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Who Was Ernest Shackleton? · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, what's up everybody?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Dirt Map City.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is episode two or three or something like that in season two.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never quite sure because these things get published out of order.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm here with my buddy Alex.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to be talking about an interesting person who happens to be dead.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm super excited about who we have today.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was my selection.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got to say, Alex, I spent more time researching this person than anybody in the past.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: I I was hoping you would start spending more time doing some uh some research work.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, when you say you spent a lot of time, I'm assuming you went to libraries.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Did you actually take some trips and go visit some places and view some people?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: All kinds of all that stuff.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like a good journalist, actually.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Which I guess that's kind of what we are, right?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're podcast journalists.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's uh stretch, but sure.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, you know, I think everybody's been loving season one and uh the couple of episodes we put out on season two.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, if you want to reach us, it's just not not at dirtnapcity.com.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's not at dirtnapcity.com.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Please email us.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: We we don't get a lot of emails on that account yet.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're one of the first people to email us, you'd probably get a shout out during the show.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know, you might get a box of chocolates.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of stuff we would probably want to do for you because we want rabid, um, engaged fans.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: We might even do a future show about you.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: You never know.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just once you move to Dirt Knap City.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, today is a person that I'm pretty excited to talk about.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'll give you a couple of clues.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for those of you who are new to Dirt Knap City, the podcast, not the place.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Our format is that each of us picks a person, but the other person doesn't know.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I know who this person is, but Alex does not.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give him a couple of clues and he's gonna have to try and guess.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, the audience already knows because it was on the little button that you clicked on to download this and listen to it.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start with a couple of clues and he's gonna guess, and we'll see if he can get it.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Can't wait.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this gentleman was born February 15, 1874, died January 5th, 1922, and he was born in Kilkea, Ireland.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: He was uh 10 years old when he moved to London, and that's pretty much where he grew up in England, anyway.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but always very proud of his Irish ancestry.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was a definitely a gentleman and an explorer.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was somebody that uh went out and explored the world at the time.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is the clue in the word gentleman?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, not really, not really.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I can tell you he was actually knighted.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So he was Sir Somebody Somebody.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Would I would I know him as Sir, somebody, somebody?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Probably.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Probably.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is one that if you know who this person is, you probably know a bit about them, but if you don't know, you probably don't know anything.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: He used ships in his exploration.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: That hmm.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was gonna I was gonna say maybe like Sir Edmund Hillary or somebody like that, but that's that is uh that is an excellent guess, actually.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the right person, but you're on the right track.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, most of this guy's um now Hillary was someone that climbed Mount Everest, right?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think so, yeah.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's like a part of Mount Everest called Hillary's step, which is like one of the hardest parts of Everest, I think, to get up, if I'm remembering correctly.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But because I did read into thin air.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you ever read that book, but no, about a about a group that goes up on Mount Everest and most of them die.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty terrible.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: But this guy this guy, he uh generally he was famous for exploring the Antarctic region.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Something must be named after him, right?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's lots named after him.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um but again, he's English, and so he was kind of more famous over there than he would be here in the US.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, his most famous journey and his most famous ship was called the Endurance.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: What if I don't know this person?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, then you're gonna learn a lot.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess so.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he made several trips to Antarctica in an attempt to be the first person to reach the South Pole.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Are you Googling?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm not.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: For some reason, Hillary's the the only explorer I can think of at the at the time.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think you'll know the name.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm a little stumped here.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he had another ship that he went on called the Nimrod, and another one called the uh Discovery.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: I thought Nimrod was like an insult to call somebody a Nimrod.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, we're gonna talk about that.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about that.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, today, Alex, we are talking about Ernest Shackleton.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Shackleton.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard the name, right?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have heard of the name.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've I if you had said Shackleton, I would have probably said something about South Pole or Antarctic, uh, but I don't know much about this guy.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sir Ernest Shackleton was the second of ten children and the first of two sons.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, interestingly, he had a younger brother named Frank who was suspected and accused of stealing the Irish crown jewels in 1907.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: But Frank was never proven to have done that.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was exonerated, but the crown jewels were never recovered, the Irish crown jewels.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they've they've still never been discovered?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Never been discovered, never, never recovered.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And probably the Irish ones, I'm gonna guess were green.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of uh green hearts, uh purple clovers, orange stars, yeah.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I get it.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Shackleton, like I said, was the second of ten children, and he moved to London when he was 10, so he grew up in England, but he was very proud of his Irish roots, often saying when people asked, you know, how his glory for England was that he said, I am an Irishman, first and foremost.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: He also was an avid reader, and a lot of people contribute his love of reading for his passion for adventure, because he read a lot of you know, sort of adventurous books.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: However, despite his love of reading, he was not a very good student because he found school boring.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you can you're you're a professor, you can probably relate to that.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: School is boring.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's not what you wanted me to say.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: He well, that's that's a great quote.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when we do your episode, we'll we'll use that as your lead quote.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I saw that on my last uh course evaluation.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: He found school so boring that when he was 16, his father uh allowed him to leave school and go to sea.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: So he he decided at the age 16 he was gonna quit school and go out to sea.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, can you imagine?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we both have sons that are older than 16 at this point.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine either of them, either of them out at sea.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, not even.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't even know if they'd know how to get there.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you just keep walking, you'll eventually hit the sea.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: But so his options at the time were he could either join the Royal Navy and have a cadet ship aboard the HMS Britannia, which was a pretty famous ship, but that cost money and his family couldn't afford it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, second was for him to join the Merchant Marines of Britain.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you're familiar with what merchant marines are?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably heard the term.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those terms that every time I hear it, I Google it and then I forget it.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, a merchant marine is an officer or a shipman, seaman aboard a uh a ship of a particular country that rather than be in a military ship, it's a merchant ship.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it you know does trade or carries things from country to country or whatever.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So uh there is training for it, there are academies for it, but it's not um it's not actually a military, like a fighting kind of thing.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a it's a merchant thing.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: But it's for the government, not for a country.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Commerce thing.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's under, no, it can be for a private organization, but it's under sort of the protection of the government, you know, because like like even if a private ship, a US ship was attacked um in foreign waters, the government would respond, right?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it kind of just it assures that um if you become a sailor, you you know what you're doing.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third option, and the one he actually chose, was to become an apprentice on a sailing vessel.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the one he chose because it didn't cost any money, it was sort of the easiest to get into.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And his father was able to secure him a spot aboard the Northwestern shipping company on a ship called the Hogden Tower.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: This really shaped who he became.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he first of all learned the trade.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and I don't think it's easy, right?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, as we said, it's not something I think either of us could do or our sons would be capable.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they'd be capable, but it would take a lot, right?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you have to learn to live closely with people, but also because he was going from port to port, he had to go uh meet people from all walks of life.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: So he was um dealing with rich people, poor people, gentlemen, etc.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of what he attributed to making him a good leader later in life, was kind of living in close quarters with all different kinds of people.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, where are we sailing at this point?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Around Europe uh mostly or um all over um Europe and Africa.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So they were doing trade, you know.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, Africa was a part of the British Empire at the time, so they were bringing raw materials back from Africa to England and Europe.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: But in 1894, he became a uh third officer on a tramp steamer of the Welsh line.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And do you have you ever heard the term tramp steamer or tramp ship or tramper?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds like something I might have heard before, but I've heard tramp stamp.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the same word?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's a stamp with one of these, um, with one of these ships on it, you know, a nice picture of a tramp steamer.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: So a tramp steamer is actually very similar to a regular trade ship, but it doesn't have a regular line that it runs.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a little a little bit more unpredictable.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So most of those ships at the time, like the first one he was on with the Western shipping company was the Hogden Tower, that had a regular line that he ran back and forth.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: He was going between what's now Cape Town and uh England quite a bit on that one.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: But a tramp steamer is kind of like for hire, so it goes all over the place and it's named after the British term tramp, which means like bum or vagabond or whatever.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of somebody who doesn't have direction.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hobo.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hobo, yeah.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's more American, I think.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't think they say hobo in the UK.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you're from the UK and you use the word hobo, let us know.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So after becoming uh, you know, sort of an apprentice, and then after getting his um examination to become a third officer, he then obtained his first mate's license.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: So again, they took it pretty seriously.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you think about the investment, it's like being an airline pilot back then.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can't just jump in a plane and fly it without training and a license.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like that on ships back then.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So in 1988, he was certified as a master mariner, and he became qualified to command a British ship anywhere in the world.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So as a master mariner, you could you could captain any British ship.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that was said about him was that he was very well liked by the crew.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, again, attributing this to having lived with different people and kind of not being he was a gentleman, but he wasn't a snob.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so um one of the shipmates that was on the same line with him said that Shackleton was, quote, a departure from the usual type of young officer, a mixture of sensitivity and aggression, but also sympathetic to others.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: That seems like kind of the Irish brand to me.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I guess the sensitivity and aggression.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he he was well liked, and and uh in 1899, he transferred to a troop ship called the Tintejl Castle.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Tintagel Castle.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: I actually looked up how to pronounce it.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's T-I-N-T-A-G-E-L, Tintagel Castle, and that was because of the Boer War, B-O-E-R War.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this was a conflict between the British Empire and the Boer Republic, which is now part of South Africa.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: So at the time, the Boer Republic was one of their, I guess, subjects under the British Empire, and so he joined the Tintigel Castle ship and uh was on a troop ship for a little bit.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: So during his time there, he met a army lieutenant named Cedric Longstaff, whose father was a financial backer of the National Antarctic Expedition, which was being organized in London, and he was able to arrange a meeting with uh Cedric's father, uh senior Longstaff, and asked if he could join the expedition.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And on February 17th, 1901, he was appointed third officer above that expedition ship called the Discovery.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, is Cedric Longstaff the most badass name?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it sounds like a made-up name, but uh sure.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: If if you asked me what my name was and I had to come up with an alias, I'd probably come up with Cedric Longstaff.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and one thing to remember as I'm telling this tale is that all of the Southern Hemisphere, their seasons are the opposite of ours, right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm talking about December of you know 1901 or whatever, that was summer for them.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I'm talking July of 1902, that was winter.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: So keep that in mind as I'm telling you these dates and months because you know everything was the opposite.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd think, why were they why were they there in this cold place in December?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because it was probably the warmest time of year.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: We think that Cedric Longstaff is a badass name.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: When Shacklet joined this British National Antarctic expedition, which was also known as the Discovery Expedition because of the name of the ship, it was led by another dude with a badass name.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: You ready for this one?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Robert Falcon Scott.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Falcon.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: His middle name was Falcon, yes.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was a Royal Navy torpedo lieutenant who had been promoted to commander, and the objective of the British National Antarctic Expedition was scientific and geographical discovery.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: I love the name Falcon.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know about Mr.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Falcon?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know about Falco, Rochme Amadeus.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what Mr.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Falcon refers to?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh when you watch the edited version of Die Hard, um, they use Mr.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Falcon as the dub.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: So and he says, Yippie IA, Mr.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Falcon.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's a little tribute to uh Robert Falcon Scott.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Could be.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was not a Royal Navy ship.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the discovery was not a it was a private ship.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was a privateer.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was, you know, financed by Longstaff.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: However, Falcon Scott, I'm gonna call him Falcon Scott.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: R.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Falcon Scott.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: R.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Falcon Scott said that they would live under the conditions of the Naval Discipline Act, which meant that basically he treated it like a military ship.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he assigned the duties and shackleton's duties.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: You want to guess a couple of his duties on the on the ship?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you give me one and I'll guess some of the others?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: He was in charge of seawater analysis.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was also the wardroom caterer.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the wardroom is.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the ward, I think those are like the state rooms and the wardrooms.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're different, they're cabins, and he he brought the food to the to the wardroom.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all right.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Latrines?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Did he have anything to do with the latrines?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, he did not clean the latrines, but he was in charge of the holds, stores, and provisions.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And this was actually on his official contract, and he was in charge of entertainment on the ship.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you couldn't just pop in a DVD, you couldn't just pop in a Geronimo movie back then.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right, and hard to book and act, really.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, it's funny, actually, it's funny you say that because uh later on we'll talk about this, but one of his criteria for people coming on the ship was that they were engaging and maybe had some sort of talent, like on the endurance, he had a banjo player.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: I love the idea that they have to be kind of hardy men, scientists, but also have a talent.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and you think about it, you're stuck with these men on this ship for years, years quarters, and so um actually there there was a long time ago, I don't know if it was Monty Python, but do you remember that song?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was Men, Men, Men, Men, Men, Men.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was Monty Python.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't Monty Python.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, yeah.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the Discovery departed London in July of 1901, summertime for them, and they arrived at the Antarctic coast via Cape Town and New Zealand in January 1902.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, summertime.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Endless summer.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, so how from how long did that take then?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: From what month to what month?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: It took them about seven months from July to January of the next year.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, it's a long time.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: July 1901 from England.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: They went through Cape Town and they went through New Zealand and then they arrived uh and the Antarctic coast in 1902 of January.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: After landing, Shackleton actually got aboard an experimental balloon on February 4th.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: They were still figuring these things out, and he took an experimental balloon ride.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if that doesn't tell you what a badass this guy was, yeah, right.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he's been at sea for six months and he gets on a balloon.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he participated in the first sled trip from the expedition's winter quarters to establish a safe route to the great ice barrier.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: So this is like uh dog sled?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, I love this.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then in his spare time, he edited the Expedition's magazine.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: They had their own magazine called the South Polar Times.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's really that's great.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, how many people are on this ship?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not sure about this one.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know on the later one that he did above aboard the endurance, there were actually two ships for that expedition, and there were 52 men, 26 on each ship.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna guess about 26, 26, 30 men.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Ugh.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: So seven months with 30 guys that all have a talent, and then a bunch of dogs, too.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I would think people would you'd want people with more than one talent.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: I can only take so much of Steve's juggling.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what else you got, man?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is pre-karaoke, even.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it really had to entertain this.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of pre-everything.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, maybe maybe a banjo, a ukulele, uh and it goes without saying, but just to make clear, no women, right?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, no women on these ships, no.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: This was this was olden times.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Even Eleanor Roosevelt wasn't invited.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder how many dogs we're talking about.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, um, there were I know that 22 dogs died during this exhibition.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: During this trip.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So they might have had 50 dogs, too.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they might have had 50.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the exact number was, but it noted that there were 22 dogs that died.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: But so um Commander Robert Falcon Scott uh chose Shackleton to accompany him on the expedition's southern journey to get as close as possible to the South Pole.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't think they were going to make it.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: This was kind of one of the first times anybody had tried it, so the expectations were pretty low.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact that uh Falcon Scott chose Shackleton showed that he had a lot of trust in Shackleton.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was a it was an honor because not very many people got to um got to do this.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, it was only three of them that that went on this sled ride with these dogs.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, unfortunately, the dogs performed poorly, not because they were bad dogs, but because of bad owners, as you hear.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, the the food got tainted.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: The dogs' food became tainted, and all 22 dogs that they took.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: I guess maybe there were only 22 dogs, they all died during this uh trip where they were trying to reach the South Pole.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's terrible.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So all of a sudden, there's there's these three men, uh Shackleton, Falcon Scott, and one other whose name I don't think I have here.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: They have no dogs left.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: They are suffering from frostbite, they're suffering from snow blindness, they're suffering from scurvy, they don't have any fresh fruit, right?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And Shackleton basically wrote later that he was broken down and could no longer carry out his share of the work.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: However, um, they survived and they set a new record for getting closest to the South Pole of any man who ever had.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they did get back to the ship in February 1903, but Shackleton was actually sent home uh on a relief ship that had arrived during their absence called the Morning because he was in such bad shape.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or there were rumors that said Shackleton was sent home because he was more popular with the men than Robert Falcon Scott was.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Never never verified, but um apparently he he didn't want to go, but Falcon Scott insisted that he go.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of people said they they liked Shackleton better, so they thought maybe you know it's a little underhanded.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I also have questions about scurvy.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you always hear scurvy as something that you only basically get on a ship.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always, like you said, about fresh fruit.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I know plenty of people that probably never eat fresh fruit on land.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: They never seem to get scurvy.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a lack of vitamin C.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not fresh fruit, really.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: You think that's just in most of our foods, so we don't have to worry about it?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, if you drink any orange juice and then and that or if you take a supplement.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: But there's lots of people that don't do that.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: That don't scurvy.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a month for with no vitamin C, with little or no vitamin C.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna try.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Give me a month, and then we'll see if I get scurvy.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And if I don't get scurvy, I'm calling BS on it.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if I do, you know, that's maybe your next episode's about me.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: According to the World Health Organization, scurvy is actually pretty rare compared to other nutritional deficiencies, and it occurs mostly in the developing nations, and of course, it used to occur on ships, but it's it's also associated with malnutrition.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of the old one-two punch.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: But they had scurvy and they had frostbite and they were snowblind, and they ended up getting back.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Shackling gets sent home to England, and when he got back to England, he worked, um, he actually worked to provision the next relief ship that would go back to the Discovery.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the Discovery stayed there.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: They they were they were doing more stuff, they were they were doing more discovery, as it were.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be okay getting sent home, though.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds miserable.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think so.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they actually um decided to send a relief ship called the Terra Nova, and Shackleton's job was to help prepare the relief ship Terra Nova, but he decided he was offered the opportunity to go back to the Discovery on the Terra Nova, but he declined.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't blame him.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take a rest.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: So for a little while back in England, he became a journalist working for the Royal magazine, uh, but journalism wasn't his thing.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: You remember he had written for the uh South Polar Times, the 30-person magazine they had aboard the ship.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: It had just reviews of the talent shows.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, like like uh actually dining reviews of of the food and and uh maybe dog of the month until they all died.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I I'd love to see a copy of that.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that still exists, but after he quit journalism, he was offered and accepted a position with the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, which is the RSGS, in January of 1904.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that same year in April, he got married to Emily Dorman and had three children throughout his life Raymond, Sicily, and Edward.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Edward actually was a pretty famous um Brit himself.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was an explorer and a politician, and I think lived until the 60s or 70s.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So being married to an explorer back then was really uh um that was really a sacrifice, probably.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you had to know that the guy's gonna be gone for years at a time.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, spent a little time back in uh back in England getting married to Emily, having children, and then in 1908, he took a position aboard a ship called the Nimrod.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now you mentioned earlier about a Nimrod meaning like an idiot or a stupid person.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it kind of sounds like a not a not a uh compliment to give somebody a Nimrod.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: The definition of Nimrod, do you know what it actually is?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh it's a mighty hunter.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's from the book of Genesis in the Bible, and it said, the first on earth to be a mighty man and a mighty hunter before the Lord.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so somebody calls you a Nimrod, it's kind of a compliment.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, except what happened is Nimrod became associated with the Tower of Babel.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: So are you familiar with the Tower of Babel?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's the language.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's yeah, that's the it collapsed, and then everybody, yeah, came out.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody forgot how to talk to each other.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: There was one language, right?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody was in a tower, and then and the tower fell apart, and then everybody Well well the tower didn't just fall apart.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nimrod was associated with building the Tower of Babel, which angered God because they wanted to build it high enough to reach heaven, and God was like, Oh no, you don't, and he knocked it down and made everybody go crazy and not speak the same language.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where a stupid person comes from in association with the word Nimrod.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of a fool's errand.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what they considered the Tower of Babel.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be such a Nimrod.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it also means great hunter.
• 26:49
  unknown: Hmm.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, great hunter is the first definition.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh stupid person is more colloquial and more um modern.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, like that's what we say today.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the HMS Nimrod, people didn't snicker at that.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, they thought it was great.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: They thought it was great.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if that was actually the HMS.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Several of these ships were HMS.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Her Majesty's ship.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if this was or not, because I didn't see HMS in any of the in any of the documents.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless, on January 1st, 1908, the Nimrod set off on what they called the British Antarctic Expedition.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: They went to New Zealand, and then from there, the ship was actually towed by another steamship for 1,650 miles to could conserve coal, basically.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: So another ship towed it so it could keep its coal, and then it took off like 1,650 miles from New Zealand.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, it was towed all the way to the ice where the ice started.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So his original plan, Shackleton's original plan, was to use the same base that they had for the Discovery when they had landed with the Discovery.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the McMurdo Sound, and he was going to try and launch his attempt at the South Pole and the magnetic South Pole, which aren't the same, from the McMurdo Sound.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: However, somebody didn't want him to do that.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody was jelly.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Guess who that was?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Our our buddy Falcon?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Robert Falcon Scott said, Nope, that is my base, and you are not to use it.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so actually, um, Shackleton agreed reluctantly and said, Okay, I won't use the McMurdo Sound.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: He planned a different route, but then for a variety of reasons, which were verified by his crew, you know, it wasn't just him lying, but his crew said that it kind of made sense.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: He ended up going to the McMurdo Sound because he couldn't get to the other place he was trying to go to.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the Nimrod arrived at McMurdo Sound on January 29th, but was stopped by ice 16 miles north of Discovery's old base at a place called Hutt Point.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: So he was kind of stuck in the ice at Hutt Point.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: What year was this?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this was 1908.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: He, Frank Wilde, and a few other men set out on October 29th, 1908.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then on January 9th, 1909, uh Shackleton and three companions, Frank Wilde, Eric Marshall, and James Adams, reached the farthest south latitude, which was 88 degrees and 23 minutes, which was only 112 miles from the South Pole.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the closest anybody had ever gotten.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: On their way, they discovered uh the Beardmore Glacier, which was named after Shackleton's patron, someone who had paid for this expedition or helped to build Beardmoor, and they became the first people to reach the South Polar Plateau.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: However, when they were going back to the McMurdo Sound, uh they didn't make it all the way to the actual South Pole, but on the way back to the McMurdo Sound, they basically ran out of food.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: They had to go half rations, and apparently at one point Frank uh Wilde received or wrote in his diary that Shackleton had given him his last biscuit or his one biscuit that was allotted for the day.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Frank Wilde wrote, All the money that was ever minted would not have bought that biscuit, and the remembrance of that sacrifice will never leave me.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: So they basically arrived back at Hutt Point and got on the ship and left.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, of course, when you say biscuit, we really mean cookies.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think Oreos, maybe.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Those would travel well, I think.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, I have a stupid question.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um I understand exploration.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um I understand wanting to see what's out there, wanting to see new lands, new territories, um, maybe see uh different crops to see what what there is to offer.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it seems to me, it's pretty clear that you go down there and it's just device.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Why was it so important to quote unquote discover the cell?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: What was there?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: What were they thinking was gonna be there that was so earth-shattering?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, so I have a couple of answers for you.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: One, I mean, if you think about the moon, we know it's on the moon, it's just rocks.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: There might be some water, but it's it's pretty homogeneous, right?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: The surface of the moon.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we want to go back to the moon, right?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Artemis is getting ready to go back.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's cheese.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's cheese, grummet.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Part of it uh was glory, part of it was uh honoring your country, right?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they could claim territory for for their country.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think a lot of it had to do with uh money, glory, kind of flexing, right?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was a little bit of flex flexing uh going on, if to use use the kids' term.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: But the ego between so the ego between uh Falcon and Shackleton, I mean, one of them was already there.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh Falcon didn't make it to the South Pole either.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Falcon never made it to the South Pole.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Shackleton didn't make it on this trip aboard the Nimrod.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: So so yeah, um basically there was competition, and and we'll get into that.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I want to I want to go back to something.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um they they did, however, reach the magnetic south pole on January 16th, 1909.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that that was an accomplishment, the magnetic south pole.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like second place, you know.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a uh silver medal.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not the exact no because of the way the earth is tilted, the magnetic magnetic north and magnetic south are are slightly off axis.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it said uh they were within 112 miles or something like that from the actual South Pole, but that's kind of where the magnetic South Pole is.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they did reach that, but when they got back to um when he got back to England, his wife uh commented later.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: She said, the only thing that uh he said to me about not reaching the pole was a live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn't it?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great quote.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was Emily Shackleton.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Said that about that her husband had said that uh a live donkey is better than a dead line.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now, uh do you know if anybody had actually explored the North Pole up to this?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're gonna get to that.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, nobody had reached the North Pole.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, apparently the Antarctic was actually more inhospitable and harder to reach than the Arctic.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the Arctic is the North Pole, the Antarctic is the South Pole, and Antarctica is a is a rougher, worse place than the North Pole.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why didn't they do the easier one first, I wonder?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Glory.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: I guess so.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that kind of would have been second place, right?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like okay, you reach the second hardest place.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be like climbing K2.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, K2, world's second highest mountain.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Who wants to climb K2, right?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna do that, climb climb Everest.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now I know from the cartoons that and the North Pole there's an actual any quote that starts with I know from the cartoons.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: I know from the cartoons that at the North Pole there's an actual pole.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah that is there.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that that'd be a lot easier to find.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: They could have stayed with Santa for a few days, right?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: They could have just uh hung out with Santa Claus.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've seen Elf, right?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or or uh Yeah.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean that there were lots, yeah.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: The North Pole was gonna be way too easy.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: South pole, you know, it's it's polar bears and and um and penguins and I think if I was an explorer at the time, I would have just gone for the North Pole be while these fools were trying to figure out their little beef to get to the South Pole, I would just slip up there to the North Pole and claim that at least.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, someone did, and we'll talk about that in a minute.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think I would have made a terrible explorer, by the way.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Put it out there.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: So um a couple of things about that expedition as well.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Shackleton in 1910 actually made some recordings on a phonograph about it.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are recordings of him talking about the Nimrod expedition on um on one of Edison's phonographs, which was pretty unusual, but they felt they felt it was important enough at the time to document it on this new piece of technology.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and also in 2010, a hundred years later, there was actually a company that sponsored a expedition to recover artifacts from that um ship from the Nimrod, including cases of whiskey and brandy that were left there.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: So those those cases of whiskey and brandy were discovered in 2010, you know, a hundred more than a hundred years after they were left there, and they were analyzed uh by a distilling company, and I think you can actually like they were able to reproduce the the ingredients or the the way they were made.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they sold it.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but that would be interesting to try some some uh Nimrod Nimrod brandy.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I wonder if they people needed a talent to go on that um that mission.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: On the Nimrod?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: The the second the one in 2010.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, I'm sure I'm sure their talent was just to be able to look at a GPS.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, boring.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: So after returning from the Nimrod expedition, uh Shackleton actually was uh received by the king, King Edward VII, on July 10th, and in 1910 he was knighted and became Sir Ernest Shackleton.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll refer to him here heretofore as Sir Ernest Shackleton, and was made a commander of the Royal Victorian Order, which I guess was a big deal.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: He was also honored by the Royal Geographic Society, which awarded him a gold medal.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: However, there was a bit of a kerfuffle at the time because Robert Falcon Scott had also been awarded a gold medal for his trip by the Royal Geographical Society, but Shackleton's was slightly bigger.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: And Falcon Scott took defense at that.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Must have been enraged by that.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was always in second place, this guy.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: He was also greeted as a hero by the people, not just all these official honors, but he was greeted as a hero by the people of Britain and Ireland.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: They all just loved him at the time.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: But despite all that praise, the Nimrod expedition had left him in debt.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was unable to pay some of his financial guarantees that he had given to backers.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he actually had to have the government bail him out in the form of a 20,000 pound, which today would be around$2 million.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or no, around 2 million pounds, sorry, uh, which is probably like three million dollars, because I think a pound is worth more than a dollar.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then a lot of people, it is said, just forgave the debts, just kind of wrote them off because they knew they weren't going to get him, and he was a hero, and they figured, okay, well, you know, just deal with it.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: So he ended up going on a lecture tour where he talked about his own polar journeys, but he also talked about Robert Falcon Scott and the journeys he was taking, as well as a Norwegian explorer named Rold Amundsund.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this Norwegian um was another person who was exploring the polar regions at the time.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um he did a ton of uh Shackleton did a ton of lectures and engagements um and and sometimes with these other explorers, but often on his own.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: But he he always talked about them, and it was said that he he was complimentary of them.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: He respected them, right?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: So while he was kind of riding this wave of fame, he tried to take advantage of it and promote a couple of businesses, uh tobacco company.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um he he he was a sponsor.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is almost like Krusty the Clown.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um he he sponsored um exploration themed postage stamps.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Of course he did.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Buy these, um had to make that 20,000 pounds somehow.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: He developed a Hungarian mining operation, but unfortunately, none of those things really took off.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he none of those enterprises really took off.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: His main source of income was from public speaking, and then in September of 1910, his family had moved to Norfolk, England, and he told his wife, I am never again going south.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: I have thought about it, and my place is at home with the family.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's nice.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: But that was short-lived.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: While he was at home with the family, that Norwegian I mentioned a minute ago, Rold Amundsen, Rold actually made the South Pole.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Rold had begun planning his uh expedition, the South Pole expedition, um, in 1909.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: He left Norway in 1910 on a ship called the Fram, F-R-A-M, and reached Antarctica in 1911.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: He established a camp at the Bay of Wales, W H A L E S.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: I can you can imagine why it was called that, and set up a series of depots, like supply.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, he would have men go out and leave supplies so that they would have enough supplies when they reached the pole.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: The men's only objective was to go drop these supplies off.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: They set out for the South Pole in October 1911 and reached it December 14th, 1911.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: So Party of Five led by Edmund Amundsen, uh, the Norwegian dude, was the first one to reach it.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then, guess what he did?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that was in 1911.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Guess what he did in 1918?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: He tried to reach the North Pole.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: So nobody had reached the North Pole at this point.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: He tried to reach the North Pole on a ship called Maud.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: Seems a lot closer.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, to Norway for sure.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but he failed.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: The Maud did not reach the North Pole in 1918.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: So he decided he was gonna do.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this guy, Amundsen, he was kind of a badass as well.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: He decided in 1926 that he and 15 other men took off in an airship called the NORG, NORGE, and they actually reached the North Pole in what was a blimp, dirgible, Zeppelin, whatever you want to call it, a semi-rigid airship in um 1926.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: First ones to reach the North Pole.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: I believe NORGE is the Norwegian word for Norway.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's right.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so then that was 1926.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: So Amundsen beat them to the South Pole, beat them to the North Pole, but then in 1928, there was another airship called the Italia, which was also doing a mission in the Arctic, and it got lost.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: So Amundsen um went on a rescue mission to try and find the Italia, and while he was on that rescue mission, he disappeared and his remains were never found.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Nikes.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm guessing the North Pole and the South Pole look exactly the same.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, uh except one is you know here and one is here, so you're upside down on the South Pole, right?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um that was my next question.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: The blood rushes to your head.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, so anyway, this Norwegian Amundsen kind of lit a fire uh with with Shackleton because he was like, All right, somebody beat me to the South Pole, but nobody has crossed the entire Antarctic continent.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: So he decided to do what was known as the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was gonna go all the way from one end of the Antarctic to the other side, like on a bicycle while juggling.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he had a juggler with him.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, seriously, how was he gonna do this with on what kind of vehicle?
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh dog sleds.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, all right.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: Or dogs did he clear it with them first?
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I don't think the dogs had a choice.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been on a dog sled?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, you have.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have, yes.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: So so my brother-in-law, I don't know if you know this.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: My brother in law is Norwegian.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: My wife's sister's husband is from Norway.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: And while we were over there in the summer, we did a dog sled, but it wasn't a um it wasn't in snow, it was on wheels.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: These things had wheels and they had levers that you turn.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we we arrived.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was my wife, my kids, my sister in law, my brother.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Mother-in-law all arrive at this place, and there's a woman there.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: She has these dogs in these crates, and they are just starting to go crazy.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: She lets them out and she gears them up, and then she puts you on the sled, and you basically have to hold the brake because the dogs are just going bananas.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: They just want to go.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't on snow.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was in the summer.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: These these are wheeled carts, but you know, like on the asphalt.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it this was like a gravel road, kind of out in the woods, like a trail, kind of gravel road kind of thing.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: The power of those dogs, when you release that brake, they just go so fast and so hard.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, we did get to go on dog sleds.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was an amazing experience.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: The the power of those dogs.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I could see how they could do this, right?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they're bred for it, and they love it.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they would run themselves to death.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: She said, You have to stop them because they will they will kill themselves running because it's so deeply bred in there.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: So in 1914, uh, after being beaten by the Norwegian dude, um Admondsen, he started this Imperial Transatlantic expedition, and during the entire year of 1914, he basically was doing fundraising and recruiting a crew.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: So those were the two things he had to do, right?
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: So apparently the advertisements for a crew, like he put out ads and flyers and stuff, you know, there was no there was no Instagram to advertise on.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the ads, they described the suffering, pain, starvation, like all these terrible things.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't very, you know, they weren't very like, join the fun, come come to the Antarctica.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was more like, you know, if you're tough enough to endure these things, you can come.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: They ended up getting 5,000 applicants that that uh wanted to come on the expedition, despite these really terrible ads.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they decided to use two ships.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: One was the endurance, and it would go to uh one end of the continent called uh Vasselle Bay, and there Shackleton and six men or five other men, a team of six, would cross the continent to meet the second ship, the Aurora, which was going to McMurdo Sound, the same place where Falcon Scott had gone.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and Shackleton had tried to go on the Nimrod.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, the ships were going to go from England and go to opposite ends of the continent, and then the the men on the Aurora would set out supplies, like maybe halfway, and then Shackleton's men would set out supplies the other halfway, and then Shackleton and his team of five would go all the way across using these supplies.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder what kind of vetting they had to do to get these guys because I'm guessing the type of person that would want to do this is the kind of person that wouldn't mind escaping for a little while.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Shackleton was sort of famous for um his unconventional questions during these interviews when he was talking to the men.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: So apparently, um, like I said, 5,000 people applied to join the expedition.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes Shackleton would accept a person at first sight without asking questions.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: He just liked the way he looked.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, sometimes he would ask um he would ask some questions and accept them pretty quickly.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: He just got a feel for them.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then apparently there was a physicist on board named Reginald James.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: I guess he was a pretty famous physicist.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he was asked if he could sing, and he could.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he he he was he was brought on partially because he was a great physicist, partially because he could sing.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so Shackleton.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: No follow-up, no follow-up question.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: Can you sing?
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, right, right.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I don't know if he made him sing right there on the spot as part of the interview, but but basically, Shackleton he kind of threw away conventional hierarchies and traditions.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: He really liked camaraderie.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: He was very into hanging out with these men.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like he wasn't the kind of captain that was just in his quarters, he would be down with them uh singing and having, you know, trying to trying to basically bond with them.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: 56 men, 28 per ship, um, 26 on the endurance and 26 on the Aurora.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then something happened that they weren't expecting in 1914, and that was the outbreak of World War One, 1914.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh World War I broke out, and there was a question whether they could go or not because of that.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, guess who stepped in and said go?
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Another man with a badass name, Winston Churchill.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, he didn't say go, he said proceed.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: Very English.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: So they left on August 8th, five days after the war broke out.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: They they took off on August 8th, and they had a man named Worsley, last name was Worsley, who who commanded the endurance, and a man named Stenhouse, who commanded the Aurora.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: Shackleton was the overall leader, right?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: But they had a captain on each ship.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: On the second in command on the endurance was Frank Wilde.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, I mentioned him earlier.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's the guy that Shackleton gave the biscuit to.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: They had a meteorologist named Hussey, who was also a banjo player.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they had a man named Meckelroy, who was the head of science on the ship.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then they had a Macklin, Alexander Macklin, who was one of two surgeons, and a guy named Tom Crean, who was the head dog handler.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tom Crean was in charge of making sure the dog's food didn't get tainted.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then they brought along a uh photographer named Frank Hurley.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what's really interesting about the uh particularly the endurance, um, Hurley was on that ship.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: There are photos, there are a lot of photos because they had a dedicated photographer on the ship.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there are photos of actually these men on the ice, of the of the endurance, I mean, all of that.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to see actual photos of Shackleton and his men, these aren't like paintings or anything like that.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're actual actual photos, which was pretty forward-thinking to bring a photographer at the time.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, especially I think they brought him because he played Maracas.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: He he he did a mean charo impersonation.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: So they had a stowaway on the ship as well named Pierce Blackborough.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he was he was a uh that's another probably could have just gone if they I mean they were looking for guys.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he stowed away and he was a Welsh sailor.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think he got rejected?
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, Shackleton was actually annoyed by his stowing away, but at that point they were already out to sea, they had no reason to turn back, so they made uh Blackborough a steward on the ship.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: So he actually had a had a position.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, that's the kind of guy I think Shackleton was known to be.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he wasn't he he looked at the big picture and said, Okay, what am I gonna do to make this the best of the situation?
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: Learn to play an instrument, man.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's he, you know, I think if he had done that, he wouldn't have had to stow away.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they they had they also had on the ship a carpenter named Harry McNish.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: And McNish and um Shackleton didn't always see eye to eye.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: There was a little bit of friction between them.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: But Harry McNish was a that's not a badass name, by the way, Harry McNish.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he he was a very good carpenter and was essential to their success or failure.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: So Shackleton tried to overlook his um conflict with Mr.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: McNish.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: But Mr.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: McNish had a cat named Mrs.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: Chippy.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Bringing a cat on this?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: They brought a cat.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: The cat fifty dogs?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they the cat was named Mrs.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: Chippy, but the cat was actually a male cat.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: I still don't understand the point of bringing a cat with 50 dogs and 50 men.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: As they departed from the South Georgia for the Wendell Sea on December 5th, 1914, um, they the conditions got worse and worse.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: And on January 19th, now remember this is kind of springtime.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, this would be summertime for them.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: However, the endurance became uh trapped in an ice flow.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it got kind of frozen, couldn't move.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: And on February 24th, 1915, about a month later, Shackleton kind of abandoned the idea of the endurance being a ship and converted it to a winter station.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess he he said, All right, we're gonna we're gonna move some things off of it on this ice, it's stuck here, and we're gonna kind of not try to sail anymore, but just try to survive.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they basically drifted with the ice for the next few months.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh during that time, too, it's to said that they had again, they had uh talent shows, they had musicians, they they shackleton very much valued the men's morale, and I think because he valued the morale so much, he really emphasized these kind of things.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something that you would have wanted to go on back then?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know, man.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: It it it sounds like quite an adventure.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm a lot more okay with being cold than I used to be, because my wife doesn't she's Canadian and she doesn't mind being cold, so I've tried to condition myself.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe if I could have been the photographer, if I could have been the social media guy posting to Instagram.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, no, I say back then, like not now.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, I know back then.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: That would have been a that would have been a tough slog.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, if you enjoyed being around dudes all the time and exploring stuff, and it doesn't seem I I bet you there's a lot of tedium, a lot of boring days.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and again, I think that's why Shackleton wanted people that were social and and could like kind of have a brotherhood, you know.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they always say that the things that make you closest to people is going through hard things together, right?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so I imagine these guys, and and you know, the Frank Wilde, you know, he went on all these, he went all all these expeditions with Shackleton because I'm sure they had been through so much together that they were close.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's interesting though that there's so many people, yet when you finally do make it, one person gets all the credit.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you say that, but Frank Wilde, you know, we're talking about him right now.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: He was part of the story.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: The names are still mentioned, but you're right, Shackleton's the most famous.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um unfortunately, that spring, uh in September, remember, because spring was in September for them, which would be fall for us, the breaking of the ice, and kind of as the ice started to come apart, Shackleton had hoped that the ship would be released, but it actually put a lot of pressure on the ship's hull.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: And on October 24th, 1915, water started coming in the ship.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they tried to fix it, they tried to get McNish, you know, the carpenter, to fix it, but couldn't do it.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: So they abandoned ship on October 24th, and Shackleton said, uh, let's set up camp on the ice.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then on November 21st, 1915, the endurance sunk.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: So for two months, they were basically stuck on this ice flow.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: They were on a large flat piece of ice that was uh drifting, and they had hoped it would drift towards this place called Paulette Island, which was about 250 miles away.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: There were known shelters and stores on Paulette Island, I guess left there by other explorers.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: So they they were they were trying to reach Paulette Island, and they actually tried to march across the ice to get there, but that didn't work.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: They couldn't they couldn't do it.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: So they set up a more permanent camp on the ice floor.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, on another ice flow, and tried to drift with the ice.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: That camp, you want to guess the name of it?
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Very appropriate name.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: What would that be?
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: Camp uh Lonely?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Camp Patience.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, patience.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: See, see, you took a real negative tack on that.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh Shafflon took a net a positive tack on it.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, obviously, I'm not cut out for this.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so uh on March 17th, uh the camp actually drifted, or the ice that it was on, drifted within 60 miles of Paulette Island.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: However, um the ice was impassable, they weren't able to reach it.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: And on April 9th, 1916, the ice flow broke in two, and Shackleton basically didn't think they were safe on it anymore.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: So they got in the lifeboats and headed for land.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess there was enough, you know, April would be fall for them.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, summer had melted some of the ice, and they there was enough water that they could actually go on the lifeboats.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: So they spent five days at sea and eventually landed three lifeboats on Elephant Island, which is was 346 miles away from where the endurance had sank.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Elephant Island is kind of a part of the southernmost um island in a chain of islands that are near Antarctica, but still, you know, 346 miles away from where they had been.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it was the first time those men had stepped on solid ground in 497 days.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: They had been floating on ice and in the boat.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's said that um during that trip on the ship to get to Alvin Island, uh, Frank Hurley had lost his mittens, and Shackleton actually gave gave Frank Hurley his uh mittens and suffered cross-fitting fingers.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: He should have uh taped them to his uh sleeve like my mom used to do to me.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's how be sure not to lose your mittens that way.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: At least for me, mittens are so much more effective than gloves.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can make a fist, you can kind of put your hand together and warm it up.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas with gloves, your fingers actually get kind of cold.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's all you can do, though.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you need to use your hands at all, they're useless.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or you or you hand it to you hand it to the photographer.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like he couldn't take any more pictures because he had all you can do is hold a rope with mittens.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, interestingly though, just this past year, we're coming up on the one-year anniversary, March, March 9th, 2022, the endurance was actually located by Sonar, four miles from where it had sunk, and it was 10,000 feet below the surface in frigid water.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: Were they looking for it?
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was a there was an expedition that went out to try and find it.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because they kind of knew based on you know, they had a lot of scientists.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: The the original crew were scientists, they had they had plotted the point pretty well, but it was four miles from where it was.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you think about four miles in any direction is a pretty big no, you know, 16 square miles, maybe.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: Especially if it's 10,000 feet.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: It would actually be because at four miles, it'd be eight, it'd be 64 square miles that it could have been in.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, they ended up on Elephant Island, terrible place.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: They they, you know, one star do not recommend.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: They were far away from shipping lanes, so they wouldn't be discovered.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: There weren't any trees, it was just a big rock, right?
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think there were some seals and some, you know, animals that they could hunt to be able to help them out, but overall, just a really terrible place to be.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: So Shackleton decided after about a month of sitting there that they were going to try to go to South Georgia and go to a whaling station about 720 mile nautical miles away.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he knew if he could get to the whaling station, they could get help, right?
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: So they picked the strongest of their three tiny lifeboats.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: These are 20-foot lifeboats, 6.1 meters long, and they christened it the James Carred.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, James Carred was a sponsor of this expedition.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: He had been one of the people that had donated money.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: So they called it the James Carred.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Shackleton uh chose five companions to go aboard the James Carred and try to make it to the South Georgian coast or to the whaling station, 720 nautical miles.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he chose um Frank Worsley, who was the endurance's captain, he would be responsible for navigation.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: Tom Crean, remember, he was the dog handler.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, apparently, Tom Crean begged to go on this expedition, so he said, okay.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: And John Vincent and Tim McCarthy, and then McNish, the carpenter.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you remember, McNish and Shackleton had not seen eye to eye earlier in the expedition, but Shackleton realized that the carpenter's um value for this job was irreplaceable, and so he took him along.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: He also thought that I guess McNish was kind of a negative guy, and he didn't want to leave him with the other men because he was afraid that would rub off on them.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted he wanted morale to be high with the men on Elephant Island to be able to survive.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: He brought the negative Nelly, aka McNish, yeah, uh, with him.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: He really emphasized trying to get back to those men.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: He promised them he would come back and save them.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: So he packed supplies for four weeks.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now they had enough supplies that they could have put more aboard the James Carrot, but he said basically, if we're not to South Georgia in four weeks, we're screwed.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: So let's not waste those supplies.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's we're giving ourselves four weeks to get there.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they launched on April 24th, 1916, and sailed for 15 days in constant stormy seas, constant threat of capsizing.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: And on May 8th, thanks to Frank Worsley's navigational skills, they spotted South Georgia.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where they were trying to go.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: They saw cliffs and they were like, okay, there it is.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: But at that point, hurricane force winds were blowing, and they had to basically stay offshore because they couldn't land because of the danger of being bashed into the rocks by the winds.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: So they had to sit there and look at it for a couple of more days.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, they found out later that those same winds had sunk a 500-ton steamer that had come from Buenos Aires.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: That same storm had sunk that steamer, and they survived it.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually they were able to land the unoccupied southern shore of South Georgia, and they rested, they recuperated, and then Shackleton said, All right, I'm gonna go find help because there were no people there.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: But they brought Frank Worsley and Tom Crean, the dog handler, and they took 36 hours while they were going.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: All they had with them for equipment were they had 50 feet of rope, they had an axe, and they had to push screws through their boots so that they could get a grip.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: They took screws and pushed them through their boots to the bottom so they could grip on the ice.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty uh ingenious.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: But this is all by dog, right?
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is all by dog sleds.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't have any dogs.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: They're just walking, they're walking, yeah.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're walking at this point.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the dogs, the dogs probably had been eaten.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like, I mean, if you think about it, when they were stuck on the ice floor, or who knows?
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: But they eventually I'd be the negative guy.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: I just I just decided I'd be the negative guy.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't you wouldn't be Mr.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: Cheerful on this trip.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um wouldn't be Mrs.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: Chip, ms Mr.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: Chippy.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, he did, he did, you know, going back to the ads that he put out for the crew, he didn't he didn't sugarcoat it.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: He apparently said it was gonna be rough, you know, and you signed up.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: So buck up there, soldier.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: What about the stowaway?
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder what happened to him.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I'd bring him too.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_01: You wanted to do this?
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: Come on.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: He he was left on Elephant Island as a steward.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so they ended up hiking 36 hours across uh South Georgia, reaching a whaling station at a place called Stromness on May 20th, 1916.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: So as soon as they got there, they sent a boat back from this whaling station to pick up the three men they had left, you know, on the other side of South Georgia.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: That was um McNish, Vincent, and McCarthy.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then they set out to rescue the men on Elephant Island.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the first three times they tried to get to Elephant Island, they were blocked by sea ice, so they couldn't they couldn't get there.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he finally um Shackleton was able to contact the Chilean government and ask for help, and they offered the use of the Yelcho, which was a small seagoing tug from its navy.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so they had the Yelcho and another ship called the Southern Sky.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those two ships actually reached Elephant Island on August 30th, 1916.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you think about August 30th, that would have been like height of winter, right?
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or towards the end of winter.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um 1960, they reached uh Elephant Island, and the men had been isolated there for four and a half months.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_00: The Yelcho picked up the men and took them to Chile, where they were uh welcomed by the the crowds.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like people were very I guess this was all news, right?
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: There were there were reports of all this going on.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of ironic that they get warm welcomes in a place called Chile.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there you go.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, but yeah, they were they were welcomed back.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: Then there were still the men who had been aboard the Aurora who were trapped at McMurdo Sound.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: Those men had to be saved.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: What a disaster.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: Shackleton actually traveled back to McMurdo Sound and rescued the men who had been trapped there, uh, who had been aboard the Aurora.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: So he saved everybody.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think there were a couple of deaths, but but basically everybody who could be saved was saved.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Shackleton was there the whole time.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: These guys are cut from a different cloth than I.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even like it when I can't find my car in a parking garage.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: It stresses me out, you know.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea of just leaving everything, your family, and and knowing that best case, you're gonna have.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they like they do it for.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: The adventure, right?
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: So they they like the idea that they're gonna get into some pickles.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that yeah, that's yeah, it's sort of it's sort of that thrill of cheating death, I suppose.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_00: So in 1917, uh in May, Shackleton returned to England, and England was still in the first world war.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: So what does he do?
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: He volunteered for the army, and he requested a post in France, but he actually was sent to Buenos Aires as a negotiator to help um see if they could bring Chile and Argentina into the war on the Allied side.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he failed at that, and he was also involved in military operations in Norway and in Russia during World War I.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he also started drinking really heavily during that time period, you know, kind of just was not taking good care of himself.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually the time to start.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: You'd think with all the stuff that he had been through before.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're gonna start drinking?
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he didn't have access to anything, probably.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, when they I'm sure they drank all their stores of booze on the on the ship, and so you know, now he had free access to it.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um people always offering to buy him a drink, I'm sure.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: But he starts drinking.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: He he returned to England in 1919 and was discharged from the Army, honorable discharge, and retained the rank of major in October of 1919.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: After that, he published an account of uh his expedition on the endurance called South in December of 1919, and he hit the lecture circuit, and he was a very sought-after speaker.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: People loved to go hear him speak.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he had been through something most people couldn't even imagine, and he pondered going to the Bufort Sea on the Arctic, which was a largely unexplored region.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, even though our friend the Norwegian had reached the Arctic, um the North Pole, a lot of it was still unexplored.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he actually got some interest from the Canadian government.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_00: He acquired a 125-ton Norwegian uh ship called the FOCA One, F O C A One, or maybe it's FOCA I, I'm not sure.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_00: He renamed it the Quest, because Foka I or Foka One is not a very good name.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he was gonna go to the Arctic, but then for some reason, it didn't really say, the destination became Antarctica again.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_00: There we go.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: Destination changed to Antarctica.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: He had a man named John Quiller Rowett who agreed to finance the expedition, and so it became known as the Shackleton Rowitt Expedition or the Quest Expedition based on the name of the ship, and he left England on September 24th, 1921 to go back to Antarctica.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_00: Even though some of his former crew members had not received pay during the Nimrod or endurance expeditions, they signed on anyway because they loved Shackleton.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted to go.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they arrived in Rio de Janeiro on the way down there, and while they were there, Shackleton uh suffered a heart attack, but he refused proper medical examination and toughed it out, as he was known to do, and continued south.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: And on January 4th, they arrived back in South Georgia.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, on January 4th, 1922, in the early morning hours, like two in the morning, uh he was feeling chest pains and back pain.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so he ordered Alexander Macklin, the ship's doctor.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, Macklin was on the previous ship as well, to come to his room.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Macklin told him, Hey man, you're overdoing it.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_00: You need to lead a more regular life.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Shackleton answered, You're always wanting me to give things up.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: What ought I give up?
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Macklin replied, Chiefly alcohol, boss.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is according to Macklin's account of the story.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then moments later at 2 50 a.m.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_00: on January 5th, Shackleton suffered a heart attack and died aboard his ship.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So Macklin claims that I warned him, even though it was just minutes earlier.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: As his physician, I suggested he take a more uh docile life.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then minutes later he died.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think you get credit for that.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, chiefly alcohol boss, and then uh Shackleton had the big one.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_00: He died.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they thought they would take his body back to England, but on the way back, you know, back from South Georgia, they received a message from his wife, Emily, and she said that her husband should be buried in South Georgia, which makes sense, you know, like bury him there.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm surprised she even remembered who he was at this point.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he barely got to spend any time with this woman.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So apparently they buried him there, and and during that um ceremony, Macklin actually wrote in his diary, he said, I think this is as the boss would have liked it, standing alone in an island far from civilization, surrounded by stormy, temptuous seas, and in the vicinity of one of his greatest exploits.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Macklin thought you know he was in the right place.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, of course, the the mission was abandoned.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Shackleton's will was read in London on May 12th, 1922.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Turns out he was broke.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Heavy debt, you know, he had a few assets, but nothing really substantial.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_00: But Lady Shackleton, Emily Shackleton, survived for 14 more years and died in 1936.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder why he wasn't charging more on those lecture circuits.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like, like you said, he was very sought-after speaker.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he would he owed everybody money.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_01: I it seems like when you're that in demand, that you could wipe out some of those debts just by giving some talks.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think that was the case.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: However, I think that the cost of these uh expeditions was so much, and you know, he he he did have funders and backers and patrons that that helped him, but I think he put his own money into it as well.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I think ultimately that was his undoing was the cost of these things that he loved.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_00: So in um later, Frank Wilde, remember Frank Wilde, the right hand man of Shackleton, was buried next to Shackleton's grave on South Georgia on his right hand side.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the inscription on his granite block says Frank Wilde, 1873 to 1939, Shackleton's right hand man.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's great.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_01: That was uh kind of what he wanted to be known for, huh?
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Buried on his right side.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_01: On his right side.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, interesting.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Before Shackleton's body returned to South Georgia, they gave a memorial service with full military honors, and it was held at St.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's Cathedral, and the king and members of the royal family were there.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Within a year, a biography was written by a man named Hugh Robert Mill.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was called The Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton, very original name.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the book paid tribute to the explorer, and also some of the money was um used from the book to help fund his family, assist his family, because he was 40,000, 40,000 pounds in debt, which was about 2.3 million dollars in today's or 2.3 million pounds in today's world.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there was also an initiative to establish a Shackleton Memorial Fund, which was used to assist the education of his children and support his family and his mother.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_00: So people people came to his aid, and I think despite the debt, you know, it wasn't uh I don't think the shackletons were destitute.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or during that time, you think Shackleton was this big hero, he was always outshined by guess who?
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not Falcon.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Robert Falcon Scott.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_00: His party, so Robert Falcon Scott had done some major exploring himself.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he led that first expedition that Shackleton went on, right?
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_00: He had more than 30 monuments in Britain.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_00: He had stained glass windows.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Robert Falcon Falcon Scott did.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_00: He had statues, he had a stamps with his face on it.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: So he was the more famous one at the time, you're saying so.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, he outshined Shackleton for many years until 1950.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened in 1950 is well, actually 1959, Shackleton started to become more popular because a guy named Roland Huntford wrote a book about uh Falcon Scott and Amundsen, and basically said they were jerks and they weren't great guys.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a very negative picture of Scott that started to take place.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then in 1959, Alfred Lansing wrote a book called Endurance.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's a book I read that kind of got me interested in him.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Shackleton's Incredible Incredible Voyage, and that took got really popular.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the tides turned, and by 2002, a poll taken by the BBC to determine the hundred greatest Britons.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Shackleton was ranked 11th, and Falcon Scott was ranked 54th.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that settled it.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_00: In 2002, and then in 1983, the BBC produced a miniseries about Shackleton, and there was another series produced, like I said, that had Kenneth Branagh play Shackleton and it won an Emmy.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_00: In 2001, uh a pair of business ladies wrote a business book about corporate leadership called Shackleton's Way, Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they basically said, in quotes, Shackleton resonates with executives in today's business world.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_00: His people-centered approach to leadership can be a guide to anyone in a position of authority.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he became kind of famous for his leadership and management style aboard the ships.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: This book was a big seller.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_00: The Center for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter offered a course in Shackleton that featured management programs.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Boston had a Shackleton school that was set up like an outward bound.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it was kind of an adventure/slash leadership kind of thing.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And their motto was the journey is everything.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: The US Navy uh used Shackleton as an example in some of its textbooks.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: In this book, they said Shackleton was a non-anxious leader whose calm, reflective demeanor becomes the antibiotic warning of the toxicity of reactive behavior.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many more things.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_00: They uh in Ireland they established the Ernest Shackleton Autumn School, and it is uh annual course that's taken.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so so many things.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of like the idea of somebody being appreciated later, kind of they were ahead of he was ahead of his time in terms of leadership, and or at least, you know, 21st century type leadership that he was doing in the uh 19th and 20th century.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really interesting idea.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what's what's even more interesting is that you know he lived in a time when there wasn't social media, there wasn't radio really.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was a little bit, but um, you know, he he lived in a time where you couldn't really toot your own horn.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_00: You had to have other people say he was, you know, he was a great captain, he was a different kind of officer, he, you know, all these things.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_00: There was a book written in 1922 called The Worst Journey in the World by a guy named Apsley Cherry Gerard.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he was one of uh Scott's Falcon Scott's team members on the Terra Nova expedition, and he wrote, For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott for a winter journey, Wilson, for a dash to the pole and nothing else, Amundsen.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so it's it's funny how the tides kind of turned.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_00: In 1993, a man named Trevor Potts reenacted the boat journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia on a replica of the James Cared, that little ship that had been fixed up, the lifeboat that had been fixed up.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, there was a 2002 series produced by the BBC called Shackleton with Kenneth Brown on the title roll.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_00: It won two Emmys.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in 2011 in London, the auction house Christie's auctioned a biscuit that Shackleton, the biscuit that Shackleton had given us a starving fellow traveler for 1200 pounds.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:18:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I learned a lot today about uh Ernie Shackleton.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I got a hold on, I got a couple more.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm almost done though.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Also, in 2011, which would have been Shackleton's 137th birthday, Google made a Google Doodle of him.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you go to Google.com and there's that little picture.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_00: There is an asteroid named after him, discovered by a Swiss uh astronomer in 2005.
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_00: He also has a fungus name after him.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Shackletonia, and it was discovered by botanists in Sweden.
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so and then finally in January 2016, uh Shackleton was featured on a series of uh uh postage stamps by the Royal Mail, which had happened much earlier for Falcon Scott.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_00: So he got his redemption.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_01: 60 years earlier, 70 years earlier.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's that's great.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_01: I love when people finally get their due.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe not while they can see it, but they eventually get their due.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's great.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and and then the last thing I have is in 2017, there was actually an off-Broadway musical called Ernest Shackleton Loves Me.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was in New York City, off-Broadway, and it was a story of a struggling composer that retells the adventure of endurance in detail.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was well received or not, but Broadway musical or off-Broadway musical.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't mind a musical that just focuses on the talent shows that were on the right where where all the adventures are kind of in the background, but the main thing that we're focused on is uh is the talent shows and the auditions to to be explored.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think that would be an interesting uh thing.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the cat Mrs.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Chippy.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Mrs.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Chippy.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sir, Mrs.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Chippy.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm very interested in seeing the um the series with Kenneth Branaugh.
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's a great actor, right?
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think that would be fun to watch.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_00: But really, if you want to know, I mean, the whole reason I chose Shackleton was I had read Endurance by Alfred Lansing many years ago, and uh that kind of I just remember it was one of those books that was given to me, and I wasn't super excited about it because I thought it was going to be like work to read it, and it kind of is because it's a lot of old English and a lot of names and stuff like that.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_00: But after reading it or getting into it, it was a page turner.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like wow, this was a really, really good book, and it's not only got um the stories of all these men and their exploits on the endurance, it also has pictures because they had a photographer, and it's like real pictures of the endurance trapped in ice and the men uh hunting seals and just all this cool stuff.
• 1:21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, there you go, sir Ernest Shackleton.
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that was a marathon.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks, Kelly.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I uh know a lot more about the guy than I did before.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I appreciate it, and I appreciate everyone who tuned in and stuck all the way through to the end.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you did, thank you very much.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'll tell you what, I'll give you a code word.
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the code word is um what was the cat's name again?
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Biscuit.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, uh Mrs.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Chippy.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Mrs.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Chippy, if you email or email the word Mrs.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Chippy to not at dirtnapcity.com, uh I'll send you something in the mail.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe a sticker, uh maybe maybe a biscuit.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, and that this good this offer is good through July of 2023.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_00: After July of 2023, don't bother.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_00: But up through July of 2023, if you if you email uh the word Mrs.
• 1:22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Chippy to not at DirtNet City, we'll we'll get you something.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So Alex, uh, thank you so much for sticking with me.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_00: That was a long one.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, hopefully you found it interesting.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh if you haven't uh read the book Endurance, it might be worth a read.
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot, Kelly.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and everyone who tuned in, we'll see you next time.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us, and we will be back in two weeks with another episode of Dirt Nap City.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.