The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [80]
The film went a long way in paying off the expeditionary debts awaiting Shackle-ton when he at last returned to England in May 1917. After the relief of the Ross Sea party, he made a whirlwind lecture tour across America, which had just entered the war. Now, his immediate concern was to secure some position in the war effort. Although legally exempt from service at age forty-two, and bone-weary, Shackleton knew that service of some kind would be essential to winning support for whatever venture he might undertake in the future. His return to England had received scant attention; there would be no more heroes who were not war heroes.
Months passed. Thirty of his men from both the Weddell and Ross Sea parties were actively in service, and still Shackleton could find no commission. He was drinking and restless, spending little time at home; in London, he could often be found in the company of his American mistress, Rosalind Chetwynd. Eventually, through the intervention of Sir Edward Carson, former First Lord of the Admiralty (and former legal defense for the Marquis of Queensberry in the libel suit brought against him by Oscar Wilde), Shackleton was sent on a propaganda mission to South America. His vague assignment was to raise morale, promote the British war effort, and report on the propaganda efforts already in place.
He left for Buenos Aires in October 1917, and was back in London in April 1918. He had still not had the satisfaction of being in uniform. Once again, he embarked on rounds of dead-end interviews, attempting to obtain a proper commission. A series of various small commissions eventually landed him in Spitsbergen and finally in Murmansk, Russia, where his official title was “staff officer in charge of Arctic Transport.” At least he was with some old companions. At his request, Frank Wild had been released from duties in Archangel to be his assistant. McIlroy, who had been gravely wounded in Ypres, had been invalided out of the army. Hussey was there and later Macklin, who had been in France. Also sent to this polar outpost were a few of Scott's old men, who remained unsympathetic, if not hostile, to Shackleton. That Scott and his men had died of scurvy was still officially denied, as it implied mismanagement; the men of the Endurance had been in the ice for nearly two years without a sign of this disease, thanks to Shackleton's insistence, from the first days of the Endurance's entrapment in the ice, on the consumption of fresh meat.
When the war ended, Shackleton was adrift again. While still in New Zealand, he had dictated the most critical parts of South to Edward Saunders, the collaborator on his first book. In 1919, South was at last published, written by Saunders and drawing from Shackleton's extensive dictation and the diaries of the expedition members. Given this method of composition, the account is remarkably accurate. Names and dates are sometimes muddled and so, occasionally, is the order of events (such as on the James Caird journey). It downplays a number of episodes but omits surprisingly few. There is no mention of McNish's rebellion, for example. Shackleton dedicated the book “To My Comrades.”
The book was critically acclaimed and sold well. Shackleton, however, received no royalties from it. The executors of one of his expedition's benefactors, Sir Robert Lucas-Tooth, who had died in 1915, hounded him for repayment. By way of settlement, Shackleton handed over all rights to South, his only asset.
J. A. McIlroy
Worldly and debonair, McIlroy had travelled widely in the East before joining the Endurance