Given the importance of Port Glasgow as a ship building town and as a port it was no surprise that the young McNish decided to head to sea. His was a career path of prestige, in the days of wooden ships, and there were a lot of wooden ships still afloat and being built, the Ship’s Carpenter was an important man, an officer. The competition amongst boys to secure apprenticeships in a craft like carpentry would have been intense. The alternative was working in the ship yards doing manual labour or in the mines or steel mills. McNish clearly had a thirst for adventure and travel and by the time he met Shackleton, he was a well-travelled and highly skilled professional.
How McNish came to sign and be chosen remains a bit of a mystery. Legend has it that he saw Shackleton’s famous advert and signed up for the adventure. However, whether or not Shackleton actually used the immortal words in the advert is doubtful. No one has been able to find a record in any British newspaper of the time of an advert with these words ever being placed despite a reward for finding evidence being offered. It's possible that Frank Worsley, a consummate seaman may have known of McNish and recommended him as a highly skilled carpenter. Whatever the truth McNish was one of the 5000 men who applied and he was one of the few chosen. Unravelling what actually happened from legend is often easiest to do by looking at the behaviour and reactions of the people who lived the events. It is clear from his diaries that McNish was pleased to have been chosen on what he saw as another job albeit an unusual one to a part of the world he had never visited.
It’s important when examining the relationship between Shackleton and NcNish to remember that McNish was a professional seaman, he had signed on with Endurance as
the Ship’s Carpenter, he wasn’t ever meant to cross to the
pole or to be part of the polar ‘shore party’ activities. Despite Shackleton’s remarkable ability to bring people together, before the ship’s entrapment in the ice made it necessary to unite the men as one party, there was distinction between the crew and the passengers.
The extent of the differences is commented on by McNish in his journal where he comments that the shore party are ‘blackguards’ (pron. blaggards) for their filthy and profane language. (The ‘black’ in this definition is the old Lowland Scots dialect word for villainous or evil or sneaky, the knife that Scots carry in their socks is called the sgian dubh – (sgian – knife dubh – black) the idea being that it’s the weapon of last resort – the sneaky knife you carry up your sleeve. The open display of your ‘black knife’ by wearing it in your sock, is a way of demonstrating goodwill to your host and others and that your intentions are honourable. If a kilted Scot isn’t wearing one in his sock then watch your back!). Specifically identifying the shore party in this instance is interesting but not unusual. If you look at the crew men of the Endurance there were a number of east coast ‘trawler men’ from Yorkshire and Linconshire, a Shetland Islander, a Welshman. All these parts of Britain have strong tradition in Calvinism and on the coasts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and in Wales fishermen were known for their Primitive Methodism. It’s highly likely that the foremast of the Endurance was a place where foul language and drunkenness were not tolerated.
In South Georgia Shackleton wrote to journalist, Edward Perris: the carpenter is "the only man I am not dead certain of". He is - "a very good workman and shipwright, but does nothing I can get hold of."
McNish was of an age with Shackleton, both in their 40s where most of the crew were young men. McNish had seen the world, had been to sea and it is quite possible that his dour, straight spoken and uncompromising way of looking at the world could have viewed Shackleton, a man known for his public dalliances and charm and his brother’s scandalous fraud case as a man of whom he did not approve and certainly didn’t respect beyond the limits of command. Those of us who are scholars of Shackleton know that on shore he was a bit of a failure, he’d several failed businesses under his belt, a difficult marriage to the long suffering Emily, rumours of affairs, a man who charmed himself out of trouble. But, in extremis he was a leader extraordinaire . This personality clash, between the Anglican Anglo-Irish Shackleton and the Calvinist Scot was on the cards.
PS Comet, 1812, the world's first regular steamboat service
The establishment of the Free Church of Scotland, 1843, McNish was brought up in this stauchly calvinistic kirk.
Port Glasgow, once one of the most important ship building towns in the world
38.