Dan Snow's History Hit - ENDURANCE22: Questions & Reflections
Episode Date: March 18, 2022To mark the end of a truly epic journey, Dan wanted to hear from you -the listeners- those that have dedicatedly followed the story of Endurance22. Find out the answers to your questions as Dan respon...ds candidly to the things that you all wanted to know.In the concluding episode of the Endurance22 series, we also share Dan’s conversation with John and Viv James, the sons of Endurance veteran Reginald James. Although Dan spoke with John and Viv before the shipwreck was discovered, the meaning of the search for Endurance was evident even then.Finally, Dan reflects on the experience of Endurance22 and the incredible people that he has met along the way.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's Histories.
I'm currently about a thousand miles west-southwest of Cape Town.
We're making our way back.
We've got 30 knots of wind blowing on our port side at the moment.
The ship is rocking quite violently from one side to the other.
There's a lot of people confined to their cabins at the moment with a bit of seasickness.
But we're coming home.
We're coming home from Endurance 22.
Spirits are high.
We found Endurance. The team are thrilled. And people all over the world have been getting in touch,
enjoying the pictures and video shot on the seabed. It's been such an exciting project to be
part of. This is the final episode. This is the last time you're going to hear me talking about
Endurance 22 for the moment. No more plans to do so. So we just wanted to wrap up a few things.
I want to answer some of your questions, but I also want to hear from the family some of the families some of the descendants now interestingly there
are two direct descendants two children left of someone on that voyage john and viv james are the
sons of reginald james he was a scientist he was a young physicist taken aboard by shackleton they
remember their dad talking about the exhibition as as you'll hear, fascinating stuff. I actually talked to them on a Zoom from the ship, as we were searching,
so it's before we knew we'd found the ship. But I wanted to fill them in on the story,
and I recorded that conversation, which I'm now going to broadcast out to all of you.
Reginald James was on the endurance, obviously. He was frozen, lived on the ice,
and then he made it to Elephant Island, where he stayed. He was not one of those in the small boat, James Caird, that went to South Georgia. He waited
on Elephant and was rescued and went on to have a very distinguished career. He ended up in South
Africa as a senior figure in the university there in Cape Town. Talking to his kids, who are now
both gentlemen of quite advanced years, was a great way of reminding myself this story is still very fresh,
very important, very real
to many people around the world today.
100 years isn't that long.
Just over a century,
105, 106, 107 years,
not that long.
Don't forget, everyone,
you can go and watch our documentary,
our most watched documentary ever on History Hit TV.
It's all about the endurance,
all about Shackleton,
and all about Huntford. head over to history hit tv the link is in the description of this podcast so you can check that out just give that little tap and it will take you through
to the history hits tv page so um make sure you go and watch that documentary but in the meantime
folks and answer some of your questions and talk to John and Viv. Enjoy.
All right, we asked for questions on Instagram and Twitter and various places and lots of people got back with lots of questions.
So here we go.
Here's a few that the team have sent me. I haven't seen these questions before,
so it's going to come as a surprise. Sarah Jenny, 321, do you feel haunting parallel with the
backdrop of war during Shackleton and his cruise expedition and the outbreak of war in Ukraine
whilst we were in search of the endurance? Well, the answer to that sarah is yes i think i mentioned it a previous podcast
it's been very disturbing very very sad indeed very sad for lots of reasons one is like all of
you you all love history you're all aware of history i think many of us thought naively
wrongly thought we no longer lived in a world of armies mashing on frontiers of demands being given
a kind of deadlines you know like so austriaHungary trying to bully Serbia in the summer of 1914. That was a world that I thought
I studied and read about in history books. It was a world that when it did rear its head in my
lifetime, like Saddam Hussein in the early 90s in Kuwait, it was roundly condemned and often
reversed by the international community. Of course, wars have gone on in my lifetime, but
interstate wars where states
seek to bite off and annex formally annex bits of territory in that very recognizably early modern
or well for the whole of history people have done that in that kind of way we thought we'd got away
from that and that's what's so depressing and terrifying about this particular war that added
of course the fact there's a nuclear power involved, a nuclear alliance lining up behind Ukraine on the other side, with the potential for absolute devastation, an existential threat to life on Earth.
Really, really depressing stuff.
Why do old, out-of-touch men roll the iron dice?
Why did the Kaiser, Hitler, the Austrians, the Russians in 1914. Why do we keep doing this? We've done
this on podcast where we attempt to get into that question and answer them. Most recently,
I remember with Brian Class, we talked about psychopaths becoming leaders and how we will
never be safe, we will never be free until we work out a way of freeing ourselves from these lunatics
who rule over us, who hold our lives and our fates in the palm of their hands. It's very,
very disturbing. In a narrow sense, yeah, I mean, it was very weird. We planned this operation and
left during a time of increased international tension. We knew that Russia was massing on the
frontier of Ukraine. It was very obvious to Shackleton that war was in the air. He narrowly
avoided, in fact, being in Germany for the outbreak of war, which would have been devastating for him. He would have ended up interned for the course of
the war, and we would not, I think, have heard the name Shackleton today. He narrowly avoided that.
It was clear that Europe was lurching towards war. And he did visit Buckingham Palace and meet the
King Emperor on the day that Britain declared war on Germany in early August 1914. So their
preparations were very tied up with war,
as you'll have heard if you listen to our documentary on Shackleton.
We arrived in the Antarctic and, sure enough, Russia invaded Ukraine.
It was very, very difficult being here.
It was very difficult allowing ourselves to enjoy what we were experiencing,
given the horrors and the sadness and the tension that we could feel
coming through all of our electronic interactions with home i hated being away as a dad as a husband as
a family member my not that i could have done anything to help anyone but i hated being away
hated being away from them at that time and so it was very difficult for everyone the expedition we
are an international crew we have a russian scientist on board. We have Americans, Germans, all sorts of different nationalities.
And we continued working and hoping that in some very small way
we could be a little bit of an example of what humans can do
when they work together and focus on science
and making the world a better place, a safer place,
rather than plunging the world into violence
and turning people against each other but
yeah that parallels were very pronounced and very disturbing violet's mond was there anything that
regardless how often you saw it kept being fascinating yes i think the ice breaking is
absolutely fascinating we were all entranced we stood on the bowels it was warm enough it wasn't
absolutely freezing the great blizzard but we stood about as long as we could and just watched as this
ship carved through a solid surface when you grow up on boats and ships it's not how it's supposed
to happen it meant to go through liquid and we would smash through this ice like a thick meringue
coating and it would shatter and get thrown aside and the penguins and seals on it would run out the
way and it was endlessly fascinating chris taft 16 would you
do it again and go back can you see why shakalas became hooked chris that's a great question yeah
i would go back you can see why people are hooked antarctica is the last great wilderness on planet
earth there are parts of antarctica that are not claimed by any nation it's the last piece of land
on earth not claimed by a nation state the The Antarctic Treaty thankfully governs the rest
of it and means that those claims are not pursued aggressively elsewhere. And so it is a place given
over to science and a little bit of tourism, but it's a place given over to international
scientists working together, trying to gain a better understanding of this planet we're on and
resolve some of the great problems that face us.
So yeah, it is an extraordinary place.
When we were out there in the Weddell Sea,
the closest human beings were probably the people
on the International Space Station as they passed overhead.
And of course, there's so much more to explore.
We only saw tiny, tiny pockets.
So I can see why people became hooked.
So much to explore.
So much untouched nature.
Seems like less fear of humans than you would get in animals elsewhere in the world
because they haven't been hassled and harassed and killed and chased and hunted by humans.
So penguins and seals that you come up close.
Whales that come up to take a look at you with their beady eye.
I can definitely see why people became obsessed with the ice.
Jay Ascom.
I wondered if there's any sign of the AUV lost in 2019,
the drone lost in 2019, how close the first expedition came to finding the drone? That is
an excellent question. Funny enough, the team did tell me that there is an AUV-sized target of
interest, point of interest, towards the north of the search box. It could be a rock, it could be a
fold in the ground, but it did look like it
could be the AUV lost in 2019 they've looked at where they searched in 2019 or that first mission
that was given to the AUV where it was actually lost on its first mission the place the endurance
was was just outside that first mission so the drone didn't find it in 2019 but it may easily
have found it had it been recovered and there'd been a second mission launched.
Ben Fulsham, how did you occupy yourself when you weren't filming or podcasting?
Well, I spent a lot of time filming and podcasting, dude.
But I did do a lot of reading.
I reread all the South and Jackson books.
Worsley's brilliant book on the open boat journey.
It's actually almost my favourite book
produced by anyone on the expedition.
I read War and Peace.
I did get there.
A lot of you said I wouldn't.
A lot of you were sending me a bit of banter on Twitter, sending I would not read War
and Peace, but I did. And I tell you, that was even more strange. So I was in the Antarctic,
like Shackleton, whilst war broke out in Europe, Russia invading Ukraine, whilst reading War and
Peace, which is all about the Russians at war and a bit at peace. So I was in the zone, man. It was a weird time.
I also read Middlemarch, which I found heavy going actually, George Eliot, but I did that.
And then I reread a couple of Patrick O'Brien's because you can't go wrong with them.
And the other thing I did was just sit around with the wonderful people, talking nonsense,
looking at stars, gazing out, looking at the icebreakers I mentioned. So there's a lot of
fun social times as well. I tried to stay away away from screens didn't watch much in the way of tv or movies just tried
to enjoy the people around me endurance south that's a good name how much has this expedition
everything you've seen experience changed your life well endurance south that's heavy I'm not
sure that's the answer you're looking for but I don't think it's changed my life a huge amount I
was always someone who loved exploring I was someone who loved spending time away isolated thinking reading writing
I'm not someone who's obsessed with creature comforts I don't mind you know sleeping I mean
it's obviously very comfortable on the boat and so I don't know sadly if it has changed my life
that much but it's reaffirmed what I know that I love in life which is seeing other parts of the
world working with wonderful teams,
being with interesting, stimulating people
who I learn things from and who stretch me.
I love travelling.
I love sailing out of the ocean.
I love seeing storm-lashed waves.
So it's made me even more determined than before
to live a life where I'm lucky enough,
privileged enough to have those experiences.
Emma Hoppe, name one particular
enduring memory or achievement from this journey. Well, I think I probably have to say when I snuck
down into the control centre for the drone that night, I think it may have been Sunday the 6th
of March maybe, when they took the 4k camera down and they were doing close filming of the wreck and
they were saying up a bit left
a bit down a bit let's get over there go around the stern around the bows and just standing behind
them all watching that and hearing the gasps and the excitement and the shouts and almost the tears
at times that was a memory i'll never forget my achievement i can't really claim to have achieved
that but i think the achievement is i'm very very pleased I read War and Peace. I feel really good about myself.
I don't think I'd have read it unless I had a lot of time on my hands.
The Wild Hog, what was your sense of time in the Antarctic?
Good question. I mean, it was light most of the time.
I didn't really have a sense of time.
You're stuck in the ice, but you're moving, but you don't know you're moving.
Space and time becomes very, very hard to calibrate.
I'd end up going to bed very, very late
and not sleeping much because it was light out my window.
So it was weird.
So the sense did come from artificial means,
your phone, your clocks on the walls.
You have to sort of regulate yourself with that.
Oddsocks99, how close were you guys to calling it a day
before you found endurance?
We had about four days left searching
and that was if the ice allowed us to,
things were getting colder, bigger ice flows were moving.
We got very, very lucky. There were a few times that looked like the ice was going
to chase us out of the search box and it never did it always remained thin enough for us to ice
break through but we had about four or five days left at best maybe eight ten dives maybe so we
were close to running out of time oxford eco garden did you ever get seasick i didn't actually i was very
lucky i got seasick all the time when i was a kid but as soon as i grew up for some reason it sort
of went away i was very lucky so no seasickness but some of the team it was pretty bad alf
senum vidland when did you start preparing the expedition well they've been preparing for years
really at least two years the research work's been going for years before that and obviously sabah come up with the prototype for
these vehicles so it's a very very long process i'd say my involvement was about a year and that
involved kind of working out how we're going to broadcast it and get the satellite links and all
that kind of stuff so it's taken about a year so i wanted to tell you all but i couldn't it's a big
secret so it's been exciting the last few months what time zone did you stick with for the trip we were at gmt
we were at universal time zulu time it didn't make much difference because it was sort of light and
dark it's only dark for three hours every night but uh yeah we start with gmt in the weddell sea
even though it should be much closer to south american time hill azzy how did you know how to
start your social insurance well it's pretty simple, actually. You started with the coordinates given by the captain of insurance, Frank Worsley,
who was a brilliant navigator. He made an estimation of where the ship sank on the 21st
November 1915, but he didn't actually manage to take a reading from the sun that day. He worked
out all his lats and longs using celestial navigation, stars and moon and sun. It was
cloudy that day, so he didn't manage to do it, but he did it the next day.
He took a sun reading the next day,
and he tried to work out roughly how much he might have moved since then.
And he turned out to be pretty good and accurate,
so we drew a search box basically around that point.
Mensenbaum, the archaeologist, obviously made some tweaks
to give him diary extracts and what we now know about
the Weddell Sea Gyre, the surface current.
But we found it about four miles south of where Frank Worsley suggested.
So well done him.
Absolute triumph.
Miss X says hi.
After being out there in extreme conditions
and seeing firsthand what Shackleton and Worsley managed to pull off
in saving themselves and the crew,
do you have a greater respect for their escape
or do you think you would have survived?
That's a great question.
The answer is no, I don you think you would have survived that's a great question the answer is no i don't think i would have survived i don't think that you can display
that grit and that dissemination and that knowledge and skill without quite a lot of
experience and training and preparation i was out on the ice for hours at a time and began to feel
my life force draining away you know i really was unable to perform basic functions.
I was beginning to struggle to use my hands.
I was getting quite listless.
Walking was exhausting.
You know, that was after a couple of hours having had a good hot meal for lunch.
So I think it's a lifetime of being hardened to the sea,
of serving in those conditions on ships going around Cape Horn.
I think it's multiple experiences of going to the ice.
I think the other
thing is they've been on the ice, they've been frozen in on the endurance for months and months
and months. They've hardened, they've toughened themselves up, and then they toughen themselves
up living on the ice. So I think they would have become acclimatised better than me.
So I don't think I've survived. And the answer is having seen the Southern Ocean looking quite
furious, having seen and experienced the cold and the damp
and the misery of trying to navigate a small boat
through the breaking up ice flows
like they did on the way to Elephant Island,
I don't really understand how they did it.
I think it was astonishingly tenacious and brave
and I think they must have enjoyed a bit of luck.
Shackleton himself says if they haven't reached Elephant Island,
when they did, people started dying in those boats
within the next 24 hours.
They almost died several times over on the James Caird trip to South Georgia.
It's an astonishing thing.
And having been down here and walked the ground and been on boats on the waters,
it just has increased my respect and admiration for what they achieved.
And it's made me even more excited with the story.
It'll be something that will always stay with me.
Rosebox, what's the next big project you'd like to complete for history well rose box i'm glad you asked we've got so much going on history we've got some exciting early medieval
archaeology anglo-saxon kings and their burial sites victims of vikings so that's going to be
good we've got a big um world war one dig coming up this year we're going to egypt for about a
tutankhamen project things have never been more exciting in history.
So loads and loads and loads going on.
So watch this space.
Catherine Morgan, 1249.
Will insurance stay in its currently beautiful preserved state
for another 100 years,
or will climate change be its final frontier?
It's a great question.
I think it'll be preserved for a long time.
I mean, unless the sea temperature heats up
more rapidly in the projections,
it's going to remain in a pretty good state for another 100 years.
At some stage, things will start to really break down,
but at the moment it's looking magnificent,
and it's likely to stay like that for the foreseeable.
Abigail Iason, regarding the rule preventing anything from being abused,
when does it come into play?
Are we aware of any shipwrecks in the Antarctic
that we are unable to access because of it?
What do you think we miss from merely looking at 3D imaging?
Are there any situations where exceptions are made to the rule?
Well, Abigail, that's not a question.
So here we go.
So we're not allowed to remove anything.
I think it's protected under the Antarctic Treaty, which has been in since the 60s, I think.
It governs everything that goes on.
The British government have also designated it a historic wreck.
So it's covered in designations and protections. one is going to touch that wreck you're not allowed
there are other wrecks yes there are definitely other wrecks in the antarctic there was a wreck
of a ship in fact called the antarctic and there's a more modern tour ship that's gone down more
recently as well so other wrecks and funny enough i don't think you do miss anything from looking at
3d imaging and video because of course bear in, that's all we've done as well.
It was 3,000 metres below us, so we haven't dived on it or been in the submersible or looked at it.
We've had a very similar experience to you.
We've just looked at the data that we've retrieved from the seabed.
So I think we're on a pretty level playing field there.
Merton Primary School.
Did you and the scientists have a party when we found endurance?
Did you see any pollution in Antarctica, and what was the best wildlife as well?
Well, great question, folks. We had a big party after we found insurance did he see any pollution antarctica and what was the best wildlife as well well great question folks we had a big party after we found insurance we were on the way back and we
all had a big barbecue on the heli deck and we listened to great south african music and we all
danced with south african crew and with each other and we and whales kept spouting out next to us as
the ship was moving through the water we're all dancing on the heli deck listening to music
all these whales kept coming to have a look at us and checking us out. Maybe they heard the music, so that was great.
We see these big tails waving in the air and then great plumes of water being spouted up.
We didn't see any pollution in the Antarctic.
That's the good news.
I didn't see any pollution at all.
But obviously the most dangerous pollution is the acidification of our oceans,
which we can't see, and then the so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
that we can't see either.
But no, I didn't see any plastic pollution or rubbish anywhere, which is great.
The best wildlife I saw, I think, was a big whale, a big minke whale,
but also saw a leopard seal.
They're so strong leopard seals.
They're great.
I love seeing that.
Thanks, everybody, for all those amazing questions.
You're listening to Dan Snow's History.
We're talking about endurance again.
You're going to hear after the break from John and Viv James,
whose dad was on the expedition.
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Gentlemen, wonderful to talk to you from um from the Weddell Sea this feels very special well it must be different it's about 27 degrees here at the moment and you're below freezing
we are about minus five right now tell us about your dad Our father was just finishing his degree at Cambridge University
when somebody asked him if he would like to go to the South Pole and he said well not really
but somehow his name was put forward he got an interview with the Master of Christ's College
and the next thing he was forwarded to Shackleton, and he had an
interview with Shackleton in London, and after a five-minute interview, Shackleton asked him
whether he could sing, whether he would mind losing his toes, or whether he had varicose veins.
He was appointed as physicist for the expedition, and he then had four months to find out what was needed
to be a physicist in the Antarctic,
get the gear together and get it packed.
He wasn't able to go on the endurance,
so he left with Frank Wilde and Jock Wordy a bit later on,
on a ship called La Negra, working his passage as a dog handler to
Buenos Aires. Can I ask, gents, why do you think your father was chosen? What special aptitude had
he shown, do you think, that made him the focus of attention at Cambridge? Well, they couldn't get
anybody else. They were pretty desperate. But he was vaguely interested because he had helped the people from Scott's expedition,
the physicists from Scott's expedition, write up their results when they came back.
So he did have a little bit of experience.
Shackleton had an amazing way of interviewing people.
He did it very quickly and he used his gut feel, I think, completely.
I think he liked the old man and said, you're on. It was probably as simple as that.
Was your old man very intrepid before all this?
No, he just finished a five-year degree at Cambridge and was wondering what to do next.
The war was imminent. It hadn't started at that stage. But his great friend at Cambridge, Jock Wordy, was going as geologist.
So that probably had a bit of an influence.
What I remember, he had only been as far as the New Forest by that time.
I think that was the limit of his adventures.
He'd studied in German university as part of his degree.
He had been that far, but never overseas.
Let's get the kind of ages and timings all sorted.
When were you guys born? How old was your father when you were born?
47 when I was born. And 49 for me.
I'm about to become 84. And he lived to a good old age?
No, he was 73 when he died. He started late. We were what we call
late lambs. He married late and that's why
we're still alive, as it were. And did he talk to you guys about it? As children, we were given
an edited version. He did several lectures and slideshows for us as kids at our school,
but there was a lot that we weren't told, that we've only found out afterwards.
In the 60s, we weren't really interested in it. You know, I would have welcomed the opportunity
now to discuss it with him in detail, but we never had that opportunity. But having said that,
talking to Jock Wordy's son, the members of the expedition,
they definitely had a pact or an agreement
that they wouldn't tell tales out of school
or talk too much about how bad things had been.
Maybe you guys weren't that interested,
but did he tell your mother or friends?
Did he tell stories about the expedition?
No. He gave a lot of lectures he talked a lot about it but we know nothing about the personal side of it
the hardships we know the general story very well but not the gory details if you know what i mean
no he never mentioned anything like that the nearest he came to it was he had to a dinner
when he was acting vice-chancellor of the university or at some stage
and he had a very, very larny dinner
and he was sitting next to this lady who mentioned that the food tasted like dog.
I think my father remarked something like, no, it's worse than dog.
That's about the only thing I've ever heard about things being said.
You mentioned there, John, the general story was known. People will be familiar now with the
Shackleton story because of all the work we've done on this podcast, but chart your father's
role within it. He was obviously a physicist. What would he have been doing on the way south
into the ice? Did he have special duties or roles? The duty of the physicist normally on these
things would be to do magnetic observations,
the sort of thing you can't do when the ship is moving.
While they were on South Georgia, they put in a meridian line for the whalers to check their compasses, a surveying job.
He then got interested in the navigation, and with the books in the ship's library, he taught himself the basics of navigation.
He was a very, very keen amateur astronomer, but of course he knew nothing about the stars in the southern hemisphere.
but once the ship was stuck in the ice and the method of observation, position-taking,
became a theodolite and not a sextant,
then he got far more involved
because he was far more competent
with using an instrument like a theodolite
than Captain Worsley would have been
because you can't use a theodolite on a moving ship.
So he got more and more involved with position finding.
They had no means of time checking
because their radio that they took with them didn't work.
They tried putting up strange aerials,
but they could receive no time signals.
strange aerials, but they could receive no time signals.
So they had to then find a method of checking the chronometer because a couple of seconds out,
that latitude can mean several miles out.
So he found among the ship's stores an old ship's telescope,
which he cleaned up and dusted off,
and they mounted this on one of Hurley's camera tripods.
And they were then able to observe the occultation of stars.
And an occultation of a star is when a star is eclipsed by the moon,
when the moon goes in front of the star.
And then from the nautical hominac,
measuring the time when the star disappeared
by a fairly complex mathematical process,
you are then able to come back to calculate the time
and correct your chronometers,
thereby getting an accurate position.
Of course, what they were interested in was an accurate position. Of course, what they were interested in
was an accurate position of the ship, not accurate time, so that ultimately when they
were able to take to the boats, they would know exactly where they were so that they were able to
aim for Paulet Island or whatever. I mean, at no stage were they plotting the endurance to come back and look
for it later. Well, it's fascinating to think that I'm roughly where your father's calculations
working together with Worsley, they sort of worked out exactly where endurance has sank. And I'm
within metres or a mile or two of that position right now. So I'm here because of your dad.
No, we're very proud that he was involved. That's why we got hold of you, Dan,
because we were really getting seriously interested
in what you're doing down there.
So your dad didn't tell you what it was like
surviving in the open boats on the way to Elephant Island
or surviving for those brutal months on Elephant itself.
What sense do you have of what he went through?
Well, we have his diary
and we have a number of papers
that he gave to various societies.
So we have a very good idea of what it was like in the open boats.
There's also a very good section in his diary of...
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And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries.
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From the greatest millennium in human history.
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Kings and popes.
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Rebellions.
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Life in the hut on Elephant Island, but not the cruder details that I found out later that at night when they wanted to wee, they used to pee into a petrol can and somebody's duty
eventually was to take that petrol can outside. So people tried to hang on as long as they could
so that they didn't have the duty of taking the petrol can outside. That is something I only
learnt many years later from Jock Wordy's son. I'd never heard it from my father.
From reading what he'd written,
I think that what's hugely underestimated is the heroic journey from the ice to Elephant Island
with those three boats. If you read about the lack of food, the lack of water, and he wrote quite a
lot about that. To me, that's one of the most incredible parts of the expedition and it's very
underplayed. I think the other thing that's underplayed about the expedition is Frank Wilde and what he did on Elephant Island. Those are the things that I think
really need to be recognised and that I got from what my dad wrote. I couldn't agree more. It's an
extraordinary part of the survival story. What about when he came back? Have you heard from
relatives or friends? Did the expedition change him? Oh, I think undoubtedly it did. But
one thing, both his parents were dead before he went on the expedition. He only had one brother
and an uncle. There were no other major relatives. I think if he'd had, if his parents been alive,
I don't think he would have gone. When he came back from the expedition, he was grabbed by Sir Lawrence Bragg to join Sir Lawrence Bragg's sound raging unit on the Western Front, where they developed this method of positioning enemy guns by timing the report over a number of microphones.
And they could then pinpoint the guns. And he was straight away into that sort of weeks after he got back to England.
Do you think he ever regretted going?
Was he excited by what he'd been part of?
Every now and again in his diary,
he mentions it would really be nice to get back to doing some proper physics again.
I think he was really philosophical about everything.
And he knew more than anybody else,
other than probably Shackleton and Wilde, what was going on because of the navigation. And I don't think anybody other than those few realized how seriously important it was to come out of the ice far to the west and not to the east. And that was their big worry, was this drift. He mentions it all the time in his diary. They weren't expecting as much drift to the west.
It was much better than they thought it would be. So he was worried about that type of thing all the time, I think. He was a very philosophical guy and super intelligent, of course.
One thing that came out of his diary too was that he said that the educated men on Edgford Island were able to cope far better than the lower deck who hadn't
got the education to think and be introspective. But arising out of this, when I finished at the
university and got my degree in engineering, he said to me, now you're going to go to England and you're going to do an engineering apprenticeship
and you're going to learn how the lower deck live.
So that was obviously part of the expedition.
Your father can't have imagined that Endurance would ever be seen again
3,000 metres down the bottom of the Weddell Sea.
What does it mean to you that the world might cast its eyes on the wreck of endurance? I was really lucky in 2008. I bumped into Captain Tarrant,
who was the skipper of the endurance, HMS endurance. And I was going through a very
bad time for various reasons. And he said to me, you look like hell. And I said, what do you mean?
He said, well, look at you. I was busy losing my first wife and then he
went wandering off on the ship and then he came back and he said don't you need a sea cruise I
think that will really help you I said what do you mean he says why don't you come south with us
so I hitched a ride with the Royal Navy and they landed me on Elephant Island and stood me exactly
where the upturned boats were and the pictures of my face it was incredibly emotional and I think if what you guys
do if you find that ship I'll have the same feelings that's why I was so keen to get hold of
you and I know you're going to leave it there and that's fine yeah you're absolutely right a lot of
people are saying to me why go to all the trouble what do you think it means to you John to identify
where that wreck is and to clap eyes on it I think it's a wonderful idea as long as you think it means to you, John, to identify where that wreck is and to clap eyes on it?
I think it's a wonderful idea as long as you leave it there. It must stay there. It must sleep there.
We don't want anybody hauling artefacts off it and trying to make money. That I would be very, very, very upset. But having said that, going to Elephant Island and landing there
was one of the most emotional experiences of my life,
that my wife and I were able to land on Elephant Island and stand where their hut was.
What do you think it meant in your father's life and career?
What was the impact of it or everything he'd been through?
Initially, probably the fact that he'd been to the Antarctic and then to the war,
probably the fact that he'd been to the Antarctic and then to the war,
it had probably slowed his career down because his Cambridge year,
there were many brilliant physicists and most of the chairs in physics in England were taken.
This is basically why he came to South Africa,
because he was offered the chair of physics at Cape Town University when he didn't seem that there was going to be professorship at any major university in England. strings and led it to a leading institution, produced two Nobel Prize winners, which I think is pretty good going. He then went on to become acting principal and vice-chancellor of the
university for several years. So I think he had quite a career and his experiences on the expedition,
and his experiences on the expedition, he was tough.
And being the vice-chancellor of the university at that time with the changes coming, it was a tough, stressful job.
And I think he was able to cope with it very well.
Was he a good dad as well?
Yes.
Well, you know, you talk about the navigation.
We had an old friend of his gave the family a theodolite of all things
exactly like the one that you see in the picture at the stern of the ship which we still have so
we spent i don't know how long in the back garden and we fixed accurately the position of our house
in rondebosch which is a suburb of cape town john you probably remember that yes i had to do a paper
on navigation for school so So this was all done.
We plotted the thing. We did all the calculations. He also built his own telescope, which I still
have. He scrounged lenses from the dockyard at Simonstown and he built a telescope. And he used
to observe occultations in our back garden and then check back with his nautical almanac
and try to do the calculations.
He never lost that.
He kept his skills up just in case he was ever called back to duty.
He was a hard act to follow, that's for sure.
And with his contacts, we met all sorts of Antarctic people
as they came through Cape Town.
We entertained Sir Vivian Fuchs at our home
and we had one of the big American explorers there
who were going down also with Vivian Fuchs.
They wanted to take him back to the Antarctic
and his doctor said, no ways, you can't do that at your age.
Are you the last two people, do you think,
who are children of Shackleton's veterans?
No, the surgeon, McElroy.
He got married even later than my father, and I believe there are, I don't know if they're still
alive, but there are two McElroy sons that are younger than us. There's not many about. What was
your father's view on Shackleton? Well, he said he was one of the greatest leaders known to man
and that Shackleton, people would follow Shackleton to the end of the earth.
In the Hugh Robert Mill biography of Shackleton,
there is a quote by my father there of what people thought about Shackleton,
but definitely he admired Shackleton all the way.
Well, gentlemen, thank you very much.
Thanks very much.
Bye, Don. Thank you.
The sun is out now. It's late afternoon.
I'm about three days before arriving in Cape Town.
There's a steady 30-knot breeze hitting us on our port beams.
We're rocking from side to side, big rollers coming in,
the white caps standing out so vividly in this sunshine
against the deep blue of the sea.
Got a few white caps, the wind is pretty stiff,
but I'm used to it now.
What might have appeared unusual a month ago,
even concerning now,
just feels very much part of the daily routine.
A cabin, my world, rocking from side to side.
The books on my shelf carefully wedged in,
nothing moving.
For many people on the ship,
we're enjoying the last few days of the trip.
We're also thinking about the future.
Lots of chat and plans with Mince and Bound
about what future shipwrecks History Hit
might be able to come out and find with him,
so that's exciting.
The scientists are all finishing up their reports
and thinking about future projects.
And there'll be no rest for the ship's crew themselves.
As soon as they get into Cape Town,
they're turning it around,
doing all sorts of essential maintenance,
and they'll be back out on the Southern Ocean
very, very soon.
The next big excitement for me seems to be
this history hit trip to Egypt
to mark the 100th anniversary
of Tutankhamen's tomb being discovered.
So watch this space, folks.
It's going to be a good one.
As I'm sitting here heading home,
I'm thinking about the veterans,
the people that survived,
the endurance, the crew of endurance.
They all famously survived, all 28 of them,
apart from Mrs. Chippy the cat,
but all 28 humans survived. Two, though, would be killed in the First World War. Most of them
signed up as soon as they got back. Borrowed McCarthy, who was a veteran of the James Caird
small boat trip, and Cheetham, they were both torpedoed. And in fact, Cheetham had a particularly
rough time because he learned as he got back from the antarctic his 16 year old son had already been killed in the first world war so multiple tragedies for the cheatham family
other people were badly injured in the war people like green actually he discovered his girlfriend
and married someone else while he'd been away presuming him dead vincent was torpedoed and
many others were badly wounded and let's not forget the Ross Sea Heroes I've mentioned them
once or twice during this but these are the people who histories have conveniently forgotten they are
the people sent to the other side of Antarctica to lay the supplies which Shackleton thought he
was going to use as he made his way from the South Pole to the other coast of Antarctica
they didn't know that Shackleton wasn't coming they had no communication at all so they worked
tirelessly they dragged loads of supplies
over hundreds and hundreds of miles back and forward sledging. Terrible. Of the 10 people
put ashore, three of them died while they were over there. And Ernest Wilde, who was actually
Frank Wilde's brother, Shackleton's kind of enforcer, his number two, Ernest Wilde died
in the First World War when he signed up, when he got back. So that was a terribly ill-fated, ill-starred group of people.
Chuck himself, he promised his wife this would be his last expedition,
but of course he was lying.
He only knew one life, really.
I think that was out there, trying to organise and trying to execute expeditions to Antarctica.
He wasn't very good at it.
He went on four expeditions,
and he never really achieved
what he set out to do in any of those expeditions. But I think we today realise that greatness is
about how you respond when things go wrong. Heroism comes out not when you're in the flush
of success, but when everything has fallen apart. That's what makes Shackleton a hero,
a relatable hero. He's a man who stared
ruin in the face and always stepped up. He died of a huge heart attack in January 1922. He was
lowered into his grave on the 5th of March 1922 and bizarrely, bizarrely, I'm not making this up,
100 years later to the day we discovered Shackleton's shipwreck on the bottom of the
Weddell Sea. Spooky. In a small way, like Shackleton's crew, we're returning to a world
that's much changed. Thankfully, not as radically as it had during the First World War, and hopefully
that will remain the case. I need to thank some people, of course. Captain Knowledge Bengu and
his crew. Without without them we would
not have been anywhere literally we'd have been stuck on the quayside in cape town so thank you
to them unbelievably professional challenging stereotypes in every way imaginable a proud
multicultural south african crew demonstrating world-class antarctic skills a privilege to watch
all that happen don Donald Lamont and the
Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, thank you for ringing me that day over a year ago now,
standing on a platform in the New Forest and getting a phone call from someone saying
they were mounting an expedition to the Antarctic. Did I want to go? The answer was quite simply,
yes. Thank you for trusting us. Me history hit thank you as well it's the whole
podcast team marion de forge who you've heard on the podcast she's the producer ably assisted by
hannah warden emily edited by the legendary doogle pat moore everyone at history hit steve
james carson the whole works everyone has been brilliant we've released pods posts articles tv Release pods, posts, articles, TV shows, online video that's gone out to tens, if not hundreds of millions of people across the world and beyond my wildest expectations.
So thank you very much, everybody.
The History Hit team on board, which is James, Nat, Saunders, Paul and Nick, have been amazing.
We have managed to do well over a month on a ship together.
I've not fallen out.
I think our friendship and our professional comradeship has deepened and I can't wait to
work with you all again. I know I always say this, but it's true, folks. My last and biggest thank you
is to people who listen to this podcast and subscribe to History at TV. Without all of you,
none of this would have happened at all. I came to you all with a mad dream.
I asked you to listen to my podcast and you said yes.
I asked you to subscribe to my history channel and enough of you said yes.
You put up with me as I learned how to transition from a useless TV presenter, TV host,
to somebody running a small or medium-sized business now.
It wasn't an easy process.
It was a brutal process, that you put up with it
and you supported me all the way through that.
And I will never be able to thank you enough.
It's been the greatest privilege of my professional life.
I owe it all to you.
I'm sure it wasn't easy for all of you at times as well.
So thank you.
Shackleton's motto, after all,
through endurance, we conquer.
And I think together, we all endured.
And here we are, having good times.
Thank you for listening to this podcast.
See you next time. Thank you. you