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21, 1961

      A boat against the odds: the James Caird on display at Shackleton’s alma mater, Dulwich College.

      Courtesy of Seb Coulthard

      The plan viewed from a distance was straightforward enough: build a replica James Caird, take her to Antarctica on board a larger ship, hire a dedicated support vessel for the duration of the journey, select the right team, get the permits and insurance, and do it. I would finance the expedition with corporate sponsorship and sale of the film rights, supplemented by funds from fee-paying passengers who’d get a once-in-a-lifetime trip on our support vessel.

      Through the help and networks of Zaz’s cousin Melissa Shackleton Dann, her husband, Tom Dann, and Perry Hooks, who all lived in Washington, DC, along with the Yale World Fellows Program that saw me resident in Connecticut during the second half of 2009, I was able to get National Geographic and Discovery interested in filming the expedition. Now I could put any funds I raised toward building a boat.

      After multiple trips back and forth from Yale to National Geographic’s headquarters in the heart of Washington, DC, and another two all the way from Australia in early 2010, the 125-year-old company signed on. I met so many people from National Geographic—from its TV channel and production departments, its book publishing, magazine and social media arms, its speaking agency, and its expedition grants department—in an attempt to communicate the full potential of the project.

      But it was all worth it. That is until a personnel change at the company coincided with a key expedition supporter and National Geographic benefactor getting cold feet. While I respected his fears for the project’s safety, I had hoped National Geographic would trust my judgment. Unfortunately, his pulling out meant National Geographic did too. To make matters worse we’d now missed our chance with Discovery. It was August 2010 and all I had to show for my lengthy efforts was a half-finished boat, a bigger mortgage, and a bruised ego.

      We were back to square one, except that the tireless Seb Coulthard, my first recruit to the crew, was now working on the Alexandra Shackleton. All the while, the fluid nature of expedition planning meant that changes to any one set of logistics had a domino effect on all the others, keeping me second-guessing and fighting fires.

      CVs were by now flooding in from people wanting to join the Alexandra Shackleton crew, but it was difficult to get top-notch people to commit without cast-iron guarantees that the expedition was fully funded and definitely going ahead. Without a decent broadcaster on board I couldn’t get sponsors and therefore could guarantee nothing. It was a catch-22 situation: broadcasters wouldn’t commit until I’d secured funding from sponsors. Also, to set an expedition date required locking in logistics providers one to two years in advance—and sponsor dollars were needed to pay their deposit fees.

      Shackleton probably suffered similar problems, although he didn’t have to contend with the considerable burden of bureaucracy placed on modern-day expeditions. Even with the support and understanding of the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the South Georgian government, it was almost impossible to finalize permits until we knew the finer details of the expedition—and these would be determined to a degree by our as-yet-unknown sponsors and broadcast partner.

      I edged forward on multiple fronts as best I could, financing everything myself, but it was a very lonely period of my life. I knew the risks for such projects started long before you reached the ice: risks to reputation, finances, career, and even one’s marriage, as the pressures abound from throwing more and more energy and personal funds behind a project with an unknown outcome.

      A turning point came in October 2010, when I joined the international engineering firm Arup on a part-time basis as a spokesman and sustainability leader. Robert Care, the chair of Asia-Pacific, and his successor, Peter Bailey, were visionaries who saw the benefits of supporting the expedition. The environmental messages of climate change and biodiversity loss that I proposed to leverage off the back of it, and the broader message of bringing to fruition something inspiring but technically and logistically challenging, paralleled what Arup was all about, making it a perfect backer for the project.

      About the same time, the issue of how to get the Alexandra Shackleton down south was resolved. Lisa Bolton, the CEO of Aurora Expeditions, Australia’s leading polar tourism operator, told me their ship, Polar Pioneer, took on supplies in Poland each September before heading south for the Antarctic summer season. If I could get the Alexandra Shackleton to Poland, it could piggyback on Polar Pioneer and be dropped off in Antarctica. I knew I had to make this happen even if I had to drive the trailer with the Alexandra Shackleton on board to Poland myself.

      In the meantime, I had to convince sponsors to fund an expedition where the major cost was $300,000 for a support vessel—a legal and moral requirement in case things went wrong in the deep Southern Ocean, but not a very exciting budget line item as far as funding went. Salvation came unexpectedly in early 2012 through a contact in the nautical community of Weymouth and Portland on the southern coast of England. It was here that the Alexandra Shackleton was based after John Dean and Richard Reddyhoff generously allowed us to turn their state-of-the-art marina into the unofficial home of the expedition. And it was from here that Seb called me excitedly to say he’d come across a tall ship that closely resembled the Endurance. Maybe it could be our support vessel.

      I went to meet the ship’s original owner and builder at the iconic Cove House Inn, nestled behind the high shingle bank of nearby Chesil Beach, not fifty meters from “Deadman’s Bay,” one of the UK’s most dangerous sections of coastline. Many ships had been wrecked in the bay with great loss of life due to lee shore winds and currents driving them onshore. Just six months earlier I had no understanding of such conditions, but now I knew we would likely face a lee shore in our keel-less boat as we approached South Georgia from the southwest with winds blowing us directly onshore. With powerful surf rumbling in the background, I knew there and then that this ship, a steel-hulled barquentine that looked remarkably like the Endurance, was the hook needed to pull everything together.

      Shackleton planning his assault on Antarctica; some things haven’t changed in a hundred years.

      Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge

      The makers of Discovery Channel’s highly successful Gold Rush show, Raw TV in London, loved the idea of using an Endurance lookalike as our support vessel. Discovery Channel Europe loved it too. Now there was an extra story angle—life aboard the Endurance, as well as the Alexandra Shackleton—although all agreed there would be no need to crush and sink our tall ship in the ice of the Weddell Sea for the sake of realism. Plus the twenty or so berths not occupied by the ship’s crew and Raw’s team could be made available to sponsors and other interested paying parties.

      About this time, PR guru Kim McKay came on board to help with publicity and fundraising for the expedition. Not only was Kim an expert in her field, she had also worked for both National Geographic and Discovery, we had mutual friends, and she was a committed greenie who cofounded the leading environmental charity Clean Up Australia and cut her teeth doing media and PR for the BOC Challenge solo around the world yacht races—in short she was a perfect choice. It took just one serendipitous meeting in Sydney, at an event to celebrate David de Rothschild’s Pacific voyage in his plastic-bottle boat Plastiki, and she was on board.

      Expeditions are all about measuring your effort and picking your battles. It’s like doubling your efforts when you know a set of tennis is there for the taking but conserving energy and conceding points cheaply when you know it is lost. With Kim on board, Arup being brilliantly supportive, Discovery Europe having committed, and Seb fitting out the Alexandra Shackleton in Weymouth with an army of volunteers, the stars were aligning. Suddenly we were leading two sets to one and were a service break up in the third. I decided the austral summer of 2012–13 would be our time.

      Of course, I should have anticipated the match would come down to a tiebreak in the fifth set. Eternal optimism is one thing but I was, after all, trying to pull off an expedition

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