In 1898, Shackleton joined Union-Castle Line, the regular mail and passenger carrier between Southampton and Cape Town. He was, as a shipmate recorded, "a departure from our usual type of young officer", content with his own company though not aloof, "spouting lines from Keats Browning", a mixture of sensitivity and aggression but, withal, sympathetic. Following the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, Shackleton transferred to the troopship "Tintagel Castle" where, in March 1900, he met an army lieutenant, Cedric Longstaff, whose father Llewellyn W. Longstaff was the main financial backer of the National Antarctic Expedition then being organised in London.