The White Darkness

David Grann's The White Darkness is a work of narrative nonfiction that tells the story of Henry Worsley, a retired British Army officer whose lifelong devotion to the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton led him to attempt three polar expeditions, the last of which cost him his life.

Grann opens in January 2016, with Worsley alone on the Titan Dome, a high ice plateau in Antarctica's interior. He was sixty-two days into an unprecedented solo, unsupported crossing of the continent, hauling a sled across more than a thousand miles of ice. His body was in severe decline: frostbitten fingers, blistered feet, a broken front tooth, and roughly forty pounds lost. Each day, he relayed audio dispatches via satellite phone, captivating listeners worldwide, including schoolchildren and Prince William, the expedition's patron. As peril mounted, Worsley asked himself a question that had guided him for decades: What would Shackleton do?

Grann traces the origins of Worsley's obsession. Henry grew up in the shadow of his father, Richard Worsley, a decorated World War II officer who held a senior Army logistics post but remained emotionally remote. Sent to boarding school at age seven, Henry found solace in sports and solitary wandering. At the Stowe School, he discovered Shackleton's The Heart of the Antarctic and was captivated by its tales of Antarctic exploration. He also learned that Frank Worsley, the captain on a later Shackleton expedition, was a distant relative. Though Henry longed to become an explorer, his family persuaded him to enlist in the Army.

Grann recounts Shackleton's expeditions. After an early Antarctic venture under the naval officer Robert Falcon Scott, Shackleton led his own Nimrod expedition, coming within ninety-seven nautical miles of the South Pole before turning back to save his men. With the Pole claimed by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen in 1911, Shackleton attempted a trans-Antarctica crossing in 1914, but his ship, the Endurance, became trapped in sea ice and was crushed. He kept his men united through unorthodox leadership, guiding them by lifeboat to barren Elephant Island, then sailing with five companions, including Frank Worsley, across eight hundred miles of ocean to South Georgia Island. From there he reached a whaling station and organized a rescue, saving his entire crew. He never completed the crossing and died in 1922. By the late twentieth century, he was revered as a model of crisis leadership.

In the Army, Worsley modeled himself on Shackleton, forgoing rank privileges and sharing his soldiers' tasks. He passed the selection course for the Special Air Service (SAS), an elite British commando unit. In 1989, he met Joanna Stainton at a London party, and despite being opposites, they married in 1993 and had two children: Max and Alicia. His military career stalled at lieutenant colonel, partly because his candid warnings about Afghanistan antagonized his superiors.

In 2003, Worsley made a pilgrimage to Shackleton's grave on South Georgia Island. The following year, Alexandra Shackleton, the explorer's granddaughter, introduced him to Will Gow, Shackleton's great-nephew, who proposed reenacting the Nimrod expedition for its 2009 centennial. They recruited Henry Adams, a shipping lawyer whose great-grandfather had been Shackleton's second-in-command. After years of training, Gow asked Worsley to take charge of the disorganized effort. Worsley accepted and planned the route from Ross Island across the Ross Ice Shelf, up the Beardmore Glacier, and over the Titan Dome to the South Pole.

The three men departed in November 2008. They endured multi-day storms, navigated crevasse-riddled terrain on the Beardmore Glacier, and suffered from frostbite and caloric depletion. When Worsley lagged, he refused Adams's offer of help and discarded his emergency food to lighten his sled. On January 9, 2009, exactly one hundred years after Shackleton turned back, they reached his farthest point. They continued south and, on January 18, after sixty-six days, reached the South Pole. Worsley took out Shackleton's brass compass, which Alexandra had entrusted to him, and let the needle spin to a stop.

After returning home, Worsley felt again the "lure of little voices." In 2012, he led a second expedition, becoming the first person to trace both classic routes to the Pole. He then conceived his most ambitious plan: the solo, unsupported trans-Antarctica crossing that Shackleton had originally envisioned, roughly nine hundred nautical miles that no one had attempted alone. With Joanna's consent, he departed on October 20, 2015, hoping to raise a hundred thousand pounds for the Endeavour Fund, a charity for wounded soldiers.

Weather delays in Chile put him behind schedule before he even reached Antarctica. He set out from Berkner Island, off the coast of Antarctica, on November 13 and trekked south toward the Pole. Storms pinned him in his tent. He narrowly escaped falling into a crevasse. Through sheer willpower, he reached the South Pole on January 2, 2016, after fifty-one days alone. Because his trek was unaided, he could not enter the nearby research station for food or shelter.

The second phase proved devastating. Ascending the Titan Dome, Worsley had lost more than forty pounds. His fingers went numb, his stomach ached, and his diary entries grew dark. On January 17, he trekked sixteen hours through a whiteout. Joanna, alarmed by his fading broadcasts, considered calling for rescue, but friends believed Worsley should make that call himself. On January 20, he phoned Max in the middle of the night, repeating only that he wanted to hear his son's voice. Max urged him to come home. The next morning, Joanna pleaded with him to call for evacuation.

All day on January 21, Worsley wrestled with the decision, torn between his diary entry, "Never, ever give in," and his longing for the ordeal to end. He reflected on Shackleton's example: Shackleton had survived because he recognized when he had no more moves and turned back, understanding that not everything can be conquered and that survival itself can be a triumph.

On January 22, after seventy-one days and nearly eight hundred nautical miles, Worsley called for rescue. In his final broadcast, he said he had "shot his bolt," echoing Shackleton's words. Donations to the Endeavour Fund had exceeded his goal. He walked to the rescue plane under his own power and was flown to the base camp of Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions (ALE), where he called Joanna and assured her he was fine.

The next afternoon, Steve Jones, ALE's expeditions manager, called Joanna: Worsley had bacterial peritonitis, an abdominal infection possibly caused by a perforated ulcer. He was rushed to surgery in Punta Arenas, Chile. Joanna caught the first flight to South America. While waiting in Santiago for a connecting flight, she received sequential updates: liver failure, then kidney failure. Before she could board the plane, Fiona Clouder, the British ambassador, knelt beside her and told her Henry was dead.

In Punta Arenas, Joanna was taken to a church where Henry lay in an open wooden casket, looking, she recalled, "incredibly peaceful." She was consumed by regret for not speaking to him before surgery and for not urging him to stop sooner. Prince William called Worsley a source of inspiration. He was posthumously awarded the Polar Medal, previously given to Scott and Shackleton. At his funeral, Adams eulogized him as "a father and a husband" and "the most honorable of men." Max recited the poem about Antarctica he had written at age thirteen.

In December 2017, Joanna, Max, and Alicia traveled to South Georgia Island. Joanna, wrapped in the down coat Worsley had worn on his final expedition, hiked with her children to a peak overlooking Shackleton's grave. They buried Worsley's ashes in the frozen earth, in a wooden box he had made for one of his expeditions.