The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

by Caroline Alexander

  George Marston had been with Shackleton on the Nimrod. A graduate of a London art school, he was part of a young set that included Shackleton's two sisters, Helen and Kathleen, who encouraged him to apply for the position of expedition artist. On the Nimrod expedition, Marston took part in three sledging journeys, one of them with Shackleton, who had been impressed with Marston's physical abilities. The son of a coachmaker and grandson of a shipwright, Marston was, like Hurley, marvelously versatile—which would prove useful.

  Little is known of Able Seaman Thomas McLeod, a superstitious Scotsman who had been with Scott on the Terra Nova and Shackleton on the Nimrod. Having run away to sea at the age of fourteen, he had twenty-seven years of sailing experience.

  Tom Crean was a tall, raw-boned Irish seaman, one of ten children born to a farming family in a remote part of County Kerry. He had come up the ranks of the Royal Navy, having enlisted at sixteen—adding two years to his age—as a boy second class, in 1893. Fluent in Irish and English, Crean always regretted that his formal education had ceased at primary school. His own sensitivity to this fact, more than the fact itself, may have prevented him from rising higher than he did. On the Endurance, Crean was second officer.

  But in worth, if not in actual rank, Crean was, to use Shackleton's own word, “trumps.” He had gone south with Scott on both the Discovery and the Terra Nova expeditions, receiving the Albert Medal for bravery on the latter; and he had been among the sixteen who set out with Scott for the South Pole in 1911. Scott's method was to avoid assigning roles in advance, so that no one in the crew knew whether he was destined to be in the polar party, or to be turned back short of the final push, after hauling supplies for many miles. On January 3, 1912, Scott told Crean and two companions, Lieutenant “Teddy” Evans and William Lashly, that they were to turn back the next day. Although all supplies and equipment had been rationed for two teams of four men each, at the last minute Scott chose a fifth man, “Birdie” Bowers, to join the polar party. This decision not only contributed to the demise of his own party by adding an unexpected mouth to feed, but seriously burdened the returning trio with a four-man sledging load. Evans, already suffering from scurvy, collapsed and was pulled by his companions until they could go no farther. Then, thirty-five miles from the nearest assistance, Crean set out alone with three biscuits and two sticks of chocolate.

  Crean (standing) and Cheetham

  The “Irish giant” and the diminutive “veteran of the Antarctic.” Crean had sailed on the Terra Nova and Discovery with Scott before joining Shackleton on the Endurance.

  “Well Sir, I was very weak when I reached the hut,” Crean wrote in a letter to a friend. He was a hard man to rattle. Earlier in the same expedition, after an exhausting trek across fragmented sea ice with the ponies, Crean and his two companions had prepared their dinner. By mistake, a bag of curry powder was taken for cocoa. “Crean,” recalled his tent mate, “drank his right down before discovering anything wrong.” But tough though he was, Crean broke down and wept when, at 87° south, only 150 miles short of their goal, Scott informed him and his companions that they had not been selected for the honor of continuing with him to the pole.

  A number of the sailors aboard the Endurance had formerly been trawlerhands in the North Sea, as brutal an occupation as could be imagined. Little suggests they were sympathetic characters, and one of them, John Vincent, previously a sailor in the navy and a trawlerhand off the coast of Iceland, would turn out to be a problematic bully. Of the two stokers, William Stephenson was a former Royal Marine and officer's servant, and Ernest Holness, the youngest of the sailors, was “a York-shire lad,” and considered—by Lees, at any rate—to be “the most loyal to the expedition.”

  Four of the sailors were particularly liked. Timothy McCarthy was a young Irishman in the merchant service, known for his ebullient good humor and gift for repartee. Walter How, a Londoner, was only three weeks back home from a stint abroad when he applied for a position with the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton was impressed with his recent experience aboard the Canadian Auxiliary Survey Ship, working only miles below the Arctic Circle off the coast of Labrador. He was also of a cheerful disposition and a good amateur artist. William Bakewell joined the expedition in Buenos Aires. He had been a farm laborer, logger, rail worker, and ranch hand in Montana before becoming a seaman at the age of twenty-seven. When his ship the Golden Gate ran aground in the River Plate, he and his mate Perce Blackborow wandered the docks of Buenos Aires looking for a way to England and came upon the Endurance.

  George E. Marston

  The expedition artist was described by a former shipmate as having “the frame and face of a prizefighter and the disposition of a fallen angel.”

  “It was,” he said, “love at first sight.” On learning that she belonged to the famous polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, and that he was seeking a replacement crew, the two young men presented themselves for consideration. Pleased with Bakewell's experience with sailing ships, as opposed to steam, Shackleton hired him (it may not have hurt his chances that Bakewell, the expedition's only American, posed as a Canadian, seeking a colonial's advantage). But Blackborow was turned away when Shackleton decided he had enough men. Aided by Bakewell and How, Blackborow stowed away in a clothing locker in the fo'c'sle. The day after the ship left Buenos Aires, he was discovered and dragged before Shackleton. Hungry, frightened, and seasick, the young man was subjected to an eloquent tirade from “the Boss” that impressed all onlooking seamen. In the end, Shackleton leaned close to Blackborow and said, “Do you know that on these expeditions we often get very hungry, and if there is a stowaway available he is the first to be eaten?” This was correctly interpreted as official acceptance of his presence, and Blackborow was signed on as steward to help in the galley, at £3 a month. In fact, Shackleton came to regard the quiet, conscientious Welshman as highly as any member of the crew.

  One of the oldest men was Henry McNish, known by the traditional nickname for ship carpenters as “Chippy.” A blunt-spoken old salt from Cathcart, outside Port Glasgow, he stirred misgivings in Shackleton from the outset.

  “The carpenter is the only man I am not dead certain of,” Shackleton had written to his friend and agent, Ernest Perris, shortly before leaving South Georgia. McNish was perhaps the most mysterious member of the expedition. He claimed, untruthfully, to have sailed south with William Bruce's Scottish expedition in 1902, but he was in any case much travelled. For reasons that remain obscure, Shackleton and his shipmates believed him to be in his fifties, although his actual age was forty. Though not particularly liked, he was universally respected, not only as a brilliant shipwright but also as an experienced sailor in the Royal Naval Reserve.

  The deck of the Endurance on the outward journey

  “Upon getting along side, I saw the name on her stern, Endurance, London. Upon closer view she did not look so neat and trim, as the deck was littered up with boxes and crates of all shapes and sizes and at least a thousand dogs.” (Bakewell, autobiography)

  “Chips was neither sweet-tempered nor tolerant,” a shipmate from another expedition recalled. “And his Scots voice could rasp like frayed wire cable.” McNish had brought along his cat, the irrepressible Mrs. Chippy, a tabby described as “full of character” by several members of the expedition, and whose chief delight was taking teasing shortcuts across the kennel roofs of the half-wild sledging dogs, whom he (for Mrs. Chippy was belatedly discovered to be a male) cannily perceived to be securely chained to their kennels.

  Twenty-seven in all, not including Shackle-ton, the men formed a relatively small team to wage the battle south through the thousand miles of ice-strewn ocean that lay between them and their planned destination. Each must have carefully scrutinized his fellows' experience and character. Nor was Shackleton himself exempt from such assessment.

  “[A] queer bird, a man of moods, & I dont know whether I like him or not,” First Officer Greenstreet wrote to his father. Shackleton
had arrived in Buenos Aires somewhat under the weather and does not seem to have been in top form while in South Georgia. Accompanying him on a short hike, Wordie observed that he “was troubled by a bad cough, and seemed pretty tired with the walk.” Shackleton still had much to worry about: The worst ice conditions in living memory showed no sign of improving and some of the whalers suggested that he should defer setting out until the next season. But for Shackleton postponement of the expedition would be tantamount to relinquishing it forever. Behind him lay the war and many financial loose ends.

  Clark in the biological lab

  His shipmates played a practical joke on him by putting spaghetti in one of his specimen jars.

  The Endurance steamed out of Grytviken's Cumberland Bay on the morning of December 5, 1914. She was freshly provisioned—her cargo now included two live pigs for food—and her crew was rested and eager for the next stage of the journey. The mountains of South Georgia remained in sight until the evening, as the Endurance headed south by southeast. As early as the next day the ship passed numerous icebergs, and by December 7 she had encountered the outskirts of pack ice.

  The Weddell Sea is uniquely configured for maximum hazard to ships. It is contained within three belts of land—the string of South Sandwich Islands to the east, the Antarctic continent proper, and the long finger of the Palmer Peninsula to the west. A prevailing current drives the roughly circular sea in a slow clockwise motion. Sea ice, which can form here during any season, is thus never dispersed into the warmer northern waters, but churned in an interminable semicircle, eventually packed by the westward drift against the Palmer Peninsula.

  For the next six weeks the Endurance worked its way cautiously south, dodging and weaving around loose floes and pack and sometimes smashing her way through them. Shackleton hoped that by keeping outside the pack's eastern edge, he could obliquely work his way down towards Vahsel Bay. The tactic only worked for so long, and soon he had to broach the pack.

  Worsley directing helmsman through the ice

  Shielded from the wind, Worsley semaphores directions to the ship's helmsman.

  As the Endurance continued south, she entered fields of snowy ice, enormous floes up to 150 square miles. “All day we have been utilizing the ship as a battering ram,” Hurley wrote in his diary in mid-December. “We admire our sturdy little ship, which seems to take a delight herself in combating our common enemy, shattering the floes in grand style. When the ship comes in impact with the ice she stops, dead, shivering from truck to kelson; then almost immediately a long crack starts from our bows, into which we steam, and, like a wedge slowly force the crack sufficiently to enable a passage to be made.”

  Days of thick mist opened onto clear days of radiant sunshine. During the long dusk of the austral summer night the broken pack appeared to float like so many giant white water lilies on an azure pond. The ship passed crabeater seals basking on the ice and crowds of always entertaining Adélie and emperor penguins, who would pop up unexpectedly on floes and clamor at her as she passed. Gradually the bodies of open water got smaller and smaller, until the whole sea looked like a vast snowfield, broken only here and there by lanes and channels.

  Christmas Day was celebrated with mince pies and Christmas pudding, colorful flags and table settings, and a singsong in the evening. Magnificent sunsets were admired from the ship's rail, and on the last day of 1914, after a difficult morning spent ramming through a bad patch of ice, the Endurance crossed the Antarctic Circle in a dreamlike twilight reflected in calm waters. On the night of January 1, 1915, the Scottish contingent singing “Auld Lang Syne” woke the “respectable members” who had retired for the evening. Lees peevishly noted, “Scotchmen always are a nuisance at New Year and never have voices worth speaking of.” Meanwhile, on the bridge,

  Endurance in pack ice

  “Pack-ice might be described as a gigantic and interminable jigsaw puzzle devised by nature.” ( Shackleton, South)

  Shackleton, Wild, Worsley, and Hudson shook hands all around and wished each other a happy New Year.

  The weather by now was usually overcast, and the Endurance was encountering more icebergs, grand structures that rose like fantastic sculptures of blue-white marble above the waterline, and which appeared peacock blue below it. The expedition company whiled away the time in domestic pursuits. Lees darned his socks and washed and mended his clothes; Hurley took photographs in the midnight sun. Robert Clark, the biologist, studied the diatomaceous deposits of the Weddell Sea under a microscope. On January 6, the dogs were taken off onto a convenient floe for exercise, the first they'd had since leaving South Georgia a month before; they immediately initiated one of their infamous “scraps,” falling through rotten ice into the water.

  Ice conditions on January 7 and 8 forced the ship to backtrack through the pack to seek a better opening, but on January 10, at 72° south, an important landmark was reached: The ship came in sight of Coats Land and began to work her way close to its great 100-foot-high wall of barrier ice. The Endurance was now, with fair going, as little as a week away from Vahsel Bay. With the expectation that she would still return to Buenos Aires or South Georgia for the winter, the expedition's wintering-over shore party were busy writing letters home to be carried with the returning ship.

  Berg, observed 21 December, 1914

  “[A]t 10:00 a.m. we entered long leads of ice free water, in which were drifting some fine bergs of magnificent forms. One a fine cuniform mass 200 feet high, I photographed.” ( Hurley, diary)

  On January 11, the ship's company began the day with a breakfast of Quaker Oats, seal's liver, and bacon. Bad weather forced the Endurance to drift with a large floe. McNish, the carpenter, used this layover to make a small chest of drawers for “the Boss.” Shackleton himself was observed to be looking “dead tired”; he had not slept much over the past few days. The two pigs obtained in South Georgia (named Sir Patrick and Bridget Dennis) were fattening up, and one of the dogs, Sally, had given birth to three pups; tough Tom Crean was observed with amusement to be fussing over the pups “like a hospital orderly.” The day closed with a dinner of thick lentil soup, stewed clubbed seal, tinned peas, and custard.

  The upper deck after a light snow fall

  “It is wonderful how the dogs prefer to sleep on the snow covered deck rather than in their kennels.” ( Lees, diary)

  January 12 dawned with mist and snow, but was otherwise a good day. Clark bagged interesting specimens in his dredge nets and towards evening a flock of young emperor penguins was passed on a nearby floe. The Endurance, now under steam, broke from the pack ice into open water and reached the bay that marked the farthest south of William Bruce's Scotia expedition in 1903. Shallow soundings of about 150 fathoms indicated the proximity of land. Lees, busy amid the stores, triumphantly rooted out “a case of marmalade and one or two other things that Sir Ernest especially wanted.”

  January 6, 1915; Exercising the dogs

  “During the day the dogs were taken for a run on the large floe to which we were anchored. The exercise did them a great deal of good—it being the first they have had for nearly a month.” ( Hurley, diary)

  Crean with pups

  “Opposite the pigs are 5 puppies & their mother, the ‘interesting event' having taken place three days ago, but so far Tom Crean, who has cared for her like a hospital orderly is the only one who has seen the little creatures, though we all hear their shrill little squeaks. They will soon be fun.” ( Lees, diary)

  On January 13, after skirting heavy pack around the barrier all night, the Endurance was again drifting within the floes, which showed no sign of opening up. For two hours she searched for an opening, then banked her fires and lay to. The following day, January 14, the ship was still held fast. The weather was magnificent, however, the best since leaving South Georgia, with the temperature at 25° Fahrenheit. Hurley, ever on the lookout for photogenic scenes, described the surroundings thus:

  The bergs & floes were reflected in the deep blue w
ater, while the heavy pres sure ice, gleaming in the sunshine with its deep blue shadows, was one of the finest sights I have seen in the South. The ice was more like serracs than pack ice, for it was so tossed, broken & crushed. Great pressure ridges thrown up 15 to 20 feet in height bear evidence of the terrific force & pressure of the ice in these latitudes.

  From the crow's nest high above the ship, Lees noted that tremendous pressure pack could be seen in every direction.

  Yet, in the evening, a rising breeze began to work upon the pack, and before

  Laying to, 14 January, 1915

  “Tied up all day to the floe ice.… The day was magnificent. The finest day since leaving South Georgia & in fact the second sunny one we have had.” (Hurley, diary)