Alexandra Shackleton grew up with her grandfather’s story hanging on the wall, told only in fragments and riddles. The photos of Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917 were everywhere in her childhood home, and she asked questions nobody answered directly. Now she tells the full story herself, in a piece titled “A Journey to Antarctica in Photos: Remembering Ernest Shackleton’s Grand Expedition.”
More than 150 glass and celluloid negatives are included here, captured by Frank Hurley, the official photographer aboard the Endurance. To Alexandra, these pictures are far more than lovely. They serve as the means to comprehend a man she hardly understood at all.
The Family Portrait Nobody Took
Eddie Shackleton, Alexandra’s father, was just 10 years old when his own father, Ernest, passed away from a heart attack on January 5, 1922, while serving on the Shackleton-Rowett Quest expedition. Since then, Eddie has never taken the time to sit down and recount his father’s adventures. Instead, Alexandra pieced together the story by asking questions about the Hurley photographs she saw hanging on the walls.
The questions that puzzled her still linger in her memory. Why was it dark when it was not night? Why did every man have a beard? What troubled her most was a photograph showing Endurance reduced to a skeleton, with sled dogs gathered around it. She asked what became of the dogs. None of the adults ever answered her directly.
It took years before she was told the whole story: the men killed and ate the dogs because there was no food left. The adults never gave her a direct answer, and she was not informed until many years had passed that the dogs were killed for food.
A Visitor Mistakes South Georgia for Lulworth Cove
A few adults were just as puzzled by Hurley’s pictures as the children were. Alexandra remembers a guest who spent a long time staring at a scene of rugged, snow-capped mountains, lost in thought over a majestic glacier sliding into a wide bay, crowded with massive chunks of drifting ice. At last, the guest declared with delight, “I know where that is! It is Lulworth Cove!” Since then, that spot has been called Lulworth Cove within the family.
In fact, it was South Georgia.
A tale serves as a warning that grown people sometimes misunderstand what they see before their eyes. One traveler lost a great deal of time pondering the view and arrived at an incorrect judgment instead.
How Hurley Joined the Crew
Shackleton chose Hurley for the expedition after seeing his work on Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913. Hurley had been the official photographer on that voyage, and Shackleton saw his 1913 documentary film Life in the Antarctic. He decided to recruit him.
The day of his leaving drew near, yet Hurley remained wholly ignorant of it. He was deep within the Australian wilds, so much so that he became almost certainly the only polar photographer to be brought back by an Aboriginal tracker.
Hurley’s photography stood out due to both his vision and his dedication. He was willing to lie down in front of the moving ship and climb high into the mast, weighed down by very heavy camera equipment. He saw himself first and foremost as an artist rather than merely a recorder of events, and he did not hesitate at times to embellish his subject matter or to add or subtract details.
The Legacy That Refuses to Die
Interest in Ernest Shackleton remains strong. In his name, many polar expeditions have set out. Shackleton scholarships exist too, and one scholar, Teresa Darbyshire, found a new species of marine bristle worm and gave it the name Micromaldane shackletoni.
A Shackleton clothing firm grants an annual award dedicated to safeguarding the polar regions. Numerous volumes have examined Shackleton’s command, and his example has been invoked by the military, NASA, and even an American football organization. In 2002, the BBC ran a national survey to settle on the “100 Greatest Britons of All Time”, and Shackleton placed eleventh.
That very year a television drama entitled Shackleton appeared on screen, with Kenneth Branagh portraying my grandfather. In 2016, the Royal Mail released Shackleton stamps featuring the Hurley images, while the Shackleton Symphony, composed by London-based Paul Frith, was recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. A Shackleton whisky has been made since 2017.
Twice a year, members of the James Caird Society gather to remember the lifeboat that carried Shackleton and his five companions across some 800 miles (nearly 1,300 kilometers) of open water from Elephant Island to South Georgia, a journey undertaken after their ship, the Endurance, was lost at sea and left them stranded. The society, named for that boat, remains a flourishing enterprise.
The Ernest Shackleton Autumn School has established a Shackleton museum in the Republic of Ireland, and it is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. It sits close to his place of birth, Kilke.
What Alexandra Chooses to Keep
Choosing a single favorite from Hurley’s glass plate negatives is not an easy task. Alexandra points to several images without any set order, suggesting they stand out on their own terms.
- “The Endurance Crushed by the Ice”
- “Head of Moraine Fjord, South Georgia” (a.k.a. “Lulworth Cove”)
- “The Long, Long Night,” that masterful and masterly image of Endurance at night, lit by twenty phosphorous flares around her
- “On the Drifting Flow, Ocean Camp,” where Shackleton stands by his tent, shoulder to shoulder with his second-in-command, Frank Wild, with scientists, officers, and crew behind
Though their setting is a harsh, empty waste, the men seem at peace with it. Beneath the ice runs the Weddell Sea, and they make their home upon it. What lies ahead is unknown to them, but the picture speaks to how far human endurance can reach.
Key Facts Box
- Expedition: Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917
- Photographer: Frank Hurley
- Official film: South (originally released as In the Grip of the Polar Pack-Ice in 1919)
- Death of Ernest Shackleton: January 5, 1922
- Poll: Shackleton ranked #11 of the “100 Greatest Britons of All Time” in 2002
- Museum: Ernest Shackleton Autumn School, near Kilke, Republic of Ireland
Alexandra Shackleton’s youth serves as proof that history sits nearer than we believe. The canines, the gloom, the far-off summits — everything lay within the family room, ready for comprehension.
Source material: “A Journey to Antarctica in Photos: Remembering Ernest Shackleton’s Grand Expedition,” Literary Hub.
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