Shackleton's Endurance

August 1914: Europe descends into what will become a long and bloody war. Days later, after being given the order to proceed by Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, Ernest Shackleton and his men set off to cross and conquer the Antarctic. 

Portrait of Ernest Shackleton, © National Maritime Museum, London

The expedition consisted of two ships, Endurance and SY Aurora. Meeting Endurance in Buenos Aires, Shackleton sailed with his men to the Weddell Sea, to begin their march via the South Pole. The Aurora sailed to the Ross Sea, on the other side of the continent, ready to set up supply depots along the route to the Pole, supporting the men of the Endurance on their trek and undertaking scientific research. 

Things did not go according to plan. By early 1915, Endurance had become frozen in pack ice. The crew camped on the drifting floes for months, salvaging what they could before the ship finally sank to the icy depths in November. Below are some items rescued from the expedition. 

Leonard Hussey's banjo

© National Maritime Museum, London

When the men abandoned ship, they were only allowed to take minimal possessions with them. The exception was this: the meteorologist Leonard Hussey’s banjo, which Shackleton called “vital mental medicine”, crucial to maintaining morale. They kept it with them as they made a five day journey in the ship’s lifeboats to land on Elephant Island.

Marine chronometer

© National Maritime Museum, London

From the remote Elephant Island, Shackleton decided to launch a mission to get help. He and five others set off in the James Caird lifeboat, hoping to reach the whaling station at South Georgia, some 800 miles away. The men were reliant on Frank Worsley’s navigational skills in heavy winds and rolling seas. This chronometer was probably used on their epic voyage.

Liquid boat compass

© National Maritime Museum, London

It is likely that Worsley used this liquid boat compass for navigation on that horrendous trip. The men had to continuously bail water and chip ice from their leaky boat in freezing conditions. They finally made landfall 16 days later. The exhausted Shackleton, Worsley and Crean then had to traverse mountains and glaciers to finally reach help.

Victor Hayward’s Journal

© National Maritime Museum, London

On the other side of the continent, things had also gone awry. In May 1915, Aurora was carried out to sea, stranding 10 men without much of their equipment, food and fuel. They continued to lay depots for the anticipated continental crossing, although hungry and weak. Three died. Victor Hayward, one of those men, last wrote in this journal two days before he disappeared following a blizzard.

The men on Elephant Island were rescued in August 1916; the remainder of the Ross Sea Party in January 1917. Shackleton and his men finally returned to find the world still in the midst of war. Many of them served in the conflict. Shackleton returned south once more, but died in South Georgia in 1922, and, according to his wife’s wishes, was buried there.

Written by Claire Warrior, Senior Exhibitions Interpretation Curator of the National Maritime Museum, the world's largest maritime museum, filled with inspirational stories of discovery and adventure at sea. rmg.co.uk

Second World War silk maps

When Sara Jane Murray brought home what she thought was a damaged silk scarf rummaged from a vintage fair, she soon realised she held in her hands a remarkable piece of history, and an emblem of British ingenuity

Ok, so I have a bit of a obsession with rummaging around in junk shops. I love unearthing unloved stuff. Especially unloved stuff that has a map on it. Or a globe. I have been known to stare at a globe for a very long time.

Over the years, all this accumulated stuff had to compete for space in a small Victorian cottage with two large dogs and Mr Austerity who, although rather lovely, was starting to tut as yet another 1930s enamel biscuit tin in the shape of a globe obscured his view of Newsnight. In order to restore marital harmony, I started selling at a vintage fair in Kent. 

Unfortunately, this was not the happy ending of an uninterrupted view of Jeremy Paxman that Mr Austerity had dreamt of. One danger of selling at vintage fairs is that your eye is often drawn to the myriad of interesting items on sale, and it was at such an event that I came across what I thought was a damaged silk scarf depicting a map. 

It was only when I got home I realised what I'd bought. The piece of silk was an Escape and Evasion map from the Second World War. A pilot or member of the Special Forces would have carried one of these maps in case they found themselves behind enemy lines.

MI9 British Military Intelligence Officer, Clayton Hutton invented silk escape maps during the Second World War. Clutty, as he was often called, was a true British eccentric. MRD Foot and JM Langley, in their 1979 memoir MI9: Escape and Evasion said of him: "His task was to invent, design and adapt aids to escape and evasion… his enthusiasm was as unlimited as his ingenuity, or his capacity for getting into trouble with the staid authorities of service and civilian officialdom." *

Hutton came up with the idea of escape maps after he persuaded the British Museum to collect over 50 true First World War escape stories from various second hand bookshops in Bloomsbury. He then delivered them to Rugby School Sixth Form and asked the pupils to read the books and summarise the key elements. In every account of a successful escape, the protagonist was in possession of some sort of map.

Hutton then went to Bartholomew, a world-famous map making company who, after Hutton charmed them with his eccentric wit and patriotism, waived their copyright on maps for the war effort. Hutton printed the maps onto pure silk. It was the ideal material as it was noiseless and rustle free, folded up small and was easy to hide or sew inside clothing. In blagging several rolls of parachute silk for the project, he apparently required: "A short circuit of the official system…and certain commodities acquired during the pre-war period, amongst them dozens of cases containing marmalades and jams." **

The maps were issued to the RAF and Special Forces in the Second World War and beyond. Troops sewed the maps inside the lining of their uniforms, or concealed them in the hollowed-out heel of their boot. They were even concealed inside monopoly board games and sent to Prisoner of War Camps under the guise of charitable donations.

The more I learnt about this fascinating tale, the more I wanted to share it. Further research revealed that some army regiments and ex-military personnel still had stocks that were either damaged or simply unwanted. I started to collect as many as I could, with no real plan of what I might do with them (the irony of which was not lost on Mr Austerity when I arrived home with three boxes containing over 1,000 of these maps).

And so Home Front Vintage was born. We now remake the damaged maps into cushions, notebooks, ties and lampshades for people who value British heritage and provenance. Each item we make comes with a short history, preserving the integrity of the maps and ensuring the story survives.  

And the best bit? We recently received an email from a 93-year-old ex-RAF officer who was carrying one of the maps when his plane was shot down in 1944. He'd seen our products at the RAF Museum and wrote to tell us how pleased he was that the story was being re-told. He also sent us a copy of his unpublished memoirs which, we think, is one of the greatest stories never told.

*M19, Escape and Evasion 1939 -1945, MRD Foot and JM Langley, Book Club Associates, 1979
**The Hidden Catch, C Hutton, Digit Books, 1957

Sara Jane Murray is the designer-maker at Home Front Vintage and lives in Kent with the long-suffering Mr Austerity and two delinquent English pointers. Her perfect weekend would involve long walks in weather cold enough to wear mittens, log-burning stoves, Yorkshire pudding and half a bitter shandy, if you’re asking.

homefrontvintage.co.uk

On this day: Captain James Cook meets his death on the shores of Hawaii

Explorer, circumnavigator, Royal Navy captain and cartographer, Captain James Cook is infamous for his voyages of discovery. Yet the circumstances of his death on 14 February 1779 in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii are still relatively mysterious. We know he was killed by a member of the local Hawaiian population during a skirmish between the tribe and his crew but historians are still in dispute as to why. 

One theory is that the Hawaiians had revered him as the incarnation of their god, Lono – the god of fertility – but moods soured and Cook was killed after it became clear he wasn’t immortal. A more modern explanation for Cook’s death is that tempers flared after a tribesman stole one of Cook’s boats and Cook retaliated by taking their chief hostage. In both accounts, the ensuing fight led to Cook’s demise on the beach of Kealakekua Bay.

Cook’s voyages are marked by their achievements in the fields of astronomy, anthropology, botany and medicine, as well as in the mapping of the southern hemisphere. His talents for cartography were initially spotted in Quebec during the Seven Years' War and Cook captained his first sea voyage in 1768. This first expedition set out to observe the path of Venus across the Pacific Ocean and also to discover Terra Australis (a hypothetical continent based on the hypothesis that continents in the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south). 

Cook circumnavigated the globe on three voyages and eventually managed to disprove the existence of Terra Australis as well as making many discoveries in the natural world. He also accurately mapped much of the land he did come across including New Zealand, Hawaii and Eastern Australia – Cook being the first European to reach this part of the continent. He is also famously credited with inadvertently discovering dietary cures for scurvy and thereby preventing many maritime deaths. 

Guest blogger Laura Rollo Smith loves bizarre histories, scientific oddities and clever design ideas. 

Behind the scenes: linocut illustrations

In issue one of Ernest, we explore the heritage of a timeless emblem of winter wear – the Aran sweater – born out of necessity, tradition and the fierce independence on the Aran islands, "three stepping stones out of Europe," as Seamus Heaney once called them..

To tell the stories behind the local lanolin-rich báinín wool, fishing heritage and 'handwriting' of each family weave, we called on linocut artist Jade They:

"My process begins with researching the subject and its origins, focusing on the atmosphere the article is trying to capture. I then make working roughs using hand drawn elements, which I refine as I go. I cut the final image out of lino and print it. Sometimes I'll make a few minor changes in Photoshop, but I try to keep to the original print as much as possible – it's the imperfections that make the image unique. Having an element of the uncontrollable is what makes printmaking interesting. It's something that you couldn't recreate on a computer." 

Mad, bad and dangerous to know...

In this build up to Valentine's Day, we thought we'd indulge you with tales of cads, rogues and philanderers whose antics would have had Cupid self-harming with his arrows in horror

Charlemagne: the randy Emperor, 742-814AD

Charlemagne, or Charles I or Charles the Great as he was also known, was the charismatic, attractive, 8th-century King of the Franks, Emperor and founder of modern Europe. He was also a bit of a philanderer and it's alleged that, if you're European, there's a mathematical certainty you're a descendant of this fruitful man who bore 18 children over his lifetime with eight out of his 10 known wives and concubines, and had many, many legitimate and illegitimate grandchildren. So next time you look in the mirror, remember you could be looking at the shadow of a mighty, if rather randy Emperor. You can find out more about Charlemagne and your potential ancestry in this awesome episode of QI.

Lord Byron: mad, bad and dangerous to know, 1788-1824

There aren't many Lords refused burial at Wesminster Cathedral for their 'questionable morality', but Byron is one of them. Handsome, athletic, a gifted poet and speaker of many languages, Byron was also a flamboyant Romantic, notorious for his aristocratic excesses, enormous debts, numerous lovers of both sexes and questionable ages, and possible incest, too. One of his conquests, the married Lady Caroline Lamb famously described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know." That's catchy. Fancy writing that in your Valentine's card this year?

Don Juan: the fictional libertine

Ok, he's fictional, but the name Don Juan is pretty much the byword for 'womaniser', and his story has been told so many times by so many authors (including über cad himself, Lord Byron), he earns a well-deserved place in our philandering rundown.  Despite the many interpretations of Don Juan, his basic story remains the same. In the first works by Tirso de Molino, Don Juan is a wealthy (kind of a prerequisite for a cad, isn't it?), violent, gambling libertine who prides himself on his ability to seduce women of all ages and social stations and who, in another interpretation, kills the father of a girl he seduced. Tirso's play was intended as a parable against Don Juan's sinful ways and ends with him being denied salvation by God. That will learn ye, ye cad ye. 

Abi Whyte is features editor of Ernest Journal. This Valentine's Day, she will mainly be watching her husband doing yoga in his pants.