What do adventurous explorers do when they’re stuck on a ship pinned in by pack ice in the Polar Arctic, surrounded by life-threatening cold, darkness, and dwindling provisions?
The crew of the Nimrod Expedition of 1908, led by the famous British explorer Ernest Shackleton, decided to author, illustrate, and publish a book, Aurora Australis.
This rare 94-page book, produced in one of the most extreme environments on Earth, will arrive on Sotheby’s London auction block this week and is expected to see bids above $100,000. The bound book, believed to be the first produced on the continent and in extraordinary condition, is filled with portrait sketches, illustrations of daily life, and essays written by crew members.
The front and back covers of the book were made from polished wooden pieces taken from the boxes in which the explorers packed provisions. The artist, George Marston, reproduced his illustrations by printing from aluminum plates. It is, without a doubt, a wondrous creation.
When the Nimrod expedition set sail from England, it carried plenty of expected provisions: animals, food, water, navigational tools, and essential crew. But it also carried a printing press, along with two crewmembers who were given rudimentary instruction in how to operate it, as well as a resident artist.
As the captain of the Nimrod expedition and the editor of Aurora Australis, Shackleton encouraged his crew to write poems, stories, and essays about their voyage while holed up in their winter quarters, according to Sotheby’s expert, Richard Fattorini.
Shackleton was an unusual explorer and commander. An affable Edwardian, he loved poetry and kept a library for his crew—not what you’d expect from a man who, as a boy, had an unimpressive academic record at school and who abandoned his studies early to join the merchant marines. And yet Shackleton was known for having memorized long sections of poetry that he insisted on reciting to anyone onboard who would listen.
On his second expedition to Antarctica in 1914, where his men would spend 497 straight days without touching land, he recorded the ships holdings as including a copy of Robert Browning’s poetry and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. On reading the latter, Shackleton wrote, “We sympathized with him and wondered what he had done with the albatross; it would have made a very welcome addition to our larder.”
This desire to delve into poetry after the rough hours laboring against the sea’s swells was a legacy from home, according to the biographer Roland Huntford: “Like many middle class Victorian households, the Shackletons cultivated poetry, partly as entertainment, and partly as moral uplift.”
I fear there aren’t many Shackletons left these days: video games have replaced poetry as the new entertainment, drawing us into their make-believe worlds of danger and adventure where pixels replace ice storms, all from the safety of the middle-class couch. To be sure, we still have our thrill-seekers and our poets—every generation does—but life for most people is easier and flatter, an eternal recurrence of pre-fab routines.
Aurora Australis reminds us of a different way of living. It is a powerful example of what comes from cycles of adventure and boredom, of moments of genuine and intense peril that require great endurance followed by extended stretches of slow reflection. It is a volume produced by a huddle of rugged men cramped into obscenely close quarters, with only a chess set, ukulele, science experiments, books, and homespun theater to while away the months. Just two pages were printed each day—and that was on good days, according to Shackleton’s memoirs.
There were no toasty coffee shops or plush offices on this expedition, or anything remotely similar to the work environments that populate today’s artsy metropolitan hubs. But these men, who were attempting to reach the South Pole, had something far more beneficial than comfortable atmospheres: they had harrowing, life threatening days followed by long, isolated months at sea (and on ice), experiences that shaped the art they created.
Most parents today wouldn’t ship their children off on high seas explorations (many won’t even let their kids walk to school by themselves), but plenty of mothers and fathers worry that their children’s sense of adventure is being stifled by endless obedience to school calendars, camp calendars, and after school commitments that lock our children—for better and for worse—into assignments, test dates, and micromanaged routines.
I wonder: If we asked our children to write a poem or keep a diary about their days and years from elementary school through college, would there be any grand heroic moments worth remembering in verse? And would our busy sons and daughters even have enough time to think and reflect upon the powerful moments that may occasionally disrupt even the most efficient mother’s best-laid plans?
As Shackleton’s story reminds us, we should make more of an effort to cultivate those moments of adventure and reflection, lest we raise a generation of children who suffer from adventure deficit disorder.
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