Survival Tails: Endurance in Antarctica
Page 14
• Perce Blackborow—stowaway
• The Endurance got its name from Ernest Shackleton’s family motto: “By endurance, we conquer.”
• Shackleton had previously been on two other expeditions to Antarctica: the Discovery expedition with the famous explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott, and the Nimrod expedition. On the first expedition, Shackleton became ill and had to return home. On the second expedition, the group took along ponies rather than dogs and were forced to turn around after running out of food.
• Along with the photographer, Hurley, there was also an artist on board called George Marston, who captured the expedition through his paintings. When left behind on Elephant Island, he was the one who had the idea to make shelters out of the lifeboats and use his oil paints as glue.
• The Endurance crew were away from home for almost two years and spent 497 days on the water or ice floes.
• Shackleton and his crew were only one part of the expedition. Another group called the Ross party was sent from New Zealand to the opposite side of Antarctica, with the goal of setting up supply depots for Shackleton’s party, as they were not able to carry enough provisions to take them the whole way across Antarctica. Unfortunately, the ice pulled the Ross party’s ship, the Aurora, away from some of the sledding parties on the ice, leaving those men marooned as the damaged ship was forced to return to New Zealand. The Ross sea party remained stranded until the Aurora was fixed and returned to rescue them in January 1917.
Timeline
1914
August 1: The Endurance departs London on the same day that Germany declares war on Russia, signaling the start of World War I.
August 4: Britain declares war on Germany. Shackleton offers his ship and crew to the British government for the war effort.
August 8: Shackleton receives a one-word telegram from the Admiralty—Proceed. The Endurance departs from Plymouth.
October 26: With the final crew on board, the Endurance leaves Buenos Aires, Argentina, for South Georgia, an island in the South Atlantic. The crew spends a month making final preparations at Grytviken whaling station.
December 5: The Endurance departs Grytviken, heading for the South Sandwich Islands.
December 7: They encounter pack ice and have to carefully navigate the shifting passages of water.
1915
January 10: The first sighting of Antarctica. Progress through the narrow leads of pack ice is very slow.
January 18: Ice closes in around the ship and it becomes stuck. They wait for the ice to shift for ten days, putting out the ship’s fires to conserve fuel.
February 14: They try to break free of the ice. For over forty-eight hours, the crew attacks the ice with chisels, picks, and saws. The ship moves a little way before becoming stuck once more. They are only one day’s sail from land.
February 22: The ice begins to drift north, taking the Endurance with it—and farther away from Antarctica.
February 24: The Endurance becomes the crew’s winter base. The crew trains the dogs and prepares for when the ice breaks up. A dog town is built and “dogloos” are made from wood and snow. The inside of the ship is remodeled, and the ship becomes known as the Ritz, after the famous hotel.
May 1: The sun vanishes, not to be seen again for four months. The landscape becomes more difficult to navigate as pressure ridges rise up and threaten to crush the ship.
June 22: The crew celebrates Midwinter’s Day with a feast, speeches, songs, toasts, and a rousing rendition of the British national anthem. The crew holds an Antarctic Derby, with Frank Wild snatching an exciting victory over Frank Hurley.
July: Blizzards make a mess of the ship. In early July the sun begins to return, but the ice continues to buckle. For safety, the men and dogs evacuate the ice and new kennels are built on the upper deck.
August 1: The ship lists heavily to port.
September 1: Ice begins to break up the ship. Shackleton and Wild inspect the damage, and the crew cuts the ice away as best they can.
September 2: Pressure ice makes the Endurance jump into the air and settle on its beam.
October 27: Ice opens planks in the hull on the starboard side, letting water in. The crew works the pumps for three days and nights. At five PM Shackleton gives the order to abandon ship. Stores and equipment are taken off the ship to set up camp, and sleds are packed with as many supplies as possible. The reduced provisions are put into three of the four lifeboats.
November 1: The nearest land is 350 miles west. The men march, pulling the lifeboats. After three days, they are still in sight of the ship. They erect Ocean Camp, which becomes their home for the next two months. Each morning, teams set out under Frank Wild’s supervision to salvage boats, sledges, rations, fuel, and equipment from the wreckage of the Endurance.
November 21: Five PM. With a cry of “She’s going, boys!” Shackleton and the crew watch the Endurance sink into the Weddell Sea. The drift has carried them thirteen hundred miles.
December 22: All luxury food for Christmas is eaten up, including mince pies, Christmas pudding, tea and cocoa, baked beans, and anchovies in oil.
December 23: They begin to march again toward open water, averaging a mile and a half a day, pulling heavily loaded sledges and boats for seven days and seven nights.
December 29: Shackleton abandons the march to set up Patience Camp, where they stay for three and a half months. Hunting becomes the crew’s main activity. Sled teams are sent out in search of seals and penguins as rations run low.
1916
January 21: A blizzard blows the camp south toward the Antarctic Circle.
February 29: In honor of leap-year day, the crew enjoys three full meals. The crew spends time hunting, reading, repairing and drying their clothes, making weather observations, and taking scientific measurements. Hurley creates a stove fueled by blubber.
March 30: With warmer weather approaching, the ice begins to weaken. This was the end of the journey for the dogs.
March 31: The ice begins to disintegrate. The floe they are on splits in two, separating them from the lifeboats, but they manage to get the boats back. They make plans to head out on the lifeboats.
April 7: Elephant Island appears on the horizon.
April 9: After six months, they head out onto water in the three lifeboats: the James Caird, the Dudley Docker, and the Stancomb Wills. It is so cold that the men’s hands have to be chipped away from the oars and their joints seize up. They each eat only one biscuit—a plain cookie—a day.
April 16: After seven grueling days at sea, the lifeboats land safely on Elephant Island. The crew kills seals, eating and drinking their first hot meal in days.
April 17: The island has no shelter from the wind, cold, and rain. Shackleton moves camp seven miles to the west and calls it Wild Camp. The lifeboats land in sleet and gales, so the men shelter beneath the boats. The blizzard rages for five days.
April 20: Shackleton announces that he will attempt to sail the twenty-two-and-a-half-foot James Caird 800 miles to South Georgia. McNish, the carpenter, sets to work—fitting canvas over the top of the boat and loading it with ballast, along with water-filled kegs and food to last four weeks.
April 22: McNish finishes work and the weather clears.
April 24: Shackleton, Tom Crean, Frank Worsley, Timothy McCarthy, Henry McNish, and John Vincent set off for South Georgia across the world’s most dangerous ocean. Frank Wild is left in charge of the men on Elephant Island, where bad weather settles in. Marston, the artist, has the idea to make the boats into a shelter. They turn the boats upside down and use his oil paints as glue to secure canvas sheets over the hulls for extra protection. They insert chimneys through the hulls, raise the boats off the ground, and carve a gutter around the outside to avoid getting wet. Wild gives the men jobs to keep them busy, and at night Hussey plays his banjo.
On the Caird, the weather is severe. The men work in four-hour shifts. Three sleep below the canvas among the ballast while three
remain above. Worsley navigates by using the sun’s position and his own intuition.
May 7: On the fourteenth day at sea, they spot signs that land is near—birds in the sky and seaweed in the water.
May 10: After seventeen days, the James Caird miraculously arrives on the west coast of South Georgia. They sail into King Haakon Bay but realize that the whaling station is on the opposite side of the island. They will have to go over the island on foot, over peaks and glaciers never crossed before.
May 19: Shackleton, Worsley, and Crean set off to cross the glacier-clad peaks. They screw nails into their boots for extra grip and set off, leaving the ill men behind. With an ax and a rope as their only equipment, they set out at three AM by the light of a full moon.
May 20: At 6:30 AM, after trekking without a break for thirty-six hours, the men arrive at Stromness whaling station.
May 23: The men depart on the English-owned Southern Sky to rescue the men on Elephant Island but are stopped by ice a hundred miles short of the island. The men left behind on the other side of South Georgia are rescued and given passage home.
June 10: The Uruguayan government loans the survey ship Instituto de Pesca No 1. The ship comes in sight of Elephant Island before pack ice forces the crew to turn back.
July 12: Chartered by the British Association, the schooner Emma sets out from Punta Arenas, Chile, again traveling a hundred miles short of Elephant Island before storms and ice force it to return.
August 25: Chilean authorities loan the Yelcho, a small steamer, which sets sail with Shackleton, Worsley, and Crean for Elephant Island on their fourth attempt.
August 30: Eighteen weeks after Shackleton set out from Elephant Island, he returns on the Yelcho, rescuing all crew members.
September 3: The Yelcho reaches Punta Arenas with all twenty-eight men of the Endurance expedition.
Glossary
ADMIRALTY: the government department that ran the British navy
BALLAST: heavy material carried by a boat or ship to add weight for extra stability
BLUBBER: the fat layer of a whale or seal, found between skin and muscle; can be used as fuel
BOW: the front of a ship
CREVICE: a crack, as in ice, that forms an opening
FISSURE: a narrow opening
FLANK: to stand at the side of someone or something
FLOE: a sheet of floating ice on the surface of the sea
FOOTBALL: the British word for soccer
FUNNEL: the smokestack of a steamship
GALLEY: the kitchen on a ship
GANGPLANK: a flat plank that leads from a ship to the dock or ground
GEE: a command meaning “right”
GLACIER: an extended mass of slowly moving ice built up over many years
HAW: a command meaning “left”
HOOSH: a thick stew made from dried meat, fat, cereal, biscuits, and water
HULL: the hollow, lowermost part of a ship
JIB BOOM: a strong, thick pole extending from the bow of a ship, used to secure the headsail
LEAD: a passage of water through an ice floe
MUSH: a command meaning “go”
PACK: a group of dogs
PEMMICAN: a mixture of dried meat and fat
PENINSULA: an area of land almost completely surrounded by water apart from a single point connecting it to a mainland
POD: a group of whales
PORT: the left-hand side of a ship
PRECIPICE: a cliff with a steep vertical drop
PROVISIONS: supplies of food and other necessities
QUAYSIDE: the edge of a dock where it meets water
RUNT: the smallest or weakest animal in a litter
STARBOARD: the right-hand side of a ship
STEAMER: a ship run by coal and steam
STERN: the back end of a ship
STOWAWAY: a person who hides aboard a ship without permission
TELEGRAM: a message or communication
WHEELHOUSE: the part of the ship that houses the ship’s wheel
WHOA: a command meaning “stop”
WILDERNESS: a wild, uninhabited area
Further Reading
BOOKS
Alexander, Caroline. The Endurance. New York: Knopf, 1998. (Features many of the amazing photographs Frank Hurley took on the expedition.)
Armstrong, Jennifer. Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. New York: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2000.
Bertozzi, Nick. Shackleton: Antarctic Odyssey. New York: First Second, 2014.
Buckley, James. Who Was Ernest Shackleton? New York: Penguin Workshop, 2013.
Grill, William. Shackleton’s Journey. London: Flying Eye Books, 2014.
McCurdy, Michael. Trapped by the Ice! New York: Walker and Co., 1997. Reprint, Bloomsbury USA Children’s, 2002.
Shackleton, Ernest. South: The Illustrated Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2016.
WEBSITES
bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/shackleton_ernest.shtml
ernestshackleton.net
jamescairdsociety.com
shackletonfoundation.org
shackleton100.com
DOCUMENTARY
NOVA: Shackleton’s Voyage of Endurance, aired March 26, 2002, on PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackleton.
Scott Palmieri
Katrina Charman lives in a small village in the middle of Southeast England with her husband and three daughters. Katrina has wanted to be a children’s writer ever since she was eleven, when her schoolteacher set her class the task of writing an epilogue to Roald Dahl’s Matilda. Her teacher thought her writing was good enough to send to Roald Dahl himself. Sadly, she never got a reply, but the experience ignited her love of reading and writing. She invites you to visit her online at katrinacharman.com.