The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [6]
Despite these efforts his party was not as shipshape as Shackleton may have thought. He had his dogs, but his sole experienced dog trainer and driver, a Cana dian, dropped out at the last minute when Shackleton was unwilling to pay a hefty insurance deposit; also left behind were worm pills, which, as matters turned out, the dogs would desperately need. Shackleton's plans for the continental crossing called for an average of fifteen miles' sledging a day, very close to Amundsen's outward-going average of sixteen—and yet only one of Shackleton's men left England actually knowing how to ski.
Owd Bob
The sledging dogs were not huskies, but a mixed collection of big dogs who had shown in Canada that they were adapted to the cold. “Actually there is not one that is not to some extent a mongrel.” ( Lees, diary)
Soldier
Wild's team leader
But the expedition had intangible assets deriving from Shackleton's previous endeavors. In 1909, having trudged to 88° south, 100 miles short of the pole, he had turned his back on certain glory and led his men on the long journey home. After so many hard miles, it was excruciating to leave the unclaimed prize for another man— let alone a rival. Yet Shackleton resisted persuading himself that he could safely cover those forgone miles, or that they counted for more than life itself. Had he been less self-possessed, or more desperate for glory, undoubtedly Ernest Shackleton would have been the first man to stand at the South Pole—and he and his trusting men would have died somewhere close to where Scott and his party perished in their little tent. Shackleton's decision to turn back was more than a singular act of courage; it bespoke the dogged optimism that was the cornerstone of his character. Life would always offer more chances.
“One has the feeling that if it had been Shackleton who lost to Amundsen at the pole, he would have met up with the Norwegians on the way back, and they would have all held a big celebratory party,” a distinguished polar historian once told me.
The despondency that clearly crushed Scott on his loss to Amundsen was unknown to Shackleton. He seems to have been possessed of a ferocious but handily adaptable single-mindedness: Once intent on achieving the pole, he strained every nerve to get there; but when survival became the challenge, he was not distracted by such demons as regret or the fear of being perceived a failure.
Early in his career, Shackleton became known as a leader who put his men first. This inspired unshakable confidence in his decisions, as well as tenacious loyalty. During the march back from 88° south, one of Shackle-ton's three companions, Frank Wild, who had not begun the expedition as a great admirer of Shackleton, recorded in his diary an incident that changed his mind forever. Following an inadequate meal of pemmican and pony meat on the night of January 31, 1909, Shackleton had privately forced upon Wild one of his own biscuits from the four that he, like the others, was rationed daily.
“I do not suppose that anyone else in the world can thoroughly realize how much generosity and sympathy was shown by this,” Wild wrote, underlining his words. “I DO by GOD I shall never forget it. Thousands of pounds would not have bought that one biscuit.”
Frank Wild
Shackleton's loyal second-in-command, according to Macklin, was “always calm, cool or collected, in open lanes or in tight corners he was just the same; but when he did tell a man to jump, that man jumped pretty quick.”
When Shackleton headed south on the Endurance in August 1914, it was with Frank Wild as his second-in-command. Wild never forgot the private act of kindness, and his adamantine loyalty to Shackleton would prove to be one of the expedition's major assets. However deficient the preparations for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition may have been,