What It’s Like to Be an Expedition Leader on the World’s Most Remote Cruises

This article is part of Crews on Cruise, a bimonthly column spotlighting the people who work behind the scenes of the world’s most memorable voyages—from bartenders and entertainers to ship captains and expedition leaders.

Seb Coulthard’s thirst for adventure started young. Originally from Worcestershire, England, his dad frequently traveled for his job in the oil industry. Upon returning home from work trips, he would regale Coulthard with tales of far-flung destinations like the Amazonian jungle and the Sahara desert. “I grew up wanting that in my life,” Coulthard says.

While with the Royal Navy, Coulthard earned a degree in aerospace engineering; it’s also where he first learned about Sir Ernest Shackleton. After being promoted to Petty Officer, he was deployed to the island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean, Shackleton’s final resting place, with a team of nine engineers and a single Lynx helicopter. He crossed the Southern Ocean again in 2013, this time aboard a near-exact replica of Shackleton’s lifeboat, the legendary James Caird, sailing 830 nautical miles wearing period-correct clothing, surviving on starvation rations, and using a sextant to navigate. The re-enactment became the subject of a three-part Discovery Channel documentary titled Shackleton: Death or Glory.

After 19 years of service, Coulthard retired from the British Armed Forces and made the leap to cruising—re-training as a polar historian, wilderness medic, and expedition guide for Polar Latitudes, which partners with small-ship cruise specialists such as AdventureSmith Explorations to take travelers to the most remote corners on earth. Some journeys, like the 10-day Antarctic Latitudes roundtrip from Ushuaia, Argentina, offer just a taste of the Southern latitudes; others, like this epic 20- to 23-day expedition, venture deeper to the Falkland Islands and his beloved South Georgia.

A jack of all trades, Coulthard has also worked as a submarine operator for ultra-luxury cruise line Seabourn. “There’s more life underwater in the Antarctic than there is above water,” he says. The seven-seat submersibles can dive up to 300 meters; at that depth, guests might encounter sea slugs, sea stars, sea spiders two feet in diameter, and 15,000-year-old sponges. “It’s like being on Mars.”

The way Coulthard views it, an expedition leader’s job isn’t just to interpret the landscapes and wildlife—it’s to connect the dots for travelers so they don’t feel numb to issues like climate change. “That’s the beauty of this type of expeditionary travel,” he says. “It comes with the opportunity to enlighten, inspire, and inform people so that when they go home, they’re armed with a new world view.”

We caught up with Coulthard at his home in the West Midlands last summer to talk about penguins, making a 12-ton machine go underwater, and the challenges of maintaining relationships ashore when you’re always on the go.

Why did you decide to work on cruise ships?

“After years in the Royal Navy, I fancied a career change—and just happened to be part of an expedition that visited the Antarctic as part of a re-enactment of Ernest Shackleton’s journey across the Southern Ocean. After the documentary came out, Polar Latitudes invited me to come onboard as a guest speaker and that turned into a job. I was transformed.”