Perce Blackborow

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Perce Blackborow with Mrs. Chippy (1914)

Perce Blackborow (* 1896 , according to other information April 8, 1894 , in Newport , Wales ; † 1949 ibid) was a Welsh sailor who drove as a stowaway on Ernest Shackleton's famous endurance expedition to Antarctica . He was the first stowaway in polar exploration .

Early life

Blackborow was born the son of the ship waiter John Edward Colston and the Irish Annie Margaret Blackborow in the port city of Newport in Wales . He had five brothers and three sisters. He started working in the docks when he was twelve. He spent his youth mainly on merchant ships. In 1912 he was able to work on the Ladywood for eleven weeks by pretending to be of legal age, born in 1893 . On the Golden Gate he drove across the Atlantic in 1914 and befriended the American William Lincoln Bakewell . However, the ship ran aground on the Río de la Plata near Montevideo , and all seafarers had to find new jobs.

Endurance expedition

Blackborow sailed to Buenos Aires to find work. He applied together with Bakewell as a seaman on the Endurance , where three crew members had recently been dismissed. The Endurance was under expedition leader Ernest Shackleton in the Antarctic sailing and part of the team should be the first to Antarctic continent cross. Bakewell was accepted, but 18-year-old Blackborow was not accepted because of his youth and lack of experience. However, he was allowed to work on the ship as long as it was in port; one of his tasks was to look after the more than seventy sled dogs . Bakewell and Walter How feared the Endurance was understaffed and smuggled Blackborow aboard at night before the ship cast off on October 26, 1914. They hid him in a closet between piles of clothes and provided him with food.

On the third day at sea he was discovered after a tip from Frank Worsley . Unable to stand, Blackborow had to sit in a chair when he met Shackleton. Shackleton gave the stowaway a stern and terrifying rant in front of the entire crew. This had the desired effect that the two accomplices made themselves known through their reaction. Lastly, Shackleton said to Blackborow, “Do you know that we often go hungry on such expeditions, and if a stowaway is available, we will eat him first?” To which Blackborow replied, “You would get a lot more meat out of you, Sir. ”Shackleton hid a smile and said,“ Introduce him to the cook first. ”Blackborow turned out to be an asset to the expedition and eventually became an official steward with a salary of £ 3 a month, which he later did not regret has been. The quiet and stocky but athletic Blackborow was popular with the crew for his casual manner. As an assistant to ship's cook Charles Green , he worked in the galley , where he had the longest regular daily working hours of any crew member. He was accommodated in the forecastle with Green . He read a lot in the ship's library and often helped photographer Frank Hurley take pictures.

Blackborow is characterized as willing and able; But he had to make up for his lack of experience on sailing ships through learning and practical work. Expedition member Thomas Orde-Lees described Blackborow as loyal to the expedition, “an embarrassingly clean and conscientious young fellow” who was “astonishingly reliable and competent for his age”. His only enemy is his hasty temper, which has greatly improved since the beginning of the expedition. He is very interested in the dogs and all outdoor activities and games. Shackleton thought very highly of Blackborow. He also emphasized to him the need for education and encouraged him to use the ship's library.

The Endurance was trapped in the ice and destroyed after eight months of drift ; then the expedition spent six months on the ice. Green and Blackborow used seal and penguin fat as fuel for their stove and therefore often had black faces, which earned them the nicknames “Potash and Mother of Pearl” after the stories of Montague Glass among the crew . In April 1916 the crew finally went to Elephant Island , Blackborow on the smallest lifeboat, the Stancomb-Wills . However, he had taken the leather boots instead of the felt boots from the sinking ship and suffered severe frostbite on both feet as he went on the boat , which is why he could not walk. On April 15, they reached a narrow pebble beach and Shackleton wanted to give Blackborow, the youngest of the crew, the honor of being the first to set foot on the island. Shackleton helped him over the rail and the almost comatose Blackborow fell into the shallow water. They announced that he was the first man to sit on Elephant Island and carried him to shore.

After Shackleton and five other men left for the rescue voyage on April 24 with the James Caird , Blackborow stayed behind with the rest of the crew, led by Frank Wild , and waited. Almost all of them were in poor health and mood. Blackborow was in severe pain and was largely immobile. As a result of frostbite, he developed gangrene in his left foot and was the main medical concern of the ship's doctor Alexander Macklin . On June 15, Macklin was forced to amputate Blackborow's toes, with assistance from the ship's second doctor, James McIlroy . For this purpose, Blackborow was placed under chloroform as an anesthetic . First Officer Lionel Greenstreet described the operation as follows: “Blackborow had ... all toes of his left foot removed, ¼ inch stumps left ... poor pig behaved great and it went without a hitch ... 55 minutes from start to finish. When Blackborow came to, he was cheerful and immediately started joking. ”In August, Blackborow's foot swelled and became infected again, suggesting osteomyelitis . Blackborow was the only member of the expedition to suffer permanent damage.

After the situation seemed hopeless, the rescue team came on August 30, 1916 and Macklin carried Blackborow out of the improvised hut to see the approaching rescue ship Yelcho . On September 3rd, after almost two years in isolation, the team arrived in Punta Arenas , Chile.

Next life

After the expedition returned, Blackborow had to spend three months in the hospital in Punta Arenas to treat his frostbite on his left foot. On his return to Newport , South Wales, he was overwhelmed by the welcome party at the train station and instead went out the other side to avoid it. He received the bronze polar medal for his service on the expedition. In the First World War , which had been raging since before the start of the expedition , he made himself available to the Royal Navy , but was refused due to his amputations. Until 1919 he served in the merchant navy on transport ships and then became a sailor in the Alexandradocks in Newport. He was also a fisherman.

Unlike other expedition members, Blackborow did not speak often about his experiences and declined radio appearances and interviews. He gave his only lecture at the request of a friend at the YMCA Boys Club in Newport. In it he talked about Shackleton, the endurance expedition and his experiences under Shackleton's leadership.

He married Kate Kearns from Ireland, with whom he had six children, Jack, Jim, Peggy, Ken, Joan and Phillip, of whom Jack died at the age of nine and Philip died in infancy. They lived in the Maesglas district of Newport. Blackborow remained friends with Bakewell and How, who had smuggled him aboard the Endurance . He died in Newport in 1949 at the age of 53 after a lower respiratory tract infection of chronic bronchitis and a heart defect; he was buried in St. Woolos Cemetery.

Blackborow's story has been immortalized in several fictionalized books, e.g. B. Victoria McKernan's Shackleton's Stowaway , Mirko Bonnés The Ice Cold Sky , which tells the story of the expedition from Blackborow's perspective, and Willy Mitchell's Cold Courage: Extraordinary Times .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Wade: The Long View: The Newport sailor, Perce Blackborow, who was one of Shackleton's heroic Antarctic survivors . In: South Wales Argus, 4th December 2015.
  2. ^ A b Liam Maloney: Our Young Stowaway: Perce Blackborow , Chapter 1: From Newport to the Southern Atlantic.
  3. ^ A b John Blackborow: Endurance Obituaries, Blackborow; 1916 May 17th Elephant Island .
  4. ↑ Victoria McKernan: Shackleton's Stowaway , Laurel Leaf 2006, ISBN 978-0440419846 . Page 5–7.
  5. ↑ Michael Smith: Shackleton: By Endurance We Conquer , Oneworld Publications 2014, ISBN 9781780745725 . Page 272 f.
  6. ↑ Perce Blackborow, Steward . Shackleton's Antarctic Odyssey, NOVA Online.
  7. ^ Alfred Lansing : Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage , Carroll & Graf, 1959, ISBN 978-0465062881 . Page 23.
  8. ↑ Roland Huntford : Shackleton , p. 384. Carroll & Graf, 1998; First published by Hodder & Stoughton, London 1985. ISBN 978-0349107448
  9. ^ Lansing: Endurance , pp. 23-24.
  10. ^ Frank Worsley : Endurance, An Epic Polar Adventure , ISBN 978-0393319941 . Page 5.
  11. ^ Frank Hurley : Argonauts of the South: Being a Narrative of Voyagings and Polar Seas and Adventures in the Antarctic with Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Ernest Shackleton , New York 1925.
  12. ↑ a b c d Perce Blackborow (1894-1949) - Biographical notes , Cool Antarctica
  13. ↑ Alexander: Endurance , p. 56.
  14. ↑ Thomas Orde-Lees : Elephant Island and Beyond , Erskine Press 2003, ISBN 978-1852970765 .
  15. ↑ a b Endurance Obituaries: W. Perce Blackborow (archived), HMS Endurance Tracking Project (including the full text of Blackborow's lecture)
  16. ↑ Caroline Alexander: The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition , Knopf 1998, ISBN 978-0375404030 . Pages 111 & 114.
  17. ↑ Ernest Shackleton : South! The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917 , Heinemann 1919, ISBN 978-0241966723 .
  18. ↑ Lansing: Endurance , p. 170.
  19. ↑ Lansing: Endurance , p. 181
  20. ^ Huntford: Shackleton , p. 533.
  21. ↑ Alexander: Endurance , p. 181.
  22. ^ Shackleton: South , p. 264.
personal data
SURNAME Blackborow, Perce
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Welsh sailor and polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH 1896 or April 8, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Newport
DATE OF DEATH 1949
PLACE OF DEATH Newport