Lead with gratitude
On the personal intertwined with the historical, looking for signs, and – against all reason – Alexander Macklin.
One of my best tips for professional correspondence of any kind is to begin with gratitude rather than apology or an excuse. "Thank you for your patience" goes infinitely farther than "my apologies for the delay" – and both are phrases I've had to utilise far too often in my life. A pernicious combination of mental health struggles, employment fluctuation, general life stress and shifting priorities has kept me on the back foot for most of my adult years. I more or less always feel like I am playing catch up with my own life, borrowing time and resources from myself, always leaving someone or something on the hook.
When I started this Substack with Sabina early in 2023, I had grand ambitions and half-finished drafts for the first few posts I wanted to write. Chief among them was a compilation of lesser known biographical information about Dr. Alexander Macklin, the surgeon on Ernest Shackleton's Endurance and Quest expeditions. At the time, I was only a few months into what I thought would be a short-lived but nevertheless exciting deep dive on the explorer who had most recently captured my interest. I don't know how to enjoy anything casually, so I threw myself into researching him with the same whole-hearted obsession that I did everything else, but still – I never expected it to gain any real traction.
Despite the full-body guilt that wracks me over taking a full calendar year to write one (1) measly post, leading with gratitude is easier than ever in this case.
Thank you for your patience. I'd like to tell you a bit about where I've been, and a bit about Alexander Macklin.
My fellow polar enthusiast friends kindly tolerated the beginning of my descent into Macklin madness throughout the autumn of 2022. One of the sweeter questions I would occasionally get asked was if there was a biography they could read, and it stung a bit every time I had to say no.
It wasn't just that there wasn't a book dedicated solely to him – the man I had decided was the most interesting person to ever sail into the Southern Ocean and was slowly tricking others into believing my delusion. All of my frantic scrabbling to try to uncover anything about Macklin outside of what has been written in books about the Endurance and Quest expeditions bore little fruit. There were a few articles – all of which I will link at the end of this piece, because I am completely indebted to the authors for beginning to delve into Macklin at all and providing me with my own jumping off point – but nothing as substantial as what I was craving. A largely unknowable man, so central to the story of Shackleton's expeditions and death, was like catnip to me. I had to know him.
In retrospect, I'm a little embarrassed that it took me the many months that it did to discover what was sitting in the Scott Polar Research Institute archives. I try to grant my past self a bit of grace – research was still new to me at that time, I was learning as I was going and simply didn't know what I didn't know – but it really comes down to a failure of imagination. I never stopped to consider that there might be substantial information about Macklin's life somewhere out there because none of the articles I read had referenced it. If professional researchers and writers before me hadn't found anything, why would I?
It was past midnight on February 7th, 2023. I found myself on the SPRI archive website idly looking up Macklin, trying in vain to hunt down a letter that still eludes me to this day. I knew that the SPRI held his Endurance and Quest diaries, but I'd never looked closely at the details of his collection – until now, eyes blown wide with a sudden mad rush of adrenaline as the description stared me down.
Biographical material. An entire sub-collection of it, in fact. I hesitated before clicking on it; Macklin was famously reticent about speaking or writing about himself, despite all the assistance he provided for historians and authors writing about Endurance and Shackleton. "Biographical material" could mean anything. A bulleted list of major life events and milestones, a few anecdotes sketched out in a letter, or perhaps if I was truly lucky, a draft version of the four-page article he wrote about his life for the University of Aberdeen's Zodiac journal upon his retirement. It would be best to keep my expectations low, to prepare for the disappointment that I was becoming accustomed to greeting me around each corner as I tried to search out this man.
Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of hundreds of pages of autobiographical writing about life before and after his brief career as a polar explorer, evidently written in the late 1950s. As soon as I regained the ability to form coherent thoughts, three questions instantly populated in my head: What drove him to finally sit down and write substantially about himself? Why had no one ever referenced these papers before? And how could I see them as soon as humanly possible?
I cannot stress enough that at this point, my interest in Macklin was driven by pure personal passion. I was obsessed, painfully so – obsessed enough to spend the next 48 hours planning a weeklong trip to Cambridge to do nothing but read these papers and everything else Macklin-related that I could manage to cram into my head. I'm profoundly blessed to have a family and friends who are not only used to my fanatical whims but (perhaps a little too) supportive of them. The sentiment seemed to be, Caitlin is rocketing herself over to England because she wants to understand a man who died in 1967? Yeah, that tracks.
In the meantime, Sabina and I started this Substack. I planned for my first post to be a compilation of the biographical research I had done thus far and a teaser for my upcoming trip. I wrote my way into meaning while trying to explain to an imaginary audience what had compelled me to become so fascinated by Macklin – his significant contributions to Alfred Lansing's Endurance and Margery and James Fishers' Shackleton biography, his ghostwriting of Shackleton's Last Voyage and his diaries being used as the basis for so many other Endurance books making him a driving force central to these narratives, versus how little is truly known about his life. That dichotomy is what gripped me and refused to let me go.
I could do something with that, I thought. So I shifted gears, started writing about what it means to be the narrative's man and began angling my research in that direction as well. I felt strongly enough about what I was uncovering that I approached the Shackleton Autumn School with a pitch for it as a lecture, and one of the greatest blessings of my life will always be that they took a chance on me and invited me to come speak in October.
Suddenly, this passion project had purpose.
And so I let it take over my life.
Lead with gratitude, not with apology or excuses. Still, this whole story is at its core an excuse. Why didn't I end up writing any of the articles I had in mind when we started, when the Macklin project was just one of several things I wanted to dedicate a chunk of time to? Why has it taken me this long to post anything at all, even though I've wanted to so badly?
Part of it was by necessity – I really did throw myself entirely into the Macklin project, and on top of other changes going on in my life there wasn't much time or brain space to dedicate to anything else. But if I'm honest, part of it was also by choice. I only wanted to focus on Macklin, but I had to save it for my lecture, so I couldn't write about him here. What else did I want to write about? Not much, all told. That's still the case today. I could be writing something substantial about any of my other polar interests, I could pick up the half-written drafts of the other articles I began throughout the past year, but I'm not. I'm writing about writing about Macklin.
The irony doesn't escape me. My entire thesis hinges on Macklin's unwillingness to centre himself in any narrative, his seemingly pathological desire to avoid the spotlight, and here I am, fixated solely on him.
The Shackleton Autumn School was easily one of the most incredible experiences of my life. My lecture went well, and I was thoroughly humbled by the response and the genuine interest in Macklin that it stirred up. The connections that I made were invaluable, and the opportunities that have fallen into my lap since continue to amaze me. What started as a labour of love born only of my own personal interest in the man has, against all reason, blossomed into something real. The shape it will ultimately take is still unknown to me, but it really is the great honour of my life to undergo the experience at all.
At the Autumn School, Synnøve Marie Kvam Strømsvag gave a lecture entitled "Inspiring Explorers – how explorers have inspired others to break barriers small and large." It was far and away my favourite talk of the weekend. Synnøve is an engaging speaker with a wealth of personal experience to draw from, holding everyone's rapt attention throughout her lecture that wove together what draws people to exploration and to explorers themselves, the rabbit holes that research can lead you down, and what it means to tell someone's story. It was that last part that made me sit up ramrod straight in my seat and practically stare holes through her with the intensity of how hard I was thinking, she gets it, she gets it, she gets it.
She stood in front of the crowd and asked: Is this story yours to tell? Why has it not been told before? What are the consequences of telling it? Is it a responsibility, or a privilege?
I wanted to cry, right there in the audience. These were the questions I had been asking myself ever since the Macklin project began to take shape. He was such a deeply private man who surely never wanted so much attention as I was going to give him. Does that matter, when he is long dead? Why do I feel so strongly that it does matter? Whose permission am I really seeking, and for what ultimate purpose? How can I best honour his privacy but still tell his story? Should I even be the one to do so?
And after all of this, what if the answer is no?
The responses I have received to my Macklin research, writing and speaking have bowled me over flat onto the ground. I don't feel deserving of half of the kindness and generosity that so many people I tremendously respect and admire have shown me. The debt I owe to my greaters in the polar community is vast, and every day I work to be able to repay it even a little bit.
But it never fails to make me laugh that the most common refrain from anyone who I speak to about Macklin, nearly every single time, is: "So, where's the book?"
It's a question that makes perfect sense. I can rattle off the facts of his life by heart. I get a manic gleam in my eye when someone wants to know a piece of minutiae that I never assumed anyone would care about, like what neighbourhood he lived in while in Dundee (Broughty Ferry, for the record.) I have my own conjecture about the branching paths of his life. I spend an inordinate amount of time tracking back through his family history. I practically cried looking at a small framed portrait of him hanging in the anaesthesiology break room at Ninewells. I did cry while visiting his grave. When I stopped in at a florist's that morning to purchase a bouquet to bring along, she wanted to know who it was for to be able to personalise it, and so I got to explain who he was and why I was making the pilgrimage. She had never heard of Shackleton before our conversation and even she asked, well, when are you going to write the book?
A person would not do everything that I have done – a person would not continue to do everything that I am doing – without intending to write a book. Objectively, I know this. But I'm still thrown for a loop every time I'm asked.
This all started because I saw there was no biography dedicated to Macklin, and I wanted to learn more about him. It truly began to take shape as I sat at the SPRI research desk and held the autobiography that he had begun to write in my hands. I spent the 33rd year of my life completely, entirely dedicated to him – the same age that he was when he wrote the majority of Shackleton's Last Voyage. To a person who looks for signs everywhere, these certainly felt like signs. But I still wondered, still worried.
This all started because I wanted to know him. It continues because I want others to know him as well. I do want to write the book, I want it more than I've ever wanted anything in my adult life, but there is nothing that I take more seriously than the responsibility I feel for doing justice to his memory.
I have no shame in admitting that as I stood at his grave in Melrose, a thousand things flying through my mind, what rose to the top was a desperate, hopeful plea. I'm always looking for signs, I thought. If the universe gives me any sort of sign that he wouldn't want his story told – by anyone, or just by me – I'll stop. I'll dream a new dream.
It's entirely possible that I'm overthinking things.
It wouldn't be the first time and it certainly won't be the last.
Unfortunately, I'm on Tiktok. I don't like to be, but I am a millennial and it's a digital timesuck; the two simply go together. As I write this, one of the trending sounds in my corner of the Tiktok algorithm is a snippet from Chris Colfer's cover of Rose's Turn from the musical Gypsy (and if this weren't ostensibly a polar-related post for a polar-related Substack, I'd go on a tear about how Ethel Merman deserves better, but I digress.)
All that work and what did it get me? Why did I do it?
It's difficult for me to overstate how this project has upended my life – in good ways, in bad ways, in more ways than I feel comfortable writing in a post that will be emailed to hundreds of people that I don't know. Suffice to say that it has irrevocably changed the course that I was on and hurtled me into the unknown, something I have pathologically avoided throughout my fairly uneventful life.
I will never truly be able to know whether Macklin would have wanted his story told by a strange Californian born a couple decades after he died, but there are steps I can take in coming as close as I can to an answer. I need to take them. Every day I tell myself to take them. The time has not yet felt right. The time may never feel right. I will have to take them anyway. I have too much passion for this project to let it stall.
And besides, I've already started writing the manuscript.
Lead with gratitude, yes – but still prepare for the worst. My anxious impulses will not allow me to stop myself from considering the worst case scenario. If ultimately I am told no, this is not my story to tell, then what did all of this work get me? Why did I do it?
To me, the why is just as important as the who or what when it comes to a historical passion – or any sort of passion, really. Before I dove headfirst into polar history, I spent a few years in the amateur football (actual football, not NFL football!) journalism sphere. While I did my fair share of match recapping, the work I was proudest of delved into my emotional connections to the sport, the teams and players of my heart. I constantly asked myself why I was writing about football, and in the end it was because I was more interested in – pardon my borrowing an overused phrase, and almost the exact title of a rather good book – what we really write about when we write about football. It's not the lineups, not the tactics, not the rules and regulations. It's love, grief, hope, disappointment, gracelessness, passion, corruption, identity, memory, home. The specific set dressing around it matters less to me than the bleeding, beating heart.
As I turned this question over in my mind, night after night, increasingly desperate for anything to give me the answer that a dead man cannot, it began to coalesce into a familiar shape. What do I cleave to when I write about Macklin? His love for his family, his unexpected tenderness in his care for them. His stoical shouldering of the duties as an unwitting eldest son, his carefully laid out plan for his life and how swiftly he deviated from it the moment his adventurous soul could be indulged. His unflinching loyalty toward Shackleton that persisted well beyond his death. His passion for sport and health that far exceeded that of a bog standard physician. His stubbornness, his humour, his quiet confidence. His role in preserving the narrative and memory of expedition and explorer alike. Love, grief, hope. Identity, memory, home. The same things I have always wanted to write about when I write about anything.
Somewhere along the way, I tricked myself into thinking that actually, what I wanted this time was to write a biography. A clean narrative with a beginning and an end, from birth to death. That would be easiest, wouldn't it? But every time I sat down and tried to work on a manuscript in that fashion, I came up empty. I have obsessed over every detail of this man's life and work for more than a year, had little interest in writing or speaking about anything else, and yet I'd find myself unable to conjure even a few sample pages to prove the project's viability.
And then, quite predictably, I read Bea Uusma's incredible book The Expedition and every stuck gear loosened itself and clicked into place.
It's there in the full title, isn't it? The Expedition: A Love Story: Solving the Mystery of a Polar Tragedy. I don't have a mystery or a tragedy, but I do have a love story. I don't only have the essential facts of his life and work – I don't only have reams of research on family history and newspaper clippings and school journals and a half-finished autobiography in some of the worst handwriting I've ever seen. I have a journey that started because I let obsession grip me, and it continues because I let myself fall deeper into it every day. Why do I do it? Because, quite simply, I love Macklin. Why should I try to temper that to write what I think a biography should be, cut and dry? Why not lean into it, this chaotic mess that has become of my life since rerouting it around him, and explore what it means to throw oneself headlong into the past in the pursuit of knowing someone entirely unknowable? Why pretend to be something I'm not and never have been: a person who can like things a normal, chill amount? Why not try to write his story and my own, see where the slowly growing irrevocable bond between them takes it?
The answer could very well still be no, but good god, why not at least try?
As soon as I approached the Macklin project from this angle, I sat down in front of my laptop late that night and all the words that had been eluding me came forth faster than I could get them down in black and white. The fog lifted just enough for me to realise that for the first time since I first began to seriously write about him, I wasn't stopping every few sentences to second guess if I was the right person to tackle his story.
"So, where's the book?"
Thank you for your patience. I'll have an answer for you soon.