The Scuttlefish

“Men Wanted: for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

This ad ran in a London newspaper in 1914 and is considered one of the greatest advertisements of all time. It was placed by Sir Ernest Shackleton on the eve of his third expedition to Antarctica, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. His plan was to be the first man to successfully travel across the entire land-mass. No one had even attempted this before, let alone succeed.

The expedition turned out to be an abysmal failure, an Epic Fail of heroic proportions. And most interesting of all, the celebrated ad is almost unquestionably fake.

It’s hard for one country to have two great Antarctic explorers. The public’s attention span can typically only wrap its collective mind around one, solitary hero, and Ernest Shackleton wanted to be that man. The problem is that England already had its hero, in the form of Robert Falcon Scott, who had led the Discovery expedition to Antarctica from 1901-1903, and had reached what was for then the closest man had ever gotten to the South Pole. Shackleton was actually on the expedition, and even accompanied Scott on on the long march to get close to magnetic south, but was sent back to the ship due to ailing health. Shackleton never forgot how close he was to glory, only to be sent away.

The Endurance, sinking below ice bergs. The sled dogs that are watching were later shot and eaten as food for the starving men.

Shackleton led his own expedition, the curiously named Nimrod, in 1907, and was able to push even closer to the South Pole. Now he could claim to have stood closer to the South Pole than any other man, beating out not only Scott, but other ambitious Norwegians and Germans.

It went like this throughout the early 20th century, back and forth, different explorers trying to get closer and closer to the South Pole. A trip to Antarctica was truly harrowing. The boat ride alone could lead to catastrophe. Ships had to navigate ice bergs in frigid weather to find a place to set up base camp, and then hike in-land from there. It was pretty much expected that your ship would get caught in the ice and would have to be hacked out.

Scott eventually made it to the South Pole in 1912, but he and the four men who accompanied him all died on the 800-mile march back to their base. Britain was in a patriotic frenzy, like all of Europe (Scott died two years before the outbreak of the nationalist Great War), and he became an instant hero, Britain’s noble explorer.

In 1914, Shackleton was ready to be crowned the true victor. He wanted to do a land crossing of all of Antarctica. The expedition sailed two boats, each going to an opposite side of the continent, so in theory Shackleton and his crew would have a ride waiting for them when they crossed.

What happened was a disaster. Shackleton’s boat, the Endurance, got frozen in ice within a month of entering the Weddell Sea. They didn’t even reach true land, just ice bergs. They waited out the winter on the boat, and the melting ice of spring actually crushed the boat, sinking it. Shackleton and his 27 men were forced onto an ice berg. They were well out of traditional shipping lanes. They had no radios. No way of correspondence. They had no escape. So they built Patience Camp to rest, and to plan. It was the closest they would get to the South Pole on this expedition.

While Shackleton failed to meet his goal of crossing Antarctica, the tale of how he got his men off Antarctica is one of the great hero stories of all time.

Shackleton crammed the men into the the Endurance’s three lifeboats, and managed to sail to the inhospitable Elephant Islands, about 100 miles north of Patience Camp. From there, he selected an elite crew of six, and bulked up one of the lifeboats, the James Caird, for a life-or-death crossing of the wide-open Southern Ocean. It took them 2 and a half weeks to travel the 800 miles to get to South Georgia Island, a known stopping point for whaling ships. While in the open ocean, they were hit by gales that Shackleton described as the largest waves he had ever experienced in almost 30 years at sea.

This map gives a sense of the plight of Shackleton, as well as the failed attempt of the 2nd boat the Aurora to make it to the other side of Antarctica. Courtesy of wikipedia.

When they got to South Georgia Island, they were on the wrong side of it. Life was on the north, and they were on the south, but the boat was too battered and two of the six men aboard were too sick to keep sailing. So Shackleton and two others hiked the never-before-explored terrain, and after 36 straight hours, with Shackleton giving much of his food to his ailing companions, they arrived at a Stromness station. Civilization. They were saved.

He rounded up his men on the other side of the island, then the men on Elephant Island. Only three men died out of 28 over the course of almost 3 years of being stranded, a true epic of endurance and survival.

If I had to re-cap this journey in a 140-character tweet, rather than a thousand-word essay, I’d say: “Antarctica. The boat sinks. Shackleton sails 800 miles through a huge storm, then hikes 36 miles to find help. What a bad-ass.” And I’d have 14 characters to spare.

Mission unaccomplished, but it’s a great story. However, Scott remained Britain’s one true hero.

That is, until the 1950s, when attitudes started to shift away from Scott, and towards Shackleton. And it can be largely traced to an advertisement.

In 1949, an American named Julian Lewis Watkins published the book The 100 Greatest Advertisements. His top-ranked ad was by none other than Sir Ernest Shackleton, the “Men wanted: for hazardous journey” ad. You can actually see Watkins’ entry of the ad on Google Books. It’s worth looking at, because it is clearly not the original ad, and Watkins spells “honor” like an American would, not like the British Shackleton would have. Watkins claims that Shackleton placed the ad in 1900, which would have been a few years before Shackleton accompanied Scott on the Discovery. That’s weird. It doesn’t make much sense for Shackleton to do the recruiting for an expedition that he didn’t lead.

According to PBS’s website on Antarctic exploration, Shackleton placed the ad in 1914, just before the botched Imperial Trans-Antarctica Expedition. However, as other scholars love point out, Shackleton was already quite famous in 1914 (not as famous as Scott, but still famous), and would not need to solicit help. It is well-known that he had almost 5,000 applicants who wanted to join the expedition. To these skeptics, it makes the most sense that the ad would have been placed in 1907, leading up to the Nimrod expedition, because it was Shackleton’s first time leading an expedition, and he was not well-known at the time.

This confusion in dating, coupled with the drama of the advertisement itself, led Robert B. Stephenson of The Antarctic Circle to offer $100 to anyone who could produce the original ad. He posted the unofficial contest on the website in 2001. He chronicles the research attempts of the various enthusiasts who have searched for the ad, but no one has yet to find the ad, anywhere, after nine years of some considerable searching. The overwhelming consensus from the Antarctic Circle that there was no such advertisement, and that Julian Lewis Watkins, for some strange reason, made the advertisement up.

This is even more intriguing because of the recent resurgence in Shackleton hero-worshipping, particularly within the niche market of business education. Shackleton is praised as a leader and a marketing genius, a man who knew how to put together a successful team, and who then led them selflessly and heroically. Websites with names like “Inherent Excellence” and “The Sales 2.0 Network” can not get enough of the ad.

"All Safe, All Well." This photo supposedly depicted the rescue of the men left at Elephant Island, but it was later discovered that it was the photo of the three lifeboats originally leaving Elephant Island. The other two boats were scratched out by the photographer.

So why would an ad guy from the late 1940s make up an advertisement about a failed Anarctic expedition? Who can really say. But what we can acknowledge is that the (fake) ad has done wonders for Shackleton’s reputation in the 21st century. You typically hear about the ad first, then Shackleton’s heroics second.

I’m willing to exponentially increase Stephenson’s offer of $100 to anyone who can find the original ad. I offer you something more valuable than money. If you can procure the original ad, I promise “honour and recognition in case of success.”

James Caird Society Shackleton News