The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

by Caroline Alexander

14 January, 1915

  “This 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.” ( Hurley, diary)

  14 January, 74° 10′S 27° 10′W

  The lay-to in the floe ice allowed the crew to take excursions on the ice.

  Pack ice, January 20, 1915

  Taken the day the Endurance was finally held by the ice. “We have only 85 miles to go but the wind is still from NE & keeping the ice hard against the barrier.” (McNish, diary)

  Endurance beset, full sail

  On the night of January 24, a lead of open water appeared ahead of the ship. “Today at 9 a.m. we hoisted all sail & got up full steam and continued to drive the engines full speed ahead until noon in the hopes of reaching the open water but all to no avail.” ( Lees, diary) midnight a lane of open water had appeared at the foot of the barrier. In the early morning of January 15, the Endurance continued under hazy skies. An unusually large number of seals were seen throughout the day, and at three in the afternoon the ship passed a large group swimming out from the barrier to offshore pack. The whole company gathered at the rail to watch and exclaim as the seals dove and played around the ship like porpoises—it was an event that everyone remembered with affection. By evening, the skies were clear and a lane of water had opened to allow the Endurance to speed south under sail. Fine, clear water lay ahead. Just before midnight, in the strange perpetual summer twilight, the ship came upon a sheltered bay formed by the projecting end of a great glacier and the ice barrier.

  “The bay…would have made an excellent landing-place,” Shackleton wrote, noting its “natural quay” of flat ice and its unusual configuration, which sheltered it from all but northerly winds. “I named the place Glacier Bay,” he continued, “and had reason later to remember it with regret.”

  The Endurance steamed along the glacier front through the night, and by early morning had arrived at another glacial overflow, deeply crevassed, its frozen torrent spilling over a cliff face that rose as high as 350 feet. At 8:30 a.m., the ship's splendid run of 124 miles was brought to a halt by dense pack ice, partly held in place, as Shackleton surmised, by the strikingly large bergs in the vicinity. The ship drew up close to a small berg distinguished by well-defined bands of embedded matter, which expedition geologist James Wordie identified as “biotite granite.” Later in the day, an easterly wind blew up, eventually increasing to gale force. While the leeward pack began to break and disperse under its pressure, the Endurance lay to behind a convenient berg. It was tedious to be held up after such a satisfying run. Lees, for one, whiled away the time with a characteristic tidying up of stores in the hold.

  The gale continued throughout the following day. The Endurance, unanchored, pitched about in the rough sea, steaming around and around in small circles all the while. A few seals rode the waves past her, their heads high above the water. From his bunk, Hurley looked up from his book to glance at the huge white bergs and lowering clouds through a porthole window.

  On January 18, the gale had abated sufficiently to allow the Endurance to raise sail in the morning and take advantage of a long lead that had opened at the foot of the glacier front. Pack ice was encountered, however, in the afternoon. Cautiously, the Endurance was nosed through the thick brash into open water, where she enjoyed a twenty-four-mile run before heading into more heavy brash and large, loose floes.

  “The character of the pack has again changed,” Worsley noted. “The floes are very thick but are composed of a greater proportion of snow; tho' they are broken up slightly into large floes the brash between is so thick & heavy that we cannot South push thro' except with a very great expenditure of power.… We therefore prefer to lie to for a while to see if the pack opens up at all when this NE wind clears.”

  Fighting seasickness brought on by the rough sea, Lees had endured his turn at the wheel, where it was “snowing and blowing and generally horrid.” In the afternoon he spent his spare time readying the stores for landing, sorting them into “ship” and “shore” piles. Less industrious members of the expedition were bored by the delay.

  “It is gratifying to feel we are only 80 miles from our intended base, Vahsel Bucht,” Hurley wrote, referring to it by its German name. “We are all keen to reach it as the monotony is telling on some of us.”

  The weather on the following morning was good, but the ice conditions had worsened, the pack having closed in around the ship during the night. The scientists dutifully took specimens, but everyone's attention was on the ice. The gale had packed it so tightly against the continental shelf that no water at all could now be sighted from the crow's nest. Still, the ship's company turned in that night hoping that a change in the wind would open the pack and allow them to continue on their way. The Endurance was now as little as one good day's sail away from Vahsel Bay.

  The northeasterly gale that had been blowing intermittently since January 16 rose again in the course of the night. The day broke dull and snowy, revealing the pack pressed around the ship more densely than before. Still, the temperature was mild, 28° Fahrenheit, so as Lees noted “there is no fear, at present, our getting frozen in.” With nowhere to go, there was not much to do. The day's excitement came when Frank Wild shot a nine-foot crabeater seal, providing fresh meat for the men and dogs and Mrs. Chippy. The scientists held a singsong in Clark's cabin, a favorite gathering place as it was close to the boilers. Hurley continued writing letters to be taken with the ship when she returned to South Georgia Island, and Lees busied himself with washing and mending his wardrobe.

  The gale was still blowing from the northeast on January 21, drifting snow from the continental ice shelf; consequently the air was full of moisture, and the wardroom and cabins became damp with condensation. Ice pressure against the rudder caused grave concern, and the crew went over the side to chip it clear. Although it represented a costly expenditure of fuel, Shackleton kept steam up in the boilers so that the ship could take advantage of the least opening in the pack. Held fast in the ice, the Endurance was being carried with the rest of the pack by the Weddell Sea's current; soon she would be moving away from land.

  After six days of blowing on and off, the northeasterly gale subsided on January 22, and the following day dawned sunny and calm. Hurley immediately took advantage of the light to take some color photographs, and Lees continued his scrubbing and darning. An assessment of the ship's supply of fuel determined that only 75 tons of coal remained of the 160 the Endurance had carried from South Georgia.

  Endurance in ice in full sail

  Worsley called this photo “The Endurance in the Pride of Her Youth.”

  At midnight on January 24, a rent in the surrounding ice opened a lead at right angles to the ship—but 100 yards distant. Full steam and sail were raised, but the Endurance could not ram through, and the ship's company took to the ice with chisels and crowbars to try to hack a path to the tantalizing lane to freedom. Although the ice could be seen breaking up some distance ahead, around the ship herself they could do nothing.

  “Held up in the ice. Nothing of any movement takes place”; “still fast & no signs of any opening”; “the lead that promised so much has almost closed up again”; “still fast”— thus, in this anticlimactic way, do the diary entries over the next few days indicate the men's dawning awareness that the decision to lay to in the pack—made, it seems in retrospect, almost casually on the night of January 18—had proved fatal to their plans.

  “It appears as though we have stuck fast for this season,” Hurley wrote at the close of January 27. “A noticeable drop in the temperature at midnight, +9 being recorded. This has had the effect of freezing up many of the small pools & cementing together the floes, an ominous happening.”

  Playing football on the ice

  A popular diversion while the ship was held up. Macklin and Clark, both Scots, were recognized as the most outstanding pla
yers. The teams were Port watch versus Starboard watch.

  A weekly gramophone evening in the Ritz, Sunday evening

  Some of the sailors developed the superstition that the gramophone incited the bouts of pressure.

  Daily depth soundings indicated that the ship was drifting farther and farther away from land. With the regular routine winding down and less work for everyone to do, boredom inevitably set in. Games of football on the ice and attention to the dogs provided some diversion. In the wardroom, the scientists amused one another by reading aloud in the evening, and Sunday singsongs were a regular event. Saturday nights the traditional toast was drunk “to our sweethearts and wives” (followed unfailingly by the chorus, “may they never meet”), a ritual overdone by McNish one night, resulting in a quarrelsome disturbance in the fo'c'sle.

  Although scientists and sailors had been prepared to travel south together, they had not counted on sharing one another's company for a polar winter. And while the possibility of the ship's wintering over had been discussed in Buenos Aires, the original plan had called for her to return to safe haven after depositing the shore party and their supplies.

  “The idea of spending the winter in an ice bound ship is extremely unpleasant,” Hurley wrote in early February, “more so, owing to the necessarily cramping of the work and the forced association with the ships party—who, although being an amiable crowd are not altogether partial to the scientific staff.”

  False hopes arose several times with the appearance of a lane, or a change in the ice, and more than once the men set out to cut or shake the ship free. On February 22, the drift of the Endurance carried her to the 77th parallel. It would be the farthest south attained by the Imperial Trans-Antarc-tic Expedition.

  Cutting the ice around Endurance

  On February 14 and 15, 1915, a lead of free water appeared 400 yards ahead of the stricken ship, and the crew made strenuous efforts to cut a path to this tantalizing lane.

  Trying to break up ice from around Endurance

  “The summer had gone,” Shackleton wrote. “Indeed the summer had scarcely been with us at all. … [T]he seals were disappearing and the birds were leaving us. The land showed still in fair weather on the distant horizon, but it was beyond our reach now.” On February 24, Shackleton ordered the cessation of ship routine, and the Endurance officially became a winter station.

  Having battled valiantly through 1,000 miles of pack ice in six weeks, the Endurance had come within a single day's journey of her landing base. Now exhausted by futile attempts to cut their ship free, Shackleton and his men could only watch helplessly as the Endurance's drift carried them out of sight of land. The fateful turn of events affected no one more than Shackleton. Not only was he burdened with the responsibility of keeping his diverse company in good health and spirits throughout a polar winter, but he had to swallow bitter personal disappointment. He was forty years old, and the Endurance expedition had taken formidable energy to assemble. With a war under way at home, it was unlikely that he would have another opportunity of returning to the south anytime soon; this was his last shot. Although for some while it remained theoretically possible that the expedition could proceed in the spring, when the breakup of the pack would release his ship, Shackleton was realistic enough to know that every passing day made this increasingly impossible.

  “It was more than tantalizing, it was maddening,” wrote Alexander Macklin, one of the ship's two surgeons, in his diary. “Shackleton at this time showed one of his sparks of real greatness. He did not rage at all, or show outwardly the slightest sign of disappointment; he told us simply and calmly that we must winter in the Pack, explained its dangers and possibilities; never lost his optimism, and prepared for Winter.”

  “The actual cutting out of the ice with picks & saws is difficult enough but lifting the blocks, some of which weigh as much as 3 and 4 hundred weight, out of the water, hauling them away, breaking them up…entails much hard work.” ( Lees, diary)

  Meanwhile, Huberht Hudson, the navigator, repeatedly tried the ship's wireless to get signals from the Falklands, the nearest transmitting stations, but without success. The expedition was not only out of sight of land. No one in the world knew where it was.

  “All hands again attack the ice and we work the ship a third of the way to the lead ahead.” ( Hurley, diary)

  Trying to free the Endurance

  “All hands hard at it till midnight when a survey is made of the remaining ⅔ some 400 yards. It is reluctantly determined to relinquish the task as the remainder of the ice is unworkable.” (Hurley, diary)

  Endurance in the ice

  Hurley noted that the pack frequently resembled a billowing sea.

  A midsummer sunset, February 1915

  “It was a charming evening. The atmosphere was charged with a redundancy of shimmering frost crystals.” ( Hurley, diary)

  The ship caught in a pressure crack. 19 October 1915

  “For the moment it seemed the ship would be thrown on her beam ends. Secured several fine photographs of our Gallant ship.” ( Hurley, diary)

  The Breakup

  March opened with a blizzard and a temperature of –8° Fahrenheit. The floes around the ship had become so rough from the wind working upon them that crew members smashed two sledges trying to haul seal meat over the broken surface. Towards the end of this same day, Worsley gave orders for all hands to stay on board. The snow had become so heavy that it was dangerous to stray outside.

  When the weather cleared, the creaking of ice and the sounds of the wind in all its moods filled the silence. At night, the men were kept awake by the light glinting upon the floes throughout the long austral twilight. Realistically, one could not expect the breakup of the ice until spring, sometime in October—some seven months away.

  According to Shackleton's original plan, the shore party, composed of scientists and sledgers, would have been busy working at their various duties, preparing for the journeys they would undertake come spring. Those who were to have remained with the ship would have been working their passage back to a winter haven. But now the jobs the men had come to do could not be done, and the danger of a numbing tedium hung over them. From his own experience Shackleton well knew the peculiar psychological strain of the eerie silence and black emptiness of the impending Antarctic winter.

  To guard against this, he set a strict winter routine. Instead of the usual rotation of sea watches, a single watchman was on duty from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., allowing all other hands to enjoy uninterrupted sleep. To boost morale as much as stave off the cold, Shackleton issued to all hands the winter clothing originally designated for the shore parties (each article of which Lees had assiduously catalogued in his diary): two Jaeger wool shirts and combinations, or long underwear, Shetland wool mitts, minders, each of whom came to regard his charges with intense proprietary pride. Rivalries and races between the teams now provided further entertainment (“My team is one of the best,” Hurley characteristically confided to his diary). The dogs' health was a matter of constant concern. A number had already died, the victims of intestinal worms. April was also a tragic month for the pigs, whom the seamen converted into pork.

  Hurley and Macklin at home one Shetland wool jersey, and, most important, Burberry tunics and trousers. These last were, in the words of one expedition member, roughly the weight of umbrella fabric, or calico, but supposedly so tightly woven as to be impervious to wind. A number of the sailors immediately stowed the new clothing safely away in their lockers, so as to have it “for swank” when they returned to civilization. Only clothing meant for the transcontinental party was kept apart, in the belief, or pretext, that the crossing might still happen.

  “There are to be cubicles accommodating two members each and about 6 ft. 6 in. x 5 ft. each along the two sides of the hold. They will have curtains instead of doors.” ( Lees, diary) “The Billabong” held two cubicles, which were occupied by Macklin, Hussey, McIlroy, and Hurley.

  Shackleton's immediate co
ncern was to establish comfortable winter quarters for his men. March temperatures were running from +11° to –24°, and the deckhouse cabins where the afterguard of scientists and ship officers lived were bitterly cold. Shackleton ordered the storage area between decks cleared, and Chippy McNish began the work of constructing cubicles within this more insulated area. On March 11, the men moved down to their new quarters, which they had christened “the Ritz.” Each of the roughly six-by-five-foot cubicles housed two men, and each received a wry name from its occupants, such as “The Billabong,” “The Anchorage,” “The Sailors Rest.” In the middle of the space was a long table where all meals were taken, and a bogie stove stood at one end. The Ritz was not only warm; its close quarters seemed familial and cozy. Crean, Wild, Marston, and Worsley moved into the old wardroom, while the sailors remained in the fo'c'sle, which was situated between decks and so sufficiently insulated. Shackleton also stayed where he was, alone in the Captain's cabin, aft; it was the coldest part of the ship. Winter accommodations for the nonhuman members were also effected. The dogs were housed in ice block kennels dubbed “dogloos” in an extended circle around the ship. The pigs were disembarked to similar winter quarters, which the sailors called “pigloos”; Mrs. Chippy stayed on board the ship.

  Ship's cabin, Endurance

  Shackleton's cabin, the tidy repository of his ambitions.

  The nights lengthened, and by the end of March there were equal hours of light and darkness. The fifty-odd dogs, big, energetic, wild, and playful, became the objects of intense interest and amusement. Their care occupied several hours a day, while their antics and different personalities kept the men on their toes. The animals took well to the ice, sleeping through blizzards with equanimity, curled in furry balls under the snow.