8. ‘Have you known the Great White Silence…?’[1]
The ordeals had been continuous and unrelenting—the Endurance, the pack ice and ice floes, Elephant Island, the James Card and South Georgia. However, by 30 August 1916, the stranded Elephant Island crew were all safely aboard the Yelcho, the Chilean vessel bound for civilisation—warmth, food and medical supplies. Once aboard, the crew dined heartily, laughing and singing following their rescue. Worsley wrote:
They all smoked like chimneys, but they had
been on short commons for so long that this, on top of the first really hearty
meal they had had for months, upset most of them...But our dinner that night
was a cheery one, and it was midnight before we turned in.[2]
They were slowly informed of the world that
they had left behind while in Antarctica—the war news and the scale of the
devastation across Europe. They soaked up as much information from a store of
old newspapers someone had brought along.[3]
They had had no news of Sir Ernest for four
and a half months, and had no knowledge of the outside world for nearly two
years, so they were eager to catch up with the Boss and the world at large. A
good many were surprised to hear that the war was still going on. They seemed
to have great difficulty in grasping what had happened, which was natural,
considering that they had not been able to follow any of the developments and,
so far as the war was concerned, were in the condition of Rip Van Winkle when
he woke up.[4]
As the Yelcho
struggled through a western gale, it pulled into Rio Seco where Shackleton
telephoned ahead to the Governor of Punta Arenas informing him of the
successful rescue.[5]
Aware of the value of good publicity, Shackleton had the crew wait a few hours
while celebrations were arranged for their arrival. The Yelcho steamed into Punta Arenas on 3 September and found jubilant
crowds on the quaysides cheering the returning men. The news of our arrival
spread rapidly. Bells were rung, fire alarms were sounded, and the police were
instructed to broadcast the news that the Yelcho
had arrived with every man of the party safe.[6]
Reginald James, a highly intelligent but
otherworldly character, was often ill at ease in the raw life at sea. The son
of an umbrella maker, he joined the expedition at age twenty-three.[7]
James wrote to his brother George when he arrived at Punta Arenas:
I don’t know whether this can get to you under
the circumstances, but it is worth attempting. Arrived here today on Chilean
vessel ‘Yelcho’ having been picked up at Elephant Island last Wednesday...
The Boss’s 4th attempt. Am very well and
fit...the whole party complete and well, the only loss being that one of the
sailors lost his toes through frostbite in the boat journey... Our most
pressing need for a wash. We have had a great reception here, crowds, bands,
and all the rest of it.[8]
The day was proclaimed a fête day, as the
Chileans were delighted that it was a ship flying their flag that had rescued
the men. The Chilean hospitality was very generous and there was a month of
receptions, dinners and speech-giving events.[9] However, there was no
partying to be done by Blackborow. Upon arrival at Punta Arenas, Perce spent
three months in a local hospital recovering from the damage to his left foot
caused by the severe frostbite and his operation on Elephant Island.[10]
Shackleton later wrote that ‘after a little treatment ashore, very kindly given
by Chilean doctors at Punta Arenas, he [Perce] has now completely recovered and
walks only with a slight limp.’[11]
When he returned home, Perce wore a block shoe on his left foot and taught
himself to walk without the aforementioned limp and never mentioned it.[12]
At a reception at the offices of the British
Association, Shackleton paid tribute to Crean and Worsley in particular, those
who had seen through the whole journey with him. He characteristically could
not forget the contribution of each of his men:
My name has been known to the general public
for a long time and it has mostly been as a leader, but how much depends upon
the men! What I do would be small, did we not work together. I appreciate my men
on Elephant Island...[13]
William Bakewell, Perce’s American companion
from the very beginning of their Endurance story, left Buenos Aires
after receiving his pay. He later wrote that, ‘I had to say goodbye to the
finest group of men that it ever has been my good fortune to be with’.[14] The
crew, except Blackborow and Hudson, waved goodbye to the Boss and to each other
at Buenos Aires train station. No formalities were needed, but often just
simple handshakes ended the two-year ordeal that they had faced together.
Although the same lines are inscribed on Capt.
Robert F. Scott’s grave, the final section of Lord Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ could
also describe the crew of Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition:
One equal temper of equal hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.[15]
The survival of all of the Weddell Sea crew
members is a story of success in failure.[16] It was a testament to the
leadership of Sir Ernest and the individual contribution of each of the
twenty-seven men who were willing to travel to the ends of the earth with the
Boss. The reciprocal nature of the pride and respect felt between Shackleton
and his men is illustrative of this success.
*
Following his three-month stay recovering and
recuperating in Punta Arena, a place was arranged for Perce aboard a ship to
bring him home. He arrived in the United Kingdom safely and in good shape. He
took a train to Newport, but on seeing a large reception for his return he
jumped off the train and crossed the tracks to avoid what he saw as a
bit of a fuss. Inquisitive reporters used to knock of the family’s door to try
to interview Perce, but he would jump over the back wall in the garden rather
than talk to them. [17]
Once home, Perce tried to join the Royal Navy
and do his duty in the war. However, he was rejected because his toes had been
amputated. Instead he was taken by the Merchant Navy and served working on
cargo and transport ships. He served in the Merchant Navy until 1919, and then
went on to become a dock boatman at Alexandra Docks in Newport. Following his
service in the wider war effort, Perce married a young Irish woman, Kate Kearns
and they settled in Maesglas in Newport. They had six children together, Jack,
Jim, Peggy, Ken, Joan and Phillip. Sadly, Phillip died in infancy and Jack died
when he was nine years old. Perce’s children have told of their father’s way of
interacting with others—he said very little but when he did speak, one
certainly knew what he meant. His brother, Reg, described Perce as a
strong man in his family who led by his presence. Perce’s grandson wrote that
he ‘was a very likeable man, he was a pillar of strength to his family and had
a great presence’.
As well as the tough work at the docks, Perce
fished to supplement his income and to put food on the table. His youngest
daughter Joan said that her father would often arrive home cold and tired after
a long day working. He would sit by the grate, open the oven door and put his
left foot near—or even in—the oven. Circulation was always a problem with his
toeless foot.
Although Perce didn’t speak much of his polar
adventures, he told his children stories every now and then. During the 1930s
the BBC produced a special radio broadcast about the Endurance expedition. Peggy, Perce’s eldest daughter, remembered
sitting on her father’s lap, listening to the show. Although it was dark in the
living room, she could tell that Perce was crying, particularly on hearing of
their dogs being periodically killed.
John Blackborow recounted a story that his
father had told him: when he was about six years old, he was playing with a
metal disk of sorts, jamming it between gaps in the pavement. Perce came out,
took the disk away and scolded him firmly and sent him to his room. Only
later in life did he discover that he had been playing with Perce’s Bronze
Polar Medal awarded to him for his service to Shackleton’s Imperial
Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Blackborow’s quiet, personal pride and appreciation
of his experiences on the ice, and the things he learned during his time, bring
to mind the following section of Robert W. Service’s poem ‘The Call of the Wild’:
Have you suffered, starved and triumphed,
groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
“Done things” just for the doing, letting
babblers tell the story,
Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors,
heard the text that nature renders?
(You’ll never hear it in the family pew).
The simple things, the true things, the silent
men who do things –
Then listen to the Wild – it’s calling you.[18]
Although some of the crew wrote and spoke
openly about their experiences (for example, Worsley wrote various books and
Green gave many lectures over the years), Blackborow, as well as Crean, mostly
kept his story to himself. Perce often turned down chances to be on radio, but
was eventually persuaded to speak before a viewing of the film ‘The Voyage of
the Quest’ by the YMCA Boys’ Club in Newport.[19] It seems that he agreed to
do so because the talk he was to give was to be about Sir Ernest
Shackleton and not particularly about himself.
As John Blackborow contends, the impact that
Shackleton had on young Perce was considerable.
As an 18yr old amongst those characters on the
Endurance with a man like Shackleton
leading you this had a profound bearing on his [Perce’s] nature—his respect
& admiration for Shackleton was second to none.
Hussey later wrote of the effect that being
with Shackleton had on the crew’s thinking and lives: ‘his personality left its
mark on all our lives... even now our thoughts and ideas are coloured by what
we knew of his.’[20] The
kind of reverence that they held for Sir Ernest may have brought
to mind the following lines from Robert Browning’s poem ’The lost Leader’:
We that had loved him, followed him, honoured
him,
Lived in his mild and
magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear
accents,
Made him the pattern to live and to die![21]
As John Blackborow wrote, Shackleton and the
expedition moulded Perce’s character and Shackleton stressed to him the need
for education and knowledge, encouraging him to use the ship’s library before
the loss of the Endurance. ‘In later
years my Grandfather owned a number of encyclopaedias and encouraged his
children likewise.’
In his speech to the YMCA Boys’ Club,
Blackborow told them of his impression of the Boss:
He was a tall, broad–shouldered man, possessed
of a very generous nature with which he combined extra-ordinary powers of
endurance and hardihood. He was optimistic even when things looked blackest,
this inspired those who served under him. These attributes and what he had
accomplished made him, I think, one of the greatest explorers in history.
*
On a cold, wet, wintery day, Perce attended a
funeral with a friend. It was for a local man who had no family left to be at
the service. On the way to and from the funeral, Perce was soaked through with
rain and caught a bad chest infection. This aggravated his chronic bronchitis
and heart disease and he died on 8 January 1949 at his home at 41 Maesglas
Grove in Newport. He was buried in St Woolos Cemetery, 48 Bassaleg
Road, Newport.
The relationships formed on the Imperial
Trans-Antarctic Expedition lived on long after the return and dispersal of the
crew. Blackborow, How and Bakewell—friendships that began in Buenos Aires in
1914 and the assistance given to Perce in stowing away—lived on. Bakewell even
visited Blackborow’s family, coming all the way from Canada, after his
companion’s death in 1949.[22]
John Blackborow was invited to contribute to a documentary by George Butler,
and was promised to be brought to the Antarctic. Although unable to land on
Elephant Island, John was accompanied to the southern oceans by Charles
Shackleton (a nephew of Sir Ernest) and Peter Wordie (son of James Wordie). The
enduring relationships between the crew and the crew’s families are touching
and speak volumes about the shared experiences that the men faced together. The
feelings of shared adventures and comraderie continuing on even long after the
expedition are reminiscent of Shackleton’s post-Discovery poem, ‘L’Envoi’:
And when, in the fading firelight, we turn
these pages o’er,
We shall think of the times we wrote therein
by that far off Southern shore.
With regret we shall close the story, yet ever
in thought go back,
And success for each comrade will pray for on
Life’s still unbeaten track;
And the love of men for each other that was
born in that naked land,
Constant through life’s great changes will be
held by our little band.
Though the grip of the frost may be cruel, and
relentless its icy hold,
Yet it knit our hearts together in that
darkness stern and cold.[23]
*
The story of Perce Blackborow is a wonderful
way to open up the epic of Shackleton’s Endurance—a
young man out for adventure lured towards a famous name and an opportunity of a
lifetime. Perce stowed away, a brave move and also a very entertaining way to
start a tale. His hard work and congeniality made him popular with the others
and they felt genuine concern for Perce as he faced the operation to remove his
frostbitten toes on Elephant Island. This provides the story with grisly
details (of particular interest to children!) to illustrate how physically and
mentally difficult the months were for all of the men stranded on a desolate
shore.
To commemorate the centenary of the expedition
in 2014, a project involving Newport City Homes and Thrift Theatre worked with
children in Maesglas Primary School, in Blackborow’s hometown. Regional
newspaper The South Wales Argus
reported that
Newport-based housing association, Newport
City Homes wanted school children in the area to learn about the adventure so
commissioned Tim Godwin from Thrift Theatre to work with a small class of boys
in Maesglas Primary School. The project culminated in writing and performing a
song about Blackborow … Teaching assistant Vicki Pettican said that the boys ‘have
really blossomed, their confidence has shot sky high’ after working with Tim.[24]
The boys learned about Perce, his adventuring
and used his story to inspire their own imaginations in group activities and in
writing a song with Tim Godwin, an expert in the use of theatre and music in
education. A short video was produced showing the activities and the children,
clearly enjoying themselves, singing their song about Perce.[25]
The
use of the Endurance story to inspire
children’s imaginations, adventuring spirits and learning seems only
appropriate. Both Shackleton and Blackborow were men with vision, ambition and
a strong sense of self that drove them to Antarctica and, with thanks to their
strong will to endure the odds, back home again.
[1] Taken from the poem ‘The Call of the Wild,’
Robert W. Service,
http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/service_r_w/call_wild.html.
[2] Worsley, Epic
of Polar Adventure, pp. 193-194.
[3] Smith, Unsung
Hero, p. 306
[4] Worsley, Epic
of Polar Adventure, p. 193.
[5] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 374
[6] Worsley, Epic
of Polar Adventure, p. 194.
[7] Smith, Shackleton,
pp. 288-289.
[8] Endurance Obituaries, James.
[9] Worsley, Epic
of Polar Adventure, pp. 194-195; Smith, Shackleton,
p. 375.
[10] Endurance Obituaries, Blackborow.
[11] Shackleton, South, p. 262.
[12] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 197.
[13] Smith, Unsung
Hero, p. 307.
[14] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 188.
[15] http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174659.
For note on Scott’s memorial cross and use of Tennyson, see: Mayer, A Life
in Poetry, pp. 47-49.
[16] For the expedition’s Ross Sea party and the
deaths of three crew members, see: Tyler-Lewis, The Lost Men.
[17] Unless otherwise stated, this section is
compiled from the following sources: Blackborow, ‘1916 May 17th
Elephant Island’; Endurance Obituaries, Blackborow; ‘A
lecture given by Perce Blackborow’, The James Caird
Society Journal
Vol. 6 (2012), pp. 7-11. McKernan’s ‘Epilogue’ also
follows, in short, the later lives of Perce and eleven other crew members:
McKernan, Shackleton’s Stowaway, pp. 305-312.
[18]
http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/service_r_w/call_wild.html. For
Shackleton’s use of this passage as inspiration in summing up the expedition,
see: Shackleton, South, p. 226.
[19] For the Quest’s adventures, before and after
Sir Ernest’s death, see: F. Wild, Shackleton’s
Last Voyage: The Story of the Quest (London, 1923).
[20] Mill, Life
of Sir Ernest Shackleton, p. 280.
[21] http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173018.
[22]
http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/biography/blackborrow_percy.htm.
[23] Mayer, A
Life in Poetry, pp. 51-52.
[24] Antarctic tale inspires
Maesglas pupils, The South Wales Argus, Sunday 21 December 2014:
http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/gwentnews/11680990.Antarctic_tale_inspires_Maesglas_pupils.
[25] The video can be viewed at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-CBPaG6ckk.