David Stonehouse Features

The importance of Ernest

Books, films, leadership seminars, fan clubs, memorabilia auctions -- the revival of interest in the Antarctic exploits of Ernest Shackleton knows no bounds

By David Stonehouse

He was a mythical figure to her even then, when Alexandra Shackleton was just a young child. He stared down at her from the walls at home, his gaze casting out from black-and-white photographs that gave her glimpses into a perplexing, exotic ice-laden world of bearded men and dark days.

She knew the leader of the bearded men was her grandfather, Ernest Shackleton. That made her proud. But she knew little else, perhaps cared to know little else.

One thing about the photos always niggled at her, though: the dogs. Why were there dogs with the men, out there on the ice? And where were they now?

She peppered her family with the question, but no one would give her a straight answer. In those days -- post Second World War -- and in proper British society, no one dared reveal such a thing to a child.

"You know what happened to the dogs, don't you?" she asks now, decades on, over the phone from her home in London.

They were eaten, of course.

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When Shackleton speaks at schools, she asks teachers whether she should be straight with the children once she gets that inevitable question from the floor, the one that had nagged her so. Usually the answer is yes, especially when she visits schools in America.

When she reveals the truth, the children don't flinch, she says. They seem to understand that it was a matter of survival for Sir Ernest Shackleton's men during their extraordinary quest to endure the Antarctic for two months short of two years, stranded in one of the
harshest climates on Earth.

As she became older, she never really pursued the family history, until a decade ago, when a trip to Antarctica stirred up her interest in the legend of her ancestor.

Now, she is president of the James Caird Society, a kind of high-class Shackleton fan club with 600 members worldwide. She attends openings of Shackleton films -- as she gave this interview she was getting ready to fly to Philadelphia to speak at the opening of the Imax screenings there. She pens forewords to Shackleton books and gives regular media interviews. Although once almost indifferent to her grandfather's accomplishment, she is now swept up in the Shackleton revival, the seemingly unquenchable thirst for all things Ernest. Book titles abound, movies are shot and shown, memorabilia from his expedition auctioned, Shackleton-inspired leadership talks delivered.

Even a SuperBowl has been credited to the inspiring story of this courageous leader and his devoted men.

The latest contribution is a four-hour movie -- called Shackleton, of course -- starring Kenneth Branagh in the lead role. The film will be broadcast in two parts on A&E; see review on page D9).

"I think there is a general hunger, that people have to be taken somewhere that they have never been before, to experience something -- even if it is vicariously through a book or through a film -- to have that kind of adventure, to see those kinds of challenges," says Delia Fine, executive producer of Shackleton.

The A&E movie follows on the heels of a recent PBS documentary, Shackleton's Voyage of Endurance, and there are rumours of a Hollywood movie in the works, perhaps starring Russell Crowe. Management gurus are turning to Shackleton, espousing his leadership skills as a path to success. Seminars featuring lectures on Shackleton insights and viewings of Shackleton films lure chief executives. There are business books
giving tips on how to lead the Shackleton way. Corporations have even designed their corporate cultures to reflect the Shackleton philosophy.

"I think we are seeing the proverbial tip of the iceberg," says New York film-maker George Butler, who is so captivated by the journey he has made several movies about it. "I was just in London looking into the possibility of directing a much bigger Shackleton film. There are 31 books in print on Shackleton right now, there are about six films out
there, four of which I made, and each one of them seems to do better than the next."

Butler, who launched Arnold Schwarzenegger's career with the documentary Pumping Iron, declares this one of the greatest stories ever told. He is convinced the expedition's survival was a gift from God.

"I think that it was a kind of modern miracle. There is no other possible explanation. How else could it have happened?" Butler says.

"There is no way Shackleton and 27 men could have survived for 635 days shipwrecked in the Antarctic," he says. "It's an impossible story. It just didn't happen. Couldn't have happened. But it did."

Butler sees people latching on to the story as almost a rebellion against the modern age.

"I think people are sick and tired of sitting behind computers, feeling that everything in the world has to have an electronic, digitalized answer to it. I think people love the idea of a story which involves 28 men who, with their hands, their feet and their heads, took on the
greatest forces that nature could bring to bear."

Shackleton, a merchant Navy man turned explorer, set out in 1914 to cross Antarctica by foot, pulling together a motley crew of 27 from 5,000 men who answered this ad in the Times of London: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success."

Irish-born, Shackleton was a carouser who loved drink, smoke and adventure. He had savoured polar life before, and wanted more. He had been one of the crew on a Robert Scott expedition at the dawn of the 20th century, but Scott sent him home, thinking him weak. Then Shackleton sought his own trek to the South Pole. He and his crew were
about 160 kilometres from the pole in 1908 when Shackleton ordered a retreat. He knew people would die if they pushed forward.

He viewed his next attempt, in 1914 -- a foot crossing of the ice-bound continent -- as the last great polar adventure. Just as the First World War was breaking out, Shackleton and his crew set sail aboard a new ship -- christened Endurance after the family motto "By Endurance We Conquer." She was built with strong greenheart wood to repel the
crushing forces of the ice.

Not seven months into the journey, Endurance became entangled in the ice, surrounded in an unrelenting grasp. But as soon as the ice let go, sending Endurance underway once again, it grabbed hold one more time. This time, it gouged. The ship began to leak, then sank.

The crew set up camp on the ice, managing to pull several tons of provisions from Endurance before it went under on Nov. 21. The camp, carried by the ice floe it sat on, lumbered across the Antarctic Circle. The men, surviving on meals of seal and penguin, eventually had to shoot the dogs because there wasn't enough food. They ate the young ones. After six months of living on the ice, they spotted land and took to lifeboats for an arduous six-day journey to Elephant Island.

The island was too remote for even a whaling station, so Shackleton and five others set out on a 22-foot lifeboat on a quest for help. In 17 days, battered by stormy weather and rogue waves, they crossed 1,300 kilometres to the island of South Georgia, then trekked 36 hours non-stop over glaciers and mountains to reach a whaling station. It would be another three months before a rescue ship, with Shackleton aboard, was able to reach Elephant Island and the rest of the men. All survived.

Declared Shackleton at adventure's end: "We had seen God in all His splendours, heard the text that nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man."

Despite conquering the might of the Antarctic and surviving well against the odds, the men returned to Britain without attracting much notice. After all, strictly speaking, they had failed. And the First World War was still raging -- preoccupation was fixed on the millions of deaths at the front, not on the survival of 28 men.

Today, though, the Shackleton story still resonates with the masses. It all seemed to begin several years ago after American writer Caroline Alexander came across photographs from the expedition and put them up for exhibit. Frank Hurley's images drew popular fascination in Shackleton's expeditions along with two books that Alexander wrote --
one from the point of view of the ship's cat, Mrs. Chippy, and the other a New York Times bestseller from 1998, The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition.

The epic fits well within the enduring popularity of true tales of human struggle against the might of Mother Nature -- look no further than the success of Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm.

But Shackleton is also appealing as an extraordinary leader, a man with an intuitive sense of human nature. He connected with his men. They believed in him. They followed him -- even in the face of the unbelievable hardship and the dark temptations of hopelessness.

And ours is a society that cries out for strong leadership and is desperate for heroism.

"Particularly after Sept. 11, it struck me that many Americans were clearly drawn to Shackleton again," says Klaus Dodds, a lecturer at the University of London and author of the soon-to-be-published book Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire.

"I suspect they could find some kind of solace in the fact that however dreadful things can be, one can always hope for endurance and that the human spirit cannot be so easily crushed."

And in the United Kingdom, a land where Scott is revered for his journey to the South Pole, Shackleton is gaining favour -- and Scott fading away. Dodds says he isn't surprised. This is a land, he says, where imperial heroes come and go. Still, he is taken aback by the momentum: " I am absolutely staggered by the revival of interest in Shackleton."

To corporate experts who tout the Shackleton way, it is clear why he is a stellar example: He took responsibility for the doomed mission, served his men, set clear goals and knew when to change them. He tolerated no attempt at mutiny, but did not browbeat. He inspired instead.

"When they were camping on the ice, Shackleton would make hot milk every morning, and he would go from tent to tent and serve it to his men. That's the essence of leadership," Wisconsin management consultant John Di Frances told the Cincinnati Post recently. "Leadership is really about service, and ethics and integrity. Shackleton was, in a sense, out there on the front lines of battle, and too many CEOs and managers aren't."

There seem to be few limits to the mania. Items like a chocolate bar and biscuits dating back to Shackleton expeditions are fetching alarming amounts at auction. A blubber-stained photograph of the Endurance belonging to Shackleton sold last year for nearly $22,000 US.

And 80 years after he was buried, the polar explorer is even given credit for the remarkable transformation of the New England Patriots from one of the worst football teams in the NFL to last year's best.

"They were losing in a resolute way for years until their coach saw the IMAX film," says Alexandra Shackleton, speaking of the Patriots' Bill Belichick and the larger-than-life Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure.

"He thought the leadership theme was wonderful and he started taking his men to it before a very important match and they started coming out as a team, and all helping each other rather than focusing on their own image. They started winning," she says. "They got to the finals -- the finals! -- and I was asked to send a message to them so I did. I turned up, as Ernest Shackleton said, 'Supreme effort is no good without resolve.'"

The Patriots won the SuperBowl.

Shackleton had plenty of resolve of his own. In the years that followed his miraculous Endurance quest, he gave lectures on the voyage that lulled him into boredom. So he mounted a fourth expedition, only to die of a heart attack in 1922 after landing just as he was to head out on the final leg to Antarctica.

His wife, Emily, had him buried in a whalers' cemetery. The tombstone carries a bold line from poet Robert Browning declaring "that a man should strive to the uttermost for his life prize."

David Stonehouse last wrote for Mix about time travel.