Mrs. Chippy (Wellington) Multi-Cache

After the race to the South Pole ended in December 1911 with Roald Amundsen’s conquest, Sir Ernest Shackleton, who had previously visited the area as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s 1901-1904 Discovery Expedition and again in 1907 when his Nimrod Expedition reached within 180km of the pole, turned his attention to what he saw as the one remaining great object of Antarctic Exploration, the crossing of the continent via the South Pole.

Grandly titled the “Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition”, the expedition departed South Georgia on 5 Dec 1914 aboard the sailing ship Endurance, headed for Vahsel Bay in the Weddell sea. In addition to the 28 crew and 70 dogs, the ship’s carpenter, Harry McNish (sometimes McNeish), had also brought along a tiger stripped tabby cat who was given the nickname of Mrs. Chippy, although it was later discovered Mrs. Chippy was in fact a ‘he’.

Mrs. Chippy quickly endeared himself to the crew who described him “as full of character” and were impressed at his his ability to walk along the ship’s inch-wide rails in even the roughest weather. Diary entries from the other expedition members gave tribute to the cat's outstanding character. Capt. Frank Worsley described Mrs. Chippy's habit of climbing the rigging "exactly after the manner of a seaman going aloft," and Leonard Hussey, the meteorologist, recalled how Mrs. Chippy used to take a provocative stroll across the roofs of the dogs' kennels whilst sharpening his claws.

The expedition then spent a further three months on the ice before eventually reaching landfall at Elephant Island. It was during this time that Shackleton ordered the sled dogs and Mrs. Chippy to be destroyed in order to preserve their meagre supplies. McNish was devastated at the loss of Mrs. Chippy and never forgave Shackleton. He clashed with Shackleton during their time on the ice,  and despite his skill at adapting one of the lifeboats to make the 1300km journey to South Georgia that would take the party to safety,  he was denied the Polar Medal awarded to most of the rest of the crew, on the grounds of his earlier insubordination.

After the expedition McNish returned to the Merchant Navy and eventually secured a job with the New Zealand Shipping Company, visiting NZ a number of times. He subsequently moved to Wellington in 1925 to work on the waterfront until his death in 1930. He was buried with full naval honours in Karori Cemetry,  but his grave remained unmarked for almost thirty years until the New Zealand Antarctic Society (NZAS) erected a headstone in 1959.

In 2004 the NZAS placed an additional tribute to McNish on his grave, a life-sized bronze statue of Mrs. Chippy by sculptor Chris Elliott.  It is, said Baden Norris from the NZAS, a fitting memorial for both the much loved cat and his owner. "In my view he's the one man, even above Captain Frank Worsley, that saved the expedition. He made it possible for it to be saved through his expertise in building the boat". For Harry McNish's grandson Tom McNish, the 'reunification' is probably just what the ship's carpenter would have wanted. "I think the cat was more important to him than the Polar Medal."