The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [91]
Maureen Mahood shared with me her careful work on the men who remained on Elephant Island, to be published in a work entitled Counting the Days. The documents, photographs, and many references she generously forwarded to me proved invaluable.
Leif Mills provided me with much biographical material about Frank Wild, which will be published in a forthcoming book entitled Wild. John Bell Thomson, author of Shackleton's Captain: A Biography of Frank Worsley (Hazard Press, 1998), gave me a wealth of material about Worsley; his recent book is the only comprehensive account of the legendary navigator.
I am grateful to Geoffrey Selley and Ralph Gullett for information about Leonard Hussey—and for the stanzas from Hussey's facetious poem.
Mary DeLashmit, of the Holderness Free Library, supplied me with countless books and microfilms through interlibrary loan services; I do not know how I would have managed without her efficient help.
Harding Dunnett, chairman of the James Caird Society, Dulwich, England, was my guiding angel. His encyclopedic and precise memory saved me weeks of time on many occasions. I am especially grateful for my visit with him to see the Caird, on display at Dulwich College, which was a deeply moving experience.
Robert Burton, keeper of the South Georgia Island Whaling Museum, was forthcoming with documents, photographs, and information, and has been a very helpful ally. James Meiklejohn, secretary of the Salvesen Ex-Whalers Club, in Norway, supplied me with fascinating material from the Norwegian whalers on South Georgia. Thomas Binnie Jr. also supplied me with material from the South Georgia side. Dan Weinstein was a kind of guru to me when I first embarked upon this subject, guiding me to many knowledgeable sources.
I am very grateful to Baden Norris of the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, for his information on “Chippy” McNish's last years. Two articles were very helpful to me: Judith Lee Hallock's “Thomas Crean,” in Polar Record 22, no. 140 (1985): 665?78; and Stephen Locke's “George Marston,” in Polar Record 33, no. 184 (1997): 65?70.
I would also like to thank George Butler, Isobel Crombie, Philip Cronenwett, Jenny Gioponlos, Richard Kossaw, Ivo Meisner, Gael Newton, Laura Bemis Rollison, Jeff Rubin, Sarah Scully, Peter Speak and Robert Stephenson. My thanks also to Dorothy Cullman for her early encouragement.
As always, I am grateful to my friend and agent, Anthony Sheil, for guiding this complex project.
Thanks are due to George Andreou, my editor, and to Peter Andersen and Andy Hughes, the book's long-suffering designer and production director, respectively, at Knopf.
A number of published books offer opportunities to explore the story of this expedition further. Roland Huntford's Shackleton (reissued in 1998 by Atheneum) is the comprehensive biography of Shackleton's life, and was my primary source for the years between the Endurance and Quest expeditions. Huntford's previous work, Scott and Amundsen (Atheneum, rev. ed. 1983), which provides vivid background to Shackleton's undertaking, is a landmark work; it pulls no punches from Scott, for which it has been both widely praised and criticized, depending upon which side of the Scott/Shackleton camp one champions—feelings about both men still run very high! Personally tending towards Huntford's view, I found this work both mesmerizing and invaluable. Shackleton, by Margery and James Fisher (James Barrie Books, 1957), was written when many of the expedition members were still alive to be interviewed.
Shackleton's own account of his adventure, South (Heinemann, 1919), is, of course, a classic. Also not to be missed are Frank Worsley's two books, Endurance (Philip Allen, 1931) and Shackleton's Boat Journey (recently reissued by W. W. Norton). Less well known are Captain Frank Hurley's two books, Argonauts of the South (G. P. Put-nam's Sons, 1925) and Shackleton's