‘It is what one is oneself and what one makes of one’s life that matters.’
— Sir E. H. Shackleton

Chapter 1

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