The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

by Caroline Alexander

  The Return of the Sun

  “Extremely heavy precipitation of rime crystals during the night, our rigging being heavily encrusted, some of the ropes being over 3? in diameter, but the effect is beautiful.” ( Hurley, diary)

  “Everyone got our warm clothes put up in as small a bundle as possible,” wrote McNish that night. “I have placed my Loved ones fotos inside Bible we got presented with from Queen Alexandra & put them in my bag.”

  Around the ship, blocks of ice caught between moving floes jumped like cherrystones squeezed between a gigantic thumb and finger. The wind blew hard all night, then dropped the following day, when all became quiet, save for an occasional distant rumbling. Shackleton calculated that the gale had caused the ship to drift as much as thirty-seven miles north in the three days it had raged.

  Throughout this ordeal, Lees, recovering from sciatica, had lain alone in Marston's bunk, to which he had been moved at his own request. From this deck cabin, he had listened to the rumbling and upheaval of the ice and the tramping of the watchman's feet overhead. While the ship rocked and trembled, he held his breath, waiting to see how she would settle. On August 9, he ventured outside for the first time in three weeks, thinner and greatly weakened.

  Outside, an amazing sight awaited him: The Endurance lay in an entirely new landscape. All the old, familiar landmarks were gone or dislocated, and the ship appeared to have been forced forward a hundred yards through ice six feet thick.

  “How this little ship survived amidst such a mighty upheaval is almost inconceivable,” he wrote. “As it is she lies very much on her side with her rudder cracked & surrounded by great piles of ice blocks rising as high as her decks. We used to step out onto a comparatively level floe, now, on stepping outside, one finds oneself immediately in a labyrinth of ice blocks & gullies.”

  The pups (by Sally and Samson)

  Left to right, Nell, Toby, Roger, and Nelson. “In addition to their foster-father, Crean, the pups adopted Amundsen. They tyrannized over him most unmercifully. It was a common sight to see him, the biggest dog in the pack, sitting out in the cold with an air of philosophic resignation while a corpulent pup occupied the entrance to his dogloo.” ( Shackleton, South)

  Yet the Endurance had survived, and the pressure had vanished. Gradually, the weather cleared, and as the winter drew to a close the sun tentatively returned, shining for several hours each day. Spirits rose as old routines were resumed. The greatest amusement was provided by Crean, who was undertaking to train the puppies he had nursed so tenderly. On their first day in harness his fat charges (now weighing some seventy pounds each) lay on their backs, waved their legs in the air, and squealed.

  “Their howls and roars of terror resound for miles around,” wrote Worsley, one of the many bystanders entertained by the spectacle. “They pursue a devious and uncertain course.… [T]hough each pup possesses the voice of Jeremiah, his paunch is the paunch of Falstaff, and they flounder puff and pant along through the snow until to their joy they are headed for the ship and for a few minutes drag the hated sledge almost as fast as a dog team. Crean expects in two more lessons to teach them to drag a sledge unaided by an old leader. They will then be formally promoted from ‘Purps' to ‘Dags.'”

  Taking the dogs out for exercise

  After severe ice pressure forced the evacuation of the dogs from the dogloos to the ship, they were disembarked every other day for exercise.

  The rest of August passed without incident. Glorious sunrises tinted the ice pink, and delicate ice formations that formed on new leads of water resembled fields of carnations. On the night of August 27, with the temperature at –24°, Hurley set up twenty flashes behind hummocks of ice around the stricken Endurance.

  “Half blinded after the successive flashes,” he recorded, “I lost my bearings amidst hummocks, bumping shins against projecting ice points & stumbling into deep snow drifts.” But the image he secured was haunting: the rime-crusted Endurance breasting the ice, a spectral ship, both gallant and vulnerable.

  Spring was on the way. The men began to speculate whether on breaking out they would immediately return to Vahsel Bay and embark upon the transcontinental crossing or would return to civilization first for provisions. Bets were placed on

  Harnessing the dogs

  “The harness is similar to that used by Amundsen, consisting of a padded collar attached to traces, which fit over the dog & is secured by a belly band.” ( Hurley, diary)

  Dog team being exercised over pressure ice. “A good leader will ferret out the best track through rough or broken country, will not allow fights in the team, or indulge in any capricious antics.…A team of nine dogs can haul about 1,000 lbs.” ( Hurley, diary)

  The dog teams

  “One team appears to suffer from heart disease, their owner evidently expecting the whole creation to hold their breath as they pass by. A vulgar person…had the indescribable effrontery to let go his horrid war cry whilst riding on the imposing conveyance drawn by these dignified but nervous creatures, and was reproved by their indignant owner pointing out to the Vulgar Person into what terror his voice had thrown the beautiful but highly strung and delicate doggies.” ( Worsley, diary)

  The Endurance at Night

  August 27, 1915: “During night take flashlight of ship beset by pressure. This necessitated some 20 flashes, one behind each salient pressure hummock, no less than 10 of the flashes being required to satisfactorily illuminate the ship herself. Half blinded after the successive flashes, I lost my bearings amidst hummocks, bumping shins against projecting ice points & stumbling into deep snow drifts.” ( Hurley, diary) the “breakout” date: McIlroy hazarded November 3; Lees, ever pessimistic, thought it unlikely to occur before mid-February; Shackleton said he believed it would be October 2.

  The pressure returned on the night of August 26. For several days it presented no immediate danger, but in the early hours of September 2, it took hold of the Endurance with a vengeance.

  “On the night of 2nd September, I had one of the most startling moments of my life,” Bakewell recalled. “I was lying in my bunk, when… the ship literally jumped into the air and settled on its beam.” The iron plates in the engine room buckled, door frames were distorted, beams bulged as if they would splinter. The Endurance struggled and groaned as if in mortal pain.

  “There were times when we thought it was not possible the ship would stand it,” wrote McNish. He had watched the three-foot-square iron plates bulge up one and a half inches. But the pressure passed, and a week later McNish was busy building a wheelhouse that would protect the steersman from the elements, once they were under way again. Meanwhile, Shackleton had privately calculated that they were 250 miles away from the nearest known land, and more than 500 from the nearest outpost of civilization.

  The floe cracking up, 29

  “My Birthday & I sincerely hope to spend my next one at Home there is a fine breeze a Southerly wind at present & there is a crack in the floe about 10 yards ahead of the ship if the wind holds in this direction for a while it will open the ice up.” (McNish, diary)

  September unfolded without further crises, although the roar of distant pressure was seldom absent, and the floes around the ship were in constant movement. The men played football on the shifting floes, exercised the dogs, and hunted for seals, which were returning with the promise of spring. A light snowfall one night left the ship shimmering as if tinselled, and the ice sparkling as though covered with diamonds.

  On the afternoon of September 20, the most severe bout of pressure encountered so far shook the Endurance from mast to keel, so that it seemed her sides would have to collapse. But an hour later, the pressure subsided.

  It was October 1915. On the third day of the month, heavy pressure broke ten yards from the ship. The Endurance was by now as frozen onto the blocks of ice beneath her, in Lees's words, “as any rock in a glacier.” During a brief opening of the ice around the ship, the men had gazed down into the open water by her side and
seen, spotlit by the penetrating sun, great azure-blue conglomerates of ice lying as much as forty feet below the surface. Frost smoke rose from out of the open leads, red tinged at sunrise so that the ice seemed at times to be aflame.

  High temperatures—up to 29°— on the 10th produced a general, mushy thaw. The men started packing up the Ritz, and on the 13th returned to their original quarters. The following night, the floe on which the Endurance was lodged suddenly split; the ice slithered out from under the ship, and she floated on an even keel, in clear water for the first time in nine months. Impelled by the gale that had arisen, she swung in the narrow lead, and actually drove 100 yards ahead. Then the ice closed on her, and she was fast again.

  An hour later

  Over the following days, while the pack was still loose, Shackleton had the sails set, and an effort was made to force the ship ahead, but with no success. Shortly after tea on the 16th, after several loud bumps against her sides, the Endurance began to rise above the ice, squeezed up between the floes—then was abruptly thrown on her port side, listing some 30 degrees. Kennels, dogs, sledges, stores were all thrown across the deck into a tangled, howling heap. Then, around nine in the evening, the pressure subsided, and the ship returned to an even keel.

  On the 19th, Shackleton had the boilers filled and fires banked in readiness, and ice debris was cleared from around the rudder and the ship. McNish was commissioned to build a small punt, with a view to navigating the leads and channels. Light snow fell off and on throughout the day, and in the evening a killer whale appeared in the tiny pool around the ship, his huge body seen plainly through the calm, clear water as he cruised, leisurely, up and down beside the stricken ship.

  In the following days, the roar of pressure was continually in the men's ears, likened, by James, to the sound of London traffic when one is sitting quietly in a park. Sea watches were resumed, while the ice floes ground around the ship. The Endurance was now shaken and beaten constantly, but the men had become so accustomed to the disruptions that they were indifferent to all but the most violent upheavals.

  “Personally,” wrote Worsley, “I've got tired of alarm against which we can do absolutely nothing.” The dogs, restless from lack of exercise, howled and whimpered as the ominous sounds arose from the ice.

  “The ice is opening up a bit, thank goodness,” Lees wrote on the 23rd. “Things look a little more hopeful.” After a dinner of salt beef, carrots, mashed potatoes, and Banbury tarts, the traditional Saturday night toast was drunk to “Sweethearts and Wives.” There was now as much as twenty-two hours of daylight each day.

  On Sunday, October 24, the men watched the pressure move across the ice throughout the otherwise uneventful day. In the evening after dinner, Lees had just put “The Wearing of the Green” on the gramophone when a terrific crash shook the ship like an earthquake, causing her to shiver and list over about 8 degrees to starboard. The men finished listening to the tune, then went up on deck, according to Lees, “to see if anything unusual had occurred.” They found Shackleton on the ice with a grave face, examining the ship's sternpost. Caught between three separate pressure ridges across her bow and both sides, the Endurance had been twisted and bent by their onslaught. The sternpost had been almost wrenched out and was leaking dangerously.

  “Early yesterday afternoon a crack formed along the snow filled trench, 2ft. broad, whose formation first started on Aug. 27th… This new crack was 8 ins. wide at 6.0 p.m.: at 9.0 it suddenly broadened another 2 ft…A big change however took place in the afternoon. Between half past two and half past three the innocent crack became a lead 10yds. broad.” ( Wordie, diary)

  Immediately, Shackleton gave the order to raise steam for the engine room pumps. With water rising rapidly, the engineers, Rickinson and Kerr, desperately piled on fuel—coal, blubber, wood—racing to raise steam before the rising water could put the fires out. Within two hours they had the pump working, but they soon saw that it could not cope with the inrush of water. Hudson, Greenstreet, and Worsley disappeared into the bunkers, where the coal was stored, to clear the bilge pump, which had been jammed with ice all winter. Digging through the coal in the darkness, now underneath icy black water, they succeeded by early morning in clearing the pump with a blowtorch, and it was worked in shifts throughout the night.

  The Endurance keeling over

  “Suddenly the floe on the port side cracked and huge pieces of ice shot up from under the port bilge. Within a few seconds the ship heeled over until she had a list of thirty degrees to port.” ( Shackleton, South)

  Port list

  “At 4.45 p.m. slowly but surely the ship heeled right over to port: all sorts of weird noises came up from the engine room, and then with a rush all the unsecured dog kennels slid down to leeward.… She took a list of fully 30° in 5 seconds. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good—Hurley was immediately out on the floe photographing the ship from every possible position.” ( Wordie, diary)

  On the floes, the men took turns away from the pumps to dig desperate, ineffectual trenches around their dying ship. Inside, the sound of running water and the clickety-clack of the pumps rose above the creaking of the ship's tortured timbers. Down in the engine room, Chippy McNish was working with fierce concentration, building a cofferdam across the stern to contain the leak. Crouched in the water that rose at times to his waist, he toiled unremittingly through the night. Meanwhile, all other hands were feverishly gathering together stores, clothing, sledging gear, and dog food in preparation for disembarking onto the ice. Worsley went through the ship's library, tearing maps, charts, even photographs of possible landfalls out of the books they would have to leave behind. Marston, Lees, and James worked in the after hold removing supplies while the sound of rushing water resounded beneath them and the ship's beams cracked and exploded like pistol shots overhead. On the following morning, Hurley visited McNish, who had labored without rest on the cofferdam, and found that the leak had been checked.

  The port side of the ship. 19 October 1915

  Shackleton, shown leaning over the side, called this photograph “The Beginning of the End.”

  “The water is level with the engine room floor but it is being easily kept under,” he wrote. “We still hope to bring our staunch little craft through.”

  It was a cloudy, misty day. Pressure could be seen and heard all around, raising the ice to unimagined heights, but the ship herself was quiet. McNish still toiled on in the engine room, filling with concrete the space between the two bulkheads he had built and caulking them with strips of torn blankets.

  “Things look a bit more promising now,” wrote Wordie later in the day. “The sun is shining for one thing, and we are hoping the cofferdam is a success.” From four in the afternoon until midnight, the pumps were worked continuously, until the incoming water was under control. All stores were shifted from the stern, so as to raise it above the water when the ice opened and allowed the ship to float again. Only the bilge pump was worked throughout the night, and the exhausted men snatched minutes of sleep despite the faint whispers of distress that arose from the ship. Chippy McNish was still below working on the cofferdam.

  The 26th dawned clear, save for gentle, fleecy clouds, and full of sunshine that glinted with sparkling beauty off the ice. With the roar of pressure in his ears, Shackleton was struck by the surreal incongruity between the serene beauty of the day and the death throes of his ship; from the bridge, he had seen how the pressure was actually bending her like a bow, and it had seemed to Worsley that she was gasping to draw breath. She was leaking badly again, and the exhausted men worked the pumps in shifts—fifteen minutes on, fifteen minutes off—half asleep on their feet. At nine in the evening, Shackleton ordered the lifeboats and sledges lowered to a stable floe. The leak slowed, stanched to some degree by movement of the ice.

  “All hope is not given up yet for saving the ship,” wrote Hurley. Nevertheless, he took the precaution of packing his photo album in waterproof cloth —”it being the only recor
d of my work I shall be able to take, should we be compelled to take to the floe.” The Endurance had quieted, but that evening an unsettling incident occurred while several sailors were on deck. A band of eight emperor penguins solemnly approached, an unusually large number to be travelling together. Intently regarding the ship for some moments, they threw back their heads and emitted an eerie, soulful cry.

  “I myself must confess that I have never, either before or since, heard them make any sound similar to the sinister wailings they moaned that day,” wrote Worsley. “I cannot explain the incident.” It was as if the emperors had sung the ship's dirge. McLeod, the most superstitious of the seamen, turned to Macklin and said, “Do you hear that? We'll none of us get back to our homes again.”

  They continued to work the pumps throughout the night and morning. October 27 dawned clear and bright, but with a temperature of –8.5°. The ice had not ceased to roar, but the men were now too tired to notice. The pumps were being worked faster and faster, and someone was actually singing a chanty to their beat. The pressure increased throughout the day and at 4 p.m., reached its height. With a blow, the ship was knocked stern up, while a moving floe ripped away her rudder and sternpost; then the floe relaxed, and the beaten Endurance sank a little in the water. The decks began to break upward, and as the keel was ripped out, the water poured in.

  It was all up. At 5 p.m., Shackleton gave the order to abandon ship. The dogs were evacuated down canvas chutes, and the supplies that had been readied were lowered to the ice. Shackleton, standing on the quivering deck, looked down the engine-room skylight to see the engines dropping sideways as the stays and plates gave way.