An Antarctic Chef
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2016
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Charles Green. Chas to his family, 'cook' to his colleagues. A young baker whose sense of adventure drew him to a career cooking on the sea. You may never have heard of Charles, but you certainly will have heard of an expedition on which he played a crucial role...
Charles was cook for the crew of the 1914 Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton. A disastrous expedition which ended up lasting for more than two years. The men were forced to camp on moving ice flows, and eventually a remote Antarctic beach on Elephant Island. But against all odds, every man on Shackleton's ship The Endurance survived. In August 1916, the men were rescued. They were on the edge of starvation.
During their time on the ice, Charlie Green cooked tirelessly using his creative flair to concoct meals out of exceptionally meagre means. His food kept the men alive. He went back to the Antarctic with Shackleton on the expedition which would be Shackleton's last. But then, despite living until the 1970s, he faded into obscurity. Known only for slide shows that he gave locally with the well-known images of the expedition.
One hundred years on, another Antarctic chef Gerard Baker, uncovers the extraordinary life led by Charles Green and his version of two years cooking for the men of the Endurance. One of the greatest survival stories of all time.
Presented by Gerard Baker and Sheila Dillon Produced by Clare Salisbury.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program. |
| 0:05.6 | Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. |
| 0:10.5 | We hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:11.9 | He was an oldish man. pleasure. We hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:15.0 | He was an oldish man. He had quite a high-pitched voice. |
| 0:18.0 | We went into the hall, pulled up the chairs. |
| 0:21.0 | And he came in with the deputy headmaster with this huge great box of lantern slides. |
| 0:26.2 | We didn't even really know what the Antarctic was. |
| 0:29.7 | You can't imagine that this little man on a stove that was powered by whale oil was |
| 0:36.7 | cooking for all these people and we were just mesmerized. |
| 0:52.0 | Charles Green, Chaz to his family, to his colleagues cook or dough balls. Perhaps you met Charles, heard him speak at one of the more than a thousand talks he gave. |
| 0:58.0 | Perhaps you were at primary school like Andy and Hazel, who you heard just now, |
| 1:02.0 | mesmerized by the alien projections of those lantern |
| 1:06.2 | slides, Charles cooking over blubber or skinning penguins. |
| 1:11.4 | Or perhaps you've never heard of him, in which case keep listening because Charles was an Antarctic food hero. |
| 1:17.0 | A young baker who ran away to see in his early 20s and found himself as cook or chef for the men of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated |
| 1:27.0 | endurance expedition. |
| 1:29.2 | He had an extraordinary life and yet he died a poor man in 1974. He'd been forced to sell his polar |
| 1:36.5 | medal and those heavy lantern slides given to him by Shackleton which so |
| 1:41.0 | atmospherically illustrated his talks. |
| 1:44.0 | It's blowing about 50, 55 knots. |
| 1:49.0 | It's minus 30. |
... |
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