In the annals of expeditionary history, Sir Ernest Shackleton's South - his account of the legendary Endurance expedition - stands out as a classic. Until now, however, another stirring record of this ill-fated 1914-1915 journey to the Antarctic has remained confined to the attention of specialists and scholars. It is the remarkable journal of the ship's cat, Mrs Chippy, who accompanied the carpenter Harry 'Chippy' McNeish, from their home in Cathcart, Scotland. The crew of the Endurance were mistaken in calling the carpenter's mate Mrs Chippy on first acquaintance, which our ruggedly masculine feline hero took in good part. All could see he was a sailor who liked the breeze in his whiskers and adventure on the horizon. Patrolling the decks or mousing below, duty was paramount to Chippy, and so too was the camaraderie of his shipmates: 'I joing them on their laps for conversations of a scientific of expeditionary nature,' notes Chippy, who privately had his doubts about Darwin's theories. As he observed, they had been on the ice now for long months and no-one showed any signs of evolving into penguins or seals. Chippy devoted whole days to vital resting and sleeping: 'If I allow myself to get run down, I won't be of use to anyone.' And of course there was a perpetual quest for news about impending emergency. The Canadian huskies were kicking up a terribly noisy fuss, but as Chippy philosophically observes, 'The kind of sensitive cooperation required for an expedition is just not in their make-up.'
Industry Reviews
A shaggy-cat tale, in which Alexander (The Way to Xanadu, 1994, etc.) gives us the feline perspective on travel and exploration in turn-of-the-century Antarctica. Mrs. Chippy is a cat - a tomcat, actually, but a very elegant one whose grace and manners and devotion to his master (Harry "Chippy" McNeish) inspired the joke that they are as good as married. Chippy McNeish is ship's carpenter aboard the Endurance, which set sail from London on August 1, 1914, on a voyage to the South Pole that was led by Sir Ernest Shackleton and the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Mrs. Chippy has her role to play, of course, and it is no small one: hunting mice, keeping watch on deck, and looking after the general well-being of her master and his crewmates. He tells his story through the pages of his journal, which record the daily rituals of weather, naps, navigation, and meals. Once they find themselves stranded in a sea of ice, however, the expedition is forced to encamp for the duration, hoping that their rations will hold out until the thaws - which, as it turned out, were nearly a year in coming. Mrs. Chippy keeps a more level head than most of his crewmates during this long confinement, and he may actually have been their salvation insofar as he injected a familiar note of domesticity and routine into the hardships of their situation ("I myself am very disciplined by nature and have set myself a strict winter regime: Wake at 2:00 P.M.; stretch, wash, take breakfast by the galley stove, greet shipmates, etc."). By the end, when the ice floes break and the Weddell Sea is open once more, Mrs. Chippy is more popular than ever. Too cute for comfort: after about 20 pages of this, even cat-lovers may find themselves feeling pretty seasick. (Kirkus Reviews)
