Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition

by Beau Riffenburgh

  The men stayed in their new camp for several days, suffering from snow blindness. When their sight returned, to their horror the ship had gone. They could, however, clearly see Cape Royds. 'The sight of it made me wonder how it would be to walk around there,' Mackintosh wrote on 7 January. 'Except for the mails, I thought it could be done.' Two days later Mackintosh and McGillion had a long walk to Cape Bird (at the northern end of the island) and back, but still could not see the ship, so early on the morning of 11 January they left for the hut. Considering the terrain that they would be forced to cover and their lack of experience and equipment, it was a ludicrous decision. In fact, second officer Arthur Harbord recorded his hope that they would not attempt such a crossing 'as this means almost certain death, as the glaciated slopes that intervene are absolutely impassable to so slender a party'.

  This Mackintosh and McGillion soon came close to finding out. After ascending several thousand feet, they were making their way unroped through what they thought to be a snowfield when, according to Mackintosh, 'I happened to look round to speak to my companion, when I was astonished to find that he had disappeared.' McGillion had fallen into a crevasse, saved from death only by a protruding boulder of ice. 'I took off my straps from the pack and then to them I tied my waist lashing, and lowered them down to him,' Mackintosh wrote. 'This just reached his hand, and with much pulling on my part and much knee-climbing on his, we managed to get him safe on the glacier again.' The accident had, however, cost them their primus stove and food.

  For the rest of the day and into the evening they continued through a region of crevasses, some small and snow-covered, others with yawning maws that led to depths slowly turning from beautiful azure or aqua to deep, dark royal blue to a pitch-black 'hell hole'. At one point, while attempting to descend a long snow slope, their route was simply cut off, so they had to retrace their steps. Finally, reaching an area where on the slope above and in front were huge crevasses but below them was a steep snow field of 3,000 feet in height, they threw the dice. They sat down, dug their knives in to act as brakes on their glissade down, stuck their heels into the snow, and pushed themselves over. Down they raced, knives quickly torn from their hands, crevasses thirty feet wide flashing past on both sides, occasionally being thrust into the air as they shot over a hidden rock or piece of ice. But soon, at a terrifying rate of movement, they had reached the bottom. Remarkably, they were uninjured.

  It was too cold to stay in one place for long, so they kept moving despite their fatigue. All through the night they travelled, until at 4.00 a.m. on 12 January they spied Cape Royds in the distance. They made directly for it, but before long a blizzard suddenly descended, the drift blowing so hard that it stung their faces and made them virtually the walking blind. By mid-morning, after they had been on the move without food for well over twenty-four hours, McGillion began to wear out. They tried to halt behind a large boulder, but found it too cold to remain motionless. McGillion 'then suggested that we should lie down, embrace each other, and cover ourselves with snow', Mackintosh wrote. 'I felt this would have been fatal.' So they kept on moving.

  In the early afternoon, the snow ceased and to their horror they saw Cape Royds to the north - they had passed it miles back. They turned but were soon lost again in a fog. They wandered aimlessly. Suddenly, at 7.00 p.m., after more than thirty-six hours on the move, with virtually no food, water or rest, a figure appeared out of the mist. It was Day, who later reported that they had been in a state of complete exhaustion and were just managing to stagger along because they knew that to stop meant death. Within a few minutes he had them in the warmth of the hut.

  Ironically, as Mackintosh and McGillion sat before the stove, Murray, who had been in charge of the base, was waiting aboard Nimrod. Even as Mackintosh had desperately attempted to get to shore, the break-up of the ice had allowed Evans to move down the sound. 'We were having tea on the afternoon of January 5,' wrote Murray, 'and Marston happening to open the door, there was the Nimrod already moored to the edge of the fast ice, not more than a mile away. The shore party quickly learned that the two men had disappeared, and the next day Joyce, Day and Riches attempted to search north of Cape Royds with a dog team, but were halted by the myriad of crevasses. After a day and a half, Evans took Murray and began a hunt, north along the dangerous, icy shore. Within hours, the rapidly moving pack jammed into the ship's propeller and then, embracing her in a great mass of ice, carried her helplessly north. It was to be more than a week before they were freed from the giant ice cube.

  Upon the ship's return on 16 January, they discovered Mackintosh's campsite, including the postbag and a letter outlining his intention to cross the island to Cape Royds. 'Nothing more than madness!' Harbord wrote dejectedly. They did not expect to see either man again. Yet hours later, upon reaching Cape Royds, there was McGillion, accompanying Roberts out to meet them. They were the sole occupants of the hut; the others - Joyce, Marston, Day and Mackintosh - had gone south with the dogs to lay a depot for Shackleton.

  For much of the next week, with Evans carefully conserving the limited supply of coal, Nimrod remained moored to a grounded iceberg at Cape Royds. By 23 January, however, the ice along the west coast of the sound had broken up enough to allow a search for the Western Party near Butter Point. Evans left promptly the next morning, but the delay meant he was almost too late.

  'I have never spent a day that seemed as much a fortnight,' Priestley wrote at 3.00 a.m. on 24 January 1909. 'May I never have such an experience again.' Four hours before he had been lying in a tent on an ice floe heading out to sea, with killer whales hopefully waiting to add him to their diet. Then around midnight, Armytage went to check their position. Suddenly he screeched to Priestley and Brocklehurst that the floe was nearing a patch of fast ice. Within moments the tent had been collapsed, everything thrown on the sledge and the two youngsters were pulling for all they were worth towards him. Just as they reached him, the floe bumped into something solid.

  'The snout of the glacier was some six feet above us,' Brocklehurst wrote. 'As it touched we scrambled up dragging what we could with us, some kit fell off as the sledge was perpendicular and hurriedly packed, so Raymond 8>c Armytage held me by the heels as I collected the odds & ends.' Brocklehurst's use of 'collected' was generous according to Priestley: 'the sledge tipped over enough to tilt a couple of oil cans, boots, finnesko and some cakes of chocolate out, and Brocklehurst hurled these up indiscriminately, one passing within an inch of my nose and another hitting Armytage.'

  Never the less, they had escaped, and from the only place possible. 'Not more than six feet of the edge touched, but we were just at that spot,' Armytage wrote. 'We had only just got over when the floe moved away again, and this time it went north to the open sea.' They stared at the disappearing floe that had been so close to being their final home, and they felt they were in turn being watched. 'The killers were all around the foot of the glacier,' Brocklehurst wrote, 'great ugly brutes deprived of their unusual breakfast.'

  Feeling uncomfortable where they stood, the three men trekked back down the coast to Butter Point, where they raised their tent - on the shore. They had a meal of sardines, biscuits, chocolate and tea before turning in. But the experience was clearly implanted in their minds. 'I shall dream of killer whales for weeks', Priestley noted before closing his journal.

  The next morning there was open water where they had previously camped, but beyond it, ten miles out, was Nimrod. They flashed her with the heliograph, and that afternoon they were picked up with their equipment and specimens. They all returned to Cape Royds, where the next week was spent freeing supplies that had never been chipped out of the ice, moving scientific and personal equipment to the ship, and adding as many samples to the scientific collections as possible. They also tried to make additional photographic records of the expedition. Murray took one intriguing picture of Priestley and his favourite dog, Cis. 'The photograph is especially interesting in that it shows my beard in all its grandeur
and simplicity,' Priestley wrote. 'Everybody has been advising me to keep it on as it hides my face, but . . . I shaved a couple of days ago. I looked just like a Russian revolutionary with the beard on, and would have got six months hard from any magistrate on sight.'

  While life thus seemed lighthearted, underneath the surface negative currents were beginning to cause dissension, as they impatiently awaited news of their missing colleagues. Evans had arrived bearing orders from Kinsey, putting him in command should Shackleton not be there. This he presumed to include all aspects of the expedition, and with his dominating presence he soon began to override the plans of the gentle Murray, including those made on clear instructions from Shackleton.

  To compound matters, not all of Shackleton's directives were clear. Although he had left orders that if the Northern Party had not returned by 1 February a search was to be initiated, no one knew where David, Mawson and Mackay were supposed to be. Shackleton's vague instructions were simply that, should they not appear at Butter Point, the ship was to search for them along the western shores of Victoria Land. This meant a detailed examination of a shoreline more than 200 miles long, parts of which had never been charted.

  Another significant aspect Shackleton had not considered was his nemesis from the earlier voyage: coal. A slow trip up the coast not only was exceedingly dangerous, as the ship needed to be kept as close to shore as the ice would permit, it also would burn a large amount of coal. Some of that which did remain might have to be left behind for those chosen to winter again, should Shackleton not appear. Evans was no keener than England to be left without adequate coal to get through the pack ice and home. Therefore he decided that the search would go only as far as Cape Washington, fifty miles north of the Drygalski Ice Barrier. If the members of the Northern Party had not been found by that point, Nimrod would return directly to Cape Royds, leaving them to their fate.

  On 1 February they crossed McMurdo Sound to Butter Point and headed north. The search turned out to be every bit as difficult as anticipated. They were prevented from getting close to the shoreline due to fast ice and jumbled pack, although the officers kept constant watch, using telescopes to view the territory they passed. For a hundred miles they were confident that they had missed nothing - although they did not notice the cairn at Depot Island. Then heavier ice forced the ship out to sea, and near the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier they were so far out they could not even see the coast.

  As the ship approached where it seemed most likely to find David's party, all eyes strained for the shore. They steamed as close as possible along the southern and northern fringes of the Drygalski Ice Barrier, discovering that the area had not been accurately charted, but seeing no sign of their colleagues. In the early hours of 3 February, while Nimrod neared the coast north of the Drygalski, a sudden squall with blowing snow made it impossible for John King Davis, the first officer, to see clearly, even from the look-out barrel on the main topmast. He was disturbed by the lack of clarity, but, as all he could make out were a group of tabular icebergs, the ship continued on her way. Later that day they reached Cape Washington. It was time to abandon the search.

  When David, Mawson and Mackay left their tent after the blizzard of 3 February, it was nearing noon. A meal of boiled penguin made life seem better than it had in many days, and they were soon tramping along the edge of the long snow valley that had prevented them reaching the depot the night before. Progress was slow, but by evening they had at last found a way. Around 10.00 p.m., reaching a small bay where Mackay 'had dragged his sledge full of meat out of inlet on our earlier stay', they decided to camp, have a meal, and turn in, taking four-hour watches for the ship.

  The next afternoon, Mawson woke his colleagues after allowing them several extra hours' sleep. They dined on penguin livers with a thin pemmican as a drink and then retired to the tent to discuss plans. They unanimously approved a move to the depot, which, being higher on the point, would allow a better view. There was less agreement on Mackay's plan to leave immediately for Cape Royds, hundreds of perilous miles away. Before the topic could get heated, however, a loud boom reverberated through the air. 'In a second,' Mawson wrote, 'I had overturned the cooker and was through the door where the bow of the Nimrod was just appearing round a corner in the inlet.'

  'At the sight of the three of us running frantically,' recalled David, who was the last out of the tent, 'hearty ringing cheers burst forth from all on board. How those cheers stirred every fibre of one's being . . . In a moment, as dramatic as it was heavenly, we seemed to have passed from death into life.'

  Within an instant, they were back at death's door, as Mawson suddenly dropped down a crevasse. Aghast, David and Mackay raced over to find him eighteen feet down, having landed flat on his back on a small, thin, ledge. They lowered a sledge harness to him, but were unable to pull him up. As Nimrod berthed along the ice edge 200 yards away, Mackay raced towards her, his voice carrying shrilly in the wind: 'Mawson has fallen down a crevasse, and we got to the Magnetic Pole.'

  Davis led a party hurriedly scrambling from the ship. They quickly reached the crevasse, which they bridged with a piece of timber. Davis was lowered to the ledge, where he took off the rope and tied it to Mawson, who was pulled up; the first officer was then brought out as well. It was not the only part of the rescue for which he was responsible. Before Nimrod had turned south again, he had admitted to an annoyed Evans that he was concerned about a group of icebergs he had seen during a snowstorm, which might have masked an inlet in the ice barrier. Evans obviously did not want to expend the coal, and, according to Davis, 'Fixing me with his cool and disconcerting gaze, he said: "Are you sufficiently uncertain of what you saw to make it worth my while to return to those bergs?'" Davis answered in the affirmative, and the disgusted Evans ordered an about-face. When they reached the Drygalski, the air was clear and crisp. Behind the icebergs, but no longer hidden, was a small inlet, and above it Harbord spied the depot.

  It was only after their reunion that those aboard Nimrod learned that the Professor and his companions had not reached what became known as Relief Inlet until after the ship had first passed. When Davis had gone aloft in the squall and seen the outline of the icebergs, they had still been camped several miles away, on the other side of the barranca. Even so, Davis later wrote:

  had the weather been clear we might perhaps have sighted the flag they were flying above their tent. But had we missed it, under those circumstances, we should certainly have steamed straight for Cape Royds. Therefore, in some strange and providential way, my mistake in not taking the ship closer inshore to examine the tabular bergs . . . had made their rescue certain and assured!

  The three men who Evans described as 'abnormally lean . . . the colour of mahogany with hands that resembled the talons of a bird of prey' now came aboard for what can only be described as a feeding frenzy. Offered a snack, they were still putting away huge quantities an hour and a half later when they were told that dinner would be served shortly. They were still clad in the clothes they had donned four months before, and their aroma was overpowering. 'We pressed them to adjourn to the engine-room for ablution and fresh raiment,' Evans wrote. 'They displayed no enthusiasm for such exercises and would willingly have dined without those preliminaries, but we were adamant.'

  In the next three days sledge parties gathered the materials at the main depot and where the instruments had been left eight miles inland. Then, after failed attempts to collect the contents of two coastal depots, they hurried to Cape Royds. All that was left was to pick up Shackleton's party - if they had returned.

  'The southern party are now overdue, and we are beginning to feel anxious about them,' Mackay wrote on 15 February, four days after Nimrod had reached Cape Royds and then promptly continued to Glacier Tongue. There had been no word of either Shackleton's party or Joyce's, and the tension among those waiting was palpable. It did not help that Evans had usurped Murray's power, and refused to discuss his plans with the members of the shore party, who w
ere split between the ship and the base. It is significant that during this period David was not mentioned. Although he remained aboard ship, his condition, which had so deteriorated on the return from the Magnetic Pole, appears to have kept him from his previous role of mediator.

  For two weeks, as the weather began to deteriorate - with frequent blizzards, colder temperatures and an increase in ice - Evans kept the ship out of danger, usually harbouring near Glacier Tongue but occasionally loading up scientific or personal supplies from Cape Royds and checking for arrivals from the south. On 20 February, everyone was cheered when Joyce, Day, Marston and Mackintosh were picked up at Hut Point, but subsequently deflated to find they had seen nothing of Shackleton.

  By 25 February - when, according to Shackleton's orders, coal and supplies should be deposited at Cape Royds and the three men who would winter should be sent in search of the Southern Party - discontent had become widespread among the shore party. Evans having achieved a 'practical supersession [sic] of Mr Murray as commander of the land party' meant that none of these actions had been taken, and, moreover, the captain had not revealed what would happen. 'We are beginning to dislike his attitude,' Brocklehurst wrote. 'He considers himself too important and it looks as if he is going to make himself the head of the Expedition.'