Bruce was an outsider who was never accepted by the Polar establishment and he failed to generate enough interest in his scheme. However, Bruce generously supported Shackleton’s plan to undertake the journey. Shackleton’s proposal was greeted with disbelief in some quarters. Hugh Robert Mill, the much respected librarian at the Royal Geographical Society and a good friend of Shackleton, regarded it as too dangerous and the RGS itself had grave reservations. Douglas Freshfield, the RGS President, would later describe the venture as ‘audacious in the extreme’. But the most venomous attack came from Sir Clements Markham, who had sponsored Scott’s Polar ambitions and loathed Shackleton. He saw the expedition as an absurd idea designed solely for self-advertisement and accused Shackleton of falsifying accounts of his earlier exploits to win support for his scheme. In a confidential note to the RGS, Markham declared that the expedition would be ‘useless and a deplorable waste of money’ and that Shackleton was at least ten years too old to undertake the mission.

The catalogue of risk was truly daunting. Shackleton’s principal ship, Endurance, had to navigate the precarious pack ice and hundreds of miles of uncharted water in the Weddell Sea to find a suitable spot to land a party that would over-winter before embarking on the trans-continental journey. At least half that journey was across unknown territory.

Robert Mossman, a member of Bruce’s Scotia party, which had successfully penetrated the Weddell Sea in 1903, summed up the potential difficulties of navigating a safe pathway through the ice. In a newspaper article at the time, he concluded: ‘The vital point bearing on the success of Shackleton’s expedition is not what he will do when he reaches his base in 78° S; the main difficulty lies in his getting there through perhaps 1,000 miles of pack ice.’3

The intended spot for Shackleton’s base was Vahsel Bay on the edge of the Filchner Ice Shelf, an area which had only been seen from afar and where no one had landed before. It was not known if a safe harbour could be found at Vahsel and even more worrying was the uncertainty of the surrounding pack ice, which might block off the ship’s escape route in the following year. After over-wintering at Vahsel Bay, Shackleton intended to lead a party of six men across 900 miles (1,400 km) of uncharted mountains and ice fields to the South Pole. From the Pole the group planned to retrace Scott’s steps back to his old base camp at Cape Evans in the Ross Sea, a further distance of 900 miles.

Shackleton’s party would be incapable of carrying enough food and fuel for the four-month journey and the success of the mission depended entirely on plans to lay a line of supply depots along the final stages of the route from Cape Evans in the Ross Sea towards the Pole. A second ship, Aurora, was scheduled to land another group of men at the Ross Sea. While Shackleton was travelling from Vahsel Bay to the Pole, the depot-laying party was expected to build vital caches of food and fuel, quite literally a lifeline for the trans-continental party.