James McIlroy (surgeon)

James Archibald McIlroy (3 November 1879 – 27 July 1968[1]) was a British surgeon and a member of Sir Ernest Shackleton's crew on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1916).

[3] Known by the nickname of Mick during the expedition, McIlroy was described by Endurance author Alfred Lansing as "a handsome, aristocratic-looking individual" who was seen by his fellow crew as a "man of the world".

[2] After the castaways found a refuge on Elephant Island, McIlroy was the surgeon performing the amputation of Perce Blackborow's gangrenous toes, with Macklin serving as anaesthetist, carefully administering a tiny quantity of salvaged chloroform as anaesthesia.

After his convalescence from his injuries he incurred during the Great War, McIlroy journeyed to Africa and took up cotton farming with Frank Wild and Francis Bickerton in Malawi, then known as Nyasaland.

In the Second World War, McIlroy was serving on the S.S. Oronsay when it was torpedoed off the coast of West Africa, spending five days on an open boat before being rescued by the French ship Dumont d’Urville.