Empire: World History - 111. Shackleton: The Hero of Antarctica

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

As the timber creaked under the pressure of the Antarctic ice, Shackleton knew his voyage aboard the Endurance was doomed. What the ice gets, the ice keeps. And so followed one of the most obscenely daring - to the point stupidity - and heroic rescue attempts. Shackleton was determined to leave no man behind, so he set off on the high seas on a tiny lifeboat, with a few men, and no navigational equipment, in the hope he could bring back a bigger ship to save his men. But did he succeed? Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Gabrielle Walker to finish the story of Shackleton and his absurd bravery in the Endurance expedition. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durember. We are once again joined by Gabriel Walker, my friend, not Williams, author, scientist, adventure, public speaker. He's trying to steal her right from under my nose. It is shameless.

And one of our ships, one of our three ships of Christmas is HMS Endurance. And in the last episode, do forgive us with it. We spent a long time, and I hope you enjoyed it, talking about Antarctica and the character of the men who were trying to conquer it. But now we're going to focus in, because you last left Ascario, you minks, with a ship that was gripped in the ice, and it's slowly being crushed. And you could hear the timbers crack. Is that what's going on?

Is that sort of thing? You can totally hear the timbers' crack. So you imagine these guys, they're on their way to the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition. The plan is to walk across Antarctica to regain the glory for the British Empire and indeed for Anna Shackleton, who hasn't quite managed to succeed in his previous attempts to do something dramatic there. And the ship has been caught by the ice and they're inside it and the ice is just moving them along.

And you can hear the creaks. You can hear the groans. You can hear the creeks and groans of the ice all around. but you can hear the ship's timbers. The ship's timbers. It's such a good phrase that. Aye. It's a pirate phrase, isn't it?

Shibber me timbers. So the timbers were definitely shivering. Quite literally, that's what's happening here. Never more appropriate than an Antarctic story. So when you say they're being moved along by the ice, I mean, does that mean it's almost like peristaltic motion, you know, when you're swallowing something and food is being squeezed? Oh, that was very impressive.

Was it very like, what? Oh, peristalysis. You know, when you swallow and your esophagus squeezes food down into the gut, that's what happens in the human body. Is that what ice is doing, too? Do you know, I have never thought of that as an analogy before what happens in the Weddle Sea. Thank you for putting that rather revolting image in there. Anytime, baby.

But is it right? Is that what ice is doing? So what happens? I mean, one of the things that's fascinating about ice is it's never still. It's never, ever still. If it's ice on land, it's always moving. Glacier's always moving. Glacies are always moving.

we talked in the last episode about how some of the bodies of the heroic explorers who've been buried in the ice are kind of being squeezed and stretched and carried off to the coast. And so the same is true of sea ice. Like spaghetti, you said. Like spaghetti, it was. I was. Spaghetti, bag. You said I was revolting. Okay, anyway, carry on.

So land ice, glacial and so on has that capacity. It's always moving. It's always flowing. Sea ice is a little different. Sea ice is thinner. It's just basically frozen water. so it hasn't had thousands of years to build up into these great big glaciers. But it's frozen water and it has icebergs around in it that can be trapped.

But basically, it's always moving and it breaks apart and it squashes together and it breaks apart and it squashes together. I should tell you the very first time I ever saw ice and fell in love with it, the reason I'm in this mess, I'm even on this program, is I went to stand on the sea ice in the north and in the Arctic. And that was a ship that was frozen into the ice. It was called a Sheba project. It was deliberately done. It was a ship that had been allowed to freeze into an ice flow.

and was floating around, and they were doing experiments. So we were measuring the air and the ice and the water underneath it as a column. And they wanted to use that to put it into climate models and understand how the Arctic was really changing. So I actually flew in there on a plane with skis, and we landed on the frozen sea. The ship was basically just a hotel. And he came off the ship and you took skis-doos around the places. There were huts.

There was a risk of polar bears. You had to carry rifles around the place. But it's really hard to get your head around. There's a ship and there's ice all around, but it was like solid ground. There was one point I was walking along with a couple of the researchers, and one of them stamped, stopped. He just stopped, and he stamped on it. And he said, don't forget, it's the frozen ocean down there.

You're walking on water now. And that was such a wild feeling because it just felt like solid, solid stuff. And then every so often on the sky, you could see a kind of patch of gray. And if there was a patch of gray, it meant that there was some open water that they call a lead of open water. and the sky is reflecting the kind of dark of the water instead of the light. So you can try to navigate by those. You kind of look for that and you try to sail down them.

But when the seas are locked around you, you can't try and find the leads. You're hoping that the ship might be carried by the ice towards a bit that might be open. You might be able to break out. You try and chip and use axes on the ice around the ship. But you can't. Basically, there was one point where Shackleton went into the cabin of his captain. And he just said something really extraordinary. he said, it's only a matter of time.

What the ice gets, the ice keeps. Whoa. Good sentence. Good sentence. I mean, honestly, that sort of hairs on the back of your neck. Yeah. So, well, so they're exercising the dogs, they're playing in the ice, they're doing their own exercise,

they're kind of waiting to be released from the ice so they can carry all their expedition, which Shackleton knew. He knew it was only a matter of time. So how, I mean, there was nothing, I guess, that he can do. so and food will run out. You haven't got an end of supply of food and drinks. So, I mean, what is the clock that's ticking away inside in that he's trying to hide away from his men?

The clock that's ticking away inside him is not worrying about food. Remember, they had enough food with them to go across the entire continent. He's not worried about food. What he's worried about is his ship. He's losing the ship. Remember that they sailed in there if he'll lose the ship. They've got a couple of lifeboats. And apart from that, they've got nothing.

Oh, yeah, how the hell do you get out? Yeah, a good point. Yeah. So then what does he do? So he waits and he waits and the men wait. You can't dig or sort of let off charges or anything like that. Well, the ice gets, the ice keeps. So you can try, you can kind of hack away at it.

You can try and convince yourself if you're doing something that might help. But no, it's a one of the many things that I love about Antarctica is even today, even today with all the technology that we have and with all of the resources that we have, we can throw all the money in the world at it. if Antarctica says no, it's final. It's a wonderful feeling, actually. It's a wonderful feeling. It's like you feel small.

People often said to me when I say, why do you go there? They'd say, I love it because it makes me feel small. And not small like in a bad way, but small in the face of nature, a remembrance that we are actually dependent on this. And nature is bigger and stronger than we are. So at some point, the creaking of the ship turns into cracking. And the ship is, I mean, once the ship is cracked, that's lost and the ice has got the ship.

So he has to abandon it. So, yeah, how does that, what does that look and feel like and how does that work? This is one of the ways in which you can understand now what kind of man Shackleton was because it became abundantly clear they had to abandon the ship and he gave the order to do that. And so they carried stores off onto the ground. They carried off the boats. Everybody was allowed to take two pounds of stuff and no more. two pounds in weight.

I think this is also interesting because it shows you, you reevaluate what's actually important to you. People threw away money and took photographs. So what actually has value in a circumstance like that? There's a nice little factoid, which is apparently one of the ships crew had a banjo. And Chaklinson said they had to take that along with them as well. That wasn't counted in the two pounds.

And the reason was the banjo was vital mental medicine. Vital mental medicine. And he has this wonderful line. He gathers the men around him and says, ship and stores have gone. So now we'll go home. Exactly. That tells you precisely what kind of man he is.

Because you imagine you're standing there. You've lost your ship. You're in the middle of nowhere on the ice and this frozen ocean. Nobody knows where you are. Nobody's coming for rescue. And he says, so now we'll go home. And there's no radios or anything. You can just.

Nope, no, no, no. It's just unthinkable. It's unthinkable. So what I love is that you said men threw money away. and they kept photographs. Shackleton throws sovereigns into the snow and this wonderful thing that he does. He tears a page from the ship's Bible. Do you remember the verse that's on it? Do you know it? I do very much remember it. Okay. So it was from the book of Job and it was out of whose womb came the ice. And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it, the waters are hid as with the stone.

And the face of the deep is frozen. Oh, how fabulous. Isn't it? Okay, so now they've done this sort of funeral. It could be a funeral service for themselves. I mean, it's got the Bible, it's got throwing away worldly goods, but he's determined that they are going to live. So, I mean, are we talking about men who are dragging lifeboats behind them with stores?

What does it look like? So one of the things that's strange about sea ice and that makes it very difficult to go across is I said that the sea ice is shifting all the time. And so you have this incredible silence. when you're anywhere in Antarctica. It's just silence that's palpable. It feels like it's the loudest noise you've ever heard in the world because it's so absolute. But when you're on the sea ice,

you can hear the kind of moving and the cracking of the ice as well as the cracking that you'd heard in the ship. And what happens is when it breaks open, it makes these leads of open water, but then they crash back together and they make kind of mini mountains of piles of piles of ice. So if you're trying to walk over it, it's not this flat surface as it would be up on the upon the continent. It's piles and rock the mountains and you're trying to drag these heavy lifeboats with all your provisions over them and trying to make headway. And as you're making

headway, the ice could be moving you back anyway. You're trying to move in the direction of something that might be land, but the ice is shifting with you. And the idea is he's trying to take the boats to open water. Exactly. Take the boats to open water, get to land, and then try to figure out how you can be rescued or how you can rescue yourselves is the plan. So they're trying to do this and eventually it becomes clear that it's just not going to be possible to get over all these kind of matters of ice. So they just make camp on an ice flow, which they call patience camp, and they sit there and they wait, and they wait for the ice to carry them. So now their boat is the ice, and the ice is carrying them around the place, and they're just camped, and they're waiting.

How long do they have to wait? It was months. They were finally released in April the following year, so they went from October to April, sitting in this patience camp. Cricky. So they're just sitting there for six months? What are they doing? With a banjo. I mean, with a banjo.

Does it make it better? Does it make it worse? No, it makes it a lot worse, Gabriel, as you well know, I guess. Okay, so then they're moving finally. I just, I'm just very interested in knowing, you know, when they are trying to get over the mountains of snow and ice, is it just that they are navigating from compass? Is that all, what do they have to try and work out where they are and how to get somewhere? They have compasses, but they also have, and this is going to be important in the story afterwards,

you can use a device which is called the sextant. What you do is if you take a picture of the sun at noon, so you know exactly what the time is, and you take a picture of the sun, you can tell whereabouts you are. And so you can use that as a means of navigation, but you need sun and you need the sextant. And so in a way, they would know where they were drifting, but they had no control over it whatsoever. They were just waiting for open water so then they could try and figure out where to go. So all these months later, they finally get to water. Then what, I mean, what happens next? What they need to do is they need to find shelter because April is heading into winter.

So they spent the whole summer sitting on this camp, the summer that they should have been walking across Antarctica. So now they get into open water and they head for the nearest land, which turns out to be a godforsaken little spit of an island called Elephant Island. They knew it was there, they head for it, they land on it. I have visited Elephant Island. I was very fortunate to do that. on the same trip where I went to South Georgia, and this was two years ago. And I tell you, our ship made a circumnavigation of this tiny little speck of rock and ice. And I have never felt, I felt that the loneliness, the solitude, it was almost painful, it was rolling from it. I've never felt anything more strongly from a place, a geographical place in my life, just emptiness, loneliness, solitude and this little speck of rock that's on the

edge of the Antarctic continent with nothing and nobody and nobody ever coming to get you. And that's where they landed and that's where they managed to make some kind of camp with one of the boats. And they were going to be okay for food. There were penguins around. They could use those. Remember, the sea has lots of food in it and they're on the edge of the sea. So they're going to be okay for food and fuel because they can use the penguin oil and seal oil for fuel.

But are they going to spend the rest of their lives on this small spit of lander? are they not? That's the question that Shackleton had to face. Well, so I guess, I mean, the answer is waiting and doing nothing. It doesn't feel like it's something that's in his personality to wait and do nothing. He would never do that. No, because, I mean, you know, that's almost condemning your men to death and it's not the thing that he does. So he sends out a mission to try and find help. How does that work? He doesn't send out a mission, darling. He leads a mission because he's a leader. He would never send out to mission. He goes and does it. Because he is Shackleton. So he decided to do something that is both impossible and completely bonkers.

It is completely bonkers. He decides they're going to refit one of the boats that they have, the rescue boats. He's going to refit it to go out into the open sea on a mission to try to get to a tiny speck of land, a needle in the haystack of the South Atlantic. The closest land is Cape Horn. He can't get to Cape Horn because there's incredibly strong westerly winds that are going to blow them off course if they tried to go straight north. When you say it's the closest, it's 900 kilometres away, so it's not close. So Cape Horn is not close, but it's 900 kilometres away.

But they can't get to that because these westerly winds are going to drift them. So they have to aim for something, 1,200, count them 1,200 kilometres away. And it's one tiny bit of land. You miss it, and you're out in the middle of the South Atlantic, and there is nothing else. So the chances of hitting this have to be extremely small, bearing in mind that we're heading into winter. And it's South Georgia again. It is South Georgia. It's the famous island of South Georgia that they're aiming for.

So there's where all the way that's that's how they knew about it. And it's one little boat seven metres long. Yep. It's called the James Caird. I've actually been there and sat in it. You can't begin to imagine a boat like that going out into the open Atlantic, especially the stormiest seas in the world, especially when it's coming onto winter. It is completely stark, raiding bunkers. It's quite a story.

Well, I mean, God navigators used to try and, they try to avoid Cape Horn at all costs because they used to sink people. And they're just sort of sailing to try and find this needle. in the stormiest seas. What was life like on that boat? So it wasn't great. Wouldn't be great to be left behind either. No, it wouldn't either.

Nobody had an easy job. But so there were six of them on this little boat. And, you know, you were either keeping watch, or you're trying to figure out where you were, you're trying to navigate, or you're kind of climbing into a soaking, wet, freezing, cold sleeping bag and trying to get some sleep while the boat's crashing

and banging all over the place on these mighty seas. And to get, you know, there's not many times when the sun is actually there. and when the sun is there, the way you navigate is that your navigator kneels down and holds up this extant to try to take a picture of the sun and two other people brace against him and hold him up while he's doing it and tries to get the snap and says, okay, we're here, we need to try and steer in that direction while this little boat's crashing around on all the waves.

And largely in the dark? Well, you know, you have daytime as well as darkness there. Remember, also you're heading into winter where the nights are getting longer, but you're heading out of the Arctic Circle towards South Georgia. But there was one amazing moment when Shack. One of the crew and this little boat had lost the glove. And Shackleton took off his glove and offered it to the guy. And the guy said, I'm not taking it.

And Shackleton said, if you don't take it, I'll throw it into the sea. Wow. I like him so very much. I like him so much. I love him. He's my favorite of all of the Antarctic heroes. That's why I said before about him failing to get to the South Pole. I think he's a real hero because he made the bravest decision in the world not to carry on.

And he's making brave decisions all the way when it comes to rescuing his men right now. So, I mean, for 14 days, there they are, buffeted around in cold, you know, semi-darkness with some sunlight, trying to get a picture from this extent while the world is just spinning around you and you're just, I mean, it's just such an excellent picture that you've painted. And they see cliffs of South Georgia. They've found it. They've done it. It's a miracle. How long, how long are they in the boat for? That was for two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks at sea. Yeah. So, I mean, God, I mean, are there any records of what they're. they felt when they suddenly sighted land? I mean, I don't think anyone's ever been so delighted ever. Well, yes and no, because they cited land. They've done it. They've made it. But unfortunately, along comes a storm. Oh, where do you know? The storm grabs the ship, nearly sinks it. I say ship,

grabs the boat, nearly sinks it, and takes it to the wrong side of the island where they just about managed to land it on the opposite side of the island from where the whaling station is. So they do manage to get to land. They have made it to South Georgia. Unfortunately, they now have no tent, no way of camping, and a 36-hour march should try to get from this side to the wailing station. On foot, because the boat is wrecked. We should say the boat is completely wrecked on the wrong side of the island. It is. So now they have to walk. Let's take a break. Gosh, it's just too much for my poor heart. Honestly, okay, join us after the break when we find out what happens when you have got, you know, you're broken, your ship is wrecked and you still have to walk

for your salvation. Welcome back. Gosh, this is a such a fascinating story. We're so delighted to have Gabriel Walker as our guide through some of the most inhospitable land on the planet. The story of an imperial adventure and Shackleton right at the heart of it. So you left us before the break,

Gabriel Walker. They've been carried, and I think it's 150 kilometres around the wrong side of this needle of an island of South Georgia, and dumped away from the wading station, away from food, help, whatever they could have, you know, actually really relied on, heat, warmth, dryness, and they have to walk. And do we know what they are thinking and feeling about that? I mean, does Shackleton ever lose heart and think, oh, God, I can't do this anymore?

The only time Shackleton loses heart is when he's back in the UK trying to raise money for ships or trying to give talks or whatever. When he's out there in the middle of the worst possible still of the worst possible circumstance, he never ever lose his heart. He's the most extraordinary leader. So they arrived there, they now know it's going to be a 36-hour forced march without means of shelter, without food to get to the whaling station. Having just had this extraordinary journey on the James Kerr managed to find South Georgia, so they start walking. And by the way, British Marines and others have actually tried to reproduce that walk

with modern equipment and not manage. So it's over the mountains and the centre of this island to get to the other side of the waiting station. Well, one of the things that Shackleton does, this. He lets his men sleep. He doesn't take all of them. He takes two of them. He leaves the others behind us. So he lets his men sleep for five minutes. And they wakes him up and says that they've had half an hour. If they sleep for longer than five minutes, he thinks that there's a risk that they will actually go into some kind of hypothermia or something. But he tells them they've had half an hour's rest and then they get up and walk on. Presumably he's not sleeping

at all then. I mean, if he's playing this trick on his men and having to have the wherewithal to keep them going. And so, and they make it, they make it to grip. The first people to see These three men who are now ragged and filthy and exhausted and bearded and hairy and screams and run away. Not exactly what you're looking for for your rescue. But along they go and then the head of the wedding station discovers who they are, they get fed, they get cleaned up and the ship is dispatched to rescue their companions on the other side of the island. So so far so good you've got six people saved from the whole disastrous expedition. Now you would think that you would then put your feet up, curl around a cup of hot chocolate and give people caught in a sick, coffee trot.

Could you bring the others back because they're waiting for us? He doesn't, does he? He doesn't do that because that's not his thing, is it? So what he actually did, first of all, he cabled the admiralty and said, I need a ship to rescue my men. But do remember, he was Anglo-Irish, he was a merchant seaman, he wasn't Navy, so why would the Admiralty send a ship to help him? So that was a big fat no. And one of the things that Chakotam was really worried about, he had to be the one that rescued his men. He didn't want to send someone else.

He had to be the one that went back. And meanwhile, what's been happening on this Elephant Island is that the guy who he left to actually oversee the men who were left there, there were 22 men on Elephant Island, every single day he told them to pack up their stuff. He said, the boss could be coming today. Oh, they need to be packed and ready. Oh, they have such faith in him. Every single day, they're packing up the stuff. The boss could be coming today.

the boss could be coming today. And he had to be the boss. He had to be the one that rescued them. But he couldn't get a ship. So then he managed to borrow a ship from the Eurogrine government. And they sailed out to rescue the men, but they got beaten back by the ice of the Weddle Sea. Remember that we're now heading into April, May.

It's the winter in the southern ocean. So he goes back, twice again. This time he gets a ship lent to him by a British ship owner. Off they go again. What's the time gap at this point? This time, they're going back, it's just a few days. So they're going back to the sailing out, getting beaten back by the ice, back to South Georgia, back out again. Not sitting down with a cup of hot chocolate.

I need another ship. And then the third time turns out to be the charm. But it's in this, it's ridiculously. It's in this kind of little steam tugboat that's Chilean that he manages to get. And off he goes again. And this one manages to get through. So it gets through. And you can imagine.

So you've just spent, you know, a year. Your ship's been trapped. It's sunk. You've had patience camp. you sail to Elephant Island. The boss has gone off with the boat. You're waiting every day. And then suddenly this little Chilean steam tug shows up.

And they're going, what? And then it puts a boat down. And then the unmistakable figure of Ernesthackleton climbs into the boat. And the ragged cheer. The boss is back. The boss came today. And a ragged cheer goes up on the coast. And how long has that been since he left?

So now he'll have been, it's weeks. It's more than a month since he left. And they've just every day they've been packing up their stuff. So then an hour later, they're all off and they're on the boat and they're heading back to South Georgia. And that's when they find out that the world has gone mad. That's when they find out that the World War I started. And can you imagine this too that I think the level of camaraderie, the level of bonding

that must come from this experience. I even experience just a tiny bit of it, just being in Antarctica and being among the people that spent the summers there, the winters there, you start to get kind of bonding. But if you've actually, you've gone away from the world. world. You've had your life on the line all the time. You depend on so much on your companions. You don't know what's going to happen. You've been living really up close with them on the ship and the disaster of the ship, on patience camp on elephant island, and then suddenly bang, off it goes, because they immediately go off and enlist. Oh, no, they do. Yeah, so they scatter. They enlist. And then that's the,

camaraderie is just evaporated in one shocking new reality that they've encountered. And can I just point again, just remind people, they return in May 1917. Yeah. So they have been away for a very long time. They deserve a break, but they just go and enlist and throw themselves into the maelstrom of World War. Yeah. And do

any die in the war? Yes, they do. So none of them, Shackleton never lost a man under his commands. But then they did go off and die in the war. Because they, I mean, by 1917 in a sense, half of it's gone. Yeah, it's bad. How did they even pass the physicals, though?

I mean, genuinely, how did they pass the physical? I mean, and supposedly some of them are of an age that isn't, you know, ripe for fighting anymore. I mean, what shape are they in when they get back that they can sign up? They didn't all in this. And they didn't all in this. And they certainly weren't in great shape when they got back. But, you know, it's a, it would remember the level of patriotism that existed then as well. And I, you know, I have to be part of this.

And I just think about the breaking of that fellowship in such a every day, you know, the hoping and hoping to be rescued when they do. then some of the deepest bonds that you've ever made in your life are suddenly gone. Plus you're heading for the trenches. Plus you're heading for the trenches. Well, so I heard that Shackleton actually, because of the, you know, the rigors of this adventure, has a heart condition. And, you know, he's really not a very well man.

And he's drinking quite heavily, too. Yeah, I mean, you would, wouldn't you? I mean, my God, you would. But he's still begging them to send him to the front in France. Yeah. And he didn't stop, it's the same thing, he didn't stop. His expeditions either. Remember, he must have known when he was back at home, he wasn't magnificent.

And when he was in these circumstances where, you know, the vividness, the realization that he could be everything who he was born to be when he was facing these kind of horrors and terrors and facing these great adventures, then the craving to do that must have been really strong. And he ended up dying of a heart attack. I visited his grave. It's now there in Gripican. Where did he die? He's buried in South Georgia. I believe he could die there And so, and his grave, you know, lots of people make a pilgrimage there, I went to see it.

What was he doing back there? Or did he have his body taken back there? I don't know that. I don't know whether he died on South Georgia. I know that his grave is there, but he certainly died of a heart attack. It's funny, because quite a lot of the great explorers, you know, think of Lawrence of Arabia. He's buried in the home counties. Quite a lot of them come back to die.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, fair more on our own time, buried in the Cotswales. But he is in South Georgia. Yeah. But the reason, I guess, you know, We shouldn't skip one step before him dying. I mean, again, right till the very end, this man is such a bloody-minded doer because he manages. I mean, he doesn't get sent to the French Front, which is what he wants.

They send him to Buenos Aires instead to boost British propaganda because, you know, he's the pen. I mean, he is getting accolades now because he's done it. He's done what Scott couldn't do. So, you know, he's a hero. He is a hero and they need propaganda heroes in the time of war. They send him to South America. He's not a diplomat, and yet, you know, he's sent to do the job because he has, such a powerful face. He tries to persuade Argentina and Chile to enter the war on the allied side,

but that doesn't work. Doesn't succeed, no. And I think it's interesting. I don't know if you want to stay with the war or move on, because one of the things that becomes interesting about this is this podcast about empire, and this is the imperial trans-Antarctic expedition. But one of the things about Antarctic and Chile, as I said earlier, we know the name of the first person who was born on this continent. But I also said that Antarctica is a continent dedicated to peace and science. So you can have scientific bases there, but you can't use it for any military purposes and you can't use it to exploit minerals or any other resources there. So when did that system come into play? That was in the 1950s when the Antarctic Treaty came into play and it's still, it's still in

play. So it's an extraordinary level of cooperation that takes place. Most unusual in human history. It is, it is. It is. And I think lots of different countries actually claimed slices. of Antarctica. If you think about it, Antarctica looks a little bit like a smudgy circle. And so they claim sizes like sizes of cheese, all kind of met in the middle. So, or slices of pie. And it's 11 countries. I mean, it's not just, you know, the big four, it's 11 countries. And the British claim is not where you might expect where Scott sort of set off on the, on the Ross Sea to walk off to the South Pole and so on. The British claim is around the peninsula and the park where elephant island is and so on. And that overlaps with Chilean claim and

Argentinian claim. By the way, the Americans have never made a claim, but they have a base at the South Pole, which is where all the different claims meet. So they've actually got a foot in everybody else's claim. I think that's like that. But they say, and all of these bases are supposed to be for science. And yet, of course, they're all there for geopolitical reasons. So all of those claims got put on ice with the Antarctic Treaty. but they're still there. They haven't been cancelled. And so the Argentinians and the Chileans, all of the bases that I visited, almost all the base I visited, they ban children. So there's only, it's only adults there and you're there for doing science or for supporting the science. And so it's only adults.

But the Chileans and the Argentinians actually sent pregnant women to Antarctica to have their babies there so that they could colonize it so they could claim it as a colony. Really? When did they do that? So that's why I told you, we know the name of the first, the only continent on earth where we know the name of the first person who was born that his name is Emilio Marcus Dasdespalma. He was born on the 7th of January, 1978, in Esperanza base, which is not very far from Elephant Island. There's a novel there somewhere. So I visited Esperanza, and it's really, they still send families along with the scientific researchers. They don't send pregnant women anymore. But it's just the weirdest thing. You look around it. And like any other Antarctic base, that's a science base, you see whether labs are and you see, where the labs are and you see, where the buildings where people sleep and you see where the food is and where the helicopter pad is. And then you see Eskuela school. And you go there and you go in there, there's little tiny chairs and tables and it blows your

mind because they're still sending families and they still want to make sure that they can make it clear that they kind of claim this as a colony. When you get onto a ship in Argentina to sail to Antarctica, they hand you, welcome to Antarctic Argentina. And people who are born there actually have Antarctica. Jellé and an Antarctic, Argentinian, and their passports. So they'll have that in their passport. Gosh, has a national...

Why is it that Shackleton's never got the sort of patriotic national pat on the back that Scott has got? Why is Scott Scott of the Antarctic, but Shackleton's just Shackleton? Shackleton is the Antarctic. Well, you know, Anita just said, you know, he had all these accolades. He'd succeeded, but he hadn't succeeded. In a way, it was a mighty failure because it was supposed to be walking across Antarctica and didn't even get to the coast. but what he did do was this massive incredible adventure and heroic and brave and daring. And leave no man behind.

Yeah. So he was daring. He was heroic. He was very charismatic. He was terrific speaker. So he was being used for that. But I think also the British love a heroic failure, don't they? Yeah, no, we do.

Eddie the Eagle. You don't see Amundsen of the Antard. The Amazon made it to the South Pole first. He's kind of a hero in Norway. Dr. Briden on his pony coming into Jalalabad at the end of the Afghan war, all that sort of stuff. Exactly, exactly. And then Dan Snow goes and discovers the boat. Yes, yes.

And that was really, I have to admit, I had mixed feelings about that. Because it was unbelievably, for me, unbelievably exciting to see those pictures and to sort of know that it was real, even though I knew that it was real. And then it was there. But then there was, of course, all this talk about can we bring it back up? can we bring artifacts up from it? And it would be really exciting to see those. But there's a part of me that kind of feels like rest in peace. There's no bodies on it.

But it feels like it's there as part of this story because it's sort of supposed to be there now. And I know I'm a pointy-headed scientist. I don't sort of kind of believe in these things, but I also kind of do. As a pointy-headed scientist who also has sort of one of their feet in the world of politics, when you do climate science, which is inherently political now, so hotly. political. Do you think that Antarctica will one day become part of somebody's empire, or is it going to retain that very special status that it has at the moment, like this big cheese sliced up with no one really owning it? One of the things that protects Antarctica is the thing that I said

earlier that it's a really, it's probably the place where nature expresses its power most immediately and spectacularly. Humans have never lived there because you have to take a life support system with you. There's no trees, there's no shelter, there's no fuel. If you go into the interior of the continent, there is nothing. It's just ice. So you have to take your entire life support system with you. It's really like going to another planet. And that's one of the things that's thrilling about it. But one of the things that it kind of occurred to me when I got there is I think I said earlier that all the bases, all the scientific bases have their own characteristic. And that's partly because when you go there, you find a mirror, you find yourself. So there's

nothing there. There's no human history. There's no culture. There's no indigenous culture. You find what you take with you. And, you know, this Antarctic Treaty, I think, was forged in part because when you're there, if something goes wrong, you need everyone to help. So if somebody gets sick in one of the bases, everybody musters. You're Antarctica and before you're anyone else. Your countries can be at war back home, but here where it's so hostile and it's so difficult, you just help. You just do. I heard that again and again. You feel part of the place. You feel part of the people. And I think that's contributed to the continuation of this sense of collaboration. But there's another thing which is, it's really hard to exploit resources. At Antarctica is really strong.

If you want to drill for oil, the ice moves 10 metres a year. So you want to drill down under the ice. You've got to have a rig that can handle that. And the temperatures, and you've got to bring everything in there. You've got to bring all your food, all your shelter, all you. So it's really, really hard to exploit it for anything that you can possibly get anywhere else in the world. But I'd say one other thing, which is that maybe, just maybe, it can be a model for the rest of the world because we are coming up against our resources. I've just come back from COP28 in Dubai, and it's depressing. We've been fighting. I've been working on climate change for 30 years and been fighting and fighting to try and get solutions to it, and people are still in denial.

But, you know, I think as we bump up against the realization that we are all in this together, just as in Antarctica, when you're all in it together, you start to reach out. And this time at COP, so many people were reaching out to me to say, you're on that side, I'm on this side. Can we talk about how we make bridges to make this work? Well, it's a lovely thought to end with. Gabriel, it's been utter complete delight, honestly. Fabulous, fabulous.

Thank you so much. Oh, I loved it. You've lit us both out like Christmas candles, honestly. It's been amazing. Thank you so much. And what a brilliant way to bring our Christmas mini-series on ships of Empire to a close. Join us again on Tuesday as we return to our series of Empires of Iran. This is the second part when we look at the post-Islamic history of Persia.

And we focus first on the Shana me and Ferdazi and the whole rebirth of Iranian language and culture with the wonderful Vesta Sarkos-Kirtis. Until the next episode of Empire, it is goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William. Drupul.