Chasing Shackleton Read online

  The next few months consisted of Seb continuing with sea trials and buying gear and equipment together with Paul Swain and Philip Rose-Taylor. I meanwhile returned to Australia to focus on fundraising and organize broader expedition logistics, which were now consuming all of my available time and energy. As we each focused on our niches, I left the Alexandra Shackleton in Seb’s capable hands. He became totally immersed in old sailing technology and language, telling me on one occasion with great pride that he’d fixed a leak to the “port aft garboard strake.” I was glad but had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

  Trevor Potts placing a silver coin under the mast for good luck.

  Courtesy of Nick Smith

  Seb was a master of detail, not only sourcing period gear and equipment and establishing its provenance but taking the time to test its adequacy for the conditions. For example, our 1916 Elgin pocket watch was bought, repaired, waterproofed, and tested in a freezer to -20˚C (-4˚ F) for twenty-four hours. Gear appeared steadily, with great stories attached to much of it, adding to the romance of the expedition. Captain Bob Turner, RN, a former captain of the ice patrol ship HMS Endurance, donated a Sestrel sextant similar to the Heath Hezzanith sextant used by Huberht Hudson, Shackleton’s navigator on board the Endurance. We also acquired an E Dent compass filled with alcohol to prevent it from freezing, which was made by the same family as the original chronometer carried on the James Caird. And it was virtually identical to the one used by Frank Worsley.

  It was an odd juxtaposition of old and new. As Seb, Paul, and Philip put in place hundred-year-old gear, Ed from Raw TV, together with marine electrician Robert Sleep, went about fitting the fixed camera rig of standard and high-definition cameras that would not have been out of place on a space shuttle. According to Ed, it was by far the most complex camera rig ever fitted to a boat of this size (and probably the most expensive).

  Old and new: (left) the 360-degree infrared camera and (right) the 174-year-old wooden block.

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  In June the Olympic Games sailing events began moving in to our Portland home, so the Alexandra Shackleton was relocated to Weymouth Marina. Best to distance her from the sleek modern Olympic boats that served only to remind us the Alexandra Shackleton wasn’t going to win any races. More and more modern equipment now went into the boat, but none of it would give us an advantage over Shackleton—it would merely allow us to record the experience for Discovery Channel and the American PBS network. In fact, if anything, the equipment could have been seen as a disadvantage, significantly reducing the space on board while increasing electrical hazards and fire risk. Three-quarters of the carefully placed stone ballast was replaced with 560 kilograms of compact marine gel batteries, each putting out 413 amps, followed by an Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder, chart plotter, radio, antennas, and EFOY fuel cell. God only knows what Shackleton would have made of it all.

  By now Seb had commissioned a leading marine technology unit, the Wolfson Unit at Southampton University, to undertake stability calculations for the Alexandra Shackleton. There were two goals: we needed to know how to best position our ballast to safeguard against capsize and to understand what the chances of rerighting the boat would be if she did go over. The summary of their report spoke volumes:

  The calculations demonstrate that the boat is not inherently self-righting. The James Caird capsized but did not remain inverted because of dynamics of the event. These calculations indicate a strong likelihood that, if the [Alexandra Shackleton] suffers a capsize and remains inverted, some action by the crew contained within the boat will enable them to right it. The scope for movement of the crew will depend on the arrangement of stowed gear and stores, and their ability to lift themselves upwards within the inverted boat. It may be desirable to conduct some trials with the boat loaded as for the proposed voyage, to quantify the level of ease or difficulty of righting the boat in this way. The consumption of water and stores will reduce the stability, and it may be desirable to counter this by filling empty containers with sea water as the voyage proceeds.

  In other words, without extensive trialing we wouldn’t know. What we did know was that any serious attempt to reright ourselves would require us to get ourselves as high off the ceiling as possible and hope the next wave pushed us back over. We had no sensible way of re-creating waves big enough to roll and reright the Alexandra Shackleton and the test sling being used to tip the boat wouldn’t accurately re-create waves anyway. All of our energy would instead have to be put toward trying to ensure we didn’t capsize.

  In early August 2012 the team consisted of Ed Wardle, Seb, Baz, Paul Swain, and me. What were worryingly and noticeably absent to even the most casual of observers were Southern Ocean sailors. I’d lined up a series of top-notch candidates and spoken to them from Australia. Now I had to interview them in person and conduct a week of sea trials off the south coast of England to determine how well they gelled with the rest of the team. Our August sea trials therefore became as much about fine-tuning the six-man crew as about assessing the boat’s seaworthiness.

  With the completion of the last few jobs of fitting the compass rack in the cockpit and stowing the handmade wooden boxes containing provisions, charts, and books, we were ready to go to sea. Initial trialing began in early September in Portland’s sheltered harbor, then the plan was to take to the open sea, heading east from Portland to Southampton, a distance of 100 kilometers. Seb had arranged for me and a BBC cameraman to ride in a Fleet Air Arm Lynx helicopter from Yeovilton to Portland to film her in action. As we thundered overhead I found myself looking straight down on the Alexandra Shackleton as we banked steeply, the wide open space beckoning through the open doors. The pilot’s voice came over my headphones. “Want to go closer in?“ he asked. “Yes,” I replied, suggesting that we give the crew below a friendly blast of down-force from the rotors to re-create Southern Ocean conditions. He obliged with glee. Forty or so meters below us, the Alexandra Shackleton shook uncontrollably as she was buffeted from side to side. “You’re going where in this?” asked the copilot incredulously as we moved away from the boat. “Antarctica,” I replied. He and the pilot glanced at each other but said nothing.

  The following evening, we were ready to begin trialing the Alexandra Shackleton in open water. It had taken most of the day to load her with provisions and water and go through final equipment checks. The plan was to meet and trial different potential skippers and navigators as we went east, stopping along the way to take on and drop off people. The first rendezvous point was picturesque Lulworth Cove, twenty-five kilometers to the east. Far from being an easy place to trial a boat, England’s south coast has very strong tidal currents that run along it in either direction. We knew that at certain points, such as the Needles, we might even get a feel for how stable she was in big waves.

  In order to meet our first potential skipper at Lulworth, we had to avoid going too far east the first evening. But a strong tide was working with us and, sure enough, even with sails trimmed and trying to tack back toward Portland as best we could, we moved eastward at several knots an hour until, in rapidly fading light, a telltale piece of flotsam passed us heading back to the west. With that, we realized the powerful tidal conveyor had turned and was beginning to push us back toward Portland. To prevent too much westerly drift all the sails now went back up, working fine initially as we trod water, the wind and current canceling each other out until the wind dropped completely about 1 A.M. Inexorably invisible forces pulled us back toward the dark, unlit band that signified Portland’s rocks. It was as if we were caught in a whirlpool that wouldn’t release us from its grasp until dawn, which was still four hours away. Eight miles off Portland’s breakwater, the city’s lights twinkling in the darkness, we realized we’d done too good a job of slowing our easterly drift—we would be on the rocks in less than three hours. It was time to take to the oars as a last resort to row east and buy some time. Baz and I leaned into them, he at
the bow, me at the stern. Then, after less than five minutes of rowing, a loud crack signaled that Baz had broken his oar. Initially we laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation, but when my oar followed suit ten minutes later, we became slightly nervous. We had just one functioning oar left to keep us off the rocks (the other had a crack in the blade and a makeshift repair because we thought we’d have no need for it).

  Only a long three hours of work on the oars kept us from the rocks that night as Baz and I, with some relief from the others, worked hard to balance the conflicting needs of applying power while safeguarding our last oar. At the first light of dawn, a slowing of our movement westward signaled the tide was finally going slack. Our distance from Portland’s rocks was less than a mile. This wasn’t even the Southern Ocean. It was Southern England and already we’d been put through our paces.

  A proud patron: the Hon. Alexandra Shackleton and her namesake.

  Courtesy of Chris Mumby

  4

  IRON MEN

  The team.

  Courtesy of Paul Larsen

  “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

  Helen Keller

  Testing our mettle: South Georgia’s challenges lay ahead of us.

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  On the face of it, we were two teams attempting the same journey ninety-seven years apart. On closer inspection, there were many differences over and above the passage of time. I needed to recruit just five people willing to undertake a dangerous journey in a small boat across the world’s roughest ocean, followed by a climb across a mountainous island. Shackleton, on the other hand, sought twenty-seven men to fill a range of positions—everything from meteorologist, biologist, and physicist through to cook—for a journey of geographical and scientific discovery crossing the mighty continent by land, not sea. He had no idea when recruiting his team that he, together with five of his most able men, would be subjected to the ordeal of crossing the Southern Ocean in the James Caird. That he managed to pursue the goal of crossing the ocean in his small boat with the same rigor and determination as the original unachievable mission is just part of the Shackleton legend.

  Shackleton received some 5,000 applications for the twenty-seven available places on his expedition. One of the most intriguing read:

  Three strong healthy girls, and also gay and bright, and willing to undergo any hardships, that you yourself undergo. If our feminine garb is inconvenient, we should just love to don masculine attire. We have been reading all books and articles that have been written on dangerous expeditions by brave men to the Polar regions, and we do not see why men should have the glory, and women none, especially when there are women just as brave and capable as there are men.

  No women went on Shackleton’s expedition. A desire for historical authenticity on the part of the Shackleton family meant I could take none either.

  In organizing expedition logistics, I wore an impressive carbon furrow between Australia, the UK, and the US, raising funds and sounding out suitable candidates. These included leading outdoorsmen Martin Hartley and Paul Rose as well as British sailor Pete Goss and Australia’s Don McIntyre. My goal was a team split fifty-fifty between sailors and climbers. Additional skill sets—an ability to repair the boat or to film the experience—were also required. Applicants ranged from an eighty-year-old sailor, a thirteen-year-old girl, librarians, musicians, polar historians, and surgeons through to high-caliber sailors, climbers, and photographers. Fortunately, while expedition logistics and funding remained opaque, the perfect candidates revealed themselves to me at just the right time, normally in response to a specific need. Ed Wardle had come forward when many other cameramen’s names were being bandied about but none seemed an obvious choice. I met him at a London cafe in June 2012 and he arrived dramatically on a powerful motorbike dressed in leathers. Quite apart from the fact he was Raw TV’s choice, I could see immediately he was a solid guy, and I liked his efficient, can-do attitude and his polite, direct style. I could also see myself getting along with this Scot in the confines of a small boat and felt I could trust him. And because he had summited Everest twice, spent fifty days on his own in Alaska living off the land, and was a former UK free-diving champion (free divers hold their breath and go as deep as they can) he was an ideal candidate. The fact he had compromised personal hygiene standards and eaten absolutely anything while in Alaska was enough on its own to qualify him for life aboard the Alexandra Shackleton. And while I hoped we wouldn’t have to call upon his free-diving skills, at least if we sank someone might survive to tell the story. As soon as I let Ed know he was on the team, he repaid me by getting to work on the camera and power systems for the Alexandra Shackleton, figuring out how best to film at sea and while crossing South Georgia.

  The other blindingly obvious choice for the team had come a month or two earlier via a combination of reputation and an introduction from Seb, via armed forces channels. Just as Shackleton had wanted and managed to include a Royal Marine in his expedition team (in the form of Thomas Orde-Lees), we wanted to include Baz Gray, a Royal Marine. His role as mountain leader chief instructor, however, meant he trained all other mountain leaders across the UK’s armed forces, had climbed everywhere, was a cold-weather expert for the Royal Navy’s Antarctic patrol ship HMS Endurance, and had already done the crossing of South Georgia in modern gear and awful weather. The fact that actor Hugh Jackman and Prince Andrew had trusted him with their lives during recent charity rappels (and both had survived) also instilled a certain sense of confidence. Baz had the driest sense of humor you could imagine and a burning desire to cross South Georgia the old way—something of a rite of passage for Royal Marines. I welcomed him onto the team and he immediately took responsibility for planning all aspects of the South Georgia crossing. The only downside was Baz’s predisposition to break into the opening lines of whatever song suited any given situation. But Shackleton would have loved it, I’m sure, as it seemed to tally with his sometimes unorthodox recruitment criteria. Reginald James said of his interview with Shackleton: “All that I can clearly remember of it is that I was asked if I had good teeth, if I suffered from varicose veins, and if I could sing.” The interview was over within five minutes and James was appointed the expedition’s magnetician and physicist.

  Ed on Everest: expert cameraman and expert climber.

  Regardless of the fact that I required just five men to fill the Alexandra Shackleton and had found three of the best for their roles already, I had two main issues facing me. First, as with Shackleton, a huge team was working behind the scenes on all aspects of fundraising, logistics, equipment selection, and media management, and second, I didn’t have a skipper yet. As far as the broader team went, there were people at Intrepid Travel trying to sell berths on board our support vessel, Kim McKay’s Momentum2 team working on fundraising and media, and Raw TV’s four-person film team and their support crew, not to mention the professional staff I’d had to find to supplement our support vessel’s crew. My struggles to assemble this broader team contrasted with the ease of recruiting Ed, Baz, and Seb, three completely committed men who immediately took ownership of aspects of the expedition, speaking volumes about their commitment in a world where people are not always recognizable from the list of attributes on their CVs.

  In terms of skippers, there were several candidates and two front-runners: Nick Bubb, whose name was put forward by Pete Goss, one of the world’s great sailors; and Chris Stanmore-Major, who was a fantastic round-the-world team and solo sailor. Deciding which one to appoint would not be easy. It wasn’t just about skill level. It was also about an ability to fit in with the rest of us and work with the other dedicated sailor on board, Paul Swain, who would be his second-in-charge. Paul had been involved in the fit-out of the Alexandra Shackleton, helping with all aspects of trialing and working on her as Dean and Reddyhoff’s assistant manager at Portland. He was a great guy and highly accomplished, but he readily accepted that at only twenty-seven years of age
and with no Southern Ocean experience, he wasn’t ready to be skipper.

  Now I had an immovable deadline fast approaching and if I didn’t choose my skipper soon, he would barely see the Alexandra Shackleton let alone sail in her before she left for Antarctica in just over a fortnight’s time. It would have been virtually impossible to get a world-class sailor to commit earlier, however, without assurances that the trip was fully funded and definitely happening.

  I traveled to Nick’s house in Lymington, near where we were due to undertake the first of our sea-survival training courses the following day in Southampton. A youthful face belied the depth of the man. Friendly, quietly self-assured but never overconfident, and with a certainty born of huge sailing experience beyond his thirty-three years, he made a good impression immediately. What I liked was that I wasn’t being bowled over by a blind enthusiasm for what we were going to do; rather I was being met by a respectful but direct line of questioning about some of the tricky issues we faced. He quizzed me on whether we would continue if we lost a man, capsize and how to manage it, the role of our support vessel, and the chain of command on board. He also offered insightful suggestions on each point. I realized in an instant he had the same quality I’d seen in Ed, Baz, and Seb—an optimistic but pragmatic nature with ego in check, suggesting they would be good team players, qualities not always easy to find in those who have achieved so much. That and a healthy respect for the seriousness of what we were attempting, while not being put off by it. Rather, they aimed to rise to the challenge by offering practical solutions to overcome any problems faced. I looked for in them what others had seen in Shackleton. Worsley once wrote of his leader, “I have seen him turn pale, yet force himself into the post of greatest peril. That was his type of courage; he would do the job he was most afraid of.”