Polar Friction: the relationship between
Marshall and Shackleton
by Leif Mills
In 1906 Ernest Shackleton met Eric Stewart Marshall at a house party in London.
Shackleton told him about his idea of organising an expedition to Antarctica which
would try to reach the South Pole. In 1903 Shackleton had been sent home from
Antarctica after the first year of the Discovery Expedition by Robert Falcon Scott and
after the two of them, together with Dr Edward Wilson, had returned from their
journey to what was then the ‘farthest south’ - 82˚ 17΄ S, over 460 geographical miles
from the Pole but the nearest anyone had been to it. Shackleton was angry that Scott
had sent him home, allegedly on medical grounds, while the majority of Scott’s
expedition stayed on for another year in Antarctica: he was now determined to return
and lead his own expedition there.
Marshall said he would like to go with Shackleton on what became the British
Antarctic Expedition and Shackleton accepted him there and then. Marshall had just
qualified as a surgeon from St Bartholomew’s Hospital that year. Shackleton
suggested he go on a training course on surveying and then he could be the
expedition’s surgeon, surveyor and cartographer and could also be the principal
photographer.
There was never any doubt that Marshall would be one of the party that Shackleton
would take on the southern journey to try to reach the South Pole and it was Marshall
who advised Shackleton on the fitness of the others who might be included in that
party. In many ways, therefore, Marshall was an indispensable member of
Shackleton’s expedition; yet on the voyage down from New Zealand to Antarctica,
during the long Antarctic winter at their base at Cape Royds and on the actual
southern journey, Marshall constantly criticised Shackleton on his diary, sometimes in
almost vitriolic language, and seemed to have nothing but contempt for him.
It is perhaps not surprising at all that with 15 men landed on the coast of Antarctica,
spending the winter in a small wooden hut there, and then four of them journeying
some 1,400 miles into the Antarctic interior and back with inadequate clothing,
equipment or food, that tensions would arise and tempers between the men would get
fraught. Similar frustrations, anger, friction and resentment have been the case in
many, if not all, polar expeditions. During the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration,
however, such feelings were rarely mentioned in the published accounts of the
expeditions: any bad feelings had to be hidden from public view. In any case, often
the strength of feeling among expedition members abated when the expeditions had
returned home.
However, what is particularly surprising is not only the vehemence of Marshall’s
feelings towards Shackleton but that those feelings showed no sign of abating during
the next 50 years. In 1952 Marshall in one letter [1] described Shackleton as an
‘attractive crook’ and in another letter [2] to a different correspondent in 1956 wrote
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that he thought Shackleton was ‘an outstanding plausible rouge’ and again in another
letter [3] was ‘the biggest mountebank of the century’.
Equally surprising, perhaps, is that much of Marshall’s criticism seems to be of
Shackleton’s personality and habits rather than the organisation of the expedition as
such.
Shackleton had originally intended to take a party of six men to try to reach the South
Pole. He also was going to rely on ponies as the main means of transport. If pertinent
criticisms of Shackleton’s organisation were to be made then the choice of ponies for
transport was an obvious one and yet Marshall made no adverse comment on this at
all.
Shackleton took 20 Manchurian ponies with him on the Nimrod when they sailed for
Antarctica from New Zealand at the beginning of January 1908. He also had nine
dogs and a motor car. He wanted to experiment with the car as transport on the ice
and took the dogs for short journeys around their base hut. It was the ponies though
that would serve as their main means of transport support on the southern journey.
During the storms on the way down to Antarctica one of the ponies in the narrow and
cramped stalls on deck was so badly injured it had to be shot; another was shot just
after they landed at Cape Royds in McMurdo Sound because it too was severely
injured. Three died later from eating the volcanic sand near the hut which had a saline
flavour from the sea water being swept over it. Another one died from eating some
wood shavings that contained chemicals which caused corrosive poisoning. That left
four ponies. It was not an auspicious start to the expedition and meant only four men
could attempt the journey.
Shackleton, when he envisaged that the southern party would consist of six men, had
promised Sir Philip Brocklehurst, the young geologist, that he would be one of the
party. Ernest Joyce, a former Royal Navy petty officer, was to claim later that
Shackleton had promised him a place on the party but this was never substantiated.
But if Joyce was to be included then the others, apart from Shackleton himself and
Brocklehurst, would have been James Adams, a lieutenant from the Royal Navy
Reserve, Frank Wild, another former Royal Navy petty officer (and who had been on
Scott’s Discovery Expedition with Shackleton) and Eric Marshall.
In fact Marshall took the view that a small southern party would be better than taking
six men. He shared a cubicle in the Cape Royds hut with Adams and complained to
him about ‘the uselessness of taking six men, much better to take three to four only
and four ponies, much more likely to get further south’ [4]. He did not elaborate his
thinking in his diary.
It was Marshall’s job, however, to examine the proposed party and see whether in his
view they were medically fit enough for the extreme rigours of the journey. Marshall
stated that he could not pass Brocklehurst as fit as he had suffered severely from
frostbite when on the climb of Mount Erebus, the active volcano just near their hut at
Cape Royds, and Marshall had had to amputate one of his big toes. He thought Joyce
drank too much and suffered from a possible damaged liver and possibly a weak
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heart. He was a little unsure of Adams but was quite clear that Wild was ‘the fittest of
them all’[5].
On Shackleton, Marshall was again a little doubtful. It was, of course, naturally
assumed that Shackleton would lead the southern party and nothing Marshall could
have said would have stopped this. Later, though, Marshall confirmed his view that,
medically, Shackleton was not completely fit for the southern journey, when he wrote
in a letter [6] in 1956 that Shackleton ‘never ventured up Mt Erebus for he knew he
could not have stood the altitude, 13,500 feet, and would have proved his
incompetence before the southern journey’.
The four-man party therefore was Shackleton, Adams, Marshall and Wild, and they
would leave on the journey at the end of October 1908, some 10 months after they
had left New Zealand. They were going where no one else had been, into a place
which was totally unchartered, with four ponies and food for 90 days. Shackleton took
two tents and it was his idea to have the four men switch round in the tents every
week as well as take it in turns to be cook for the week.
It was a sensible way to try to avoid unnecessary friction by mixing up the party and
to make for an harmonious journey. But it was not to be. From the start Marshall was
highly critical of Shackleton. He had been critical of Shackleton during the voyage
down to Antarctica and during the winter. His attitude was not to change.
Marshall himself must have been a difficult man to get on with: a rather arrogant and
opinionated public schoolboy (at Monkton Combe) who had played cricket, rugby and
rowed at school, then an undergraduate for a year at Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
where he also rowed, and then six years at St Bartholomew’s Hospital where he was
both vice-captain and secretary of the rugby club and from where he qualified as
Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS). At one point Marshall had
considered taking holy orders but then had decided against it.
Shackleton’s account of the British Antarctic Expedition was published as the twovolume The Heart of the Antarctic. In it he made no criticism of Marshall, nor any
other member of the expedition. Adams’ papers and notes relating to the expedition
were all lost as a result of a bomb on his house during the blitz on London in 1940.
Wild’s diaries, though, are extant and contain his views on the other members of the
southern party as do his memoirs which he wrote towards the end of his life in the late
1930s. Marshall kept a diary during the whole period of the expedition and while it
has never been published, it has been publicly available. Apart from Shackleton’s
diary published in The Heart of the Antarctic we therefore have Marshall’s and Wild's
diaries to rely on for details of the southern journey. Adams did have an interview
with James Fisher in 1958 when James and Margery Fisher were researching for their
biography of Shackleton but apparently he said little that was not already then known.
The Nimrod was a small ship, very overcrowded with – apart from the captain Rupert
England and 15 crew – Shackleton’s own 15-man party for wintering over in
Antarctica, their hut, the ponies, the dogs and the motor car. There were several heavy
storms on the voyage and conditions generally were rough. It was not the best of
times for a man like Marshall who was totally unused to sailing long distances. Nine
days after leaving New Zealand, Marshall wrote [7]: ‘Shackleton is disagreeable and
3
moody. This overcrowding makes it very hard for us but does not affect him
[Shackleton had his own cabin on board]. I suppose it will be just the same in hut.’
Marshall was then, however, not critical of only Shackleton but was to express his
view on others. On the same day he wrote: ‘Have heard that S [Shackleton] wishes to
keep Prof David on the ice. A great pity if he does, as he has S under his thumb and
can do as he likes with him.’
Edgeworth David was a 50-year-old university professor in geology from Sydney
University in Australia, and was originally intending to return from Antarctica with
the Nimrod after the ship had deposited Shackleton’s party there. Shackleton,
however, asked him to stay and he was subsequently to lead the three-man party to try
to locate the South Magnetic Pole. Another of those three was a fellow Australian,
Douglas Mawson. Mawson is now regarded as Australia’s greatest polar explorer but
in the same diary entry Marshall then said Mawson ‘is useless and objectionable,
lacking in guts and manners. I could leave him behind without a regret’.
From the accounts of the voyage and the expedition it is not clear whether Marshall
voiced his opinions directly to Shackleton on many occasions, but he did on one
particular aspect of the journey – where Shackleton would put his base in Antarctica.
Scott, in the Discovery Expedition of 1901-1904 had made his base by McMurdo
Sound in the Ross Sea area of Antarctica. He had put his hut on the shore while he
used the Discovery as the actual living quarters for the men. After Shackleton had
announced the details of his proposed Antarctic expedition in 1906, Scott had been
anxious that he would not use his [Scott’s] own base area by McMurdo Sound. Scott
was already thinking about another expedition south. From February to May 1907,
Scott and Shackleton corresponded over where Shackleton would land his party in
Antarctica. Scott used Edward Wilson to act as an intermediary for him and then met
Shackleton face to face. Scott regarded the McMurdo Sound area as ‘his’ area and
insisted that Shackleton would not land his party there.
In May 1907 Shackleton wrote to Scott saying he would have his base on King
Edward VII Land, much further along the Great Ice Barrier to the west and would not
go near McMurdo Sound. Although it is astonishing now to think that Scott had any
right to insist on where Shackleton could or could not have his base, nevertheless
Shackleton did agree and so informed the Royal Geographical Society.
Shackleton’s party on the Nimrod sighted the Great Ice Barrier on 23 January and for
three days Shackleton tried to find a landing place on the coast of King Edward VII
Land between the longitudes of 162' and 172' West, but it was fruitless. Where
Balloon Bight had been (from where Scott during the Discovery Expedition had
launched a balloon) the ice had calved away. Now there was heavy pack ice, the ship
was running short of coal, visibility was difficult because of fog and Rupert England,
the Nimrod captain, was getting anxious about the fate of the ship unless it moved
away from the area. It was not just a question of landing there but staying long
enough until all the shore party, their equipment and 180 tons of stores, the ponies,
dogs and the motor car had been landed. And if they did manage to land the shore
party, Shackleton was worried that the ice on which they had their hut might calve
away. Also, the weather and conditions were such that the chances of the ship getting
4
frozen in the ice were very real. Shackleton then decided they could not land at King
Edward VII Land after all and they would have to go further east to McMurdo Sound.
Marshall, in his diary entry for 24 January [8], wrote:
Shackleton is not going to make another attempt on King Edward the Seventh
Land … and says he will go to McMurdo Sound. If this is so he hasn’t got the
guts of a louse, in spite of what he may say to the world on his return. He has
made no attempt to reach King Edward VII Land. In short he and England funk
it. It is useless talking about it. He got very angry when I told him I was sorry he
had not made an attempt … [he] tried to make me believe he had done as much
as any human being could.
In a letter [9] written in 1952, Marshall was as equally scathing about Shackleton’s
decision to sail for McMurdo Sound:
Shack’s [sic] double cross in breaking his promise to Scott by using his old base
when other alternatives were available if he had the guts to take a risk and land at
the Bay of Whales. I have always been quite convinced that Shackleton never
intended to land anywhere but at Scott’s base.
It is clear that Marshall was being unfair on Shackleton. Shackleton did make an
attempt to land on King Edward VII Land and therefore keep his bargain with Scott,
however extraordinary that bargain was. It was relatively easy for Marshall to criticise
Shackleton but he (Marshall) had no previous experience of the sea, let alone the seas
around Antarctica, nor did he have the responsibility of leadership of the expedition.
Ironically, though, if Shackleton had managed to land his party on
King Edward VII Land they would have been about 60 miles nearer the South Pole
than at their actual base of Cape Royds and, assuming the ice and their hut did not
calve away into the sea, that might – just – have made the difference in whether they
reached the South Pole or not.
By the end of January the Nimrod was well into McMurdo Sound but held up by thick
pack ice just south of Cape Royds. They were some 16 miles north of Hut Point
where Scott’s Discovery hut was but the ship could not get there. Shackleton decided
to make Cape Royds his base and for the next three weeks the stores, equipment, the
hut, motor car, ponies and dogs were unloaded. On 22 February the Nimrod set off to
sail back to New Zealand, leaving the 15 men in their hut.
The following day Marshall wrote [10] in his diary that ‘Shacks and I are polite but
distant and [there] never will be any confidence between us’. He added that he had
‘not one iota of respect for him’. Four days later Marshall wrote [11] his most
damning criticism of Shackleton to date:
What a different show this is to what I anticipated when I first joined the
expedition. I thought I should be under a man and [was] soon disillusioned but
always hoping he would be all right on ice. Vacillating, erratic and a liar, easily
scared, moody and surly. Some chance of success if he does not start on southern
journey as he hints, on what all my hopes are centred. I have some times …
thought of returning on Nimrod.
5
Three weeks later Marshall wrote [12] an even more savage criticism of Shackleton:
I must have a talk to S [Shackleton] some time. By God, he has not played the
game and is not capable of doing so, a consummate liar and a practised
hypocrite. When he took us on he thought he had got a fool. No doubt he was
right. He had got a man who was a fool enough
(1) to take him at his word
(2) to disregard reports and certain reports he had heard of him
(3) to spend £ [sic] in prep and waiting for expedition
(4) to have the best interests of the expedition at heart
(5) who sacrificed an appointment and prospects in order to [the next words are
indecipherable] a coward and a cad, who was incapable of keeping his word. By
God, I have been a damned fool to trust him. He is incapable of a decent action
or thought.
But the party was now alone and it would be 12 months before the Nimrod returned.
During their time at Cape Royds, Marshall continued to criticise not only Shackleton
but other members of the expedition as well. He described [13] George ‘Putty’
Marston, the expedition artist, as ‘buffooning as usual’ and that he caused ‘much
amusement to low class caricatures’. In August he had a furious row with Ernest
Joyce and did tell Shackleton about it. Even then he blamed Shackleton for not taking
action against Joyce [14]: ‘he is a damned coward and would only be too glad to see
us downed. A very serious row was only just avoided but all arising through
cowardice and unmanly behaviour.’
Even Adams, with whom Marshall got on better than with any of the other men and
with whom he shared a cubicle in the hut, was criticised [15] as being ‘argumentative,
childish, hopeless; idiot at critical times’.
The other doctor in the shore party was Alister Forbes Mackay (who was one of the
three-man party which went to the South Magnetic Pole). He was sharing a cubicle
with William Roberts, the expedition’s cook. In August Mackay’s temper snapped
with Roberts. It appeared that the cook had put his feet up on Mackay’s sea chest to
lace up his boots. Mackay got his hands round Roberts’ neck and made an attempt to
strangle him. Mawson intervened and stopped the matter from getting any worse.
Again, Marshall managed to blame Shackleton [16]: ‘Shackleton in a regular panic
about it and threatens he will shoot [Mackay]. This is the second time he has said this
re Mac. He is so easily frightened that he is not to be trusted with a pistol.’ There is no
record of the other occasion to which Marshall referred.
Shackleton had tried to make sure that relations in the hut would be as amicable as
they could be given the cramped conditions there. In contrast to Scott’s arrangement
in the Terra Nova hut on his second Antarctic expedition (where the officers’ part of
the hut was cut off from the men’s quarters by rows of packing cases) there was no
division between any of the members of the expedition. Marshall, however, seemed
determined not to be mollified by Shackleton at all even though he was almost
guaranteed a place on the southern journey.
The loss of six ponies meant that Shackleton’s original idea of having a western party
to explore part of King Edward VII Land and also a party to go to Cape Crozier to
6
visit the breeding grounds of the emperor penguins had to be abandoned. In March,
Shackleton agreed that six men would climb Mount Erebus, the active volcano just
near their hut. After the Antarctic winter then there were just two objectives of the
expedition: one was a party of three men to try to locate the South Magnetic Pole in
South Victoria Land to their east; the other was the four-man party which would try to
reach the South Geographical Pole.
There was certainly friction between the three members of the South Magnetic Pole
party and, at the beginning, particularly between Mawson and Edgeworth David.
Later, though, much of that friction was forgotten. In Shackleton’s party, however,
there was considerable friction between Marshall and both Shackleton and Wild.
Marshall himself never criticised Wild – except on one occasion during the Antarctic
winter when he thought Wild had drunk too much – but Wild, in his diary, was
scathing about Marshall, even writing some of the more purple passages in his own
form of code. Basically Wild thought that neither Adams nor Marshall were pulling
their weight once the ponies were dead and the party had to man-haul their sledges.
He also thought that Joyce and Marston should have been in the party rather than
Adams and Marshall.
Wild was to maintain that if Joyce and Marston had been in the party then they might
have made faster progress and reached the Pole and returned safely. As it was, he
wrote [17] on 11 December:
We are all dead tired tonight, except perhaps Marshall, he does not pull the
weight of his food, the big hulking lazy hog. Shackleton pulls like the devil,
Adams does better than I thought he would and I am quite certain that for days I
have been pulling over 300 lbs. I would tell Marshall and Adams what I thought
of them only for the sake of poor old Shackleton.
Wild made several similar comments in his diary and once wrote [18] that ‘Marshall’s
trace was so slack that Shackleton fell over it’. Wild’s brother Laurie wrote [19] in
1974 that ‘his [Frank’s] bitter feeling against Marshall’s selfish laziness had not
entirely subsided after his return home. He said that if Joyce and Marston had been
substituted they would probably have reached the Pole and returned safely.’
Shackleton, however, insisted on one of the polar party being a qualified doctor and
that had to be Marshall.
Marshall wrote several criticisms of Shackleton on their outward journey but there is
no criticism on their return journey. Perhaps because of the extreme privation and
conditions they had, which – coupled with their shortage of food, the appalling cold
and bad weather – gave them little thought of criticising each other as they were,
literally, in a prolonged struggle for survival.
On two occasions on the outward journey Marshall commented on Shackleton’s
apparent brutal way of controlling the ponies but Wild made no mention of this at all.
Well into the outward journey Marshall wrote [20] of Shackleton’s ‘ignorance and
incompetence’; he expressed [21] no sympathy for Shackleton’s temporary snowblindness as Shackleton ‘would not wear large goggles’; again [23] ‘Sh [Shackleton]
as cook is hopeless, he is feeling the high altitude a little’.
7
It was 9 January 1909 when the party reached their furthest south. Marshall wrote
[24]:
Turned out at 2 am, blizzard having barely finished. Had hoosh and started for S
[southern] march with small supply choc and biscuits sugar. Marched hard till 9
when we hoisted the Queen’s flag in lat. of 88˚ 23΄ S. The highest, coldest,
bleakest, windiest plateau in the world, the great King Edward VII Plateau.
When the expedition had returned to England there was some doubt among members
of the Royal Geographical Society as to whether the party had actually got as far as
they had claimed – 97 geographical miles from the South Pole. Clearly once
Shackleton realised that they would not be able to get to the Pole and stand a chance
of returning safely he was anxious to get within 100 miles of it; but there is no
evidence for any falsification of the latitudes.
On 3 January, Marshall had recorded a latitude of 87˚ 27΄ S and on 6 January had
written [25] in his diary ‘lat. 88˚ 5΄ S. Tomorrow we make our last dash without the
sledge’. However, a severe blizzard kept them in their tent for the next two days.
Wild in his diary recorded latitude 88˚ 5΄ S on 6 January and also latitude 88˚ 23΄ S on
9 January. Shackleton also recorded the latitudes and it is almost impossible to believe
that all three men conspired together to falsify their position.
But there is one disturbing point left. When the Fishers were researching for their
biography of Shackleton in the 1950s, Margery Fisher asked Marshall about the
claimed southern latitude of 88˚ 23΄ S. In a letter [26] to another correspondent in
1958, Marshall wrote that he would not comment on it but that ‘the facts will be
disclosed in a sealed statement, before or after my death’. In fact such a statement was
never disclosed. Also, Marshall never publicly departed from the claimed latitude. As
late as 1942, in a letter [27] to the British Medical Journal, Marshall wrote about the
southern expedition and that they had ‘reached the highest latitude man had ever
attained – 97 miles from the Pole’.
There was no criticism of Shackleton in his diary entries – necessarily much shorter –
for the return journey. And nowhere, either on the outward or return journeys, does
Marshall make any criticism of Wild or Adams. He did record when either was ill but
that was all. Then, surprisingly, after two particularly arduous and back-breaking days
when coming down the Beardmore Glacier and on to the Great Ice Barrier, Marshall
wrote [28] on 28 January ‘Sh [Shackleton] has stood it wonderfully’, but he added
‘Wild and Adams played out’.
Each of the four men was ill at various times. Eating the meat of the dead ponies,
which they had depoted on their way south, sometimes caused dysentery. There was
snow-blindness, severe headaches, constant hunger and cold and very difficult
travelling surfaces. Their journey of 1,400 miles altogether is one of the most
harrowing ever undertaken in any field of exploration and their hardship lasted right
to the end.
Towards the end of February, Marshall fell ill with dysentery. Shackleton wrote [29]
in his diary ‘Marshall suffered greatly, but stuck to the march. He never complains.’
8
But Marshall’s condition got worse and he collapsed. They were 33 miles from the
Discovery hut at Hut Point. Their position was now desperate. Shackleton decided he
and Wild would go themselves to try to reach the Nimrod – which they hoped would
be waiting for them as arranged – and fetch help for Marshall and Adams whom they
would leave in the tent.
On 27 February, Shackleton and Wild set off. Shackleton had previously left
instructions at Cape Royds that if his party was not back at Hut Point by the 25th of
the month then a relief party should be landed. He named 28 February as the last
possible date when they would reach Hut Point. By 1 March when Shackleton and
Wild were in the Discovery hut there was still no sign of a relief party or anyone else
from the expedition. Then they sighted the Nimrod just coming towards them round
Glacier Tongue. They went on board and stayed there for just three and a half hours
when Shackleton started back – with three others (but not Wild) – to rescue Marshall
and Adams. They found them and three days later they were all back on board the
ship. Shackleton had been over four days with hardly any sleep at all – as well as
being exhausted, cold and hungry – and had marched to and from their last camp in
very difficult conditions, and his behaviour and leadership had been exemplary.
Marshall, however, in his diary made no particular reference to Shackleton’s relief of
him and Adams. Years later in 1956 he was to claim [30] that on the return journey
Shackleton ‘should have died in the Beardmore Glacier unless I had taken over after
he proved his incompetence and I led them until Wild and Adams collapsed’. On 25
March 1909 the Nimrod reached Lyttleton in New Zealand and there the party split
up. Marshall never went to the Antarctic again.
Many years later in 1950 he wrote in a letter [31] that when Shackleton was planning
his crossing on Antarctica from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea via the South Pole
(the proposed Imperial Transantarctic Expedition)
Shackleton offered me command of this expedition [Ross Sea Party] but I would
not seriously consider accepting it unless I had a final veto on selection of staff. I
also considered the chances of crossing the Antarctic Plateau were too remote to
be considered seriously and that any work I put in for that object was a waste of
time, when I had interesting work in my own time.
In 1956 Marshall sharpened up – or embroidered – his recollection when he wrote
[32] in a letter that Shackleton had at different times made ‘two offers to me to serve
again with him [which] I turned down with contempt’. One offer record of what the
other offer was unless it was a reference to the relief expedition that the Admiralty
was considering in 1916 having learnt that the Aurora had been swept away by the ice
from Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party and been unable to land any of their stores or
equipment.
When John Stenhouse, the captain of Aurora, returned to England he had informed
the Admiralty of the plight of the Ross Sea Party. When Marshall heard about the
proposal he volunteered to join it. In the event the relief expedition never
materialised. But it was hardly a case of Shackleton offering him a chance to serve in
Antarctica again – Shackleton was out of contact with the outside world at the time of
the Admiralty proposal.
9
Although Marshall never went to Antarctica again, he had got a taste for exploration.
Nine months after landing back in New Zealand about the Nimrod he was in Dutch
New Guinea.
To commemorate its 50th anniversary the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU)
organised an expedition to undertake ‘the zoological exploration of a totally unknown
land of vast and unlimited promise as regards scientific discoveries’ and in particular
to explore the interior of Dutch New Guinea and the central snow range of mountains.
Preparation for the expedition had started in 1908 and sufficient funding – though
restricted – came from the British Government, the Royal Geographical Society, the
Ornithologists’ Union itself and from private individuals.
The original date for the expedition’s departure was in May 1909 but the Dutch
Government would not give permission then for them to land there. There was a
Dutch expedition in New Guinea at that time and the feeling was that the Dutch did
not want any British expedition to overshadow theirs.
In July 1909 one of the members of the proposed BOU expedition had withdrawn and
it was suggested that Eric Marshall should be asked to substitute. Marshall was
approached and he agreed to serve as assistant surveyor and doctor. There were five
other members, four forming the ornithological section and two (including Marshall)
the geographical section. Walter Goodfellow of the ornithological section was the
expedition’s leader.
The Dutch Government then gave permission for the British expedition to proceed.
They also insisted that 40 Javanese soldiers and what they called ‘convict coolies’ –
nearly 100 of them – should accompany the British party in addition to the 10 Gurkha
soldiers who were the only escort that the BOU had originally wanted. Many of the
former were to give the expedition a great deal of trouble through indiscipline and illpreparedness.
The BOU expedition members left England in October and on 4 January 1910 landed
in New Guinea. Seven days later one of the members disappeared and his body was
never found. A replacement was sent from England some months later.
In mid-March 1911 the expedition members sailed home to England. The expedition
had lasted 15 months. Although they had obtained nearly 4,000 specimens of birds –
of which 25 were then new – and some 250 mammals, the expedition was not a
success. They never explored the full mountain ranges. There was a suspicion that he
Dutch Government had deliberately led them to go up the wrong river (leaving the
main and more direct river to the interior to another Dutch expedition); the jungle
conditions were very difficult, many native inhabitants were hostile, the weather was
often very wet and hot, their equipment was scant and there were arguments between
the BOU members.
Marshall kept a diary of the whole 15-month expedition. Ten days after they had
landed in New Guinea (another example of his almost instant judgements) Marshall
wrote [33] ‘all disgusted with the hopeless lack of organisation … prospects are
10
distinctly depressing’. In 1955 Marshall wrote [34] in a letter that ‘three months
would have completed this expedition of bloody fool Woolaston …’.
Goodfellow was invalided back to England in October 1910 and another expedition
member returned in December. Once replacement was sent out and the chief surveyor,
Captain Rawling, was made leader. Marshall seemed to have got on well with
Rawling – in contrast to his relations with Goodfellow – and in September wrote [35]
to Scott Keltie, the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, in Rawling’s support.
Marshall wrote:
A statement has been made and which I hear on good authority has reached you
that ‘Rawling does not get on with the other members of the expedition’, this is a
gross fabrication and has not a grain of truth for its foundation … the fact
remains and can be born out by the other members of the expedition that the
members have never failed to get on well with one another.
Marshall’s statement was not convincing. Very surprisingly too, in March 1910 he
had written to Shackleton appealing for his help in sorting out the problems of the
BOU expedition.
This letter [36], dated 15 March 1910, is quite friendly and almost fulsome to
Shackleton and inevitably casts doubt on the genuineness of Marshall’s attitude to
Shackleton.
Marshall addressed the letter to ‘My dear Boss’ and wrote:
By the time this letter leaves, the beginning of April, we shall have been 3
months in the country, with nothing to show for it, and the future prospects of the
expedition looking as bad as can be … a little collecting has been done but
nothing of any value.
Then Marshall attacked Goodfellow as expedition leader:
Now for the facts re the way the expedition is being run. Goodfellow, who is
responsible for the organisation and funds, has shown himself hopelessly
incapable … Now, re stores and equipment, which you must know were
hopelessly inefficient. The tents and flies are of the poorest quality and are
already much torn and worn, no repairing material being provided … this is the
result of placing a half Spaniard, on his mother’s side [Goodfellow], in command
of a British expedition. We are all so sick about it that Rawling would clear out if
it was not for the £750 put in by the RGS, and I can say the same for myself, but
for the £500 you put in.
There is public reference to the fact that the BOU was considering approaching
Shackleton for funding for the expedition but this is the only reference to whether
Shackleton actually responded to it positively.
In his long letter Marshall then wrote:
I am telling you this that, as a subscriber and interested in the expedition, you
can make what use you like of the information and take what steps you think
11
necessary. Goodfellow should get the boot and no doubt R. [Rawling] is the best
man to run it, in fact I shouldn’t serve under any other.
Then – even more surprisingly in view of what Marshall had written about Shackleton
in the Antarctic – he wrote:
Now for more pleasant matter – I heard of the dinner the Expedition gave you at
the Berkeley. I join with others in wishing you hearty congrats. And only regret
that I was not there to offer them in person.
There is no record of any reply; indeed, Marshall in his diary wrote later about his
regret that Shackleton had not replied to him. In spite of his complimentary remarks
about Rawling, Marshall, however, did write in his letter in 1955 that ‘Rawling’s
survey work was unreliable’.
There is a rather cryptic reference in the records of Monkton Combe School to
Marshall and the ‘Balkan War 1912’ but no details there or anywhere else. The only
reference that Marshall made to this period in his life was in his letter [37] to the
British Medical Journal when he wrote about different diets to combat disease
(especially scurvy and beri-beri) and included the phrase ‘When trailing
Martinovitch’s army in the Montenegrin mountains in 1912-13 I learnt the value of
yaghourt cheese and the virility of the mountain tribes there and in Albania bears
testimony to the merits of a local diet, and not out of tins’.
There is also reference in those records to Marshall attending the Department of
Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 1912. In June 1914 he was in Antigua in the West
Indies researching into the cause and effect of hookworm but, on the outbreak of the
First World War, he hastened back to England.
Marshall joined the royal Army Medical Corps and was commissioned as a second
lieutenant in April 1915 just before he landed in France. As Marshall had a short
service commission – and not a regular commission – his details are not held in the
official RAMS records. However, there are references in the National Archives to
him.
Marshall was probably attached to a battalion of the rifle Brigade for most of the War.
He was mentioned in despatches (by Sir Douglas Haig, Commander in Chief of
British Armies in France and Flanders) twice: once in April 1916 for service at Ypres
and another time for service at the Somme in May 1917. He was awarded the Military
Cross in January 1918. By the end of the War he had attained the rank of acting
Major. While in France in 1916 he had volunteered to join the relief expedition that
the Admiralty was considering, to go to the aid of Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party. His
offer was not taken up as the relief expedition never took place.
In the autumn of 1918, Marshall was posted to Archangel in northern Russia as a
member of the British North Russian Expeditionary Force. British forces had been
landed in Murmansk and archangel earlier that year to safeguard the large amount of
stores and equipment that the Russian Army had left there – prior to the Bolshevik
revolution in November 1917. The British Government knew, too, that the Germans
12
had an army of 55,000 troops stationed in Finland and could use it as a submarine
base from which to attack Allied shipping in the North Sea.
After the armistice ending the First World War was signed in November 1918, the
British troops stayed on in northern Russia and in effect acted as supporters of the
local anti-Soviet forces (known as the ‘Whites’) against the Bolshevik forces (known
as the ‘Reds’). The British were joined by several thousand American troops and
some from France and Canada. There were separate Russian generals in charge of
their own ‘White’ armies in both Murmansk and archangel. Shackleton was given a
temporary commission in the British Army and sent to Murmansk with the rank of
Captain to advise on stores and equipment needed for the British troops.
In fact several former members of Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions were to be
posted to either Murmansk or Archangel during the period of the British intervention
there. Dr Edward Atkinson, the surgeon on Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition, was
stationed briefly in Archangel and there Marshall met him. They had previously met
in France two years earlier (and also at the School of Tropical medicine) and,
apparently, on each occasion discussed – and argued about – the cause and effect of
scurvy. Marshall was pleased that on the Nimrod Expedition no cases of scurvy had
arisen whereas he was convinced that scurvy had severely affected the outcome of
Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition. Atkinson each time denied this. It is claimed that
while in Archangel Marshall did meet up with Shackleton but there is no record of
this.
Marshall was in command of a Convalescent Depot from November 1918 until
January 1919. Then he was given the post of deputy assist and director of medical
services (DADMS) in charge of sanitation services. The majority of those under his
care, apart from some of the allied forces and local civilians, were captured soldiers of
the ‘Red’ forces. Marshall was particularly aware of the dangers of scurvy amongst
them and by his insistence on proper diet managed to avoid this in the main. During
this time he was presented by the local Russian general with the order of St
Stanislaus. Marshall remained as DADMS until the end of July 1919 and then
returned home to England where he was discharged from the Army with the rank of
Major. The North Russia Expeditionary Force left the country shortly afterwards.
While at Murmansk, Shackleton – getting bored with his formal task of looking after
clothing, boots and other equipment – looked round for an opportunity to start a
business venture to exploit the local timber and raw materials resources. As ever he
was desperately short of funds and was searching for means to make money. That
area of northern Russia was poor, cold and lacked much infrastructure but did offer
opportunities for commercial exploitation. Shackleton made a number of contacts
with local officials in and around Murmansk and Archangel and, particularly, senior
‘White’ Russian military commanders in order to secure the necessary concessions to
set up a local company and exploit the natural resources of the area. After the British
forces (and the other Allied forces) withdrew form the country and the Bolshevik
forces defeated the remaining ‘White’ forces, Shackleton’s dream of establishing a
proper commercial company collapsed.
Marshall was responsible for writing up the formal ‘War Diary’ during his time as
DADMS and there is no reference in it to his meetings with Shackleton or Atkinson.
13
There is, however, one reference in a letter he wrote [38] in 1956 ‘in N [North] Russia
Ironside warned him [Shackleton] that he would be court-martialled if he sought
“concessions” whilst in the King’s uniform’. General Ironside was the commander of
the Allied forces at Archangel and wrote an account of his experiences when he
retired from the Army. In his book Ironside mentioned Shackleton as being posted to
the North Russian Expeditionary Force but made no reference to the incident to which
Marshall referred.
Shackleton died on the way to South Georgia on this ship Quest in January 1922. At
that time Hugh Robert Mill, the former librarian at the Royal Geographical Society,
was researching for the first biography of Shackleton. He was in touch with many of
the men who had served with Shackleton, including Marshall. Marshall wrote [39] to
Mill in September that year stating ‘Shackleton was a complex character’ and then
added ‘the story of Wild and the biscuit is not true’.
This was an odd statement by Marshall and it is difficult to understand why he wrote
to Mill in such terms.
In his diary entry for 31 January 1909 – on the southern party’s journey back from
their furthest south – Wild, who was then suffering from dysentery, had written [40]:
Shackleton privately forced upon me his one breakfast biscuit and would have
given me another tonight had I allowed him. I do not suppose that anyone else in
the world can thoroughly realise how much generosity and sympathy was shown
by this. I do and by God shall never forget it. Thousands of pounds would not
have bought that one biscuit.
Shackleton did not refer to this incident in his book and H.R. Mill stated that Marshall
and Adams were unaware of it. The only person who referred to it was Wild himself.
He repeated the reference to it in his memoirs when he wrote [41]:
Shackleton and I were packing sledge ready for a start when he suddenly stuck
his one and only biscuit into my pocket. My expostulations were in vain; he said
‘your need is greater than mine’ and threatened, if I did not keep it, to bury it in
the snow. All the money that ever minted would not have bought that biscuit and
the remembrance of that sacrifice will never leave me.
Certainly the incident cemented Wild in his being ‘a Shackleton man’ but there is
absolutely no reason why he would have invented it; and, equally, no logical reason
why Marshall should have claimed that the incident never happened. Mill did include
a reference to the incident in his Shackleton biography as did the Fishers in their
biography over 25 years later. Marshall later dismissed the fishers’ biography with a
withering comment [42]: ‘it is a thrilling Boy’s novel of adventure’.
In 1922 Marshall got married and later Enid Marshall gave birth to a daughter. In the
1930s he and his family moved to Kenya and for a while he practised farming. After a
few years they came back to England. Then in the Second World War, Marshall
rejoined the Royal Army Medical Corps and achieved the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
After the War ended, Marshall joined the Ministry of Pensions as a medical officer.
When he retired he and his wife moved to Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight. In his
14
retirement Marshall would occasionally write letters to the newspapers and it was a
letter in the Sunday Times that aroused the interest of Dudley Everitt. Everitt and
Marshall then corresponded from 1950 till 1959 and in that correspondence Marshall
referred to his Antarctic experience and also his time with the BOU expedition in
Dutch New Guinea. He also corresponded during that period with Dr John Kendall, a
general practitioner from Epsom, in Surrey, who was researching into scurvy.
In the letters to both Everitt and Kendall, Marshall had lost none of his invective nor
harsh feelings towards Shackleton.
To Kendall in 1951 he wrote [43] that ‘Shackleton was never physically fit to carry
out any of his programmes, so the legend still stands!!’ The following year – after
seeing Diana Morgan’s play about an Antarctic explorer called Starcross (who clearly
resembled Shackleton) – he wrote [44]:
Shack planning his second expedition to cross the Antarctic continent [the
Endurance Expedition], knowing that he was physically incapable of severe
strain at 11,000 feet, and knowing that he could never pick up the depots which
cost 3 lives to lay, solely to prove he was a great ‘leader’ and that others had to
pull him out, e.g. Worsley. The third expedition [the Quest Expedition] in an ill
found ship was equally ill conceived & for the same purpose.
Marshall was probably right in his view about Shackleton’s health and that he did
have a heart condition but may well have overestimated the effect of this. Certainly
Shackleton died from a heart attack at the early age of 47. That condition, however,
made it all the more remarkable that Shackleton did achieve what he had achieved
both in the Nimrod and Endurance Expeditions. Perhaps Marshall was a little
chagrined that despite his views on Shackleton’s health, Shackleton did achieve so
much. This may have been why Marshall always tried to denigrate what Shackleton
did and – where Shackleton’s achievements could not be gainsaid – he attributed the
reasons for success to other men.
In another letter [45] to Kendall, Marshall returned to the decision of Shackleton to
land the Nimrod party in McMurdo Sound in 1908 and how he believed Shackleton
had never seriously intended to land other than in McMurdo Sound.
Marshall also mentioned a curious incident in a letter [46] to Everitt. When he was
back from the Nimrod Expedition Marshall drew a map of their southern journey. It
was copied at the Royal Geographical Society onto linen and Marshall claimed that
Scott took it with him on his journey to the South Pole. The linen map was never
found afterwards and the records on which the map was based – which Marshall said
he had left with the RGS – disappeared. He wrote to Everitt that ‘I have every reason
to believe that these records disappeared whilst in their [RGS] possession and I am
further of the opinion that they have been wilfully destroyed – but proof, No.’
In a later letter [47] to Everitt, Marshall wrote: ‘Shacks was biggest mountebank of
this century but when they blow his gaff [sic] England has no polar explorers of
merit.’
In a way Marshall’s written comments about Shackleton are a bit pathetic. His
bitterness towards Shackleton he had carried with him for 50 years. Yet, as his letter
15
to Shackleton in 1910 form Dutch New Guinea shows, he could express feelings of
admiration and friendship towards him. There is a basic inconsistency in his attitude.
While Frank Wild was scathing about Marshall’s performance on their outward
southern journey in 1908-09 it may have been Marshall’s self-justification for what he
knew were his shortcomings that made him so critical towards Shackleton. But even
that does not explain why Marshall seemed so anti-Shackleton only a few days after
the Nimrod had sailed from New Zealand at the beginning of 1908.
Marshall died in 1963. He had had a long and adventurous life; a distinguished war
record; his place in the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration was established. Equally
Shackleton’s place in the Heroic Age is well established. Both men were strongminded, somewhat egocentric, easily irritated at what they perceived to be the
weakness of others and perhaps it was no surprise that they did not get on well with
each other. That Shackleton never publicly nor, as far as we can ascertain, privately
criticised Marshall is a measure of his magnanimity and leadership. That Marshall
was to criticise Shackleton even 50 years after the event is a testament to his failure to
rise above the rather small and somewhat petty – though in horrendous conditions –
feelings that polar expeditions often engendered.
References
Key to references:
AGEJ is A.G.E. Jones
BBC is British Broadcasting Corporation
BMA is British Medical Association
DE is Dudley Everitt
DNG is Dutch New Guinea
EM is Eric Marshall
ES is Ernest Shackleton
FW is Frank Wild
HoA is The Heart of the Antarctic, Heinemann, 1909
HRM is Hugh Robert Mill
LW is Laurie Wild
ML is the Mitchell Library
RGS is the Royal Geographical Society
SK is Scott Keltie
SPRI is the Scott Polar Research Institute
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
EM letter to JK 17 August 1952 (RGS)
EM letter to DE 23 January 1956 (RGS)
EM letter to DE 30 August 1956 (RGS)
EM diary 3 May 1908 (RGS)
EM diary 12 July 1908 (RGS)
EM letter to DE 23 January 1956 (RGS)
EM diary 9 January 1908 (RGS)
EM diary 24 January 1908 (RGS)
EM letter to JK 17 August 1952 (RGS)
EM diary 23 February 1908 (RGS)
EM diary16 March 1901 (RGS)
EM diary 24 April 1908 (RGS)
EM diary 1 April 1908 (RGS)
EM diary 11 August 1908 (RGS)
EM diary quoted in Ralling’s Shackleton, BBC 1983
EM diary 3 August 1908 (RGS)
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
FW diary 11 December 1908 (ML)
FW diary 19 December 1908 (ML)
LW letter to AGEJ 24 May 1974 (SPRI)
EM diary 30 November 1908 (RGS)
EM diary 4 December 1908 (RGS)
EM diary 14 December 1908 (RGS)
EM diary 21 December 1908 (RGS)
EM diary 9 January 1909 (RGS)
EM diary 6 January 1909 (RGS)
EM letter to DE 30 August 1956 (RGS)
EM letter to BMJ 10 June 1942 (BMA)
EM diary 28 January 1909 (RGS)
ES diary 27 February 1909 (HoA)
EM letter to DE 23 January 1956 (RGS)
EM letter to JK 15 September 1950 (RGS)
EM letter to DE 23 January 1956 (RGS)
EM diary 14 January 1910 (RGS)
EM letter to DE 1 April 1955 (RGS)
EM to SK 4 September 1910 (RGS)
EM letter to ES 15 March 1910 in DGN diary (RGS)
EM letter to BMJ 20 June 1942 (BMA)
EM to DE 23 January 1956 (RGS)
EM letter to HRM 20 September 1922 (RGS)
FW diary 31 January 1909 (ML)
FW memoirs 1937 (ML)
EM letter to DE 30 August 1956 (RGS)
EM letter to JK 15 May 1951 (RGS)
EM letter to JK 20July 1952 (RGS)
EM letter to JK 17 August 1952 (RGS)
EM letter to DE 19 October 1955 (RGS)
EM letter to DE 30 August 1956 (RGS)
Acknowledgements
With grateful thanks to the Mitchell Library, the Scott Polar Research Institute, and in
particular to Sarah Strong, Archives Information Officer at the Royal Geographical
Society, London, for allowing me to quote from the correspondence and papers held
by the Society.
Every attempt has been made to contact the family of E.S. Marshall, but without
success: if as a result of this article any family member would like to make contact
with the author, he will be pleased to respond.
© Leif Mills, 2012. Leif has had a distinguished career in the trade union movement,
becoming President of the TUC in 1994-95, and was awarded the CBE in 1995. His
personal interest in polar matters led him to write Frank Wild (1999) and Men of Ice
(2008), both published by Caedmon of Whitby.
17