Vital Mental Medicine: Shackleton's Banjo

[Russ Chandler]

Not heard this yet - it's on the BBC website...

As his ship was sinking through the Antarctic pack-ice, Ernest
Shackleton allowed each member of his expedition to take 2lbs of
possessions with them as they abandoned ship. One exception was made;
Shackleton saved Leonard Hussey's banjo saying, "We must have that
banjo. It's vital mental medicine."

So it proved; when Shackleton set off in a small boat to sail to South
Georgia to get help, he left behind on Elephant Island twenty-two men.
They lived for months under an upturned boat and some old sails. Every
Saturday the banjo-playing meteorologist mounted a concert. He composed
songs and whenever they caught a seal to eat brought out his banjo. He
played, the men sang - and anger and depression were kept at bay.

Leonard Hussey survived, as did his banjo, now in the National Maritime
Museum, its skin marked with a dozen signatures of members of the failed
expedition to the South Pole.

Tim van Eyken is best known as a squeeze-box player and singer - he was
the Song Man in 'War Horse' at the National Theatre. But he also plays
the banjo. Tim explores the character of Hussey and the role he and his
banjo played in saving the sanity of the explorers. He plays some of his
songs - sadly not on Hussey's banjo, which is too fragile, but on his
own, made by Pete Stanley, who sheds some light on the original
instrument.

Tim also hears from Pieter van der Merwe of the National Maritime Museum
about the importance of music in expeditions and, thanks to some
remarkable archive recordings, Hussey himself. He plays the tune
Shackleton asked for the night he died. Hussey reveals, too, that his
banjo had seen action in warmer climes, "having among other things been
played to an audience of cannibals in Africa."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wdgr5