1. From Newport to the Southern Atlantic
Wonders are many on
earth, and the greatest of these
Is man, who rides the
oceans and takes his way
Through the deeps,
through wind-swept valleys of perilous seas
That surge and sway.[1]
Perce
Blackborow, probably the only person to ever stowaway on an Antarctic
expedition, was born on 8 April 1894 in Newport in south-east Wales. His
parents were Annie Margaret and John Edward Blackborow. Annie was from Co. Cork
on the south-western coast of Ireland, one of many Irish men and women who had
come to that part of Wales in the nineteenth century. Newport was an active
town, with its docks receiving shipping from all over the world and exporting
coal in large quantities. Perce lived in a big family—he had five brothers and
three sisters—of a strong seafaring livelihood at 25 Horselary Street. Life was
simple and tough, food was hard-earned and Perce started working at the docks
at age twelve.[2]
Perce
mainly worked on merchant ships around England for the early part of his life.
He had an eleven week stint in 1912 aboard a London-registered ship named the Ladywood. He acquired the job by
claiming he was older than he was—he said he was born in 1893, making him
eighteen—a very frequent occurrence at the time. The extant discharge
certificate, dated 31 December 1912, however, put an end to that employment.
His first ocean crossing was on board the Golden
Gate. However, after crossing the Atlantic, the ship ran aground in the
River Plate, near Montevideo, Uruguay. It left nearly one hundred sailors
without a ship and looking for work.[3]
While
aboard the Golden Gate, Perce had
become friends with William Bakewell, an American who had worked as a ranch
hand in Montana before turning to the sea, who was now also a wandering sailor.
In search of a way home, they found themselves in Buenos Aires and were drawn
to the Endurance as the answer to
their predicament. The lure of the famous Sir Ernest Shackleton’s new
expedition to Antarctica was too great an opportunity to let slip by.[4]
Shackleton
himself had joined the Endurance in
mid-October 1914 and found his ship, crew and supplies in an organisational
mess. Several members of the crew were sacked for heavy drinking and unruly
behaviour.[5] Both Bakewell and Blackborow
were interviewed along with many other hopeful applicants to fill the
vacancies. Bakewell was duly signed on to the Endurance, but Perce was turned down on account of his young age
and his lack of experience. Bakewell, however, spoke well of his friend and
Frank Wild, the expedition’s second-in-command, gave Perce a temporary job
while the ship was in port. His jobs included cleaning out the dog kennels,
looking after the seventy-plus dogs and acting as steward assisting the cook,
Charles Green, who had also been taken on at Buenos Aires.[6]
The
Endurance left the port of Buenos
Aires on 26 October 1914. With the help of Bakewell and Walter How, a Londoner
with artistic tendencies, Perce hid in Bakewell’s cramped, damp, smelly oilskin
locker. His seasickness after leaving port was intensified by being cooped up
in the tiny, airless space. He was brought water and biscuits by his friends and
remained concealed for three days. On the third day out at sea, however, he was
found and hauled before Shackleton. Worsley recalled the scene:
After
we had been out a couple of days, however, one of the seamen had come to me in
some concern when I was on the bridge, and had rapped out, ‘If you would come
to the locker where the oilskins are kept, sir, I wonder whether you’d see what
I think I see.’ I had followed the seaman and looked at the oilskins, which
hung about eight inches from the deck. And what I saw against the wall was a
pair of legs. I put my hand in under the oilskins, and pulled, and out came
young Blackborow, the boy we had turned away.[7]
His
legs were weak from his cooped-up refuge and they almost gave way as he faced
the Boss. Shackleton erupted in a fury, delivering an impressively eloquent
tirade—a thorough dressing down—in front of the other crew members.[8] Hurley later wrote that ‘Sir
Ernest, with characteristic Irish humour, regarded the incident as an excellent
joke and treated it humanly.’ However, Hurley recalled that Shackleton, at
first, ‘feigned austerity’.[9] Victoria McKernan imagined
the scene:
‘What
the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ Shackleton roared. ‘Stowing away!
You think this is a bloody lark?
‘We
are going to the most desolate place in the world. It is always cold and always
dangerous. Do you have any idea what it is to walk through a blizzard when you
can barely stand? Have you ever spent an hour trying to wiggle your foot into
your boot that has become a solid block of ice?’[10]
The
Boss concluded the rant by narrowing his eyes and coming to within a few inches
of Perce’s face and informing him, in a whisper, that men get very hungry on
polar expeditions and if a stowaway was available, he was the first to be
eaten. Blackborow, one half petrified and the other half hopeful, responded
that as there was more meat on Shackleton, it’d be better if he were eaten
first. Shackleton, having likely enjoyed and appreciated the young lad’s cheeky
response, set him back to work helping the cook. Perce was later signed on as a
steward at £3 per month and Shackleton came to regard him as well as any other
man on board.[14]
Worsley spoke well of the newest addition to the expedition: ‘Shackleton, like
myself, was rather drawn to the youngster… [we] made him one of the crew, and I may add that we never regretted it.’[15] Hurley agreed; after
Shackleton had taken the ‘athletic-looking and promising lad’ on, Blackborow
became ‘the ship’s steward and a loyal and valuable addition to the party.’[16]
[1] Sophocles, ‘Antigone’ in
Sophocles, The Theban Plays, trans.
E. F. Watling (Hammonsworth, 1972), p. 135.
[2] Endurance Obituaries, Blackborow;
J. Blackborow, ‘1916 May 17th Elephant Island’.
[3] J. Blackborow, ‘1916 May 17th
Elephant Island’; McKernan, Shacketon’s
Stowaway, pp. 5-7.
[4] Smith, Shackleton, p. 287.
[5] Smith, Shackleton, pp. 272-273; Lansing, Endurance, pp. 21-22.
[6] J. Blackborow, ‘1916 May 17th
Elephant Island’; Alexander, Endurance,
p. 23; John F. Mann, ‘The
Crew of S.Y. Endurance’, Nimrod: The
Journal of the Ernest Shackleton Autumn School Vol. 2 (2008), pp. 17-19.
[7] Worsley, Endurance, An Epic Polar Adventure, p. 5.
[8] Lansing, Endurance, p. 23; Alexander, Endurance,
p. 23; J. Blackborow, ‘1916 May 17th Elephant Island’.
[9] Frank Hurley, Argonauts of the South: Being a Narrative of Voyagings and Polar Seas
and Adventures in the Antarctic with Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Ernest
Shackleton (New York, 1925), p. 127.
[10] McKernan, Shacketon’s Stowaway, p. 32.
[11] Alexander, Endurance, p. 23; J. Blackborow, ‘1916 May 17th Elephant Island’;
Lansing, Endurance, pp. 23-24.
[12] Worsley, Epic Polar Adventure, p. 5.
[13] Hurley, Argonauts of the South, p. 128.
[14] Alexander, Endurance, p. 23; J. Blackborow, ‘1916 May 17th Elephant Island’;
Lansing, Endurance, pp. 23-24.
[15] Worsley, Epic Polar Adventure, p. 5.
[16] Hurley, Argonauts of the South, p. 128