BB:
What’s been the most challenging thing about organising an expedition like this?
RS:
The most challenging part of any expedition and this one was no different is raising sponsorship and approaching sponsors. Many explorers and adventurers run into problems here. To the outsider, sponsorship seems very straightforward. You have an idea for an expedition, you go to a big company with loads of money, and they immediately see the publicity and write you a cheque. The reality is far from this. Every business on the planet, it doesn’t matter how wealthy it may or may not appear to be, has financial pressures and will plead poverty. Unless you can demonstrate clearly and succinctly the business benefits to the potential sponsor forget it. It’s a business transaction and many explorers, by their very nature, find this very difficult.
BB:
Indeed, Shackleton is well known to have had real issues with this side of his expeditions. It must have been a hell of a strain on the man?
RS:
Yes, Shackleton is a very good example; he really struggled with the business side of life. If you look at his biography, despite his leadership skills, his dedication and care for his men and despite never losing a man under his direct command he was pretty hopeless in business. His ‘at home’ life was a catalogue of one hair brained business idea after another. He got hopelessly into debt and during and after his death the financial situation had a serious impact on his family. It’s sad that they never really reaped the benefit of his expeditions during or after his lifetime. Remember, Shackleton has only been ‘remembered’ for the last 30 years or so, between his death and the resurgence in the interest in him in the 1970s he’d been pretty much a forgotten figure of the heroic period of polar exploration. In business he was an extreme failure and succeeded at pretty much nothing, if it hadn’t been for the industrialist James Caird donating £24,000 at the last minute (£2.5m in 2015) the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition would have been seriously postponed. I don’t think Shackleton would ever have given it up but he would have been forced to postpone it...
Rob Small FRGS
93.