Shackleton's Last Days.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 September 1922, Page 1

Shackleton's Last Days.

“THE LURE OF THE WILD.” I have flouted the Wild. I have followed its lure Fearless, familiar, alone, lint a day must come when the Wild will win And I shall bo overthrown. —Robert W. . Sendee. One of Shackleton’s favourite quotations.)

Captain Hussey, meteorologist of the Quest, who recently reached London, gives some unpublished details of tlie last moments of Sir Ernest Sliackleton, !the Quest’s commander.

“The Boss,” as Sir Ernest was ceiled, repeated Service's lines given above the day before liis death. “The more hopeless the situation appeared, Captain Hussey writes, “the calmer and more self-reliant lie seemed.”

During the terrible storms at Christ mas. 1921. the “Boss” remained on the bridge of the Quest for days without rest, deaf to all entreaties to go to his cabin and sleep. “Flis only reply was,” says Captain Hussey: “I am all right, Go below and sleep yourself.” He said later that never before in nearly forty years’ experinve <>l the sea. had he been in such a storm.

“About 3 a.m. on January sth.” Captain Hussey says, “Dr Mneklin, ;the Quest's surgeon, heard a. low whistle coming from the Boss’s cabin. He went in, and. the Boss said: “I have a had pain in the hack. Can you give me something for it?” Dr Mneklin prepared some medicine, and as the Boss was drinking it he collapsed. Later, among the tributes, there arrived at the whaling station of South Georgia, where the explorer lies buried, a sprig of rosemary with the inscription:— ' . ‘Rosemary—for remembrance. From a Suffolk garden.’”