Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition - Personnel

Personnel

Shackleton received more than 5,000 applications for places on the expedition, including a letter from "three sporty girls" who suggested that if their feminine garb was inconvenient they would "just love to don masculine attire." Shackleton turned their request down. Eventually the crews for each arm of the expedition were trimmed down to 28 apiece, including William Bakewell, who joined the ship in Buenos Aires, his friend Perce Blackborow who stowed away when his application was turned down, and several last-minute appointments made to the Ross Sea party in Australia. A temporary crewman was Sir Daniel Gooch who stepped in to help Shackleton as a dog handler at the last moment, and who left Endurance at South Georgia.

For the expedition's second-in-command, Shackleton chose Frank Wild, who had been with him on both the Discovery and Nimrod expeditions, and had been in the Furthest South party in 1909. Wild had just returned from Mawson’s Australian Antarctic Expedition. To captain Endurance Shackleton had wanted John King Davis, who had commanded Aurora during the Australian Antarctic Expedition. Davis refused, thinking the enterprise was "foredoomed", so the appointment went to Frank Worsley, who reportedly had applied to the expedition after learning of it in a dream. Royal Navy Chief Petty Officer Tom Crean, who had been awarded the Albert Medal for saving the life of Lieutenant Evans on the Terra Nova Expedition, took leave from the navy to sign on as Endurance's Second Officer; another experienced Antarctic hand, Alfred Cheetham, became Third Officer. Two Nimrod veterans were assigned to the Ross Sea party: Aeneas Mackintosh, who commanded it, and Ernest Joyce. Shackleton had hoped that the Aurora would be staffed by a naval crew, and had asked the Admiralty for officers and men, but was turned down. After pressing his case, Shackleton was given one officer from the Royal Marines, Captain Thomas Orde-Lees, who was Superintendent of Physical Training at the Marines training depot.

The scientific staff of six accompanying Endurance comprised the two surgeons, Alexander Macklin and James McIlroy; geologist James Wordie; biologist Robert Clark; physicist Reginald James; and meteorologist Leonard Hussey, who would eventually edit Shackleton’s expedition account South. The visual recording of the expedition was the responsibility of photographer Frank Hurley and artist George Marston. The final composition of the Ross Sea party was hurried. Some who left Britain for Australia to join Aurora resigned before it departed for the Ross Sea, and a full complement of crew was in doubt until the last minute. Only Mackintosh and Joyce had any previous Antarctic experience; Mackintosh had lost an eye as the result of an accident during the Nimrod expedition and had gone home early.