Blackborow, W. Perce, 1894-1949

Perce Blackborow was born in Newport, Wales in 1894. Eager to return home from Buenos Aires, he applied to join the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition [Weddell Sea Party], 1914-1916 (leader Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton) but was turned down. He came aboard Endurance as a stowaway and was discovered shortly after the ship left South Georgia, when he signed on as a steward.

After Endurance was crushed in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, the crew lived for six months on drifting ice until this broke up north-east of the Antarctic Peninsula. Proceeding in three open boats, the party of twenty-eight men reached Elephant Island on 15 April 1916. Blackborow sustained severe frostbite in his left foot during the journey and the surgeons Alexander Macklin and James McIlroy amputated his toes in June 1916. He and his companions were eventually rescued from the island on 30 August 1916.

Returning to Wales after the expedition, Blackborow was rejected by the Royal Navy on medical grounds, serving instead with the Merchant Navy until 1919, after which he worked as a dock boatman in the Alexandra Docks in Newport. He died in 1949 at Newport.

From the guide to the Perce Blackborow collection, 19--, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)