Last Wednesday,  I watched Chasing Shackleton, a documentary about the  the Shackleton Epic Expedition led by Tim Jarvis which recreated Shackleton’s epic 800 mile lifeboat voyage in 1916 across the Southern Ocean from Elephant Island to South Georgia to seek help for his stranded crew.  (See our previous posts about the expedition here.) They attempted to reenact the voyage as accurately as possible by replicating the lifeboat, the clothes, the food and the navigational gear.  One unavoidable element was entirely new — the support boat and the documentary crew. The support boat was a requirement of the Antarctic authorities and the documentary was required by economics. There was no feasible way to fund the expedition without it.  The documentary crew apparently proved to be as challenging as the elements.

Chasing Shackleton – Chapter 1

The first of five chapters of the documentary was generally well done. They used Shackleton’s diary to provide commentary about conditions aboard the modified lifeboat, which added a strong sense of context and authenticity. The chief weakness of the episode was a certain breathless under-current that seems endemic to reality-TV programming.

There was a small crisis at the end of the first episode to add the requisite tension. Ironically, it had nothing to do with the challenges that faced Shackleton and his crew. In the late afternoon, as night was approaching, the support boat lost the AIS (Automatic Identification System) signal for the lifeboat. The lifeboat, which unlike the original was packed with video cameras and electronics (though not GPS) had suffered a failure in its electrical system. Without the AIS signal nor radio contact, the support boat had no way to keep track of the lifeboat as darkness fell, and in the worst case scenario might even run over it.  After several hours of tracing the wiring, the short circuit was located and the expedition sailed on.  Of all the challenges facing Shackleton, at least he didn’t have to worry about his electronics breaking down.

There is a companion book to the documentary series. In a review of the book in the Daily Beast,  the reviewer Darrly Hartman comments that  “despite the raging tempests, subzero temperatures, and treacherous crevasse fields, what really tests [Tim Jarvis, the expedition leader] are the intrusions of a reality TV crew.”

Polar Explorer vs. Reality TV Crew: Tim Jarvis in the Footsteps of Shackleton