The New Yorker Radio Hour - Alone and on Foot in Antarctica

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Henry Worsley was a husband, father, and an officer of an élite British commando unit; also a tapestry weaver, amateur boxer, photographer, and collector of rare books, maps, and fossils. But his true obsession was exploration. Worsley revered the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and he had led a 2009 expedition to the South Pole. But Worsley planned an even greater challenge. At fifty-five, he set out to trek alone to ski from one side of the Antarctic continent to the other, hauling more than three hundred pounds of gear and posting an audio diary by satellite phone. The New Yorker staff writer David Grann wrote about Worsley’s quest, and spoke with his widow, Joanna Worsley, about the painful choice she made to support her husband in a mortally dangerous endeavor. This segment originally aired March 2, 2018. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Next week on the program, I'm going to be talking with my colleague and friend David Gran, one of the great nonfiction writers working today. He's got two books out that are high on the bestseller list this summer. So before that interview, I wanted to share again a story that David brought to the radio hour a few years ago. It's about the explorer Henry Worsley, the subject of David's book, The White Darkness. 3.9, 4 nautical miles over 3.5 hours travel was pleasing. Having great spirits. It was so wonderful to be back on the snow, heading south.

Good night. Worstley set out in 2015 to become the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided. He was on skis, pulling his food and his equipment behind him. Well, part of journeys are all about how fit and strong your mind. Hours in the gym cannot prepare you for that moment. You are at your starboard fades. Or from then on, you'll strip you bear. Here's David Grant.

Henry had been to the South Pole twice before, but this would be his first solo expedition, and it was also longer than his other expeditions and more dangerous than any other expedition he had ever attempted. Henry was a meticulous planner, ruthlessly whittling down all his equipment to the bare essential. most important was his satellite phone, which would allow him to stay in contact with ALE,

Antarctic logistics and expeditions, a company that helped get polar explorers on and off the continent. Each night, after a long trek, he would call ALE, give them his medical condition and his coordinates. If he was ever in trouble, he could call for what he referred to as the most expensive taxi ride in the world, which would be a rescue plane to pull him out. He also called a friend in London

so he could record an audio diary of his day which could then be posted on his website and it updated listeners about what he was going through, what he was eating, what he was feeling. He was on for most of the day whilst wave after wave of low cloud cast intriguing bands of shadow and light that raced across the surface

creating strips of light. He was incredible. incredibly good looking. And at that point, most of my friends were in the art world in books or theatre or film, and we all thought that someone in the Special Forces was very, very glamorous.

Henry met his wife, Joanne, at a party in London in 1989. He had recently completed his selection course for the Special Air Service, or S-A-S, a legendary elite commando unit. And actually, I like adventurous people. I think it's great talking to people who are adventurers. So the SAS has extreme endurance tests, which you have to pass in order to qualify.

Several people have died, even trying to take that course. Henry was among the very few who passed it. And in many ways, he and Joanna were opposites. She hates the cold. She could think of any more dreadful place in the world than Antarctica. Yet for all their differences, they shared a similar sensibility. He really was a true romantic. He loved poetry.

He loved art. He did tapestry. He stitched the most wonderful tapestry of two sledges going across the snow. He loved the history of all these old explorers. and he glamorized their lives at his head. We retreated our steps over Travasters and Blizzard until eventually on the first of March. Henry worshipped Ernest Shackleton,

who in many ways was a failure as an explorer. On his first expedition that he commanded himself, he set out to reach the South Pole with three other men. They got within 97 miles, nautical miles of the pole, But he feared that if he kept going, his men who were already fading would not make it back. Those 14 men who were my comrades, who regardless of self... And so he made a decision that always astonished Henry Worsley. He decided to turn back.

And on his other most famous expedition, Shankleton had wanted to walk across Antarctica. He thought it was the last great prize to be achieved. But before he even reached Antarctica, his ship the endurance, got frozen in the ice, and Shackleton found him and all his men marooned on an ice flow more than 800 miles from the closest island with any contact with civilization.

What made it so amazing was he was able to guide all the men in his immediate party and get them back all home alive. I can only say speaking here now that they have been loyal to the very core throughout the time to weave on the cruise. I was very interested as a child. Photographs of the endurance story absolutely captivated me.

He started reading more of the diaries on the accounts that they wrote about those expeditions. Henry found out that one of his ancestors, Frank Worsley, had been the captain of the Endurance ship on the Endurance Expedition. So, yes, this all started. He began to burn with this very peculiar ambition, with very few share, which was to kind of suffer these miseries and become a polar explorer. And the motto that he lived by was Shackleton's family motto, which was by endurance we conquer.

I should have had warning bells when he came back from a trip to South Georgia just after I first met him and was incredibly excited because he had managed to sleep beside Shackleton's grave. and it wasn't until when he was about 40 that he started really talking about wanting to do an expedition and follow in Shirkleton's footsteps. So by the time Henry was talking about doing his first expedition, he had two children, Max and Alicia.

Initially when he decided he wanted to do something that, you know, how many people say suddenly, wait a second, I want to go walk to the South Pole, his kids were a little bit bewildered. But Joanna was very supportive. I thought it was a wonderful idea. I really did. Both of us were huge believers in trying to fulfill dreams.

A lot of the time, marriage stops you from fulfilling your own individual dreams because you feel you'll have to get permission from the other person. And I felt that through my 20s, I had fulfilled a lot of my dreams. I'd had a lot of fun. And he went into the army when he was 18. And I felt that it was his turn, really. So for his third trip, he wanted to walk across Antarctica to fulfill the goal that his hero, Shackton, was not able to achieve.

But he wanted to do it alone. Well, I do the best thing is the day is mine. success or failure of this journey is completely up to me. At the moment, I'm up at 7.30, on the trail at 9 a.m. Each day was similar. I mean, Henry would get up early in the morning, pack up his sled. This usually took about an hour. His harness would be connected to the sled, and he would begin to haul it, not unlike a mule.

Well, I've been skiing for 90 minutes and then taking a five-minute break. and he would walk with his skis burning as much as 8,000 calories in a day. I've been craving food. Fish pie, brown bread, double cream, steak and chips, small chips, smoke salmon, big potato, eggs, rice pudding, dairy milk, chocolate, tomatoes, bananas, apples. He would do this Herculean task and challenge

day after day. There was something almost primal about it. And pizza. Ah, just cold weight. His singular purpose became to just make his mileage. He had to achieve so many miles a day if he was to ultimately accomplish his goal. 9.4 nautical miles today. Evening, everybody, so in sum, a tough day.

A 9.7 nautical miles or hard one. I travel a bit longer today, just over 11 nautical miles at this early stage. Everybody, day 21. 10.3, nautical miles was a disappointment. But it's simply that 14 nautical miles is all I can do at the moment in a 12-hour day. He would track for 14, 15, sometimes 16 hours across an alien landscape. It's covered with a sheet of ice.

It's pachua crevasses. A white house with just enough visibility to see the horizon greeted me this morning. It was a very tough day with many pauses. or intake of breath, leaning forward on my ski sticks, head drocks, summoning everything. At 7pm, I checked my mileage covered during the day, and it was 11-107. At 8pm I checked again was 12.9. Not enough.

So I continued until the GPS displayed 13 nautical miles. miles. Perhaps tomorrow. And at the end of the day, when he was burrowed in his sleeping bag, he would record a dispatch an audio diary, updating his growing number of listeners, including many students. Henry always called these students young explorers. Good questions, good questions tonight. Mr. Wilson wanted to know if I'd have the opportunity to ask, Shackleton. One question, what would it be?

I think my question would be, what had he learned? about leadership, what kept drawing him to the Antarctic? Did he regret being away from his wife, Emily, and three children for so long? I talked to him a lot while he was out there on a satellite phone. He found it much harder than other expeditions. That breaking ice is very hard work, and at least if you're with other people, you can take turns to be a lot. turns to be at the front.

Whereas if you're the lead skier for a thousand miles, it's a great deal harder. You've found it cripplingly hard. When he got to the South Pole, there's a research station there. But if he was to fulfill his ambition of doing this trip alone and unsupported, he couldn't drop off supplies,

he couldn't get a hot mail. And the only thing he really allowed himself was he thought he'd give himself at least a day of rest in his tent. Well, no much to report, and I detected my body heading for hibernation. I thought it best to get back into the routine and head off. He felt the constant strain of making his mileage so that he could reach the end point of the expedition

before the end of the month of January, because in February begins the winter season in Antarctica where the temperature drops even further. It can reach minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit, even ALE shuts down then. And at that point there would be no exit. I left at about 8 p.m. this evening, and only covered five miles. And he hoped that the northern journey, this last phase of his expedition,

would be a little bit easier, at least he hoped than the first phase, that after he reached something called the Titan Dome, which is this massive ice formation, 10,000 feet high, he would at least begin to descend and have the help of gravity, pushing him to the finish. If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew long after that, except that many of you will, of course, recognize those lines by Roger Kipling.

I'm getting more feeble and more empty, but I still seem to have the will which says to my heart and nerves and sinews. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. I listen to his blogs every day, They were pretty good. They were pretty upbeat. But I was just very concerned.

It was a thousand miles on his own. He was older. He was 55 when he set out instead of 40. She could hear him growing more tired, and she wondered what she should do. He worried constantly, constantly, that he was being delayed. I was in a terrible position as to whether to say, Henry, stop, just listen for a minute.

You are not going to make the end. You cannot make the end. Or say, you'll do it, darling. It's a really difficult one. I chose to say, I'm sure you'll be fine. Last night, a bad stomach. By now his entire body was in agony. His back throbbed.

All his muscles ate. His feet were bruised. Toes were discolored. He was suffering from the early signs of frostbite, especially in his thumb, which he struggled to move. He had lost more than 40 pounds. He was so tired that one day during a snack break, he fell asleep while sitting on his sled in the middle of a whiteout.

up. But you have to listen to your body sometimes. Tonight, time to get back on the trail. He kept a diary, a personal diary. This one he didn't broadcast. One evening he wrote, legs are stick thin, and arms puny.

Andy, and Andrews, Henry. Just to let you know, I'm getting into an extra hours at the moment, so my briefs will come, but they may be much shorter.

It's now nine o'clock. It was just really not right. There was something really not right about it then. His voice, his despair. He cried quite a lot. He never cried. He kept thinking he would reach the top of the Titan Dome and begin to descend.

He just couldn't seem to reach the top. And so each day he would push longer and longer. Okay details day 66, 17 jam. I'm troubled. Good evening, everybody. It's a very late broadcast. It's now 1 o'clock in the morning. In order to keep track, I must now do 16 nautical miles per day.

This makes for a very long 16 hour day. So that's what I have to do, but do it I will. As of today, this evening, I get 142 vertical miles on the finish line. The next day, day 67, his journal entry is short, and his writing is increasingly difficult to read. He wrote, mixed bag, white out, soft snow, painful while afraid of stomach, worried about time and distance. On day 68, he didn't record a message for his listeners. It's all become quite an ordinary moment, so I'm not doing any young explores. No narratives.

Could he just explain? The next day on Day 69. he scribbled in his diary, awful, had to stop after five hours, totally exhausted, feeling terrible, very deplorable, rested rest of day and into following morning, just want it all to end in a good way. He was unable to move, really, at that stage,

and he had lost control of his bowels and his bladder. We had been on the phone non-stop for two days. Me, very hysterical, begging him to pull out, and him just asking me to be patient. Henry throughout his life, especially whenever he was in danger and he was in more danger now than he'd ever been in his life, he would always ask himself, what would Shacks do? What would Shackleton do?

And he had always sought, by endurance, we conquer, was the message of Shackleton, that you can always prevail through force of mind. But the thing that set Shackleton apart from so many other explorers who went to their polar grave is that he acknowledged his human limitations and the limitations of his men, and he turned back. That was the thing about Shackleton. Henry was 900 miles into his 1,000-mile journey

when he rang ALE and called for the most expensive taxi ride in the world. Then he composed a final public message. 30 second. It shot his bolt. Today, I have to inform you who's some sadness that I too have shot my vault. My journey is at an end. I have run out of time, physical endurance,

and a simple cheer and ability to slide one ski in front of the other. I spent 70 days all alone in a place I love I'll lick my wounds and heal over time and I'll come to terms of the disappointment and Henry was resigning off

journey's end until later Ellie arrived later that day and Henry walked to the plane on his own volition he was flown to Western Antarctica to Ellie base camp and there he called Joanna

it was such a relief for me I can't tell you. He was with doctors, and he said to me, I'm fine. I'm going to stay here for a few days and just build up my strength. I'm having a cup of tea and a biscuit, and I'm going to be fine. But his condition continued to deteriorate, and he was flown overnight to a hospital in southern Chile, where they discovered he had paratinitis,

which is an infection in the abdomen lining. When Joanna Hurdy had been taken to a hospital, she hurried to get on a plane. Shortly after she landed in Chile, she received an update that Henry's liver had failed. Shortly after that, she heard that his kidney had failed. And before she could get to the hospital, she learned that Henry had died. The news of Henry's death was greeted in England with an outpouring of emotion. And he was healed as an inspiration. and as a hero, a polar hero,

much like the heroes that he had revered growing up. Hundreds of people went to Henry's funeral, including the top military brass, as well as Prince William. In December of 2017, nearly two years after Henry died, Joanna, Max, and Alicia set off for the island of South Georgia, which was where Shackleton was buried, and which Henry himself has visited many years ago.

Joanna wore the same coat that Henry had worn on his last expedition, and they carried with him Henry's ashes. It was a very special day. It's an extraordinary little bay. It has the most magical little Norwegian church, and we had a wonderful service there, and we all poured whiskey onto Shackleton's grave. They then began to climb up an icing-me-escentred.

mountain slope. And where the earth was flat, they knelt down and buried Henry's ashes. David Grant's book about Henry Worstley is called The White Darkness. I'll talk with Grant about the wager, about killers of the flower moon, and all his work on our next episode. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.