The Ross Sea Party included just two men who knew their way around the ice. Both had sailed with Shackleton before. Most of the others joined the expedition looking for adventure. All the men were from temperate regions and didn’t know much about polar survival. They were given no formal training and their main reference material for the trip was a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The party’s goal was to haul a backbreaking 4000 pounds of supplies over 360 miles – that’s 1814 kg over 579 km. To help, they had twenty-six powerful sledge dogs from the Hudson’s Bay Company. A mix of breeds, the dogs had never worked as a team and many were as unprepared for hard polar slog as the men.

Aeneas Lionel Mackintosh: Commander

Like Shackleton, Mackintosh had left home in his mid-teens to join the mercantile marine. He had the accent and manner of an officer and, after working hard as an apprentice, earned steady promotion on the P&O line out of India before travelling with Shackleton on the ‘Nimrod’. On that expedition, he lost an eye in an accident, but gained Shackleton’s respect for his “will of iron”, which he put down to the Scottish chieftains in his ancestral line. Almost from the outset, Mackintosh struggled with his job as a leader, nearly losing the respect of the party on a number of occasions. He was mainly criticised for driving the dogs too hard in the first season of the depot laying – most didn’t survive to support the much harder second season. But Shackleton later wrote about Mackintosh’s “supreme efforts”.

Ernest Edward Joyce: In charge of sledging equipment and dogs

A strong-minded South London working man, given to drink, Joyce wasn’t a natural fit with the well-born members of the party. Sent to the Royal Hospital School for Navy Orphans in Greenwich as a boy, he had made his own way in life. He was the only man in the party with Antarctic sledging and dog-driving experience and had impressed both Scott and Shackleton on previous expeditions. Together with his raw grit and determination, this ensured him his place, even though Stenhouse and others didn’t like him. Joyce reacted badly to Mackintosh’s high-handed leadership style and was given to challenging his decisions. This did create some tension in the party, but Joyce proved his worth and was key to the final success of the depot laying and the men’s gruelling return journey.

Victor George Hayward: General Assistant (and our diary writer)

Abandoning a routine career as a clerk in finance to join the expedition in London. Hayward was one of the party’s willing amateurs. As a boy he had been fascinated by adventure stories and boasted some wilderness experience, having spent seven months working on a ranch in Canada. Aged twenty-six when he joined the expedition to “do anything”, he left behind a new fiancée whom he missed desperately throughout his time in Antarctica. It was for her that he made carbon copies of every word he wrote in his diary, which he kept throughout the trip, writing up the hardest times after they were over. Hayward’s diary was saved when he left it with other members of the team before setting off on his final disastrous crossing of treacherous sea ice.

Reverend Arnold Spencer-Smith: Chaplain and Photographer

Arnold Spencer-Smith read history at Queen’s College, Cambridge, where he had a very active social and sporting life and got a pass degree despite missing his final exams. He then worked as a teacher at Merchiston Castle boys’ boarding school in Edinburgh. A good sportsman, he stood six foot four inches tall, but had a weak heart. Ordained as an Anglican priest five days before the Ross Sea Party left London he was nicknamed Padre by the party. Although Spencer-Smith was a tireless worker, his heart condition was aggravated by the extreme hardship and lack of nutrition, causing him problems throughout the expedition. He died at the end of the second sledging season.

Irvine Owen Gaze: General Assistant

Spencer-Smith’s cousin, Gaze, was a sporty Australian – eager to join the expedition and lead a ‘real life’. His enthusiasm and easy-going humour won him the job and helped keep spirits up on the trail.

Harry Ernest Wild: Storekeeper

Wild was a steady Royal Navy petty officer. He was thirty-five when, after a great deal of thought, he joined the expedition to help Joyce with stores. He could have been persuaded by the fact that his brother, Frank, had already signed up to travel with Shackleton’s party. Sons of a Yorkshire headmaster, they were brought up with six other brothers and five sisters. Good-natured, even in the really hard times, Ernest Wild was the one member of the party who seemed to get on well with everyone. With so many siblings, he was a natural at caring for Spencer-Smith and Mackintosh when they became ill during the second sledging season.

Scientists: A group of scientists travelled with the expedition. Alexander Stevens, the Scottish Chief Scientist had studied religion before becoming a schoolteacher and then returning to university for a scientific education. In poor shape, he was not up to the physical sledging that he ended up doing in place of research. John Lachlan Cope, a biology student at Cambridge, exaggerated his age from twenty-one to twenty-five to help his application. A lively character, he responded badly to the stress of the expedition and began acting strangely even during the first season. Andrew Keith Jack, Gaze’s friend, had won a science scholarship to Melbourne University and graduated with first-class honours. Richard Walter Richards was an Australian physics teacher from a gold-rush town. At just twenty-one, he was one of the youngest of the party. Like Jack, he had barely seen snow before the expedition.

On board: Joseph Stenhouse: Chief Officer (supported by Thomson and others)

In charge of the ‘Aurora’ was Chief Officer Stenhouse – a Scotsman born into a Dumbarton shipbuilding family. Before joining the expedition, he had been an officer with the British India Steam Navigation Company, where his thorough approach won him admirers. Appointed at the eleventh hour, he had spent little time with Shackleton and only met Mackintosh in Australia. As captain, Stenhouse played a crucial part in saving the ‘Aurora’ and her crew after the ice ripped the ship from her moorings and carried her away to sea. Despite his achievement, he wasn’t asked to captain the ship on her rescue mission.

Rescue: John King Davis Commander (with Shackleton and others)

Davis was an experienced sailor, who had been Shackleton’s first choice to command his own ship, the ‘Endurance’, to the Weddell Sea. Davis had turned down the offer, unsure of both the ice-worthiness of the ship and the abilities of the men that Shackleton had chosen. When the rescue effort began in New Zealand, he was chosen to captain the ‘Aurora’, instead of Stenhouse. Davis was also caught up some rivalry with Shackleton about who should lead the rescue mission. They finally sailed together, with Shackleton signing on as a crew member at one shilling a week. Although Davis was a reserved man, he knew many members of the Ross Sea Party personally and was very distressed when he heard that three of them had died.