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By Root 868 0

a Distinguished Service Order. He then joined Shackleton in Russia, and stayed on after the war fighting the Bolsheviks, which won him a second Distinguished Service Order. After the Quest, he was coleader of an Arctic expedition, and appears to have spent a fair amount of time attempting to re-create the experience aboard the Endurance by almost deliberately getting stuck in the ice. In 1934, he went treasure hunting in the Pacific, something he and Shackleton had promised each other they would do together. In the Second World War, he was given command of a merchant ship but was sacked when it was discovered that he was nearly seventy years old. He died of lung cancer in 1943, just short of seventy-one.

His duties to the expedition completed, Hurley was appointed official photographer and awarded the honorary rank of captain with the Australian Imperial Force. Within days of signing up he was covering the struggle at Ypres. His photographs clearly show that he got close to the action, and some are small masterpieces of stark, muddy misery. His Paget slides from this period are some of the very few known color images of the First World War. A distinction was made by his superiors between historical and propaganda shots, and Hurley chose to furnish the latter. It was during this period that his passion for composites became excessive; glorious, mournful skyscapes, exploding shells, puffs of ominous smoke, clouds of primitive planes like dragonflies—all are liberally imposed upon his original images.

After the war, he continued his demanding pace, making photographic expeditions to Papua New Guinea and Tasmania, and in the Second World War he was sent to Palestine. He married a beautiful young Spanish-French opera singer ten days after meeting her, and they had three children, to whom he was a loving but stern father. Following the Second World War, he created a great number of photographic books intended to promote the various regions of Australia. He travelled indefatigably to produce these, and all are competent; but it is difficult, indeed, to reconcile the perky, picture-postcard images with the bold, elegant, and at times emotionally momentous photographs of the Endurance expedition. At the end of his life, he produced several books on Australian and Tasmanian wildflowers.

At the age of seventy-six, still on assignment, still lugging his heavy camera gear, Hurley came home from a day's work and mentioned to his wife that he felt ill. So unusual was it for him to make such a complaint that the family was instantly put on alert. Wrapping himself in his dressing gown, he took to his favorite chair and refused to budge. A doctor was summoned, but Hurley curtly motioned him away. He was still sitting in his chair the following morning, grimly, tenaciously, and silently waging his war with imminent death. Around noon of the same day, January 16, 1962, he finally passed away.

In 1970, the three surviving members of the expedition were invited to attend the ceremony for the commissioning of the HMS Endurance. A photograph shows them, three elderly men, sitting in folding chairs, under the Union Jack.

Walter How, able seaman on the Endurance, returned to his home in London, after service in the Merchant Navy. He had intended to join the Quest, but at the last moment chose to remain with his father, who had become ill. Although his sight was failing, owing in part to a land-mine accident during the war, How became an amateur painter and builder of ships in bottles; his detailed models and sketches of the Endurance betray that her lines were etched upon his memory. He was also one of the most loyal alumni of the expedition, going to great lengths to try to stay in touch with all hands. He died at the age of eighty-seven, in 1972.

Greenstreet Illustrating breath icicles

“Some of his jokes & stories are decidedly humourous & after all one cannot exactly expect to keep up drawing-room standard in a mixed assembly such as ours.” ( Lees, diary)

Green, the cook, had written a letter to his parents when he signed on with Shackleton