Percy Blackborow was not supposed to be there at all. He was eighteen years old, from Cardiff, and he had tried to sign on as a crew member but been turned away for being too young and inexperienced. He had stowed away, hidden by friends among the crew, and was not discovered until the Endurance was already at sea. When Shackleton found him and reportedly told him that if the food ran short he would be the first to be eaten, Blackborow had answered, according to accounts passed down through the expedition, that at least the boss would have a fine meal. Shackleton had kept him on. He would become the first member of the party to set foot on Elephant Island, and he would lose all the toes on his left foot to gangrene before the ordeal was over.
Lewis Rickinson, the chief engineer, was a veteran mariner whose engine would prove useless against the ice but who kept the ship’s mechanical systems functioning through conditions they were never designed for. He would suffer a mild heart attack when the boats finally reached Elephant Island, after seven days of open-boat travel.
Timothy McCarthy was an able seaman from Cork, a cheerful, steady Irishman whose calm in the worst conditions was, by the accounts of those who served with him, extraordinary. He would be one of the six men who sailed the James Caird. He would survive the crossing. He would die in the First World War a few months after returning to England.