`My mother is Irish - very Irish - and I was brought up to loathe Scott," Caroline Alexander admits on the telephone from her New Hampshire farm. "To me he was the archetypal English twit. I was programmed to respond to Shackleton."
Born and raised in Florida, a classics scholar with an English father and English accent, Alexander is now America's best known Shackleton authority as guest curator of "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" and author of the phenomenally successful book published in conjunction with the exhibition. She is also a writer and co-producer of the upcoming documentary and IMAX film on the 1914-1916 epic.
Alexander did not set out to write the book that launched her in every magazine from People to National Geographic earlier this year. "I love reading adventure stories and this one caught me," she explains, "But I never intended writing about Shackleton." She was, in fact, more interested in the ship's cat, which appears in several Hurley photographs and in numerous diary entries. The result of that interest was Mrs Chippy's Last Expedition, which Alexander regarded as her Endurance book. Hurley' s photographs, however, could not be ignored. "I discovered that they had not been exhibited as a collection and concentrated on that. The book was an absolute afterthought."
Three years of research, conversations with descendants of the Endurance crew and access to Frank Wordie's unpublished diary revealed, in particular, the emotional footnotes to the legendary achievement. "The story is as one imagines," Alexander stresses, "There is no nasty underside. But the aftermath was emotionally draining to write." She refers in particular to the expedition's invaluable ship-wright, Henry McNish, one of four men denied the polar medal by Shackleton, presumably for poor behaviour. "McNish ended up destitute, broken and bitter, living rough on the Wellington docks," Alexander recalls, "He died a pauper."
Thanks to Alexander, McNish's grandson, "a man of very modest means", finally met Frank Hurley's twin daughters who recalled for him the day Hurley learned that McNish had not been awarded the medal and raged for hours at the injustice.
Speaking of Kerryman Tom Crean and his compatriot, Tim McCarthy, Alexander notes that the James Caird voyage has a strong Celtic flavour but stresses that ethnicity was secondary to the shared sense of what she un-apologetically calls "manhood".
"This is not purely an adventure story," she observes, "I think it appeals to us now because it is a vindication of what we used to call character. There is no question about it. These men were saved by their upbringing."
Alexander refers to Frank Hurley's diary entry following the arrival on Elephant Island. "It is regrettable to state," he wrote of the crew, "that many conducted themselves in a manner unworthy of gentlemen and British sailors . . ." This is written by an impetuous Australian. "It's ludicrous," Alexander laughs, "except that it is said in that place by that man, making all our preconceptions irrelevant."
Suggesting that we always want to believe in a higher code of behaviour triggered by adversity, Alexander also thinks that we are in a nostalgic mood. "At the end of our century, we are looking back, saying `This was us, too."'
She is enthusiastic about the upcoming Petersen film and sanguine about the idea of Mel Gibson as Shackleton. "I was reduced to tears by their first suggestion," she recalls, "Tom Hanks. At least Mel Gibson looks right - and he's Australian, not American." Anthony Lane was less optimistic in the New Yorker. ". . . I'm sure that the studio executives will spare no effort to mess things up," he wrote, "Even now, they must be fretting over the question of finding a part for Gwyneth Paltrow."