The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

by Caroline Alexander

  He was fond of claiming that his cabin was too stuffy, and slept instead in the 0° passageway; he relished shocking his shipmates by taking snow baths on the ice. His diaries are anecdotal, with a keen eye for situational comedy and for the beauty of the landscape around him. Like Shackleton, he was a romantic, dreamily in search of buried treasure, of improbable journeys. Yet for all Worsley's impracticalities, he was an expertly skilled sailor. Before moving to England, he served for several years in the New Zealand Government Steamer Service, a time spent mostly in the Pacific, where he learned to sail small boats in heavy surf.

  Captain Frank Worsley

  “The skipper's principle whims were his eagerness to announce at every port at which we touched on the way out that this was, ‘Sir Ernest Shackleton's flag ship Endurance bound for the Antarctic on a voyage of discovery,' and his persistence in declaring that the cabins etc. on board are so stuffy that he had to sleep outside in the passages, which is what he actually does; but he is very much ‘all there' in spite of these quaint little peculiarities.…” ( Lees, diary)

  Lionel Greenstreet, a young officer in the merchant service, between commissions, had signed on to the Endurance at short notice— twenty-four hours before the ship sailed from Plymouth—when the original first officer withdrew to join the war effort. His father was a respected captain in the New Zealand Shipping Company. Perceptive, critical, and a hard worker, he chose as companions the taciturn Clark and the rather superior Frank Hurley.

  Huberht Hudson, the navigator, was the son of a minister and had grown up in an educated family, but in a tough East End neighborhood. He had left a school sponsored by the Worshipful Company of Carpenters at age fourteen, to be apprenticed at Trinity House. He was a “mate” in the merchant service, but was studying hard for his “master” rank while on the Endurance. He was regarded by his shipmates as extraordinarily good-hearted and unselfish, although at times a bit “touched.”

  “One never quite knows,” wrote Lees, “whether he is on the brink of a mental breakdown or bubbling over with suppressed intellectuality.” He earned the nickname “Buddha” after appearing in a bedsheet with a kettle lid tied to his head at a small costume party held early in the expedition on board the ship. He was also the most proficient catcher of penguins for the ship larder.

  A handful of men kept busy despite the expedition's setback. Charles Green, the cook, and Blackborow, the steward, worked hard in the galley from early morning until night, preparing meals for twenty-eight men. Green was the son of a master baker, and had run away to sea at the age of twenty-one, becoming a cook in the Merchant Navy. When war broke out, he joined a Royal Mail Line passenger liner, which docked in Buenos Aires around the time Shackleton was cleaning house. Hearing that the Endurance cook had been sacked, Green applied for the job; he had in fact met Worsley once before, in Sardinia. Blackborow, the eldest of nine children, grew up in Newport, Wales, near the town's active docks in a seafaring family. A hint of temper, the capability of plainly speaking his mind, was perceived to lurk beneath his pleasant, easygoing manner. At only twenty, he was the youngest member of the crew.

  Hudson with young Emperor Penguin chicks, 12 January 1915; Lat. 74° 45S, 22.33W

  The navigator became renowned for his penguin-catching skills.

  Cook skinning a penguin in the galley

  On the Endurance, Green's day began at dawn and ended only after dinner. The son of a pastry chef, he baked twelve loaves of bread a day, in addition to skinning and preparing game captured on the ice.

  Chippy McNish was also rarely idle. He was not merely a carpenter, but a master craftsman and shipwright, and was constantly building or adapting things—card tables, chests of drawers, dog kennels, decking.

  “All the work he did was first class,” according to his shipmate Macklin. He was never seen to take measurements: He simply looked at his job, then went away and cut the pieces, which always fit perfectly. Even Lees, who loathed him, recognized that McNish was “an expert wooden ship's man.” Although neither an officer nor a scientist, McNish was officially one of the afterguard, and his quarters were therefore not in the fo'c'sle, but in the wardroom, now relocated to the Ritz. For the fastidious Lees, eating at the same table with so unrefined a person was a kind of penance (“at scooping up peas with a knife he is a perfect juggler”). Lees would have been taken aback to learn McNish's views of the propriety of the shore party, of which he, Lees, was a member: “I have been shipmates with all sorts of men,” McNish confided to his diary, “both in sail & steam but never nothing like some of our shore party as the most filthy langue is used as terms of endearment & worse than all is tolerated.” This from an old salt whose blunt-spoken manner intimidated nearly everyone else.

  Between McNish and Worsley there was likewise little love lost, McNish holding a very low and undisguised opinion of Worsley's high jinks and erratic ways. Not one of the expedition company could have guessed, in these early months of the winter of 1915, that the lives of the company would eventually depend upon the skills of these two men—the rambunctious captain and the gruff, uncouth Chippy McNish.

  Finally, Frank Hurley's work remained unaffected by the change in plans. An able handyman, he kept continually busy with self-imposed tasks, such as creating an efficient “thaw box” for frozen seal meat, or carving signs for the various Ritz cubicles; his stint as an electrician in a Sydney post office enabled him to run the Endurance's little electric plant. But above all, he was occupied with his photography. Hurley's images from the earliest days of the expedition, when the Endurance first entered the pack ice, are marvelous, bold, abstract patterns shaped by the play of ship's mast against ice, or the cross formed by mast and yard arm against a lead of open water. They reflect what must have been the heady sensation of having the whole of Antarctica as a bare, white canvas to be etched by the stark, clean lines of the Endurance and her shadow.

  “Frank Hurley”

  “Hurley, our photographer, is an interesting character. He is Australian—very Australian & was photographer on Sir Douglas Mawson's recent Australasian Antarctic expedition to Adelie Land. As a photographer he excels & I doubt if his work could be equalled even by Ponting.…” ( Lees, diary)

  “H is a marvel,” Worsley wrote towards the end of January. “[W]ith cheerful Australian profanity he perambulates alone aloft & everywhere, in the most dangerous & slippery places he can find, content & happy at all times but cursing so if he can get a good or novel picture. Stands bare & hair waving in the wind, where we are gloved & helmeted, he snaps his snaps or winds his handle turning out curses of delight & pictures of Life by the fathom.”

  Once the Endurance became trapped, Hurley turned his camera to both the domestic life of the ship, and to the vision of it improbably suspended in the protean world of the ice. On duty at all hours of the day or night, sometimes arising at midnight to take photographs, he was keenly sensitive to the variegated and ever-changing play of light, continually elated at this spectacle of sky and ice and shadows.

  Hurley

  This photograph shows Hurley with both his still and his movie film cameras.

  The cold temperatures increased the difficulties of every aspect of his work. To guard against the condensation that developed on his cameras when they were carried from the outside into the ship's warmer interior, Hurley made a storage cupboard on deck, where they could be kept at a fairly constant temperature.

  “Nevertheless,” he wrote, “my apparatus needs attention every occasion it is taken out. Lubricating with petroleum etc., especially the cine. The film becoming extremely brittle.”

  The processing, too, was conducted under less than ideal conditions.

  “Darkroom work rendered extremely difficult by the low temperatures it being –13 outside,” he wrote towards the end of the winter. “The darkroom situated abaft the engine room is raised to above freezing point by a primus stove.…Washing [plates] is troublesome as the tank must be kept warm or the plates become a
n enclosure in an ice block. After several changes [of water] I place them in a rack in Sir E's Cabin—which is generally at an equable temperature. The Dry plates are all spotted & carefully indexed. Development is a source of annoyance to the fingers which split & crack around the nails in a painful manner.”

  Hurley aloft, Shackleton on deck

  “Hurley was very busy with his camera and cinematograph machine, getting photos. He … fixed his machine on the extreme end of the top-gallant yard, to get panoramic views of the Pack.” (Macklin, diary)

  Elsewhere he dryly notes “difficulty in obtaining sufficient water for washing operations.” All water, of course, had to be melted from blocks of ice.

  April, in Shackleton's words, “was not uneventful.” Twice that month, the ice groaned around the ship, nipping her sides and causing the Endurance to vibrate slightly; it was the first palpable hint of the pack's deadly potential.

  On the last day of the month, the ship's company were entertained by a rare spectacle. Shackleton and Worsley took a break from inspecting Lees's motor sledge and, inspired by some private whimsy, danced together in a stately waltz on the ice, while a member of the crew whistled “The Policeman's Holiday.” Lees's record of this improbable event was perceptive.

  “That is Sir Ernest all over,” he wrote of the famous polar explorer's courtly gyrations. “He is always able to keep his troubles under and show a bold front. His unfailing cheeriness means a lot to a band of disappointed explorers like ourselves. In spite of his own great disappointment and we all know that is disasterous enough, he never appears to be anything but the acme of good humour and hopefulness. He is one of the greatest optimists living.… [H]e enters the lists every time with the spirit that every prize fighter enters the ring with.”

  Hurley with camera

  In June began the darkest part of the year. Save for the moon and a couple of hours of dim twilight at noon, there was no light. The temperature had dropped to the minus twenties and leads of water that had been clear only the day before became encrusted with six inches of ice overnight.

  During this darkening period of dead calm, on June 9, heavy pressure broke. Some 500 yards from the ship, colossal plates of ice screamed and groaned against each other, exploding now and then with the muffled boom of distant artillery. Guided by hand lanterns, several men went out to observe the pressure as it piled huge blocks of ice, each many tons in weight, one atop the other, to a height of fifteen feet. The roaring continued through June 12, but the weather thickened, making more excursions impossible.

  Endurance in the Ice, 4 April 1915

  “During the night of the 3rd we heard the ice grinding to the eastward, and in the morning we saw that young ice was rafted 8 to 10 ft. high in places. This was the first murmur of the danger that was to reach menacing proportions in later months.” ( Shackleton, South)

  By June 15, all was calm again, and a race between dog teams was planned for the following day. The rollicking Dog Derby was a much welcome diversion after the ominous bout of pressure. In the twilight, the track was lit with hurricane lamps, and Shackleton himself acted as starter. He had given all hands the day off, and several of the able seamen entered into the spirit of the day by appearing dressed as bookies, although, as Hurley remarked, “as they look a trifle ‘disreputable,' their odds are not accepted.” With a flutter of handkerchiefs and cheers of encouragement, the dogs were off. Wild's team won, having covered the 700 yards in two minutes and sixteen seconds.

  Only days later, yet another holiday was festively observed. June 22, Midwinter's Day, was commemorated with a feast and after-dinner entertainment. Hurley erected a stage decorated with bunting and set up acetylene footlights. An overture, “Discord Fantasia in four flats,” was performed by the Billabong Band, while James offered the most successful sketch of the evening, appearing as Herr Professor von Schopenbaum to give a Dissertation on The Calorie.

  “Very witty & truly unintelligible,” Worsley wrote appreciatively. After midnight, the company sang “God Save the King” and wished one another well for the days ahead.

  Midwinter Dinner, 22 June 1915

  “Dinner at 6-0 Roast Pork stewed apples & preserves peas with plum pudding.” (McNish, diary)

  “From within the cosiness of the Ritz, it is hard to imagine we are drifting, frozen and solid in a sea of pack ice in the heart of the Weddell Sea,” Hurley wrote. Yet, he added, “I often wonder what is to become of it all.” His words imply that certain possibilities were not discussed, even as the creaking, booming sounds of distant pressure were carried through the crisp air to the stricken ship.

  By the end of June, the Endurance had drifted more than 670 miles since her entrapment, and each mile brought her closer to the open water beyond the pack, and to the prospect of freedom. The hours of daylight were now increasing appreciably, and the men could look forward to seeing the sun again. Dog exercising became easier with the returning light, and concerts and lantern slide lectures continued as entertainment.

  After several days of clear calm, a strong gale arose on July 12 and grew into a full-blown blizzard on July 13. The ship quivered as the pressure ground around her. Wild and Worsley were visiting with Shackleton in his cabin.

  “The wind howled in the rigging,” Worsley recalled, “and I couldn't help thinking that it was making just the sort of sound that you would expect a human being to utter if he were in fear of being murdered.” In the lulls of the wind, the three men listened to the grinding of ice against the ship's sides. It was now that Shackleton shared what he had known for many months.

  “The ship can't live in this, Skipper,” he said, pausing in his restless march up and down the small cabin. “You had better make up your mind that it is only a matter of time. It may be a few months, and it may be only a question of weeks, or even days … but what the ice gets, the ice keeps.”

  Worsley reports that he received this news with despair and incredulity, and it is difficult to tell whether, in the few remaining months ahead, he regarded the loss of his ship as truly inevitable. He was, in his way, a more incurable optimist than Shackleton.

  But Shackleton knew, and what Shackleton knew Wild took on faith. The men left their meeting and went back to the old routine, betraying nothing.

  “It is bitterly cold and no one is allowed away from the ship,” Hurley wrote the following day. “We are not anxious however. The alluring cosiness of the Ritz being too enticing.” On the opposite side of the Ritz, however, McNish was writing in his diary from a very different perspective.

  “We had a slight shock last night or this morning early,” the old seaman wrote. “At least there was a noise under the bottom aft the same as if the ice had broken up

  Crew of the Endurance

  “The keel is jamed & there is no way in clearing it but at present everything is quiet & we are freezing in again but there is a lot of craks around the floe Hurley took a groupe of all hands on Wednesday.” (McNish, diary)

  I jumped on deck but we could not find out what it was the Boss thinks it was a whale but I think different.”

  On July 21, amid heavy pressure, Shackleton ordered the decks cleared in the event the dogs had to be evacuated from the breaking ice; hourly watches were set throughout the night. The following day, Worsley rushed into the Ritz to announce that the ice had cracked some thirty yards ahead of them. All hands donned Burberrys and head gear and hurried outside. Some 300 yards off the port bow, colossal pressure was piling up massive blocks of ice as if they were sugar cubes. The sledges were brought off the floe, and Shackleton, Wild, and Worsley each took a four-hour watch during the night; Shackleton's daily sleep was now down to about three hours in the afternoon.

  Over the ensuing days, emergency rations were stored with the sledges, ready for use, and on August 1, the dogs were hastily brought on board shortly before a wave of pressure caused blocks of ice to flatten the kennels and grind them to powder between the jaws of opening and closing floes. A large lump of ice th
at had become jammed under the rudder was maneuvered away, but damage had already been done.

  As the gale raged, the Endurance was shaken like a toy by the pressure, knocked to her port side and nipped forward, backward, and side to side. Soundlessly she resisted, but when this onslaught ceased, a massive new pressure compressed her sides, causing her to strain and groan until her beams actually buckled.

  At close of Winter. August 1, 1915

  “Our position became extremely perilous, as huge blocks were rafting and tumbling over themselves in their apparent eagerness to hurl their force against our walls.” ( Hurley, diary)

  New leads covered with ice flowers—early spring

  “Took color camera to lead this morning amidst similar gorgeous conditions of yesterday & more glorified perhaps for a fine crop of ice flowers springing up on the lead & they, illumined by the morning sun, resembled a field of pink carnations.” ( Hurley, diary)