Aeneas Lionel Acton Mackintosh (1 July 1879 – 8 May 1916) was a British Merchant Navy officer and Antarctic explorer who commanded the Ross Sea party as part of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–1917. The Ross Sea party's mission was to support Shackleton's proposed transcontinental march by laying supply depots along the latter stages of the march's intended route. In the face of persistent setbacks and practical difficulties, Mackintosh's party fulfilled its task, although he and two others died in the course of their duties.
Mackintosh's first Antarctic experience was as second officer on Shackleton's Nimrod expedition, 1907–1909. Shortly after his arrival in the Antarctic, a shipboard accident destroyed his right eye, and he was sent back to New Zealand. He returned in 1909 to participate in the later stages of the expedition; his will and determination in adversity impressed Shackleton, and led to his Ross Sea party appointment in 1914.
Having brought his party to the Antarctic, Mackintosh was faced with numerous difficulties. Confused and vague orders meant he was uncertain of the timing of Shackleton's proposed march. His problems were compounded when the party's ship, SY Aurora, was swept from its winter moorings during a gale and was unable to return, causing the loss of vital equipment and supplies. In carrying out the party's depot-laying task, one man died; Mackintosh barely survived, owing his life to the actions of his comrades who brought him to safety. Restored to health, he and a companion disappeared while attempting to return to the expedition's base camp by crossing the unstable sea ice.
Mackintosh's competence and leadership skills have been questioned by polar historians. Shackleton commended the work of the party, and equated the sacrifice of their lives to those given in the trenches of the First World War, but was critical of Mackintosh's organising skills. Years later, Shackleton's son, Lord Shackleton, identified Mackintosh as one of the expedition's heroes, alongside Ernest Joyce and Dick Richards.
Early life
Mackintosh was born in Tirhut (in what was then British India), on 1 July 1879. He was one of six children (five sons and a daughter) of a Scottish indigo planter, Alexander Mackintosh, a descendant from the chieftains of Clan Chattan. Aeneas would in due course be named as an heir to the chieftainship, and to the ancient seat at Inverness that went with it. When Aeneas was still a young child, his mother, Annie Mackintosh, suddenly returned to Britain, bringing the children with her. The reasons for the family rift are unknown, but it was evidently permanent.Tyler-Lewis, pp. 35–36 His father had Bright's disease and remained in India. Mackintosh never saw him again but remained fond of him, writing regularly; his father kept every letter but they were found unopened when his father died.McOrist, p. 8. At home in Bedfordshire, Mackintosh attended Bedford Modern School. He then followed the same path as had Ernest Shackleton five years earlier, leaving school at the age of 16 to go to sea. After serving a tough Merchant Officer's apprenticeship, he joined P&O, and remained with this company until he was recruited by Shackleton's Nimrod expedition, which sailed for Antarctica in 1907. Before the expedition's departure Mackintosh was commissioned as a sub lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve.
Nimrod Expedition
The Nimrod Expedition, 1907–1909, was the first of three Antarctic expeditions led by Ernest Shackleton. Its objective, as stated by Shackleton, was to "proceed to the Ross Quadrant of the Antarctic with a view to reaching the Geographical South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole".Riffenburgh, p. 103. Mackintosh was recommended to Shackleton as a suitable officer by the P & O Line,Huntford, p. 196. and soon earned Shackleton's confidence while impressing his fellow-officers with his will and determination.Tyler-Lewis, p. 22. While the expedition was in New Zealand, Shackleton added Mackintosh to the shore party, as a likely candidate for the polar march.Riffenburgh, p. 141. On 31 January 1908, not long after Nimrods arrival at McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic, Mackintosh was assisting in the transfer of sledging gear aboard ship when a hook swung across the deck and struck his right eye, virtually destroying it. He was immediately taken to the captain's cabin where, later that day, expedition doctor Eric Marshall operated to remove the eye, using partly improvised surgical equipment.Riffenburgh, p. 159. Marshall was deeply impressed by Mackintosh's fortitude, observing that "no man could have taken it better."
The accident cost Mackintosh his place on the shore party, and required his return to New Zealand for further treatment. He took no part in the main events of the expedition, but returned south with Nimrod in January 1909, to participate in the closing stages. Shackleton, who had earlier fallen out with the ship's master, Rupert England, had wanted Mackintosh to captain Nimrod on this voyage, but the eye injury had not healed sufficiently to make this appointment possible.Riffenburgh, p. 170. On 1 January 1909, on its return to Antarctica, Nimrod was stopped by the ice, still from the expedition's shore base at Cape Royds. Mackintosh decided that he would cross this stretch of ice on foot. Historian Beau Riffenburgh describes the journey that followed as "one of the most ill-considered parts of the entire expedition".Riffenburgh, pp. 266–268. Mackintosh's party, which left the ship on the morning of 3 January, consisted of Mackintosh and three sailors, with a sledge containing supplies and a large mailbag. Two sailors quickly returned to the ship, while Mackintosh and one companion went forward. They camped on the ice that evening, only to find next day that the whole area around them had broken up.Riffenburgh, p. 266. After a desperate dash over the moving ice floes, they managed to reach a small glacier tongue. Mackintosh later wrote about the near-death experience:
They camped there, and waited for several days for their snow-blindness to subside. When their vision returned, they found that Cape Royds was in sight but inaccessible, as the sea-ice leading to it had gone, leaving a stretch of open water. They had little choice but to make for the hut by land, a dangerous undertaking without appropriate equipment and experience.Riffenburgh, p. 267. On 11 January they set out. For the next 48 hours they struggled over hostile terrain, through regions of deep crevasses and treacherous snowfields. They soon parted company with all their equipment and supplies.Riffenburgh, p. 267. At one point, to proceed, they had to ascend to and then slide to the foot of a snow-slope.Riffenburgh, p. 268. Eventually, after stumbling around in the fog for hours, they encountered Bernard Day, a member of the shore party, a short distance from the hut. The ship later recovered the abandoned equipment. John King Davis, then serving as Nimrod's chief officer, remarked that "Mackintosh was always the man to take the hundredth chance. This time he got away with it."Tyler-Lewis, p. 108. Mackintosh later joined Ernest Joyce and others on a journey across the Great Ice Barrier to Minna Bluff, to lay a depot for Shackleton's polar party, whose return from their southern march was awaited. On 3 March, while keeping watch on the deck of Nimrod, Mackintosh observed a flare, which signalled the safe return of Shackleton and his party. They had fallen just short of their South Pole objective, having reached a Farthest South of 88° 23' S.Shackleton, Heart of the Antarctic, p. 339Riffenburgh, p. 231.
Between expeditions
Mackintosh returned to England in June 1909. On reporting to the P & O, he was informed that due to his impaired sight he was discharged. Without immediate prospects of employment, he agreed, early in 1910, to accompany Douglas Mawson (who had served as a geologist on the Nimrod expedition and was later to lead the Australasian Antarctic Expedition) on a trip to Hungary, to survey a potential goldfield which Shackleton was hoping would form the basis of a lucrative business venture.Huntford, pp. 323–327. Despite a promising report from Mawson, nothing came of this. Mackintosh later launched his own treasure-hunting expedition to Cocos Island off Costa Rica's Pacific coast but again returned home empty-handed. In February 1912, Mackintosh married Gladys Campbell and settled into an office job as assistant secretary to the Imperial Merchant Service Guild in Liverpool. The safe, routine work did not satisfy him: "I am still existing at this job, stuck in a dirty office," he wrote to a former Nimrod shipmate. "I always feel I never completed my first initiation—so would like to have one final wallow, for good or bad!" He was therefore delighted, early in 1914, to receive an invitation from Shackleton to join the latter's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which was to attempt the first transcontinental crossing of Antarctica.
Ross Sea party
Early difficulties
Shackleton's expedition contained two separate components. The main party would establish a base in the Weddell Sea, from which a group of six led by Shackleton was to march across the continent, via the South Pole. A supporting Ross Sea party, based on the opposite side of the continent in McMurdo Sound, would lay supply depots across the Great Ice Barrier, to assist the transcontinental party on the final stage of its journey. Mackintosh was originally to have been a member of Shackleton's transcontinental party,Fisher, p. 300. but difficulties arose over the appointment of a commander for the Ross Sea party. Eric Marshall, the surgeon from the Nimrod expedition, turned the assignment down, as did John King Davis;Tyler-Lewis, p. 27.Fisher, p. 302. Shackleton's efforts to obtain from the Admiralty a naval crew for this part of the enterprise were rejected.Huntford, pp. 371–373. The post of Ross Sea party leader was finally offered to, and accepted by, Mackintosh. His ship would be the Aurora, lately used by Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition and presently lying in Australia. Shackleton considered the Ross Sea party's assignment routine, and saw no special difficulties in its execution.Shackleton, p. 242.
Mackintosh arrived in Australia in October 1914 to take up his duties, and was immediately faced with major difficulties. Without warning or notification, Shackleton had cut the Ross Sea party's allocated funds in half, from £2,000 to £1,000. Mackintosh was instructed to make up the difference by soliciting free gifts,Fisher, pp. 397–400. and to mortgage the expedition's ship to raise further money. It then emerged that the purchase of Aurora had not been legally completed, which delayed Mackintosh's attempts to mortgage it.Fisher, p. 398. Also, Aurora was unfit for Antarctic work without an extensive overhaul, which required co-operation from an exasperated Australian Government. The task of dealing with these difficulties within a very restricted timescale caused Mackintosh great anxiety, and the various muddles created a negative image of the expedition in the eyes of the Australian public.Fisher, p. 399. Some members of the party resigned, others were dismissed; recruiting a full complement of crew and scientific staff involved some last-minute appointments which left the party noticeably short of Antarctic experience.Tyler-Lewis, pp. 48–53.