The Shackleton–Rowett Expedition (1921–22) was Sir Ernest Shackleton's last Antarctic project, and the final episode in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
The venture, financed by John Quiller Rowett, is sometimes referred to as the Quest Expedition after its ship Quest, a converted Norwegian sealer. Shackleton had originally intended to go to the Arctic and explore the Beaufort Sea, but this plan was abandoned when the Canadian government withheld financial support; Shackleton thereupon switched his attention to the Antarctic. Quest, smaller than any recent Antarctic exploration vessel, soon proved inadequate for the task, and progress south was delayed by her poor sailing performance and frequent engine problems. Before the expedition's work could properly begin, Shackleton died on board the ship, just after arriving at the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia.
The major part of the subsequent attenuated expedition was a three-month cruise to the eastern Antarctic, under the leadership of the party's second-in-command, Frank Wild. The shortcomings of Quest were soon in evidence: slow speed, heavy fuel consumption, a tendency to roll in heavy seas, and a steady leak. The ship was unable to proceed further than longitude 20°E, well short of their easterly target, and her engine's low power coupled with unsuitable bows was insufficient to penetrate southward through the pack ice. Following several fruitless attempts, Wild returned the ship to South Georgia, on the way visiting Elephant Island where he and 21 others had been stranded after the sinking of the ship Endurance, during Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition six years earlier.
Wild had thoughts of a second, more productive season in the ice, and took the ship to Cape Town for a refit. Here, in June 1922, he received a message from Rowett ordering the ship home to England, so the expedition ended quietly. The Quest voyage is not greatly regarded in the histories of polar exploration, due to the event that defines it in public memory, overshadowing its other activities: Shackleton's untimely death.
Background
Shackleton after the Endurance
Shackleton returned to Britain from the Endurance expedition in late May 1917, while World War I was under way. Many of his men enlisted promptly upon their return. Too old to enlist, Shackleton nevertheless sought an active role in the war effort, and eventually departed for Murmansk with the temporary army rank of major, as part of the North Russia intervention. Shackleton expressed his dissatisfaction with this role in letters home: "I feel I am no use to anyone unless I am outfacing the storm in wild lands." He returned to England in February 1919 and began plans to set up a company that would, with the cooperation of the North Russian Government, develop the natural resources of the region. This scheme came to nothing, as the Red Army took control of that part of Russia during the Russian Civil War; to provide himself with an income, Shackleton had to rely on the lecture circuit. During the winter of 1919–20 he lectured twice a day, six days a week, for five months.
Canadian proposal
Despite the large debts still outstanding from the Endurance expedition, Shackleton's mind turned towards another exploration venture. He decided to turn away from the Antarctic, go northwards and, as he put it, "fill in this great blank now called the Beaufort Sea". This area of the Arctic Ocean, to the north of Alaska and west of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, was largely unexplored; Shackleton believed, on the basis of tidal records, that it contained large undiscovered land masses that "would be of the greatest scientific interest to the world, apart from the possible economic value".
Shackleton also hoped to reach the northern pole of inaccessibility, the most remote point in the Arctic regions. In March 1920, his plans received the general approval of the Royal Geographical Society and were supported by the Canadian government. On this basis Shackleton set about acquiring the necessary funding, which he estimated at £50,000.
Later that year, Shackleton met by chance an old school-friend, John Quiller Rowett, who agreed to put up a nucleus of cash to get Shackleton started. With this money, in January 1921, Shackleton purchased the wooden Norwegian whaler Foca I together with other equipment, and began the process of hiring of a crew.
In May 1921, the policy of the Canadian government towards Arctic expeditions changed with the advent of a new prime minister, Arthur Meighen, who withdrew support from Shackleton's proposal. Shackleton was required to rethink his plans, and decided to sail for the Antarctic instead. A varied programme of exploration, coastal mapping, mineral prospecting and oceanographic research in the Southern Ocean would replace the abandoned Beaufort Sea venture.
Antarctic preparation
Objectives
Even before his problems with the Canadian government, Shackleton had been considering a southern expedition as a possible alternative to the Beaufort Sea. According to the RGS librarian Hugh Robert Mill, as early as March 1920 Shackleton had talked about two possible schemes – the Beaufort Sea exploration, and "an oceanographical expedition with the object of visiting all the little-known islands of the South Atlantic and South Pacific". By June 1921, the latter plan had expanded to include a circumnavigation of the Antarctic continent and the mapping of around 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of uncharted coastline. It would also encompass a search for "lost" or wrongly charted sub-Antarctic islands (including Dougherty Island, Tuanaki, and the Nimrod Islands), and would investigate possible mineral resources to be exploited in these rediscovered lands. A scientific research program would include a visit to Gough Island, and an investigation of a possible "underwater continental connection between Africa and America." Shackleton's biographer Margery Fisher calls the plan "diffuse", and "far too comprehensive for one small body of men to tackle within two years", while according to Roland Huntford, the expedition had no obvious goal and was "only too clearly a piece of improvisation, a pretext [for Shackleton] to get away".
Fisher describes the expedition as representing "the dividing line between what has become known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration and the Mechanical Age". Shackleton called the voyage "pioneering", referring specifically to the aeroplane that was taken (but ultimately not used) on the expedition. In fact this was only one of the technological "firsts" that marked the venture; there were gadgets in profusion. The ship's crow's nest was electrically heated; there were heated overalls for the lookouts, a wireless set, and a device called an odograph which could trace and chart the ship's route automatically. Photography was to figure prominently, and "a large and expensive outfit of cameras, cinematographical machines and general photographic appliances [was] acquired". Among the oceanographical research equipment was a Lucas deep-sea sounding machine.
This ample provision arose from the sponsorship of Rowett, who had extended his original gift of seed money to an undertaking to cover the costs of the entire expedition. The extent of Rowett's contribution is not recorded; in an (undated) prospectus for the southern expedition Shackleton had estimated the total cost as "about £100,000". Whatever the total, Rowett appears to have funded the lion's share, enabling Frank Wild to record later that, unique among Antarctic expeditions of the era, this one returned home without any outstanding debt. According to Wild, without Rowett's actions the expedition would have been impossible: "His generous attitude is the more remarkable in that he knew there was no prospect of financial return, and what he did was in the interest of scientific research and from friendship with Shackleton." His only recognition was the attachment of his name to the title of the expedition. Rowett was, according to Huntford, "a stodgy, prosaic looking" businessman, who was, in 1920, a co-founder and principal contributor to an animal nutrition research institute in Aberdeen known as the Rowett Research Institute (now part of the University of Aberdeen). He had also endowed dental research work at the Middlesex Hospital.
Quest
In March 1921, Shackleton renamed his expedition vessel Quest. She was a small ship, 125 tons according to Huntford, with sail and auxiliary engine power purportedly capable of making eight knots, but in fact rarely making more than five-and-a-half. Huntford describes her as "straight-stemmed", with an awkward square rig, and a tendency to wallow in heavy seas. Fisher reports that she was built in 1917, weighed 204 tons, and had a large and spacious deck. Although she had some modern facilities, such as electric lights in the cabins, she was unsuited to long oceanic voyages; Shackleton, on the first day out, observed that "in no way are we shipshape or fitted to ignore even the mildest storm". Leif Mills, in his biography of Frank Wild, says that had the ship been taken to the Beaufort Sea in accordance with Shackleton's original plans, she would probably have been crushed in the Arctic pack ice. On her voyage south she suffered frequent damage and breakdowns, requiring repairs at every port of call.
Personnel
The Times had reported that Shackleton planned to take a dozen men to the Arctic, "chiefly those who had accompanied him on earlier expeditions". In fact, Quest left London for the south with 20 men, of whom eight were old Endurance comrades; another, James Dell, was a veteran from the Discovery, 20 years previously. Some of the Endurance hands had not been fully paid from the earlier expedition, but were prepared to join Shackleton again out of personal loyalty. Another Shackleton loyalist, Ernest Joyce, had fallen out with Shackleton over the money he claimed was owed to him, and was not invited to join the expedition.
Frank Wild, on his fourth trip with Shackleton, filled the second-in-command post as he had on the Endurance expedition. Frank Worsley, Endurance's former captain, became captain of Quest. Other old comrades included surgeons Alexander Macklin and James McIlroy, meteorologist Leonard Hussey, engineer Alexander Kerr, seaman Tom McLeod and cook Charles Green. Shackleton had assumed that Tom Crean would sign up, and had assigned him duties "in charge of boats", but Crean had retired from the navy to start a family back home in County Kerry, and declined Shackleton's invitation.
Of the newcomers, Roderick Carr, a New Zealand-born Royal Air Force pilot, was hired to fly the expedition's aeroplane, an Avro Baby modified as a seaplane with an 80-horsepower engine. He had met Shackleton in north Russia, and had recently been serving as chief of staff to the Lithuanian Air Force. Due to some missing parts, the aeroplane was not used during the expedition and Carr assisted with the general scientific work. Scientific staff included Australian biologist Hubert Wilkins, who had Arctic experience, and Canadian geologist Vibert Douglas, who had initially signed for the aborted Beaufort Sea expedition.
The recruits who caught the most public attention were two members of The Boy Scouts Association, Norman Mooney and James Marr. As the result of publicity organised by the Daily Mail newspaper, these two had been selected to join the expedition out of around 1,700 Scouts who had applied to go. Mooney, who was from the Orkney Islands, dropped out during the voyage south, leaving the ship at Madeira after suffering chronic seasickness. Marr, an 18-year-old from Aberdeen, remained throughout, winning plaudits from Shackleton and Wild for his application to the tasks at hand. After being put to work in the ship's coal bunkers, according to Wild, Marr "came out of the trial very well, showing an amount of hardihood and endurance that was remarkable".
Expedition
Voyage south
Quest sailed from St Katharine Docks, London, on 17 September 1921, after inspection by King George V. Large crowds gathered on the banks of the river and on the bridges, to witness the event. Marr wrote in his diary that it was as though "all London had conspired together to bid us a heartening farewell".
Shackleton's original intention was to sail down to Cape Town, visiting the main South Atlantic islands on the way. From Cape Town, Quest would head for the Enderby Land coast of Antarctica where, once in the ice, it would explore the coastline towards Coats Land in the Weddell Sea. At the end of the summer season the ship would visit South Georgia before returning to Cape Town for refitting and preparation for the second year's work. The ship's performance in the early stages of the voyage disrupted this schedule. Serious problems with the engine necessitated a week's stay in Lisbon, and further stops in Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands. These delays and the slow speed of the ship led Shackleton to decide that it would be necessary to sacrifice entirely the visits to the South Atlantic islands, and instead he turned the ship towards Rio de Janeiro, where the engine could receive a thorough overhaul. Quest reached Rio on 22 November 1921.
The engine overhaul, and the replacement of a damaged topmast, delayed the party in Rio for four weeks. This meant that it was no longer practical to proceed to Cape Town and then on to the ice. Shackleton decided to sail directly to Grytviken harbour in South Georgia. Equipment and stores that had been sent on to Cape Town would have to be sacrificed, but Shackleton hoped that this shortfall could be made up in South Georgia. He was vague about the direction the expedition should take after South Georgia; Macklin wrote in his diary, "The Boss says...quite frankly that he does not know what he will do."