As fair as their main objective – the quest for the Pole – sledging commenced in the spring of 1908, the polar team being Shackleton, Adams, Wild and Marshall. Although the expedition had started with ten ponies, two had to be shot during the voyage, four died at Cape Royds from poisoning, and four – Socks, Grisi, Chinaman and Quan – began with the polar party; the death of all four ponies by early December 1908 meant man-hauling with a sledge weighing 1,000 lbs from that time. The team forged a new route up to the polar plateau via the Beardmore Glacier, which they named for the expedition’s patron. On 9 January 1909, after nearly two-and-a-half- months of trudging, they had reached a point of just 97 (156km) from the South Pole. In his diary entry for that day Shackleton recorder: ‘We have shot our bolt, and the tale is latitude 88º 23 South…Homeward bound at last. Whatever regrets may be, we have done our best’.
The decision to turn around with the Pole almost in sight was the hardest of Shackleton’s life and has subsequently been called the finest decision ever made in Antarctic exploration. Although it was likely that the team could have made the Pole, Shackleton knew they would probably not make it back and opted to ensure the survival of his men. He later told his wife Emily: ‘I thought you’d rather have a live donkey than a dead lion’.
It was the sort of decision which prompted the Polar explorer, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, to day of ‘the Boss’: ‘If I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time’.
Still, they had beaten Scott’s furthest south point by 589km, discovered 800km of new mountain range, and found coal and fossils at Mount Buckley at the top of Beardmore Glacier. More importantly, they had shown a possible route to anyone who would attempt the Pole after them.
Nimrod collected the expedition on 3 March 1909 and arrived back in Lyttelton on 25 March 1909; it continued on to England where, in acknowledgement of the success of the expedition, Shackleton was rewarded with a knighthood.
Shackleton and his men probably never envisaged that their humble hut at Cape Royds would still be standing after 100 years, but they built it to be as robust as possible. Indeed, it had to be; it was their refuge, their base and the centre of their lives for some 14 months, providing shelter, light and warmth through the blizzards and extreme cold of an Antarctic winter. It was the place in which extensive preparations were made for the spring journeys for which the expedition became justly famous. The fact that the main part of the hut is still standing today is testament to their efforts, and to the skill of the designers. But the hut is far more than the physical structure of weather beaten timbers. It is the symbol of the hopes and dreams of Shackleton and his men, and of their remarkable achievements of discovery and endurance.
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