“I think he considered I was exceeding my prerogative in discussing the matter at all and judging from what he then said I suppose that he considered that if people observed that he was laying in a stock of meat for the winter it might convey to them the impression that he expected to have to remain for the winter & so cause people to become despondent.”
— Thomas Orde-Lees
“If these orders arecabled out, Sir Ernest Shackleton (who will not like them) will spend some more cash in cabling back to this country to try and get the decision … rescinded… if Admiralty orders… are to be cabled by anybody it should not be any outside party but by the Admiralty itself, and I see no necessity for the latter.”
— minutes of the chief censor, Captain Sir Douglas Brownrigg
“Impossible to reply to your question except to say unsympathetic attitude to your material welfare on part of Mawson and [Admiral Sir Lewis] Beaumont and customary attitutde of Navy to Mercantile Marine which it seems resulted from desire of Admiralty to boom its own relief Expedition. Strongly advise patience until you know the details, then exercise skill and tact in getting round difficult but not insuperable position.”
— cable to Shackleton from Perris
“The RSS Discovery as seen docked at Dundee,” Dundee, 2009, photo by David Ball
“[Why Shackleton] was allowed to go playing the giddy goat at the South Pole in the interests of nobody and nothing but himself, why was he allowed to take away useful men whose services might have been utilised in war… there are men on Elephant Island who might have been more useful and quite as much entertained in Flanders and Salonika. We have very little use for Sir. E. Shackleton.”
— The Strathspey Herald
Visitor’s Book, The British Club, Punta Arenas, Chile, 1916
Signatures for Shackleton, Worsley, and Crean may be seen in the column on the right.
Shackleton, Worsley and Crean in the British Club, Punta Arenas
“Of average height, broad in the shoulder, deep in the chest, with face much wind-burned, square of chin, with heavy brow overarching deep-set grey-blue eyes telling a tale of strain and constant care, but brightening not seldom with joviality and good humour; solid, forceful and infinitely determined, — such is Sir Ernest Shackleton.”
— The Magellan Times, Punta Arenas, Chile, 1916
Military funeral procession in Port Stanley, 1914; source
“My good friend the Governor said I could settle down at Port Stanley and take things quietly for a few weeks. The street of this port is about a mile and a half long. It has the slaughter-house at one end and the graveyard at the other. The chief distraction is to walk from the slaughter-house to the graveyard. For a change one may walk from the graveyard to the slaughter-house…. I could not content myself to wait… knowing that six hundred miles away my comrades were in dire need.”
— Ernest Shackleton, South
[image: Falkland Islands: Postcards: 1915 AA series by T. & N. Binnie of Port Stanley depicting the Battle of the Falkland Islands naval funeral, from Grosvenor Auctions]
Winston Churchill, center; with his Royal Scots Fusiliers at Ploegsteert, 1916; source
“Fancy that ridiculous Shackleton & his South Pole — in the crash of the world.
“When all the sick & wounded have been tended, when all their impoverished & broken hearted homes have been restored, when every hospital is gorged with money, & every charitable subscription is closed, then & not till then would I concern myself with those penguins. I suppose however something will have to be done.”
— letter from Winston Churchill to his wife, writing from a Flanders trench, 1916 [Churchill in WWI]
“I have had a year and a half of hell, and am older of course, but no lives have been lost, though we have been through what no other Polar expedition has done. It was Nature against us all the time the cable [to the Daily Chronicle] barely describes a little of what it was. Wild and Crean were splendid throughout.”
— letter from Ernest Shackleton to Emily Shackleton
Shackleton. 