Free Shackleton's Heroes by Wilson McOrist Page B

and more than help, she edited my book from page one to the end.

FOREWORD BY SIR RANULPH FIENNES
    I WAS INTRODUCED TO Wilson McOrist, the author of Shackleton’s Heroes , by Dr David Harrowfield. David is a close colleague and a highly respected author, geographer and researcher of Antarctica. He had reviewed a draft manuscript of Wilson’s book and not only did he find it a most enjoyable read, but he was enthused by Wilson’s use of original diaries; diaries written in 1915–16.
    Shackleton’s Heroes is told through the diaries of six men. The narrative adds a new and highly significant chapter to the early 1900s British Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. The six men were the Mount Hope Party, a small team who placed food depots out to Mount Hope on the Great Ice Barrier in 1915 and 1916. Shackleton intended to use the depots on the last 360 miles of his planned crossing of Antarctica; from Mount Hope near the foot of the Beardmore Glacier to Discovery hut in McMurdo Sound. I personally can appreciate Shackleton’s logic in needing such food depots. In 1993 Mike Stroud and I had walked across the Antarctic continent unsupported and had reached the start of the Great Ice Barrier, next to Mount Hope. We too were 360 miles from our support base at McMurdo Sound and we had only eight days of food left. For us to march that final 360 miles we would have needed food depots to have been laid for us.
    The story of the Mount Hope Party is almost unknown because it has been dwarfed by Shackleton’s epic escape from the ice after his ship Endurance was crushed, the landing of his men on Elephant Island, his boat journey to South Georgia, his trek across that island and the rescue of all his men.
    The release of the diaries to the public view exposes the intimate details of the Mount Hope Party story. We experience Antarctic life of 1915–16 with the words of the men who were there. It is a gripping tale with the most tragic of endings. An integral part of the story is the six months from October 1915 to March 1916 when the men were out on the Great Ice Barrier, man-hauling sledges, battling freezing conditions, severe blizzards, crevasses, sastrugi, waist-deep snow, and succumbing to frostbite, snow-blindness and scurvy. The six men of the Mount Hope Party were halted by a prolonged blizzard, only 10 miles from a food depot and within 80 miles of their hut. In their diaries they write of Scott because they knew they were in a similar predicament, and in close proximity to where he died just four years before. Many of these struggles I can relate to, having endured similar conditions during the ninety-three days of my crossing of Antarctica in 1992–3.
    What also makes the diary release significant is that we have six diaries, one from each of the six men of the Mount Hope Party. We see events told from different perspectives. We read different points of view. And, beyond the immediacy of their writing, what makes the story even more interesting is the cast of characters. Six men of varied backgrounds, education, experience and personalities performed unbelievably heroic work, under harrowing and difficult conditions. For 100 years these diaries have remained hidden, except for the release of selected quotes in a small number of books.
    I believe the diaries of the Mount Hope Party are an Antarctic literary treasure. I congratulate Wilson McOrist for not only bringing them out of obscurity but for weaving them together so they tell the fascinating, but true and definitive story of the Mount Hope Party: Shackleton’s Heroes.
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    Ranulph Fiennes

INTRODUCTION
    I N THE BOOK South , the story of his attempt to cross Antarctica in 1914–17, Shackleton wrote: ‘I think that no more remarkable story of human endeavour has been revealed than the tale of that long march.’ 1
    He was not referring to his retreat from Antarctica when, from January 1915 until April 1916, with his ship the