by Chris Turney
ALSO BY CHRIS TURNEY
1912: The Year the World Discovered Antarctica
Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened
Ice, Mud and Blood: Lessons from Climates Past
ICED IN
Ten Days Trapped on the Edge of Antarctica
CHRIS TURNEY
CITADEL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
CITADEL PRESS BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2017 Chris Turney
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Published in Australia in August 2017 by Penguin Random House Australia, under the title Unshackled. Published by Citadel Press in arrangement with the author.
CITADEL PRESS and the Citadel logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-8065-3852-5
Library of Congress CIP data is available.
First electronic edition: October 2017
ISBN-13: 978-0-8065-3854-9
ISBN-10: 0-8065-3854-6
To the extraordinary members of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013–2014 and the wonderful crews of the Akademik Shokalskiy, the Xue Long, the Aurora Australis, and the Astrolabe.
Thank you.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
All distances are expressed in nautical miles. One nautical mile is equal to 1.151 statute miles or 1.852 kilometers. A “knot” describes the number of nautical miles traveled in an hour. All currency is expressed in Australian dollars unless stated otherwise.
There seems to be a wide-spread idea that the work of
exploration is virtually finished . . . The “race” is over: ergo
the work of exploration is done. No more foolish mistake
could be made, and none more disastrous in its consequences.
—SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON (1874–1922)
If we teach only the findings and products of science—no
matter how useful and inspiring they may be—without
communicating its critical method,
how can the average person possibly distinguish
science from pseudoscience?
—CARL SAGAN (1934–1996)
Table of Contents
ALSO BY CHRIS TURNEY
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Praise
PROLOGUE
PART I - HEADING SOUTH
CHAPTER ONE - The Big Picture
CHAPTER TWO - A Step into the Unknown
CHAPTER THREE - The Furious Fifties
CHAPTER FOUR - There Be Dragons
CHAPTER FIVE - Off the Map
CHAPTER SIX - In Adélie Land
PART II - TRAPPED
CHAPTER SEVEN - An Armada of Ice
CHAPTER EIGHT - A Christmas to Remember
CHAPTER NINE - The Home of the Blizzard
CHAPTER TEN - Frustration
CHAPTER ELEVEN - Teamwork
CHAPTER TWELVE - Keeping It Together
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Escape from the Ice
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOURCES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A Century of Antarctic Exploration
Commonwealth Bay, East Antarctica
PROLOGUE
We’re on our own.
Just thinking the words scares me.
I’m standing alone on a windswept deck looking out over the Antarctic coastline and the wildest landscape I have ever seen. We’re over 1,400 miles from civilization, and things don’t look good.
Our ship, MV Akademik Shokalskiy, has spent the last four weeks fighting the stormiest seas on our planet. For four weeks, I’ve shared our small vessel with seventy-one other souls, leading a scientific expedition to study this extreme environment. Arriving at the edge of the continent, we successfully crossed thirty-five miles of sea ice to reach a hundred-year-old wooden Antarctic base, a time capsule from the Edwardian age, to complete research the first polar scientists could only have dreamed of. With the science program nearly done, we took the Shokalskiy round to the east for one final piece of work. We finished yesterday and, flushed with success, were heading home.
Now we’re surrounded by ice . . . lots of ice.
I’m struggling to understand what’s happened. Just a few days ago, we sailed these same waters, an area that satellite imagery showed was free of ice. We passed some patches forming on the freezing surface, but nothing to be concerned about. Now we’re hemmed in by slabs of ice, some measuring ten feet thick, their immense size signifying they’ve formed over several winters. The amount of ice smacks of a catastrophic realignment up the coast, somewhere out to the east. Shattered by strong winds or broken up by rising temperatures, the ice has swept out to sea and into our path, too fast for us to dodge.
History is repeating itself. The expeditions of a century ago returned from the Antarctic with tales of adventure, tragedy, heroism . . . and sea ice. Sea ice was the villain of the south; the single greatest reason for lost lives and ships. No vessel was free of the risk, even at the height of summer. And no one experienced it worse than the great explorer Ernest Shackleton, who in 1915 lost his ship, the Endurance, to the crushing pressure of pack ice.
I search the horizon through my binoculars, looking for anything that might hint at a route to open water and freedom. The explorers of old like Shackleton learned that ominous dark skies promised open water reflecting on the clouds above, but the nearest “water sky” is two to four miles away. It may as well be a hundred. My freezing breath condenses on the lenses. I rub them clear with my gloves and look again.
Nothing breaks. There’s ice as far as the eye can see.
I look at the weathervane overhead. It remains stubbornly fixed on the southeast, and the frenetic spinning of the wind cups shows no let-up on the forty knots we’ve had all day. Huge slabs of ice jostle for position around the ship. If only the wind would ease off, or better still, change direction, it might loosen the pack and give us a chance to get out of here.
In the frigid wind, I catch a distant laugh from below decks.
It’s Christmas Eve 2013. All over the boat, decorations have been put up. Flashing lights adorn the corridors, tinsel hangs around the dining room and banners flutter from the ceilings. We’ve even brought two green plastic Christmas trees, already sheltering a pile of presents for tomorrow. There’s concern aboard but hopefully we’ll be moving again soon.
I lower my binoculars and turn to join the party below.
* * *
Six hours later, I wake and sense something is wrong. I lie still for a moment, wondering. Then I realize: the Shokalskiy’s quiet. The constant throb of our ship’s engines has stopped.
I scramble out of bed and throw on some clothes.
This is bad. This is very, very bad.
I grab my down jacket and leap up the stairs to the ship’s bridge. It’s half past five in the morning, and most of the expedition team are still in their cabins.
But up on the bridge there’s a frenzy of activity. Several Russian crew members, led by the captain, Igor Kiselev, are checking screens and poring over maps. His strained face says it all. It’s clear Igor has been up for hours. A native of Vladivostok, white-haired, stocky, and a polar veteran of over thirty years, he is normally bullish. Not this morning. A gruff “Morning” in his strong Russian accent indicates all is not well.
“Chris, we
have problem.”
“How bad is it?”
“No way out.” He sweeps his arm toward the windows and horizon beyond.
I look aghast at the scene before me. The ice has closed up even more. What little water was visible last night has disappeared, replaced by thick, tightly packed blocks of ice that slam into each other, thrusting chaotically into the air.
I look at the navigation monitor, and my stomach knots. The path of the Shokalskiy is plotting automatically on the screen. The rudder is blocked and with the engines turned off, our vessel has no steerage; the wind is pushing us, with the pack ice, toward the coast. The rocky outcrops lie just a few nautical miles off the port side. It’s like a car crash in slow motion. Unless the wind changes or the ice packs in hard enough between us and the shore, there’s nothing we can do to avoid being thrown against the continent. The ship will be smashed to pieces, and we’ll have to evacuate everyone on board.
But even more alarmingly, two towering icebergs, each weighing some 80,000 tons, are moving at a great pace off the starboard side. The arrival of icebergs on the scene is a different threat altogether. In contrast to pack ice, which forms in the ocean, icebergs originate from the continent, shed by glaciers and ice sheets, and are far larger. They can extend hundreds of feet into the deep, where they’re steered by ocean currents. There they can pick up speeds of two to three knots, ripping through ordinary sea ice and anything else in their path, often in a completely different direction to the prevailing wind. If these icebergs set a trajectory for our 2,300-ton ship, they could be upon us within a couple of hours. There won’t be much time for an evacuation; we’ll barely have time to get everyone off the stricken vessel before it’s crushed to pieces.
And then Igor gives me the bad news: A tower of ice has pierced the ship during the night, ripping a three-foot hole in the hull, threatening one of the water-ballast tanks. The destruction of the Shokalskiy has already begun.
I stifle rising panic as Igor pulls out the latest weather charts and spreads them on the table. The tightly packed pressure bars and thick arrows all point to an approaching blizzard and persistent winds from the southeast.
Igor flicks over the page to recent forecasts for the next few days. “No relief.”
I reel at the news. We have to get help, and we have to get it fast. I stagger back toward my cabin, numb. This can’t be happening.
The trials of past endeavors conjure up the worst possible scenarios in my mind. Shackleton and his men were stuck in the ice for two years. A thousand miles from civilization, they faced isolation, starvation, freezing temperatures, gangrene, wandering icebergs, and the threat of cannibalism. But by sheer positive attitude and superb leadership, the Anglo-Irishman kept his team together and returned everyone home. No matter how bad conditions became, Shackleton never lost a single life.
But there’s a difference between him and me, I think, as I open the door to my cabin and see my wife Annette, fifteen-year-old daughter Cara and twelve-year-old son Robert sitting at the table, smiling and laughing, waiting to open their Christmas presents.
Shackleton didn’t have his family with him.
PART I
HEADING SOUTH
CHAPTER ONE
The Big Picture
Late January 2013, I was pacing outside my home, the warmth of the Australian summer sun beating down on my face. It was a glorious day, perfect for the beach. Hordes of Sydneysiders had driven the hour down the coast to Austinmer. After parking along the street, young and old struggled by our house under bright mountains of towels, buckets, spades, and inflatables, eager to stake their claim in the sand. Some gave me a glance as they passed by, hearing me speaking loudly into a phone the size of a brick. I couldn’t help but wish I were joining them.
I was starting to lose patience. I’d been cut off three times already. The thermometer was hitting over 100F, and I wanted to get in the sea and cool off.
Things weren’t helped by the howling blizzard at the other end of the phone line.
Finally, I got a decent connection. “Chris? Chris? Can you hear me? Annette’s had a brilliant idea for our expedition.”
I was speaking to my friend and fellow scientist, Chris Fogwill. Chris and I have been mates for years, built on a mutual love of the outdoors. We met in the U.K. when we were appointed to the same university to teach Earth sciences. In years gone by, we might have been described as geologists or environmental scientists, but it’s both these and more. Earth science takes a complete view of our planet; it pulls together different disciplines to try to get a better understanding of how our world works. Earth science isn’t just interested in what’s below our feet and why it’s there, but looks at how geology, the air, oceans, ice and life itself are all connected. How quickly do melting ice sheets raise sea level? What impact do volcanic eruptions have on the carbon cycle? If the planet’s wind belts get stronger, what happens to the ocean currents? Earth science makes links and answers questions that a single discipline struggles to tackle.
Both Chris and I soon realized we had a shared passion for using our planet’s history to improve predictions of future climate; something that’s badly hindered by the century-long weather-station records that fail to capture the changes we’re likely to face in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, Nature rarely provides easy-to-find clues for what happened before scientific observations began. You need to know where to look. Our short field trips turned into large expeditions as we worked around the world with friends, digging into peat bogs, probing lake sediments, coring trees and drilling ice, searching for evidence of past change. As we delved deeper, we started to piece together a picture of a planet with a tumultuous past that is rarely, if ever, stable—where wild swings in climate can happen in a geological blink of an eye. At a time of such massive environmental change that a new geological epoch—the “Anthropocene” or Human Age—is being considered seriously by world scientists, such insights are crucial.
In 2010, I was offered the job of a lifetime: an Australian Laureate Fellowship, one of the most prestigious scientific positions available. I was granted five years of funding to host a research team at the University of New South Wales to focus on these wild swings in climate and what they might mean for the future. It was the position I had always dreamed of. And at thirty-six years of age, I was one of the youngest to ever be awarded a Laureate. I couldn’t say no. I left the U.K. and managed to convince Chris to join me.
Chris is a brilliant scientist. A world leader in glaciology with over ten years’ field experience in Antarctica, he can read the landscape like no one else I’ve worked with. Chris also has an unerring understanding of what gear a team in the field needs and how to use it. No matter what the terrain, Chris will know what and how much kit we have to get and where to get it. What Chris doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing.
Six weeks before my call to Chris we’d been working in the Antarctic and had returned home just in time for Christmas. But one of our New Zealand colleagues had been expecting his first child and needed someone to take his place on an expedition departing in the New Year. Chris couldn’t resist the opportunity. Now he was holed up in a small pyramid tent in the Transantarctic Mountains with three other guys. Tragically, a plane had just disappeared near their field site and all available aircraft were searching in the vain hope they’d find survivors. Chris was patiently waiting for a helicopter pickup, but the weather had taken a turn for the worse: a blizzard was blowing and everyone was grounded. I was forced to shout down the line to be heard above howling winds and flapping tent sheets.
There really is nowhere bigger or more exciting for an Earth scientist than Antarctica. Lurking in the shadows like a disruptive neighbor, it does its own thing, whatever the consequences to anyone else. Antarctica’s been implicated in some of the most extreme and abrupt environmental changes our planet has ever experienced. Catastrophic sea-level rise, massive temperature swings and abrupt shifts in tropical rain belts have all been li
nked to the southern continent. The challenge is getting there to find the clinching evidence.
Most researchers head to the Antarctic on a government ship, but that’s easier said than done. Although there are more than thirty research bases across the region, berths on supply ships and aircraft are fiercely fought over for years in advance. If you’re lucky—really lucky—you may get two or three of your team on board. If by some miracle you manage to get a large group south for the whole season, forget about them working anywhere that’s not near a national base without years of lead time; the cost of operating in the Antarctic is so high, scientists are encouraged to work as close as possible to a research station. The problem is that with a changing planet, the science questions have changed since the first bases were put up over half a century ago. For the last year, we’d been working on an intoxicating solution: Charter our own vessel and take our own team of scientists to a region where big changes are afoot. It was something that hadn’t been attempted for decades.
Before government funding became the main source of support for scientists after the Second World War, most researchers were heavily dependent on finding wealthy benefactors and businesses to finance their work. In Antarctica, the hurdles were even greater. It is a vast expanse of unknown with little, if any, prospect of help if things went wrong. As a result, the cost of kitting out, transporting, and supporting a twenty-plus team of scientists, engineers, cooks, medics, and photographers across the perilous Southern Ocean and off the map for a year or more would have run into the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars today. With national governments hesitant to underwrite what would most likely be a costly affair, many explorer-scientists looked to other means. One of the great early twentieth-century pioneers in this regard was the irrepressible Ernest Shackleton, determined to stake his claim in the history books. Blending a heady mix of adventure, exploration, science, and opportunism, Shackleton sold the idea of Antarctica to whoever would listen. It could be whatever you wanted: your name on the map, a territorial claim, a place on the expedition, a scientific study. Any and all were available to those who had money. Shackleton was the finest leader Antarctica ever saw, inspiring future generations of scientists and adventurers alike.
