Shackleton's wartime reception and the Ross Sea Party

The review explains why Endurance's survival story did not receive an uncomplicated heroic welcome in wartime Britain. Millions were dead, the heroic ideal had changed, and one Falklands observer complained that Shackleton should have been serving in the war rather than on the ice. South American crowds, including Germans in a state formally at war with Britain, offered a much warmer reception that the Foreign Office recognised as diplomatically useful. The story was not yet complete, because Aurora had broken from her moorings and left the Ross Sea depot-laying party stranded, requiring Shackleton to return south for a rescue after three men had died.