The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [3]
Shackleton had learned much on the Discovery expedition, but he had not learned all he should; the Nimrod departed with ten Manchurian ponies and only nine dogs— even though expeditions to the Arctic had by this time proved that dog teams were the only practical mode of polar transportation. Shackleton had also made little progress in learning how to ski, and much of his mountaineering equipment would prove inadequate.
These shortcomings notwithstanding, on October 29, 1908, Shackleton departed from his base at Cape Royds over the Great Ice Barrier on his second journey south with three companions and a team of four ponies. Once again, the pattern of man-hauling and suffering began. The ponies slipped and floundered, at times sinking up to their bellies in the snow. Eventually, most would be shot and eaten. By early December, Shackleton and his three companions—Frank Wild, Dr. Eric Marshall, and Lieutenant Jameson Adams—had reached the tongue of a massive, hitherto unknown glacier that flowed from the range of mountains abutting the Great Ice Barrier. Christened by Shackleton the Beardmore Glacier after one of the expedi-tion's patrons, it was to be his party's gateway from the ice shelf on which they had been travelling to the continental plateau behind the mountains. It provided a fearful, glittering passage. Without crampons the men, accompanied by Socks, the lone remaining and unshod pony, fought their way up the dangerous tongue of ice. On the third day, the pony fell down a crevasse to his death. Suffering from snow-blindness, hunger, and frostbite, the men struggled beyond the Beardmore on to 88°23? south—approximately 100 miles short of the pole. Here, Shackleton took realistic stock of their meager provisions and failing strength, and made the bitter decision to turn back while survival was still possible. Near journey's end, with Adams critically ailing, Shackleton and Frank Wild dumped all the gear they could spare so as to make a desperate dash for the relief of their companion. They travelled thirty-six hours with little rest, only to find that the base camp they had so long dreamed of was deserted. They were discovered shortly afterward when the Nimrod returned with a search party preparing to winter over and look for their bodies.
Shackleton's effort surpassed Scott's southern record by some 360 miles. Although he and his companions had suffered greatly, they survived and, thanks in great part to the fresh pony meat, had kept scurvy at bay. Back in England, Shackleton became a national hero and was knighted. Although he publicly made tentative plans for another southern expedition, this one to explore the land west of Cape Adare in the Ross Sea, his time was consumed by efforts to pay off the Nimrod 's debts. For the next couple of years, Shackleton hit the lecture trail, dictated a best-selling book called The Heart of the Antarctic, and even turned the Nimrod into a museum, to which he charged admission. Meanwhile Scott, with the prayers and good wishes of the nation, headed back for another assault on the South Pole. Shackleton, mired in financial obligations, could only read the headlines and wait.
Scott's last journey is, of course, an epic of its own. In October 1910, the news broke that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had secretly turned back from a projected trip to the Arctic and was headed south, intent on beating the British to the pole. The race was on. Both expeditions set out in October 1911, Scott from Cape Evans, near his old base, Amundsen from the Bay of Whales, some distance to the east. Scott's party, bogged down by a bewildering array of modes of transporta-tion—ponies, such as Shackleton had already proved to be useless, motor sledges that didn't work, and dogs that no one knew how to drive—slogged their way south, adhering closely to Shackleton's route and playing out the now traditional drama of starvation and hardship. Amundsen and his