Regular readers of Nauti News will know my general love of bureaucracy in its two most pernicious and unintelligent forms; box-ticking and backside-protection. I came across the following recently and am wondering whether it shows a different form.May 16th 1916, South Georgia
Sir,
I am about to try and reach Husvik on the East Coast of this island for relief for our party. I am leaving you in charge of this party consisting of Vincent, McCarthy, yourself. You will remain here until relief arrives. You have ample seal food which you can supplement with birds and fish according to your skill.
You are left with a double-barrelled gun; 50 cartridges; 40 to 50 Bovril sledging rations; 25 to 30 biscuits; 40 (bars of) nut food.
You also have all the necessary equipment to support life for an indefinite period. In the event of my non-return you had better, after winter is over, try and sail round to the East Coast.
The course I am making towards Husvik is East Magnetic.
I trust to have you relieved in a few days.
Yours faithfully E H Shackleton
Now, help me out here. You are the commander of an expedition which has, to say the least, been having a few problems. You have just spent two weeks in close company with five other men on one of the great small boat journeys of all time, through the southern oceans, and have then spent a week ashore with them on a deserted beach. One of the men is not your greatest fan. In fact that was one of the reasons you took him with you.
You are about to set out on a journey to get help and you decide to leave this man in command of base camp. Before leaving, you sit down and write out his instructions: not as a note but as a letter. You do not him address by name but as ‘Sir’. Was this intended to give him a dubious sort of rank, making him a temporary ‘officer’ as it were? Why not ‘Dear McNish’ which was surely the style of the time.
Why spell out the rations and equipment? Why add the sentence: ‘You also have all the necessary equipment to support life for an indefinite period’ unless you are going to keep a copy to cover your backside in a possible enquiry? Why the almost gratuitous ‘according to your skill’
The instructions appear inconsistent: ‘You will remain here until relief arrives’ …’in the event of my non-return you had better …’ Which of this is the man to do? Why remove almost all his decision-making powers? If you fail to return, you will hardly be in a position to check up if he obeyed your orders.
Today we might have sat down with the man alone, or with the others, discussed options and then given instructions. A democratic style of leadership has a good precedent back as far as St Bernard, but that is for another day.
Perhaps this letter was just the style of the time and shows that Shackleton left nothing to chance even when giving ‘Chippy’ NcNish his instructions. Could it be that Shackleton had been taught to write orders down as part of his training by a generation that had be-moaned the inadequate instructions given at Balaclava? Did Shackleton keep a copy of the orders in his notebook? Who knows.
We know that ‘the Boss’ did of course bring relief within a few days but that does not destroy the strange wording of the letter.
Read it again and let me know what you think.
Jonathan
