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

Chapter 2

2. A Love Gained and Lost: The Endurance

Poseidon, the great god… You are the tamer of horse and the saviour of ships… Help those who sail upon the sea in ships.[1]

Blackborow’s unusual employment brought the number aboard the Endurance to twenty-eight. Shackleton’s selection process for some of the others was also unorthodox, making Perce’s presence seem not so out of place in the motley crew that made up the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton gave Leonard Hussey, a meteorologist, a very short interview before agreeing to hire him. He later explained that Hussey was taken along because he could play the banjo and because he ‘looked funny’.[2] In his selections, Shackleton relied on his gut feelings and trusted his ability to read a man’s disposition quickly. Orestes, son of Argive Agamemnon, observed that ‘[t]here’s no effective touchstone to identify a good man. Classifying men’s natures is a confusing business.’[3] However, for his polar expeditions, Shackleton seemed to have stumbled on a good formula.

At first Perce expected to be brought only as far as South Georgia, but Shackleton was impressed by the young Welshman and he remained on the Endurance as she sailed out of Grytviken on 5 December 1914. Perce had to adapt quickly to the challenge and routine of being a regular crew member, and in this he succeeded. He had to learn his trade, both through practical engagement and studying, to make up for his little experience in non-steam vessels. He was an able and willing young man, perhaps hungry to make an impression on the Boss.[4]

Perce was part of the daily rota for those on watch, just as everyone else. He got on well with all hands on board and his easy-going manner was well-liked. Perhaps being the youngest of all the men led the others to treat him with an equally relaxed fashion. Beneath his calm demeanour, though, a hint of temper was perceived, with the capability of plainly speaking his mind.[5]

Along with Green, Perce had a long working day preparing hot meals for the hungry crew. Green was the son of a master baker in Richmond, England, but he ran off to sea at age twenty-one and became a merchant navy cook. He was strong and serious, and, crucially, provided food for the men, sometimes in very daunting circumstances, all through the expedition. Ably assisted by Perce, Green baked twelve loaves of bread a day and prepared any game caught. Perce, as steward, prepared meals, helped cook at the galley and cleaned pots and plates after meals.[6] He was well-liked by Mrs. Chippy, the ship’s resident cat and dog-taunter.[7] Blackborow slipped scraps to the adventurous feline, strengthening the friendship that probably first bloomed during Perce’s days in hiding. When Orde-Lees temporarily took over from an injured Green as cook, he had to admit that he knew very little about cooking and wrote that

Blackborow—our stowaway who is now acting as pantry boy...is really a most excellent...young fellow. I soon find that he knows quite a lot about cooking & I confide in him that I know nothing & that I rely upon him to pull me through.[8]

There was much activity on the Endurance besides the daily running of the ship. Frank Hurley, the expedition’s photographer, had a keen eye for spectacular shots. Frank Worsley, the ship’s captain, wrote that Hurley was ‘a marvel’:

He [Hurley] perambulated alone aloft & everywhere, in the most dangerous & slippery places he can find, content & happy at all times but cursing so if he can get a good or novel picture.[9]

Hurley often received the assistance of Perce when taking his photographs, having Perce operate the camera while he stood in with others for a shot, or when he wanted a different angle. The photographs of Hurley with his equipment high up in the ship’s mast were probably taken by Perce. In later life, Blackborow told his son that when Hurley came looking for him, he was often busy reading.[10] Perce read much, making good use of the ship’s well-stocked library to study and as a way to pass the time. Shackleton told the bright and conscientious Welshman to study when he could, and took a personal interest in the steward’s learning.  The ship’s copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was particularly popular and would provide relief for interested and bored sailors alike. The Boss discussed literature with Blackborow and often talked with those who shared his personal passion for poetry.[11] Hurley acknowledged that individual pastimes took various forms. Although the ‘library was fairly extensive and reading varied’, he noted that ‘[v]ast and purely imaginary sums were won and lost at dice and cards.’[12]

Life aboard the Endurance was a product of the broad range of personnel in the crew and how they all mixed together under the always-present Shackleton. 

We are those fools who could not rest
In the dull earth we left behind,
But burned with passion for the West
And drank a frenzy from its wind;
The world where small men live at ease
Fades from our unregretful eyes,
And blind across uncharted seas
We stagger on our enterprise.[13]

When quoting this St John Lucas poem, Shackleton changed the ‘West’ of line three to ‘South’. He often altered his favourite poems, although maintaining their integrity, and interspersed them in his writings to suit his purpose or feelings at any given time.[14]

            After the Endurance became beset by the ice, trapped in by the pack for as far as the eye could see, on 19 January 1915, Perce experienced the ‘tedious time of waiting’.[15] Despite this, Perce and Green remained busy as ever preparing the daily meals. The days were filled with various activities: exercising and looking after the dogs, seal-hunting, games of football and hockey on larger ice floes, reading and indoor games such as cards, checkers and chess. Frank Hurley’s photos show the many entertainments and distractions that the men engaged in while aboard the Endurance, as it slowly drifted according to the whims of the ice. There were lectures, made possible by the ‘excellent projection lantern [which] had been brought along’ and it used to give ‘illustrated talks on such topics as the Mawson Expedition and travel in sunny lands.’[16]

The men also enjoyed the performance of plays and musical evenings for amusement, which also often had a friendly competitive element. The communal listening to either the gramophone or to Hussey at the banjo provided welcome distraction. Hurley recorded the result of a singing competition occurring on the evening of 7 March 1915—’the prize being unanimously awarded to Sir Ernest. His voice is quaint, vacillating uncertainly between sharps and flats in a unique manner.’ Despite the many men who entered the competition, Hurley amusingly recalled that it was ‘astounding the musical talent we do not possess!’[17] Further activities included poetry readings, varied conversation on any topic under the sun and, unusually, a head-shaving contest. The last of these amusements showed that more than just a hint of cabin fever had broken out among the crew.[18]

A memory that Perce could later vividly recall was that of the darkness and monotony of the Antarctic winter, with no sun for ten weeks—’the long polar night’.[19] The nights’ amusements provided healthy breaks, but it was a bleak time for all. A crucial element of leadership for Shackleton, at the point when enthusiasm turned to stagnation, as landfall for the Endurance was impossible, was keeping everyone together and as content as could be expected. As Michael Smith contended, ‘Shackleton’s genius was in his sheer force of personality.’[20] He seemed to be everywhere, do all and be the master of everything. He grew to know his crew further and spent time chatting informally with everyone, which had a powerful effect in making each feel as important as the next. Macklin recalled these little chats and their value:

When he came across you by yourself he would get into conversation and talk to you in an intimate sort of way, asking you little things about yourself—how you were getting on, how you liked it, what particular side of the work you were enjoying most—all that sort of thing. Sometimes when you’d felt he’d been perhaps a bit ruthless, pushing you round a bit hard, he seemed to have the knack of undoing any bad effect he’d had with these little intimate talks; he immediately put you back on a feeling of rightness with him.[21]

The impact that this engagement of Shackleton with his crew was, perhaps, most closely felt by the younger members on board, such as Perce. Macklin, then only twenty-four, wrote that one would have ‘found it rather flattering at the time,’ especially when Shackleton spoke about literature and poetry—’to have him discussing Thackeray, for instance, or asking you if you’d ever read Browning. I never had, and he would tell me what I was missing.’ Shackleton used poetry to inspire the men under his command, and to encourage them to persist, with the ideas and moving lines of his favourite poets.[22]

Displaying one wonderful example of Shackleton’s character and enthusiastic leadership, Orde-Lees wrote the following, after witnessing Shackleton and Worsley—the ‘Boss’ and the ‘Skipper’—dancing on the ice for the amusement of the others:

This is Sir Ernest all over…he is always able to keep his troubles under and show a bold front. His unfailing cheeriness means a lot to a band of disappointed sailors like ourselves.[23]

Months passed as the Endurance was slowly taken further away from the Antarctic coast, lodged amid their icy entrapment. Despite the crew’s best efforts, the pressure of the pack ice crushed the ship in mid-October. Her solid oak keel, seven foot thick, and bow, four foot thick, were not to withstand the pressures from the ice. Her beams buckled and snapped, growling and booming in the process. The men worked valiantly in efforts to save their ship but Shackleton ordered for her to be abandoned on 27 October 1915. ‘The floes,’ he wrote, ‘with the force of millions of tons of moving ice behind them, were simply annihilating the ship.’ It produced a ‘sickening sensation’ to watch and hear her destruction.[24] Hurley recalled that, despite the ship’s destruction, smoke was issuing from the galley chimney. Before leaving the Endurance, Green and Perce made one last meal aboard and handed it out to the men as they contemplated the loss of ‘our little ship’.[25] Hurley continued:

All hands assemble in the ward room to partake of the last meal aboard the good old ship. The meal is taken in silent gravity, whilst the crushing is in progress and an ominous sound of splintering timbers arises from below.[26]

Shackleton knew that it was vital to reassure his men. He gathered all hands and confidently declared: ‘Ship and stored have gone—so now we’ll go home’.[27] The simplicity and boldness of the statement was thoroughly effective at raising spirits. Perce was greatly moved by this and later remembered Shackleton’s optimism at times at strain:

I like to think of our leader as I recall him at this time [after the loss of the Endurance]. His hopes and ambitions had all been shattered, yet he was cheerful and went out of his way to impart some of that cheerfulness to others. He had a genius for keeping men in good spirits, and need I say more, we loved him like a father.[28]

Perce was certainly correct to say that Shackleton felt the ship’s destruction acutely. He wrote that, in the Endurance he had ‘centred ambitions, hopes and desires’.[29] However, the new goal for the Boss was to return his men safely to civilisation. As Hugh Robert Mill, a long-standing friend and trusted confidante of Sir Ernest, commented in his biography, once the ship was abandoned

…the soul of Shackleton was enlarged and set free, doubt and anxiety dropped from him, and he gave himself with all his might to the simple, straightforward fight for the safety of his people, putting behind him the shatterings of his own ambitions.[30]

For Blackborow, he then had the right to say that he had survived two shipwrecks—the Golden Gate and the Endurance—by age twenty. 

[1] The Homeric Hymns, trans. J. Cashford (London, 2003), p. 127.
[2] Smith, Shackleton, p. 289.
[3] Euripides, ‘Electra’, in Medea and Other Plays, trans. J. Marwood (Oxford, 1998), p. 91.
[4] Alexander, Endurance, p. 56.
[5] Alexander, Endurance, p. 64.
[6] Alexander, Endurance, pp. 63-65; Smith, Shackleton, p. 312.
[7] Alexander, Mrs. Chippy’s Last Expedition: The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton’s
Polar-Bound Cat (New York, 1999), pp. 5, fn. 9.
[8] Alexander, Mrs. Chippy’s Last Expedition, p. 31, fn. 44.
[9] Alexander, Endurance, p. 65.
[10] J. Blackborow, ‘1916 May 17th Elephant Island’
[11] For more on Shackleton’s lifelong love and use of poetry, including his own amateur works, see: Mayer, A Life in Poetry.
[12] Hurley, Argonauts of the South, p. 163.
[13] Mill, Shackleton, p. 265; Mayer, A Life in Poetry, pp. 113-114.
[14] For an example of this, see: Mayer, A Life in Poetry, p. 125.
[15] ‘A lecture given by Perce Blackborow’, The James Caird Society Journal Vol. 6 (2012), p. 9.

[16] Hurley, Argonauts of the South, pp. 161-162.
[17] Hurley, Argonauts of the South, pp. 161-162.
[18] For Hurley’s photographs, see: Alexander, Endurance; http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/library/pictures/catalogue/itae1914-16/gallery.
[19] ‘A lecture given by Perce Blackborow’, The James Caird Society Journal Vol. 6 (2012), p. 9.
[20] Smith, Shackleton, p. 291.
[21] M. & J. Fisher, Shackleton (London, 1957), pp. 336-337.
[22] Mayer, A Life in Poetry, pp. 181-182; Fisher, Shackleton, pp. 336-337.
[23] Alexander, Endurance, p. 68.
[24] Smith, Shackleton, chapter 29.
[25] ‘A lecture given by Perce Blackborow’, The James Caird Society Journal Vol. 6 (2012), p. 9.
[26] Hurley, Argonauts of the South, p. 187.
[27] Smith, Shackleton, p. 300.
[28] ‘A lecture given by Perce Blackborow’, The James Caird Society Journal Vol. 6 (2012), p. 10.
[29] Smith, Shackleton, p. 299.
[30] Mill, Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton, p. 212.