The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

by Caroline Alexander

  “When they think there is a danger of their being overlooked by their human pals,” wrote Worsley, “they sit up, shake themselves, do a song & dance & then coil down again for another snooze til GRUB— all our dogs spell it that way.”

  In early April, Shackleton divided the dogs into six teams assigned to specific

  The way to the lead

  A line of ice mounds were thrown up, linked with light rope to serve as guidance during blizzards.

  Kennels around the ship

  “Dogs all placed on shore much to their delight. All hands engaged building Igloos or Dogloos, from ice blocks & snow.… The dogs are secured by chain, one end of which is buried in the ice & frozen therein.” ( Hurley, diary)

  Macklin and Greenstreet boiling blubber for dogs

  A number of ice structures, including a quarantine and hospital for sick dogs, formed the dogloo complex.

  In the dwindling light, the men exercised the dog teams, or scouted for now infrequent seals, or went off on exploratory hikes across the ice. Like the hapless Endurance, a number of icebergs had also become trapped in the pack, and so ship and landscape drifted in tandem, held together by the northwest current. As familiar objects in the men's erratically shifting world, many of these companion icebergs came to be regarded with affection. Notable among these was the aptly named Rampart Berg, which they had first encountered in early January, while still under sail.

  Some 150 feet in height, it now reared majestically above the ice twenty miles from the ship.

  Self (Hurley) giving a “lantern chat”

  “Hurley gives a lantern slide show of New Zealand. Having the honour of being the only New Zealander aboard, I do my best to give a lecture which consists mainly of ‘This is such & such a place.' Tap tap with a stick for the next picture. At the conclusion I give an imitation of a Maori haka or war dance with 3 or 4 excellent pupils.” ( Worsley, diary)

  In the evenings, there were singsongs for entertainment, led by Leonard Hussey, the popular meteorologist who was also a proficient banjo player. Occasionally, Hurley presented lantern slide lectures, showing scenes of ice and snow from his Mawson expedition, or of sun and vegetation from his trip to Java. After most of the company turned in to bed, the lone night watchman was often joined by his pals, sharing such treats as cocoa and sardines on toast; these night visitors were called “ghosts.”

  On the first of May, the sun disappeared entirely, not to be seen for the next four months. The men's activities were now curtailed even more. Exercise of the dogs continued, despite the difficulty in navigating the sledges over broken ice in the uncertain light, but excursions far from the ship were discouraged. Diversions of all kinds were sought: Hurley and Hussey became keen chess opponents, welcoming the mental stimulation of the game. In the fo'c'sle, the sailors played cards and draughts. Books were read and argumentatively analyzed, and for a time guessing games were all the rage in the Ritz. In late May, the men succumbed to winter madness, shaving their heads and posing amid great hilarity while Hurley immortalized the moment with a photograph.

  Yet even in these winter months, there were days and nights of intense, magical beauty that raised morale and reminded some of the men why they had ventured into this harsh world. The strange mingling of faint daylight and a radiant moon on the frozen sea rendered the landscape mystically luminous. In the pure dark of a clear night, the stars glittered with unimagined brilliance, while faint aurorae tinged the horizon. Coming back from a sledging ride one night, Hurley described with elation the sensation of driving into the face of the moon.

  The diaries of the men reflect, to varying degrees, a generally contented company. There are notes of peevishness and signs of the strain of living at close quarters with the same faces day after day, but no friction of real consequence.

  “We all manage to live very happily here on board in spite of conflicting interests and the fact that most members are what one might term rather definite personalities and of somewhat different stations in life,” wrote Lees, ever mindful of class distinctions. Yet, he continues, “[T]here is no real need to have quarrels of any kind with one's comrades. Amongst gentlemen quarrels should be and can be avoided and there is no reason therefore why that should not be the case down here.” This was a particularly generous statement, written as it was only a short time after Hussey and Hurley had emptied a handful of lentils into his open mouth while he slept, to stop his snoring.

  Clark returning from winter exercise

  Carrying his skis, he prepares to enter the main hatch.

  The general peace that prevailed on the Endurance had not come about by accident and owed something to the manner in which Shackleton had selected the men in the first place. When James presented himself for his interview, the great explorer had bewildered him by asking not about his suitability for a major polar expedition, or details of his scientific work—but whether he could sing.

  “Oh, I don't mean any Caruso stuff,” Shackleton had continued, “but I suppose you can shout a bit with the boys?” The question proved to be uncannily appropriate. What he was looking for was an “attitude,” not paper qualifications.

  Shackleton's presence informed every event that occurred on his ship. On the one hand, he was always ready to be one of the boys: He shaved his head along with everyone else, and he joined, enthusiastically and tunelessly, in the singsongs. He was anxious, with much to ponder and plan, but he did not require a brooding solitude in which to do this. He was always among his men, perceived to be in good spirits, and this fact alone was in great part responsible for the atmosphere of security that pervaded their stricken circumstances.

  A morning in the Ritz, midwinter 1915

  At left rear, Blackborow carries a lump of ice to be melted for water. Right, the scientists work.

  Hussey and Hurley (Nightwatch) indulge in a friendly game

  “Hussey & I are night watchmen. During the night we indulge in a game of chess. We are both keen enthusiasts & it exercises one's otherwise stagnant intellect.” ( Hurley, diary)

  Shackleton did not believe in unnecessary discipline, and yet ultimately nothing happened without his consent. He was known to be above all fair, and so commands were obeyed not only because they were commands, but because they were generally perceived as being reasonable. His attention to the crew in the fo'c'sle was scrupulous. This was illustrated very clearly when the winter clothing was distributed. The fo'c'sle hands were supplied first, before officers and the shore party: “Whoever goes short it is not the crew,” Worsley wrote.

  Walter How and William Bakewell, both lowly able seamen but avid readers, could look forward to discussing the books they had read in the excellent ship's library one-on-one with Sir Ernest Shackleton. Blackborow, the stowaway, was made to attend to his schooling, Sir Ernest having taken a personal interest in the bright, conscientious young man. Yet when occasion required, Shackleton's commanding personality could also confront the most difficult individuals head on. John Vincent, the bosun, a swaggering trawlerhand who was physically bigger and stronger than any of the rest of the crew, was a bully. When a delegation from the fo'c'sle complained to Shackleton of ill treatment at his hands, the Boss summoned Vincent to his cabin. Vincent left shaken and demoted, and caused no more specific trouble. Shackleton had not felt the need for backup in this encounter, which in the hands of lesser men could have turned into an unpleasantly jittery affair.

  “He could put on a look, a disdainful look that made you shrivel up,” according to First Officer Lionel Greenstreet. “He could be very cutting when he wanted to, but I think it was more the look.”

  Above all else, Shackleton judged a man by the degree of optimism he projected. “Optimism,” Shackleton once said, “is true moral courage.” Those not blessed with this gift he regarded with transparent contempt. This was the case with poor Lees, who was probably the most universally unpopular member of the expedition on account of his snobbishness and his inclination to be absent when hard work
was demanded. For Shackleton, however, these flaws mattered less than Lees's naked anxiety about supplies and provisions. Lees had been appointed storekeeper and was in charge of rationing and keeping tally of what was consumed; but his able fulfillment of these duties was marred by his tendency to hoard and secret away trivial odds and ends for his own personal use. This, to Shackleton, suggested morbid pessimism, a lack of faith in availability of future stores. And so, despite Lees's own reverence for Shackleton as a leader, he was despised.

  Characteristically, however, Shackleton was not vindictive. When, later in the winter, Lees was laid up with a bad back after shovelling snow (“the first work he has done since we left London,” McNish sourly observed), Shackleton placed him in his own cabin, checking in on him from time to time and bringing him cups of tea.

  “At first,” wrote Lees plaintively, “I was in my own bunk lying in indifference & almost complete darkness all day. …” These are the words of a lonely man. One has the distinct feeling that Shackleton sensed some less observable malaise behind Lees's symptoms, and that he whisked Lees away from self-pity and the needling of his skeptical shipmates for a little ego boosting—all for a man he actively disliked.

  R. W. James

  “James was physicist, and was engaged in working magnetic observations, occultations of stars. … He had some wonderful electrical machines which none of us understood, and a joke of ours that annoyed him very much, was that he did not either.” (Macklin, diary)

  Another pillar of the high morale on board Endurance was Frank Wild, Shackleton's second-in-command. No man had a bad word to say about him. “He has,” wrote Lees, “rare tact and the happy knack of saying nothing and yet getting people to do things just as he requires them.… [I]f he has any orders to give us he gives them in the nicest way.” Wild was forty, the same age as Shackleton. He was born in Yorkshire, the son of a schoolteacher, and claimed, untruly, that he was a direct descendant of the great Captain Cook. Before his first journey south on the Discovery, Wild had served in both the merchant service and the navy. He later declined Scott's invitation to join the Terra Nova expedition, casting his lot instead with Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Wild had a laid-back competence, an unassuming manner, and it was to him that most petty complaints were made—that Clark, the biologist, wasn't polite enough, that Marston was a bully. To each grievance Wild appeared to give complete attention and understanding, with the result that the petitioner left feeling vindicated, even if no action was actually taken. Wild's loyalty to Shackleton was bone-marrow deep, and together the two men made a formidably efficient team.

  Despite the efforts to generate amusements, time hung very heavy for the scientists. James “Jock” Wordie, the geologist, and Reginald “Jimmy” James, the magnetician and physicist, had been friends at Cambridge. Jimmy James, earnest and reserved, was the stereotypical academic, brilliant and engaged in his field, somewhat baffled and inept in everything outside of it. The son of a London umbrella maker, James had led a sheltered academic life. He had given up a desirable university appointment to come south (his ice-block physics lab was called a “physloo” by the sailors). James was a good conversationalist, talking excitedly about such issues as vaporization, pressure of gases, and atmospheric phe-nomena—often baited by Greenstreet and Hudson, whose facetious questions would eventually silence him. Unexpectedly, he proved to be one of the best actors in the farcical skits that were a mainstay of ship entertainment.

  Wordie was from Glasgow, and a popular member of the expedition. His dry humor and unmalicious leg pulling were much appreciated. He had determined to join the expedition while at Cambridge, despite having attended a dinner there with Lady Scott, Captain Robert Scott's colorful widow, who “tried to dissuade all would be candidates from the thought of going” with Shackleton. But Wordie suspected that this would be the “last big expedition which would go South.” Unable to do much in the way of geology, he had turned his attention to glaciology.

  Worsley, James take observations during the winter

  “Worsley and James had a large telescope which they set up, and by getting the exact moment of occultation of certain stars, were able to work out the exact time.” (Macklin, diary)

  Robert Clark, the biologist, was a dour man of very few words; even in Hurley's photographs, his reserve and self-containment are unmistakable. He won respect from all hands, being hardworking and strong, and could be counted on to volunteer for disagreeable jobs such as shovelling coal; he was also an excellent football player. Almost from the moment he left England, he was at work with his dredging nets, and grimly continued with his scientific duties while in the ice. He was forever skinning and dissecting penguins, a practice that gave rise to the rumor among the sailors that the scientists were looking for gold in the animals' stomachs.

  Leonard Hussey, the meteorologist, was a Londoner by birth, and his shipmates amused themselves by teasing him for being a “cockney.” Having taken his degree from London University, he worked in the Sudan as an archaeologist before joining the Endurance; Shackleton claimed to have chosen him because the improbability of a man travelling from the heart of Africa to Antarctica amused him. Hussey's dedication to science was perhaps not as strong as that of his companions.

  “The vagaries of the climate quite bewilder Hussey,” Lees observed. “For just when he thinks it is going to do one thing the precise opposite happens.”

  J. H. Wordie

  “ ‘Jock' … is another Scotsman from Glasgow. … Taking him all round he is at once the most inoffensive & one of the most popular of our members. He has no use for cliques.” ( Lees, diary)

  Robert S. Clark

  “One day we saw a bunch of curious-looking penguins. … Clark went into ecstasies, or as near it as was possible for a dour Aberdonian to go.” (Macklin, diary)

  Leonard D.A. Hussey

  “I could never see that Hussey had much to do, for all his night observations were taken by the night watchman, but if we wanted him to come out and he did not want to come, he always pleaded great pressure of meteorological work.” (Macklin, diary)

  A. H. Macklin

  Reliable and loyal, Macklin was the only Antarctic “novice” selected for the transcontinental crossing.

  The two surgeons on board, Alexander Macklin and James McIlroy, were kept busy with the dogs: Both had been appointed as sledging team drivers, and it was their lot to attend to the parasite-ridden animals. Macklin was a Scot, the son of a physician from the Scilly Isles: Much of his boyhood had been spent around the islands in small boats. Although he could be quick-tempered, he was generally soft-spoken and very hardworking. He was also considered one of the group's best rugby players. McIlroy was about thirty-five years old, handsome and sardonic, already a man of the world who had practiced for years in Egypt, Malaya, and Japan and as ship's doctor on East Indian passenger steamers. He was from Northern Ireland (a third of the expedition were Scotch and Irish), and his humor could be wicked. One of his most successful perfor-mances—as reported by Lees himself—was an imitation of Lees's excessive deference to Shackleton:

  [McIlroy:] (Dancing about in a most effusive way) “Yes sir, oh yes certainly sir, sardines sir, yes sir here they are (dashes to pantry and back) and bread sir, oh yes sir, bread sir, you shall have the night watch-man's bread sir.” (Another dash to the pantry and much groveling effusion and so on) “And may I black your boots sir,”…

  A man checking an ice hole outside the ship Shackleton sent word back that he himself had been brought up to eat what was put in front of him.

  Probably Clark, who persisted with dredging for specimens throughout the period on the ice.

  In the fo'c'sle, the sailors spent a great deal of their time in their beds.

  “They just sleep the time away as best they can and never seem to look for any occupation,” Lees wrote, disapprovingly. The sailors were exempt from night watch duties, and although they had to tend to their own quarters, they were not called upon t
o help out in the Ritz. Again, Shackleton's care was to ensure that no one in the lower deck had cause to feel aggrieved. There had been hints that they could be troublesome, principally on the issue of meals. Though seal and penguin meat were routinely served in the wardroom, grumbling resistance to this had arisen in the fo'c'sle on the grounds that serving seal, as opposed to costly tinned meat, was “a ——— cheap way of running the expedition.” But their prejudices were catered to only so far. The word came down from the fo'c'sle one afternoon that one of the sailors had not found the day's menu of Heinz Spaghetti in Tomato to his taste.

  The night watchman's visitors

  The night watchman's duties consisted of keeping alight the fires in the Ritz, upper-deck wardroom, fo'c'sle, and Shackleton's cabins, and keeping an eye on the dogs in the event that they “came adrift.” Above all, he was expected to watch for signs of change in the ice.

  A glimpse in the fo'c'sle

  Conjectured in background, How with ukulele, Stephenson beside him; around table (left to right), Holness, Vincent, Blackborow, McLeod.

  Louis Rickinson and Alfred Kerr, the two engineers, were both so quiet and unassuming that their shipmates knew little about either of them, although both were admired for their efficiency and tidiness. Rickinson, who was in his thirties, was distinguished for his experience with internal combustion engines—and for being particularly sensitive to the cold. Kerr, who was a little over twenty, had worked on large oil tank steamers.

  Possibly no one had less to do than the three men responsible for moving the Endurance forward. Frank Worsley, the captain, was now for all intents and purposes a man without a ship. Worsley was from an educated family of settlers who had come to New Zealand from England (his father had attended Rugby). He had grown up living the rugged, outdoor life of a pioneer, and at sixteen had followed his brother to sea, as an apprentice on a wool clipper. After coming up through the ranks of the merchant service, he eventually moved to England and joined the Royal Naval Reserve. Rambunctious and erratic, he was much like some of the high-spirited sledging dogs. One of the reasons Shackleton had reconsidered his plan to return the Endurance to safe haven over the winter was that he did not completely trust Worsley to deliver her safely the following season without supervision. Few men so thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of the expedition in all its extremes as Frank Worsley.