The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [85]
Tom McLeod settled in Canada, fishing for two years off Bell's Island. He never married, claiming he “never had enough money to buy a house in which to put a wife.” Unbeknownst to Shackleton, McLeod had secretly retrieved the Bible that the Boss had deposited on the ice after the breakup of the Endurance, believing it would be bad luck to leave it. He presented it to the family who looked after him in Punta Arenas, and they in turn presented it many years later to the Royal Geographical Society—where it remains, the pages torn from the Book of Job still missing. McLeod died at the age of eighty-seven, in a rest home in Canada.
Blackborow arrived back in Wales in late December, several months after his companions, and received a festive, enthusiastic welcome from his whole street. He volunteered for the navy, but was rejected on medical grounds, and so returned to sea until the end of the war, when he joined his father working at the Newport docks. He was often invited to speak about his experience, but was reluctant to do so and spoke instead of his companions. Although he wore a block shoe on his damaged foot, he never mentioned it, and had assiduously trained himself to walk without a limp. He stayed in touch with his old mates Bakewell and How; to this day, the descendents of these men have kept up correspondence. Blackborow died in 1949, at the age of fifty-four, of a heart condition and chronic bronchitis.
Bakewell stayed on in South America, sheep farming in Patagonia for a year; his subsequent occupations included merchant seaman, railroad switchman, and farmer. He settled in Dukes, Michigan, in 1945, where he worked as a dairy farmer and raised his daughter. In 1964, he was invited to England to attend the fiftieth anniversary of the departure of the expedition. His Michigan neighbors never knew of his adventures —since it was a British expedition, he figured they wouldn't be interested. He died at the age of eighty-one, in 1969.
After serving in the Royal Navy during the war, Rickinson became a naval architect and consulting engineer, and died in 1945. Kerr continued with the Merchant Service until his retirement. Hussey, whose heart, perhaps, had never been in his meteorological duties, became a medical doctor after serving in two world wars. During his lifetime he lectured frequently on the expedition. Although married he had no children, but before his death handed over his lecture notes and lantern slides to a young man he had chosen as his heir, with the injunction “to keep alive the story of the Endurance.“
Marston collaborated with Hurley on a number of painted/photographic composites. In 1925, he joined an organization established to regenerate and support rural industries. He died in 1940, at the age of fifty-eight, of coronary thrombosis.
Hudson, after serving on mystery, or “Q,” ships during the war, joined the British India Navigation Society. His health had been permanently impaired by the boat journey, frostbite having maimed his hands and caused necrosis of the bone of the lower back. At the time of his death he was a commodore of convoys in the Royal Naval Reserve, during the Second World War. He had returned from a Russian convoy when he was asked to take another mission to Gibraltar. He could have refused, but did not, and he was killed on his return trip.
After serving on a minesweeper during the war, Clark eventually took up an appointment at a fishery research station near Aberdeen, writing research papers on herring larvae and haddock investigations. He was locally renowned for his football and cricket prowess. He died in Aberdeen in 1950, at the age of sixty-eight.
In 1937, James immigrated to South Africa, where he took up the Chair of Physics at the University of Cape Town, eventually becoming vice-chancellor. During his tenure, he spoke out publically for the right to admit non-European students to the university. He died in 1964, aged seventy-three.