Walking from Larsen House to Hope Point is one of my favourite routes on South Georgia. The track climbs above King Edward Cove, curling towards the cairn that stands in memory of Sir Ernest Shackleton. Most visitors know it as the place where the Boss is memorialised. Few realise it also holds a hidden connection to The Lewisman Who Never Left the Ice | Thomas F. MacLeod, a Scotsman from Stornoway whose life at sea took him from the Outer Hebrides to the heart of Antarctica.
A Lewisman of the Sea
Born in Glasgow on 3 April 1873 and raised above the cooper’s shop at the corner of Point Street and Quay Lane in Stornoway. Young Tommy MacLeod grew up with the salt air in his lungs. His mother, Barbara MacLeod, had worked in domestic service in Glasgow before returning north with her infant son to live with his grandmother. The harbour became his playground, and by the age of thirteen he was at sea. He celebrated his fourteenth birthday on the far side of the world in Australia. By 1910 he was an experienced sailor who had seen service in the Boer War.
Three Voyages South
MacLeod’s polar career began almost by chance. In 1910, unemployed in New Zealand, he happened upon Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ship Terra Nova in Lyttelton Harbour and talked his way aboard. He served during Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition and was later awarded the Silver Polar Medal by King George V.
Four years later he joined Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition aboard the Endurance. When the ship was crushed in the Weddell Sea, MacLeod helped navigate the open boats through ice and storm to reach Elephant Island. A journey that became one of the greatest survival stories ever told. Shackleton called him “a typical old deep-sea salt and growler … the best sailor of the crew.” For this feat he received the Bronze Polar Medal.
Undeterred, MacLeod signed up once more when Shackleton launched the Quest Expedition in 1921. He was on board when the ship reached South Georgia in January 1922. MacLeod was there when Shackleton died suddenly of a heart attack. It was MacLeod who suggested that a memorial cairn should be built at Hope Point overlooking the bay.
A Secret in the Cairn
The cairn was built from local stone by the men of the Quest, led by Frank Wild and Frank Worsley. Few people know that within its centre they placed a sealed metal capsule containing a copy of a document signed by the expedition members — Wild, Worsley, Alexander Macklin, Thomas MacLeod, and others. The original rests safely in archives, but this copy remains hidden inside the cairn, a quiet tribute preserved against time and weather. It links South Georgia not only to Shackleton but also to the Scots seaman who first proposed it.
From South Georgia to Canada
After the Quest voyage, MacLeod emigrated to Canada at the invitation of the expedition geologist George Vibert Douglas. He settled near Kingston, Ontario, working as a caretaker and watchman, still known affectionately as “Old Mac.” In 1928 he even applied to join Admiral Richard Byrd’s Antarctic expedition, writing modestly, “There is a lot of little things I know would be handy when you got south.” His letter arrived too late, but it captured his enduring longing for the ice.
MacLeod died in 1960, aged 87, and was buried in Cataraqui Cemetery, Ontario. His gravestone records his service with Scott and Shackleton, and in Stornoway a memorial plaque now honours him as the first Lewisman to reach the Antarctic.
Remembering the Lewisman
Every time I walk the path to Hope Point, I think of that hidden capsule beneath the stones — signed by men who lived and worked through unimaginable hardship. We often speak of Shackleton and Wild, but Thomas F. MacLeod deserves a place beside them: a Hebridean sailor whose skill and courage helped carry others through the worst the ice could offer.
The cairn he conceived still stands, and somewhere within it lies a copy of that document — a small, silent reminder that the spirit of the Outer Hebrides reached all the way to the Antarctic.
Special thanks to the information from this Facebook Page Shackleton’s Endurance
The Lewisman Who Never Left The Ice | Thomas F. MacLeod
Canada’s Great Rivers To Avoch: The Untold Story Of Sir Alexander Mackenzie
Polar Plunge. The Infamous Polar Plunge: The Ultimate Antarctica Challenge
Zodiacs and Ice Camping: Once-in-a-Lifetime Experiences on an Antarctica Cruise
Penguins, Whales, and Seals: Your Guide to Antarctica’s Spectacular Wildlife