Caroline Alexander

by The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

  “ ‘Well, I’m here,’ “ Worsley reported himself as saying, clearly delighted by the turn of events.

  “[T]hey stared,” he continued. “Clean and shaved, they had taken me for a Norwegian!”

  Taking up their meager possessions, the last of the James Caird crew boarded the Samson, McNish holding his diary. Worsley had also determined to bring the James Caird along. The men had none of the depth of feeling for her they had held for the Endurance, which had sheltered and protected them as long as she was able; nonetheless, though the Caird had provided them little comfort, they and she had battled for their lives together and had won.

  A great gale and snowstorm descended on the Samson as she approached Stromness, keeping her at sea for two extra days. But mindless of the weather, the men on board ate and rested to their hearts’ content.

  In Sørlle’s home, Shackleton and Crean lay in bed, listening to the snow drive against the windows. They now knew how slim had been their margin of safety. On Sunday, May 21, Shackleton sailed round to Husvik Station, also in Stromness Bay, to arrange a loan of a likely rescue ship, the English-owned Southern Sky, for immediate departure to Elephant Island. Another old friend from Endurance days, Captain Thom, was in the harbor and immediately signed on as captain; the whalers eagerly volunteered as crew.

  When the Samson arrived in the harbor, the men from the whaling station came to greet her, and congregated around the James Caird, carrying the boat ashore on their shoulders.

  “The Norwegians would not let us put a hand to her,” wrote Worsley. That same night, Monday evening, Sørlle held a reception at the station clubhouse for Shackle-ton, and invited the captains and officers of his whaling fleet.

  “They were ‘old stagers,’ “ Shackleton recorded, “with faces lined and seamed by the storms of half a century.”

  The club room was “blue and hazy with tobacco smoke,” according to Worsley. “Three or four white-haired veterans of the sea came forward. One spoke in Norse, and the Manager translated. He said he had been at sea over 40 years; that he knew feat of daring seamanship as bringing the 22-foot open boat from Elephant Island to South Georgia. … All the seamen present then came forward and solemnly shook hands with us in turn. Coming from brother seamen, men of our own cloth and members of a great seafaring race like the Norwegians, this was a wonderful tribute.”

  Passages back to England were arranged for McNish, Vincent, and McCarthy; tensions between McNish and Vincent and the rest of the party seem to have persisted until the very end. McNish’s description of Worsley doing “the Nimrod,” a facetious reference to the great biblical hunter, shows that he had lost none of his fine sardonic touch in the course of the journey. Likewise, his dry observation that Vincent remained in his bag smoking while others did work suggests that Vincent’s performance in the boats had not changed the carpenter’s opinion of this young cub of a trawler. The attitude of Shackleton and Worsley to these two men would be made manifest much later. Together, the six had performed a prodigy of seamanship and courage; but they parted as they had entered the expedition—tough, independent-minded, unsentimental old salts. None of the three returning to England would see one another, or any member of the James Caird crew, ever again.

  On May 23, only three days after their arrival in Stromness, Shackleton, Worsley, and Crean left in the Southern Sky for Elephant Island. This was the moment for which Shackleton had lived through all the difficult days. Driving steadily against the familiar westerly gales, the Southern Sky was within 100 miles of Elephant Island when she ran into ice. Forty miles farther, she was brought to a complete stop.

  “To attempt to force the unprotected steel whaler through the masses of pack-ice that now confronted us would have been suicidal,” wrote Worsley. Skirting the pack for many miles, they began to run dangerously low of coal, and were at last forced to turn back. The Southern Sky now made for the Falkland Islands in order to seek another vessel; from here Shackleton was able to cable to England.

  News of Shackleton’s survival created a sensation. Newspaper headlines heralded the story, and the king cabled the Falklands with a congratulatory message:

  “Rejoice to hear of your safe arrival in the Falkland Islands and trust your companions on Elephant Island may soon be rescued.— George, R.I.”

  Even Robert F. Scott’s widow, Kathleen Scott, ever watchful of her husband’s reputation, conceded, “Shackleton or no Shackleton, I think it is one of the most wonderful adventures I ever read of, magnificent.”

  But for all the excitement, the British government was not able to provide for the final rescue. Britain was still at war and had no spare ships for non-military efforts, let alone any fitted for the ice. The only suitable vessel was the Discovery, Scott’s old Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile for assistance as Shackleton desperately scoured the southern ports for an appropriate wooden vessel. More than anyone alive, he knew how difficult it would be to find one—the stout little Endurance had been unique. On June 10, the Uruguayan government came forward with a small survey ship, the Instituto de Pesca No 1, and crew, for no charge. After three days, she came in sight of Elephant Island, but the ice allowed her no closer. Six days after setting out, she limped back to port.

  In Punta Arenas, a subscription from the British Association chartered the Emma, a forty-year-old schooner built of oak, and a multinational scratch crew. Setting out on July 12, they too came to within 100 miles of Elephant Island before ice and tempestuous weather turned them back.

  “Some members of the scratch crew were played out by the cold and violent tossing,” wrote Shackleton, with the restrained irony of a veteran of the James Caird. The ferocious weather kept the Emma three weeks at sea, and it was August 3 before she reached harbor. Back in Punta Arenas, Shackleton waged another desperate search. The unthinkable was happening: Weeks of waiting were passing into months.

  “The wear and tear of this period was dreadful,” wrote Worsley. “To Shackleton it was little less than maddening. Lines scored themselves on his face more deeply day by day; his thick, dark, wavy hair was becoming silver. He had not had a grey hair when we had started out to rescue our men the first time. Now, on the third journey, he was grey-haired.”

  He had also begun, uncharacteristically, to drink. In a photograph taken by Hurley at Ocean Camp, Shackleton sits on the ice preoccupied, but strangely debonair. But in a photograph taken of him during this period of searching for a ship, he is utterly unrecognizable. Pinched with tension, his face is that of an old man. It was now mid-August—four months since the departure of the James Caird.

  From Chile, Shackleton sent yet another cable to the Admiralty, pleading for any wooden vessel. The reply stated that the Discovery would arrive sometime around September 20; but it also cryptically implied that the captain of the Discovery would be in charge of the rescue operation—Shackleton would essentially go along as a passenger and answer to him.

  Incredulous, Shackleton cabled both the Admiralty and his friend and agent Ernest Perris seeking clarification.

  “Impossible to reply to your question except to say unsympathetic attitude to your material welfare,” Perris replied, “and customary attitude of Navy to Mercantile Marine which it seems resulted from desire of Admiralty to boom its own relief open-handed and open-hearted support; only in England did the concern to put him South Georgia Island in his place exceed that for the plight of his men. Galvanized into frenetic action by this response, Shackleton begged the Chilean government to come forward once again. Knowing perhaps that honor as well as life was now at stake, they lent him the Yelcho, a small, steel-built tug steamer entirely unsuitable for the purpose, and on August 25, Shackleton, Crean, and Worsley set out with a Chilean crew for Elephant Island.

  In a moment of introspective summing up, Shackleton at the end of his account of crossing South Georgia had written:

  When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-white
sea that separated Ele phant Island from our landing-place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, “Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.” Crean confessed to the same idea.

  Now that they were back in the world of men, this guiding presence seemed to have fled; and the grace and strength that had brought them so far would count for nothing if, when they eventually arrived, they found even one man dead on Elephant Island.

  Hut on Elephant Island

  Marston and Greenstreet suggested that the two remaining boats, the Stancomb Wills and the Dudley Docker, be converted into a hut. The boats were overturned on stone walls standing some four feet high, and in this shelter the 22 men lived for the next four months. The remains of the tents were used for the windbreaking “skirt” around the walls.

  Elephant Island

  “We gave them three hearty cheers & watched the boat getting smaller & smaller in the distance,” wrote Wild, on the departure of the James Caird. “Then seeing some of the party in tears I immediately set them all to work. My own heart was very full. I heard one of the few pessimists remark, ‘that’s the last of them’ & I almost knocked him down with a rock, but satisfied myself by addressing a few remarks to him in real lower deck language.”

  The Caird had left at 12:30 p.m., and at 4:00 p.m., Wild climbed a rocky lookout from where, through binoculars, he caught the boat just before she vanished into the pack.

  All hands had gotten completely or partially soaked in the process of preparing and loading the Caird, and after a hot lunch, everyone wrung out his sleeping bag as well as he could and went to bed for the rest of the day.

  On the following morning the bay was filled with pack ice—the Caird had not left a day too soon. After breakfast, Wild addressed the entire company, “concisely yet pertinently relative to future attitudes,” according to Hurley’s approving report. Although Shackleton had gone, Wild made it clear that there was still a boss in charge. The men were put to work skinning penguins and carving out shelters in the snow. High hopes had been pinned on these snow “caves,” before the men discovered that their body heat raised the temperature inside to the melting point, making things wetter than ever.

  The land at their disposal was a narrow, rocky spit that jutted out from the pre cipitous mainland by some 600 to 700 feet. Standing about 9 feet above high tide, it was little more than 100 feet wide. A glacier to the west frequently calved enormous chunks of ice. To the east lay a narrow gravel beach used by seals and penguins. Their spit was utterly exposed to the elements.

  Hole in Ice

  The 22 men left behind after the departure of the Caird still had no shelter. A “cave” was dug in the snow slope, but was unsatisfactory: “We have already excavated a fair sized chamber big enough for eight men to sleep in, but it is much too wet for anyone to try the experiment yet.” ( Lees, diary)

  “We pray that the Caird may reach South Georgia safely and bring relief without delay,” wrote Hurley, still one of the toughest and most resilient members of the group. “Life here without a hut & equipment is almost beyond endurance.” It was the last day of April; the Caird had been gone only six days.

  Marston and Greenstreet suggested building a shelter using the only materials at hand: the two overturned boats. This meant taking them permanently out of commission; the stores at Cape Valentine would now be retrieved only if a second boat journey was made in the spring, in the event of the failure of the James Caird. Such an eventuality was unthinkable, and the need for shelter was immediate.

  “Owing to the lack of carbohydrates in our diet we are all terribly weak,” wrote Lees, “and this part of the work was exceedingly laborious & took us more than twice as long as it would have done had we been in normal health.” Eventually, two walls standing four feet in height, nineteen feet apart were erected between two large boulders that acted as additional windbreaks. The Stancomb Wills and Dudley Docker were lain on top of the walls and weighed down with loose rocks. Odd pieces of salvaged timber were placed like rafters on top of the boats and then the whole construction was overspread with one of the large tents. More tent material was cut for outer walls, and the sack mouth entrance from one of the domed tents was attached as a doorway.

  When the “Snuggery” was completed, Wild officiated over the distribution of berths. Ten men, including all the sailors, took upper “bunks” on the thwarts of the boats, while the rest were carefully arranged along the ground. The hut floor had been cleared as well as possible, but under the various remnants of ground cloths and tents there still lay ice and frozen guano. During the first night, a screaming blizzard revealed the hut’s every weakness. The men had gone to bed in the weary hope that they had at last secured shelter, but they awoke to find themselves under several inches of drift.

  “And then what a miserable getting up,” wrote Macklin. “Everything deeply snowed over, footgear frozen so stiff that we could only put it on by degrees, not a dry or warm pair of gloves amongst us. I think I spent this morning the most unhappy hour of my life—all attempts seemed so hopeless, and Fate seemed absolutely determined to thwart us. Men sat and cursed, not loudly but with an intenseness that shewed their hatred of this island on which we had sought shelter.”

  But Wild persisted, and gradually the cracks through which snow and wind infiltrated were discovered and assiduously caulked with the remains of an old Jaeger woolen sleeping bag. Later, Hurley brought in a small blubber stove, which was placed in the triangle between the sterns of the two boats.

  In front of hut on Elephant Island

  Frank Hurley rests against the “Snuggery.” “[The hut] is a decided improvement & a step in the direction of making life more endurable under such severe climatic conditions. The entire party of 22 sleep in this small space snugly though sardiniously.” ( Hurley, diary)

  “From now on we shall always be black with smoke, but we hope, at least dry,” wrote Wordie. Additional refinements, made through trial and error, increased the general comfort. A chimney constructed by Kerr from the lining of a biscuit tin removed much of the smoke, while Marston and Hurley devised blubber lamps from sardine tins, capable of shedding light for a few feet around. Hurley and Greenstreet supervised the construction of a galley, built of a six-foot-high roughly circular wall of stones, covered with the sail of the Dudley Docker. An oar serving as the camp’s flagpole added the final touch; from it they optimistically hung the Royal Thames Yacht Club burgee.

  Wild set a strict camp routine. Poor Green was roused from his bed atop some of the supply cases at 7 a.m., just before daylight. Out in the gray dawn, he made his way to the galley, where he lit the blubber stove and spent the next two to three hours preparing thick seal steaks. At 9:30 a.m., Wild turned everyone out with the cry, “Lash up and stow! The Boss may come today.” With this, the men rolled up their bags and stashed them away amid the thwarts of the boats. After breakfast, fifteen minutes was allowed for “Smoke Oh” while Wild assigned the day’s various tasks—hunting, skinning, and preparing penguins and seals, shoring up the Snuggery, mending, and so forth. “Hoosh Oh” was at 12:30 p.m., and the afternoon was passed in more of the same occupations as the morning. The evening meal of seal hoosh was served at 4:30 p.m., after which everyone settled in a circle on crates placed around the bogie stove. A strict seating rotation ensured that everyone got a place close to the stove once a week.

  Elephant Island

  Skinning penguins. “With the little stock of seal meat and the provisions we already have one penguin per day between every two men would be quite sufficient. That is eleven penguins per day for the whole party or a total of about 1300 birds for the period May-August inclusive. At present we are merely living from hand to mouth and have as yet only a very small reserve.” (Lees, diary)
>
  “It is a weird sight,” wrote Hurley. “The light thrown up by the lamp illuminates smoke colored faces like stage footlights. The sparkling eyes & glint on the aluminium mugs, the stream of flickering light thrown out from the open bogie door, making weird dancing shadows on the inside of the boats makes me think of a council of brigands holding revelry after an escape in a chimney or coalmine.”

  After “Smoke Oh,” the box seats were stowed so as to form Green’s bed—a concession to the fact that his Jaeger woolen bag was soaked more than most. Those in the upper berths swung up between the thwarts with practiced agility, while the others spread their groundsheets and bags. Hussey often closed out the evening with half an hour’s singing and playing on his banjo. Muttered conversations continued until sleep came, around seven o’clock. During the night, sheets of ice up to half an inch thick formed along the walls from condensation of their breath.

  On May 10, Hurley took a group photograph with his small pocket camera.

  “The most motley & unkempt assembly that ever was projected on a plate,” he wrote. He was in considerably higher spirits since moving into the hut, and once again responsive to the stern beauty of the changing light upon the glacier faces and cliffs.

  The Party Marooned on Elephant Island

  Hurley took this group portrait on May 10, 1916: “The most motley & unkempt assembly that ever was projected on a plate” ( Hurley, diary). Back row: Greenstreet, McIlroy, Marston, Wordie, James, Holness, Hudson, Stephenson, McLeod, Clark, Lees, Kerr, Macklin. Second row: Green, Wild, How, Cheetham, Hussey, Bakewell. Front row: Rickinson (below Hussey). Blackborow lay incapacitated in his bag.

  “A sunrise of bright red clouds reflected in the mirrory stillness of the bay I am utterly powerless to describe,” he wrote. “The vast ice facade presented to the sea, assumed a bright pea green hue with isolated areas of emerald! … Violet tints & purples lingered on the snow slopes.… The rocky scarps ordinarily a greyblack, still kept their natural color but appeared to shine with a golden veneer.”