Product Description

Scott, Shackleton and Mawson were the three great explorers of the Edwardian age. Now Beau Riffenburgh tells the forgotten story of Douglas Mawson and his death-defying expedition of 1911-14. A key member of Ernest Shackleton's famous Nimrod Expedition, Mawson led his own Australasian Antarctic Expedition. However, following the tragic deaths of the other members of his sledging party, he was left to struggle the hundreds of miles back to base alone, only to find that the relief ship had sailed away, leaving him to face another year in Antarctica. Having survived with a small band of men against incredible odds, he later led a groundbreaking two-year expedition which explored hundreds of miles of unknown coastline. Mawson's is a story of true heroism and a fascinating insight into the human psyche under extreme duress.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54350 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'The greatest survival story in the history of exploration' Sir Edmund Hillary 'In Beau Riffenburgh, [Mawson] has found a biographer who truly knows his way around the hut politics and intemperate journals of Antarctic history The biographer takes the Edwardian view that it's by the explorer's heroics you shall know him, which is why, like the best polar books, Racing With Death is on peak form when out on the ice' Daily Telegraph 'Beau Riffenburgh has delivered an outstanding adventure' Literary Review

About the Author
Beau Riffenburgh is an historian specialising in exploration, particularly that of the Antarctic, Arctic, and Africa. Born in California, he earned his doctorate at Cambridge University, following which he joined the staff at the Scott Polar Research Institute, where he served for 14 years as the editor of Polar Record. He is the author of the highly regarded Nimrod: Ernest Shackleton and the Extraordinary Story of the 1907-09 British Antarctic Expedition and The Myth of the Explorer. He also served as Editor of the Encyclopedia of the Antarctic.

Customer Reviews

A Forgotten Antarctic Hero
Beau Riffenburgh has produced an excellent and highly readable introduction to the now largely forgotten Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) of 1911-14 and its heroic leader Douglas Mawson. Although referencing Mawson's important work on Shackleton's British Antarctic Expedition of 1907-09 and the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition of 1929-31, the bulk of the book focuses on the AAE - and this is just as it should be; in fact, one of the few criticisms of the book is that, perhaps, the BAE and BANZARE are given a little too much space. The AAE set off for the Antarctic in December 1911, on board the steam yacht "Aurora" - a ship that would later play a key role on Shackleton's ill-fated "Endurance" Expedition. In January the following year, Mawson and his team of specialists landed at Cape Denison, a place that they would subsequently identify as being the windiest spot on the face of the planet, scoured by winds averaging 50mph for a whole year and regularly experiencing gusts of well in excess of 200mph. In such conditions, it soon became clear that the work of the expedition would be severely hampered, with the planned sledging parties not being able to set off until November of 1912. It was during these sledging expeditions that tragedy struck. During the Far Eastern Sledging Expedition, Lieutenant Belgrave Ninnis fell to his death down a seemingly bottomless crevasse, taking with him his sledge and most of the party's food, equipment and sledge-dogs. Mawson and Xavier Mertz were thus forced to begin a return journey of over 300 miles in an appallingly handicapped condition. Obliged to eat the remaining dogs, both men quickly succumbed to Vitamin A poisoning, which brought on lethargy and caused the men to slough large areas of skin and hair. With 100 miles still to travel, Mertz finally collapsed and died in their tent, leaving the exhausted Mawson to first bury him and then stagger the remaining distance. His last final trek makes for truly harrowing reading. When he finally arrived back at the expedition's winter quarters, Mawson discovered that the ship had been forced to sail, leaving behind a small Relief Party, made up of the best men among his original staff. Abandoned for yet another year, these men soon found, to their horror, that one of their number had become insane: suffering from delusions and extreme paranoia, occasionally turning to violence. The entire story is thrilling, heroic and hugely impressive; it should appeal to anyone interested in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and clearly demonstrates that Mawson was a leader on a level with Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen; that he has been so largely forgotten is a travesty.