GREAT SHACK

Yesterday was Shackleton’s birthday.

He is a hero of mine, Old Shack. The Boss, as his men never failed to call him, organised the most audacious rescue attempt of his expedition party from Elephant Island on the Antarctic peninsula, via open boat journeys which would shake the most fearless. Anyone who has been at sea at all, seen at first hand their boat, the James Caird, and imagined the terrifying prospect of crossing the Drake Passage in her cannot fail to be moved by the achievement of Shackleton, Worsley, Crean, Vincent, McCarthy and McNish in navigating from Elephant Island to King Haakon Bay, South Georgia. The James Caird was an open boat of twenty one feet. McNish, the carpenter, had modified her, providing canvas decks, extra ballast, and a ketch rig, including a jib. But everything froze on the journey, the men included. The rigging froze so hard that the crew had to crawl out on the lethal icy decks, held at the ankles by their crewmates, and attack it with an ice axe. Everything, everything – rations, water, sleeping bags, clothing, got soaked then froze, meaning almost no respite for the crew. It was a good job McNish had rigged a jib, as without it, the James Caird would never have clawed to windward to clear Annekov island as they made landfall. As it was, it was the nearest of near misses. But somehow they made it, through the most desperate of voyages, only then to face a hitherto unattempted crossing of the unthinkably mountainous interior of South Georgia. This they also accomplished with crude, improvised equipment, but an unstoppable motivation to save their colleagues. When they were met at the door of the Manager’s house at Stromness whaling station, it is said that the Manager wept openly to see their pitiable state. Even after their privations, Shackleton was unceasing in his quest to rescue the rest of his men from Elephant Island. He finally did so. “All well?” he hailed them. "All well," they replied. And as they were all safely transferred to the rescue tug Yelcho, Worsley reported that “years dropped away from the Boss’s countenance”. All were brought off alive. Only one, Perce Blackborrow, had any serious injury. He got frost bite and needed a toe amputating. Ironically he was a stowaway on the expedition which had taken them to Antarctica.

Shackleton epitomises for me the ideal that a leader should, quite simply, put his people first -something which one comes across in industrial and commercial leadership so, so rarely. He combined a hard, utter clarity and determination towards the goal with a deep, almost maternal (so his men said) care about his people.

Shackleton is buried at Grytviken cemetery on South Georgia. I hope one day to be able to pay my respects. Ideally I will have travelled there under sail. Ideally too, in rather more comfort than Shackleton’s men.