Alexandra Shackleton discusses Ernest Shackleton, 2005

Transcript of interview

He and his men got within 97 miles [156 km] of the South Pole. He could have been the first. But they were all in bad physical condition and although they could probably have got there, he could almost certainly have not got his men back safely, and he turned back, which I happen to think was a wonderful decision. And he wrote afterwards to my grandmother: 'I thought you would rather have a live donkey than a dead lion'. Her response to that was: 'Yes, darling, I would rather'. We're all defined by our priorities, and his priority was his men. Really, 'Nimrod expedition' was his first as leader, and there's another famous story … coming back from their 'furthest south', they were all pretty well starving, but [Frank] Wild, one of the company, was suffering more than the others because he had appalling stomach upsets, and Wild wrote in his diary: 'Before breakfast, Shackleton gave me his one breakfast biscuit, secretly, and said he would throw it into the snow if I did not take it. At supper he did the same thing. No-one will ever know what that biscuit meant to me. Thousands of pounds would not have bought it. Oh, God, I shall never forget this'. Shackleton didn't mention this in his diary, but from then on, Wild was a Shackleton man.