Endurance, Deluxe Ed: The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told by Alfred Lansing

by Alfred Lansing

  Similarly, the camp was divided on the matter of eating into the savers and the nonsavers. Worsley headed the nonsavers, who gobbled down anything they could get whenever they could get it. Orde-Lees, with his all-consunl- ing fear of starving to death, was the leading advocate of the savers' school of thought. He rarely ate his entire ration at any meal. Instead, he stored a little piece of cheese or a bit of bannock somewhere in his clothing to be eaten later or saved for the leaner days he was sure would come. He could and often did produce from his pocket a lump of food that had been issued a week, two weeks, three weeks before.

  Shackleton and Wild

  But there was no shortage of food these days. Obliging animals even presented themselves in camp. On November 18 a woebegone little seal scarcely a month old wandered in amongst the tents. He had apparently lost his mother to a killer whale, and though he was so small that he was almost worthless as food, the men reluctantly killed him anyhow, since he obviously could not survive alone. On the nineteenth pandemonium among the dogs announced the presence of a seal in camp - this time a big bull crabeater. After several such appearances, Worsley advanced the theory that whenever seals sighted the camp, they mistook it for land or a rookery and headed straight toward it.

  Early on the morning of November 21, a salvage party went back to the ship. They noticed that the floes which had driven into the sides of the ship were moving slightly. They returned to camp and were unharnessing and feeding the dogs, when Shackleton came out to watch. He was standing close to Hurley's sledge. It was 4:5o p.m. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the ship move. He turned quickly and saw her stack disappear behind a hummock.

  `She's going, boys!' he shouted, and dashed up the lookout tower. A moment later all hands were out of the tents and scrambling to gain a vantage point. They watched in silence. Away across the pack, the stern of the Endurance rose 20 feet into the air and hung there for a moment with her motionless propeller and her smashed rudder held aloft. Then slowly, silently, she disappeared beneath the ice, leaving only a small gap of black, open water to mark where she had been. Within sixty seconds, even that was gone as the ice closed up again. It had all happened in ten minutes.

  Shackleton that night noted simply in his diary that the E,i h,va,icc was gone, and added: `I cannot write about it.'

  And so they were alone. Now, in every direction, there was nothing to be seen but the endless ice. Their position was 68°381/2' South, 52°28' West - a place where no man had ever been before, nor could they conceive that any man would ever want to be again.

  Chapter Five

  The final loss of the Endurance was a shock in that it severed what had seemed their last tie with civilization. It was a finality. The ship had been a symbol, a tangible, physical symbol that linked them with the outside world. She had brought them nearly halfway around the globe, or, as Worsley put it,'... carried us so far and so well and then put forth the bravest fight that ever a ship had fought before yielding to the remorseless pack.' Now she was gone.

  But the reaction was largely a sentimental one, as after the passing of an old friend who had been on the verge of death for a long time. They had been expecting her to go for weeks. When she had been abandoned twenty-five days before, it had seemed that she would sink at any moment. Indeed, it was remarkable that she had stayed on the surface so long.

  The next morning,Worsley obtained an encouraging sight indicating that in spite of four days of northerly winds, they had not been blown back. The pack appeared to be under the influence of a favorable current from the south. Hussey, however, had detected a disturbing change in the behavior of the ice. It no longer showed much tendency to open up under the influence of winds from the north. Furthermore, these winds - which in the past had been comparatively warm after blowing across the open seas - were now almost as cold as the winds from the Pole. There could be only one conclusion: quantities of ice - not open water - extended for a great distance to the north.

  Still the men showed an astonishing optimism. The task of raising the whaler's sides was almost complete and everyone was impressed with the job McNeish had done. The shortage of tools and lack of materials seemed not to have handicapped him in the least. To calk the planks he had added, he had been forced to resort to cotton lamp wick and the oil colors from Marston's artist's box.

  That night, the first after the sinking of the Eiidlirantce, Shackleton sanctioned a special treat, the serving of fish paste and biscuits for supper. Everyone was delighted.

  `Really, this sort of life has its attractions,' Macklin wrote. `I read somewhere that all a man needs to be happy is a full stomach and warmth, and I begin to think it is nearly true. No worries, no trains, no letters to answer, no collars to wear - but I wonder which of us would not jump at the chance to change it all tomorrow!'

  Macklin's good humor continued into the next day when he and Greenstreet were out seal-hunting. They were suddenly taken with the idea of going for a ride along one of the small leads of open water. But they knew that Shackleton, who could not abide unnecessary risks, would be furious if he saw them, so they went some distance away behind a number of pressure ridges. They found a stable little floe and climbed on board, poling along with ski poles.

  They were doing beautifully when they spied Shackleton a short distance away, riding on Wild's sledge. Shackleton caught sight of them at the same time.

  `We both felt,' said Greenstreet, `like guilty schoolboys caught robbing an orchard, and immediately paddled for the bank and landed and went on with our seal hunt, finally meeting him as he returned to camp. Instead of the long harangue as we expected he only gave us an awful look and passed on.

  Shackleton's aversion to tempting fate was well known. This attitude had earned for him the nickname `Old Cautious' or `Cautious Jack.' But nobody ever called him that to his face. He was addressed simply as `Boss' - by officers, scientists, and seamen alike. It was really more a title than a nickname. It had a pleasant ring of familiarity about it, but at the same time `Boss' had the connotation of absolute authority. It was therefore particularly apt, and exactly fitted Shackleton's outlook and behavior. He wanted to appear familiar with the men. He even worked at it, insisting on having exactly the same treatment, food, and clothing. He went out of his way to demonstrate his willingness to do the menial chores, such as taking his turn as `Peggy' to get the mealtime pot of hoosh from the galley to his tent. And he occasionally became furious when he discovered that the cook had given him preferential treatment because he was the `Boss'

  But it was inescapable. He was the Boss. There was always a barrier, an aloofness, which kept him apart. It was not a calculated thing; he was simply emotionally incapable of forgetting - even for an instant - his position and the responsibility it entailed. The others might rest, or find escape by the device of living for the moment. But for Shackleton there was little rest and no escape. The responsibility was entirely his, and a man could not be in his presence without feeling this.

  His aloofness, however, was mental - rarely physical. He was very much in evidence, taking part in all the men's activities. Shackleton, in fact, was one of the early arrivals when word got around on November 26 that somebody in No. S tent had unearthed a fresh deck of playing cards. Along with Mcllroy, he spent hours teaching them how to play bridge.

  The two instructors could hardly have found more enthusiastic students. Within forty-eight hours, the popularity of the game reached epidemic proportions. On the twenty-eighth, Greenstreet noted that `from each tent may be heard,'i club, 2 hearts, 2 no-trump, double 2 no-trump' etc' Those who didn't join in found themselves almost ostracized. On one occasion Rickinson and Macklin were driven out of their tent by the crowd that assembled there to play and to kibitz.

  At the same time, preparations were being completed for the journey to the west.' The boats were now as ready as McNeish could make them. Nothing remained except to name them, and Shackleton did so. He decided the honor should go to the expedition's principal back
ers. Accordingly, the whaler was christened the James Caird; the No. i cutter became the Dudley Docker, and the second cutter, the Stancomb Wills. George Marston, the artist, got busy with what remained of his paints and lettered the proper name on each boat.

  Shackleton also adopted Worsley's suggestion that they call the floe on which they were established `Ocean Camp.' He then issued the individual boat assignments. He himself would be in charge of the James Caird, with Frank Wild as his mate. Worsley would captain the Dudley Docker, with Greenstreet second-in-command, and `Buddha' Hudson was put in charge of the Stancomb Wills, with Tom Crean as mate.

  And so November was drawing to a close. They had been on the ice just a month. And for all the trials and discomforts, these weeks of primitive living had been peculiarly enriching. The men had been forced to develop a degree of self-reliance greater than they had ever imagined possible. After spending four hours sewing an elaborate patch on the seat of his only pair of trousers, Macklin wrote one day, `What an ingrate I have been for such jobs when done for me at home.' Greenstreet felt much the same way after he had devoted several days to scraping and curing a piece of sealskin to resole his boots. He paused in the midst of his task to write in his diary: `One of the finest days we have ever had ... a pleasure to be alive.'

  In some ways they had come to know themselves better. In this lonely world of ice and emptiness, they had achieved at least a limited kind of contentment. They had been tested and found not wanting.

  They thought of home, naturally, but there was no burning desire to be in civilization for its own sake. Worsley recorded: `Waking on a fine morning I feel a great longing for the smell of dewy wet grass and flowers of a Spring morning in New Zealand or England. One has very few other longings for civilization - good bread and butter, Munich beer, Coromandel rock oysters, apple pie and Devonshire cream are pleasant reminiscences rather than longings.'

  The fact that the entire party had been kept occupied contributed much to their feeling of well-being. But toward the close of November, they simply began to run out of things to do. The boats were completed and ready to go. A test launching had been held, and they had been found entirely satisfactory. The stores for the trip had been repacked and consolidated. Charts of the area had been studied, and probable winds and currents had been plotted. Hurley had finished the boat pump and gone on to make a small portable blubber stove for the journey.

  They had completed their part of the bargain. Now all that remained was for the ice to open.

  But it didn't open. One day wore on into the next, and the pack remained substantially the same. Nor was their drift particularly satisfactory. During this period the winds had been southerly but never very strong, so the pack continued to move north at the same sluggish pace, about 2 miles a day.

  Frequently, even the recreation of exercising the teams was denied them. Often the ice would loosen somewhat, leaving their floe an island with up to 20 feet of open water around it. At such times, all they could do was run the dogs around the perimeter. Worsley wrote: `Men and dogs exercise around the floe. The complete distance is about 0/2 statute miles, but to do it more than once proves damnably monotonous to the dogs as much as to ourselves.'

  Time, indeed, was beginning to weigh a little heavily. Each day blurred anonymously into the one before. Though they invariably tried to see the good side of things, they were unable to fight off a growing sense of disappointment. Macklin wrote on December i :

  `We have done a degree [of latitude - 6o miles] in less than a month. This is not as good as it might be, but we are gradually getting north, and so far everything is hopeful.'

  And on December 7, McNeish rationalized: `We have drifted back a bit, but I think it will be for our good as it will give the ice between us & the Land a chance to get out & us a chance in.'

  Since abandoning the Endurance, they had covered 8o miles in a straight line almost due north. But their drift had described a slight arc, which was now curving definitely to the east, away from land. Not enough to cause real worry, but enough to stir concern.

  Shackleton had suffered a bad attack of sciatica which had kept him confined to his tent and more or less out of touch with things. But toward the middle of the month his condition improved and he became aware of the growing restiveness among the men. The situation was not improved on December 17. Just after they had drifted across the 67th parallel of latitude, the wind hauled around to the northeast.The next day's observation showed that they had been blown back across it.

  An air of tension, of patience pushed too far, settled on the camp that night, and conversation was scant. Many of the men went to sleep right after supper. McNeish let go some of his pent-up frustration in his diary, choosing as his target the profanity of his tentmates:

  `One would imagine he is in Ratcliff Highway [a nineteenth-century redlight district on the London waterfront] or some other den by the language that is being used. I have been shipmates with all sorts of men both in sail and steam, but never nothing like some of our party - as the most filthy language is used as terms of endearment, and, worse of all, is tolerated.'

  Shackleton was concerned. Of all their enemies - the cold, the ice, the sea - he feared none more than demoralization. On December i9, he wrote in his diary: `Am thinking of starting off for the west.'

  The need for action was settled in his mind the next day, and he announced his plan that afternoon. He said that on the following morning, he would go with Wild, Hurley, and Crean's teams to survey the country to the west.

  The reaction was immediate. Greenstreet wrote: `The Boss seems keen to try to strike to westward, as we don't make headway as we are. That will mean travelling light and taking only two boats at the most and leaving a lot of provisions behind. As far as I have seen the going will be awful, everything being in a state of softness far worse than when we left the ship, and in my opinion it would be a measure to be taken only as a last resort and I sincerely hope he will give up the idea directly. There have been great arguments about the matter in our tent ... '

  Indeed there were. Worsley felt much the same way: `My idea is to stay here - unless the drift should become large to the East ... The advantages of waiting a little longer are that the drift will convey us part of our journey without any exertion on our part, that probably we should be able to keep 3 boats, and that in the meantime leads may open in the pack.'

  But a great many others defended Shackleton's decision warmly. As Macklin put it:'... personally I think that we ought to push west as hard as we can. We know that there is land zoo miles west, therefore the pack edge should be somewhere about 1 So-i 8o miles off in that direction ... At our present rate of drift it would take us to the end of March to reach the latitude of Paulet Island, and even then we cannot be certain of breaking out. Consequently my view is, "Make as hard and as far as possible to the west." The drift will take us north, and the resulting direction will be NW, the direction in which we want to go ... Anyway we will see what they think of things tomorrow.'

  Chapter Six

  The inspection party set out at 9 a.m., and the four men were back at three o'clock, having gone a distance of some 6 miles. Shackleton called all hands together at five o'clock and informed them that `we could make progress to the west.' He said they would leave about thirty-six hours later, very early on the morning of December 23, and they would travel mostly at night when temperatures would be lower and the ice surface firmer.

  Furthermore, he said, since they would be on the trail over Christmas, they would observe the holiday before leaving and all hands could eat everything they wanted for supper and the next day. A great deal of food would have to be left behind anyway.

  This last announcement was enough to win over all but the staunchest holdouts against the plan. The Christmas `gorgie' began immediately and lasted almost all the next day, with every man eating all he could hold -'and everybody finishing up feeling full as a tick,' Greenstreet remarked.

  The men were called at three-t
hirty the following morning, and they started an hour later. All hands were put on the sledge supporting the Janes Caird, and succeeded in getting it across the open water surrounding their floe. They pushed her until they reached a high pressure ridge; then half the party went to work hacking a way through it, while the others returned for the Dudley Docker. The Sta?iconlb Wills was to be left behind.

  By about 7 a.m., they had relayed the boats more than a mile to the west, and all hands went back to camp to eat breakfast. At nine o'clock, the teams were harnessed and set off toward the boats, pulling all the stores and equipment the sledges could carry. At i p.m., the tents were pitched at the new campsite and everybody turned in.

  It was dismally wet. The tent floorings the men had devised at Ocean Camp had been left behind. Now they had only canvas ground covers or pieces of sail from the Endurance, which offered almost no resistance to the water covering the ice. After a time, Macklin and Worsley gave up trying to sleep in their tent and spread their soaked sleeping bags in the bottom of the Dudley Docker. It made a very uncomfortable surface for sleeping, but at least it was relatively dry.

  Shackleton summoned Worsley at seven o'clock that evening. He handed him a corked pickle bottle containing a note, and instructed Worsley to return to Ocean Camp with Greenstreet's team and leave it there.

  In essence the note said that the Endurance had been crushed and abandoned at 69°5' South, 51°35' West, and that the members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition were then at 67°9' South, 52°25' West, and proceeding to the west across the ice in the hope of reaching land. The message concluded: `All well.' It was dated December 23, 1915, and signed, `Ernest Shackleton.' Worsley placed the bottle with its message in the stern of the Stancomb Wills back at Ocean Camp.