Shackleton.

“[While] Wall Street abhors such crimes, [the archduke] was an exceedingly unpopular prince.”
— Wall Street Journal, June 30, 1914 [See enlargement]

“Orde-Lees was a public schoolboy, from Marlborough. His father was a formidable Victorian eccentric, who had been Chief Constable of Northamptonshire, and designed a chief constable’s dress uniform. Tall, dark, with an enigmatic ghost of a constant private smile, Orde-Lees had served in China during the Boxer Rebellion. It was on hearing Nansen lecture in 1897 after his return from the drift of the Fram that Orde-Lees “came to the conclusion,” as he put it, that he “would go polar exploring one day.” He tried unsuccessfully to join Scott’s second expedition. … What persuaded Shackleton to take Orde-Lees, however, was that he was a skier and climber. In addition, he was a motoring pioneer, and was experimenting with motor sledges.

“As Orde-Lees told the tale, he rode up from Deal to London on his motorcycle for his first interview with Shackleton ‘to give him some idea that I had a practical knowledge of internal combustion engines’. Shackleton, in what was becoming a familiar pattern, instantly, and to Orde-Lees’ amazement, accepted him.”

— Roland Huntford

Winston Churchill in 1914

“I will return the men safe and undamaged, as far as God wills it… the majority of the men will never be out of touch with civilisation for more than three months… so that if you want [them] back for war purposes they could… return to England, and I would have the ship manned with a scratch crew.”

“You know from our talk yesterday that I am trying to do good and serious work. Death is a very little thing, and Knowledge very great. You yourself, for the sake of science and country, are often taking risks aloft in the pioneer science of aviation… and really Regent Street holds out more dangers on a busy day than the five million square miles that constitute the Antarctic Continent.”

“Do please look favorably upon our talk.”

— Ernest Shackleton to Winston Churchill

“Then there was George Marston, the expedition’s thirty-two-year-old artist. Marston, a boyish-faced, chubby man, had done outstanding work on Shackleton’s 1907-1909 trek. Unlike most of the others, [but like Shackleton himself] he was a married man with children.”
— Alfred Lansing