The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

by Caroline Alexander

  Inside, the men lay head to toe, like sardines in a tin, with no room to turn and nowhere to tread when they went out or came in. Inevitably, minor tensions were exacerbated.

  “Tent walls are very thin,” Lees wrote, “thinner than this paper, and they have ears on both sides—inside & outside and many are the scrappy bits one hears which one ‘didn't ought' to hear.” The role Lees himself came to play in the group was both fascinating and pathetic. In addition to his many other irritating traits, he was a snorer, and in early November he reported to his diary that “there is a movement on foot to eject me from the 8 man pole tent & make me sleep in the rabbit hutch.” This campaign was successful, and shortly afterward Lees busily put the finishing touches to the sleeping accommodations in the storeroom.

  Ocean Camp

  Shackleton, Wild, and an unidentified member of the crew stand right to left. This is one of the last photographs Hurley took with his professional equipment. It was taken sometime between November 9, when the sailors erected the lookout tower, seen with ship's burgee flying beneath the king's flag, and November 22, when Hurley soldered his camera lenses and negatives in hermetically sealed double tin cannisters. He also soldered his album of developed prints in a brass case. After that, all his photographs were taken with his Vest Pocket Kodak and three rolls of film.

  Ocean Camp

  The three lifeboats on sledge runners can be seen in the background.

  “Sounds of bitter sobs and lamentations are heard this evening from No. 5 tent at the loss of their dearly beloved ‘Colonel' who has removed himself for a season to sleep in his store in the old wheelhouse,” Worsley wrote facetiously. Given Shackle-ton's almost obsessive care to keep his group together, physically and morally, it is striking that he allowed Lees to go off, or be driven off, in this manner. Yet there were clear reasons why he would have wanted Lees neutralized.

  “A human being's normal diet should contain the three main constituents of food, protein, fat and carbo-hydrates in the proportion of 1–1–21?2 respectively whatever the actual weights,” Lees recorded in his diary, in a typical entry. “I.e. the carbohydrates (farinaceous foods and sugar) should be more than double the other two.… As it is, our flour will only last out for another ten weeks at the most,” and so on, and on. The sight of Lees's nakedly anxious face, his incessant fussy inventory-taking and worried pronouncements of shortages must have driven Shackleton wild.

  It did not help matters that Lees's observations were entirely correct. But Lees does not appear to have grasped the single salient fact of the crew's predicament— that by all rational calculations their situation was not merely desperate but impossible. Any strategy for survival, therefore, could not completely defer to reality; Shackleton's tactics always involved a dangerous gamble of morale against practical necessity. The last thing he needed was for the men to hear Lees's grim invocations of the laws of science and reason. Hence, a move to ostracize Lees, or undermine his credibility, could only have been welcomed by Shackleton.

  On the other hand, certain practical measures could be taken, such as the preparation of the boats for their inevitable journey.

  “I have been busy since Saturday finishing the sledge for the boat,” wrote McNish on November 16, “& now I am building the boat up 1 foot higher & decking her in half way making her fit to carry the whole party in case we have to make a longer journey than we intisipate at present.” The work was done with his only surviving tools—a saw, hammer, chisel, and adze. Less than two weeks later, he had finished all three boats, but was still tinkering.

  “I have started to raise the Dudley Docker a strake higher at my leisure,” he wrote. “It is pass time for me & it makes the boat carry more & more seaworthy.” Everyone who stopped by was impressed by his work. In mid-December McNish was still tinkering with the boats. It was, as he said, “pass time.” The particular object of his care was the twenty-two-foot-long whaler, christened the James Caird after the expe-dition's principal benefactor. The boat had been commissioned by Worsley and built in a Thames dockyard according to his specifications.

  “The Wreckage Lies Around in Dismal Confusion. Wild taking a last look at the ship before she sank.” (Shackleton, South) Probably taken on November 14, 1915, when Wild and Hurley walked from Ocean Camp to take a look at the wreck, only seven days before she sank for good.

  “Her planking was Baltic pine, keel & timbers American elm & stem & sternpost English oak,” according to Worsley. One of McNish's refinements was to put chafing battens on her bow, as he said, “to keep the young ice from cutting through as she is built of white pine which wont last long in ice.” In lieu of the usual caulking materials—oakum and pitch—McNish had filled the seams with lamp wick and sealed them over with Marston's oil paints. The nails he used had been extracted from salvaged timber of the Endurance.

  The landscape around them had subtly changed with the thaw. The convoluted ice fields had softened and were threaded with small, broken leads of water. The days were very long, with the sun rising at 3 a.m. and setting at 9 p.m. The crew passed the time by hunting seals amid the slush, playing cards, and arguing over articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In tent No. 5, Clark read aloud from Science from an Easy Chair. Singsongs were still held in the evenings. Marston resoled everyone's boots, and Hurley was absorbed with improvising crampons for the march to the west from Snow Hill Island.

  On the evening of November 21, shortly after the dogs had been fed, as the company read and chatted quietly in their tents, they heard Shackleton call out, “She's going.” Hurrying outside to the lookout platform and other points of vantage, the men looked out to see the last moments of the Endurance. Her stern rising high in the air, she went down bows first in one quick dive.

  “There was a queer silence over the camp,” according to Bakewell. “As for me, there was an odd lump in my throat and I found it hard to swallow.… We were now very lonely.”

  “She's gone, boys,” Shackleton said quietly from the lookout post. In his own diary he wrote, “At 5 p.m. she went down by the head: the stern the cause of all the trouble was the last to go under water. I cannot write about it.”

  As the thaw continued, leads of open water increased, making the still occasional salvage trips to Dump Camp and hunting excursions increasingly dangerous. It was with great difficulty that the dog teams negotiated paths through the ever-changing maze of open lanes to collect seals killed earlier by scouting hunters. The floe on which they were encamped had rotated as much as 15 degrees to the east in the loosening ice. Yet the pack as a whole showed no signs of breaking up.

  “Really Sir Ernest does not at all ignore the possibility of having to remain on the floe until it reaches the vicinity of the South Orkneys,” Lees reported. “But he does not like it to be discussed for fear of creating a feeling of despondency, especially among the sailors.”

  Old landmarks drifted regally across the waterlogged, slurry landscape. The crew's old friend the Rampert Berg was now a mere five miles distant and appeared to be dark blue, a sign that it might be floating in open water. Thick mist sometimes obscured the landscape; wet snow fell, and once actual rain. In late November, a blue sky gave way to showers of hail that fell on the tents with a sound that reminded Wordie of heavy rain on trees. They were drifting northwest at a rate of a little more than two miles a day.

  December was not an easy month for Shackleton. Towards the end of November, he had come down with an attack of sciatica, which worsened over the following days, until he was unable to leave his sleeping bag without assistance; it could not have been helped by his lying in a wool bag on waterlogged timber. Worse, his confinement removed him somewhat from the goings-on in camp. James, who shared

  Ocean Camp

  This may depict the striking of Ocean Camp, in preparation for the “Christmas march.”

  Shackleton's tent, noted that “he was constantly on the watch for any break in morale, or any discontent, so that he could deal with it at once.” Above
all else, Shackleton feared losing his grip on his men. The period of illness made him anxious and restive, and when he finally recovered, some two weeks later, he emerged from his tent not altogether in the best of spirits. “Boss hauls cook over the coals for making doughy bannocks,” Hurley recorded on Shackleton's first day up and about. The men, too, were restless, the sailors in particular showing worrisome signs of disaffection.

  The entire company monitored the drift of their floe more intently than ever.

  “Once across the Antarctic circle (66.31) it will seem as if we are practically half way home again,” Lees noted on December 12. “And it is just possible that with favouring winds we may cross the circle before the new year.” Only a few days later, a strong blizzard arising from the south promised to speed them over the magic line even sooner than anticipated; but on December 18, the wind swung around from the northeast, driving them back the way they had come. More disconcerting was the fact that their drift fluctuated between northwest and a subtle veer to the east, away from land. Shackleton discussed with Wild and Hurley the possibility of making another attempt to march to land, partly to forestall the ominous hint of an eastward drift; partly because, as Wild agreed, “a spell of hard work would do everybody good.” On the 20th, the three men set out to scout the conditions.

  “Found the surface & conditions good, there being about 75% of splendid going,” Hurley reported optimistically. Shackleton broke the news to the rest of the company that they would be on the march again on December 23, the day after Mid-summer's

  Galley on Ice; Orde-Lees and Green the Cook

  Their faces black with smoke from the blubber stove, Lees and Green prepare a meal in the makeshift galley during the ill-fated march from Ocean Camp to Patience Camp.

  Day, which was to be celebrated as Christmas. The announcement of this second march came as an unwelcome shock to many. “As far as I have seen the going will be awful,” wrote Greenstreet. “Everything being in a state of softness far worse than when we left the ship, and in my opinion it would be a measure to be taken only as a last resort and I sincerely hope he will give up the idea directly. There have been great arguments about the matter in our tent.”

  Despite the grand “blowout” feast for “Christmas,” the breaking of camp on the early morning of the 23rd was not accomplished in universally high spirits. Shackle-ton had determined that they should travel at night, when the surface of the ice was hardest, and consequently the men were awakened at three in the morning on a foggy, dreary day. The abortive first march had been undertaken with genuine optimism. On the second march, many set out in resigned, halfhearted obedience.

  Eighteen men straining in harness relayed two of the boats ahead over the now precarious ice; then all hands returned to pack up the remaining supplies. Tents, galley, stores, sledges were dragged as far as the boats, where a new camp was pitched; the third boat was left behind at Ocean Camp. At the end of the first day of eight hours' marching, they had covered approximately one and a quarter miles.

  The following days passed in the same dreary and unrewarding routine. Never entirely rested, their hunger never entirely satisfied, and their clothes always wet, the men strained and slipped at their loads over the hummocked and slushy ice, averaging for hours of labor a mile and a half a day. Shackleton's plan had been that they would pull west for sixty miles; by now, even he must have known they would never make this mark.

  “A harder or more discouraging march, I have never had the misfortune to participate in,” wrote Bakewell.

  On December 27, silent doubts and resentments became dramatically apparent.

  “The skipper had trouble with the carpenter to-day whilst sledging,” wrote Wordie. “To-night the company assembled on the floe, and the ship's articles were read.” After struggling over a particularly bad section of ice for two hours, McNish dug in his heels and announced in abusive language he would go no farther.

  Shackleton was up ahead with the pioneering party, and it was left to Worsley, who was in charge of the boat haulers, to tackle McNish. This he proved incapable of doing. There had always been tension between the two men; had the boat haulers been under the command of anyone else, the incident might not have arisen. In any case, a flustered Worsley sent for Shackleton, who hastened back from the head of the column.

  McNish was exhausted, wet through, suffering from piles, and still heartsick over the loss of his pet, Mrs. Chippy. For weeks, he had complained that he had not been allowed to salvage wood from the Endurance to build a sloop that would carry them all to freedom. Others shared his disappointment. The old salt now turned sea lawyer, arguing that his duty to obey orders had terminated with the abandonment of the Endurance.

  Hard words were exchanged between the two men. Technically, McNish's contention was correct. Nonetheless, Shackleton called a muster and read aloud the ship's articles, with a few elaborations of his own: He informed his men that they would be paid up until the day they reached safe port—not, as under normal articles, only until the loss of their ship. Consequently, the men were bound by his orders until that time.

  Loaded Sledge

  Sledges loaded with supplies—in this case, dog pemmican and cane sugar—were hauled by the dog teams on the march.

  McNish cooled down, and the situation passed. But Shackleton remained conscious of the narrowly averted danger. More had been at stake than one disgruntled seaman. Not only had McNish disobeyed orders at a moment of critically low morale, but he had also, as it were, defied Shackleton's optimistic pronouncements. It was now impossible to pretend that their painful efforts held any hope of success. Perhaps Shackleton's muttering critics had been right, and they should not have moved from Ocean Camp; perhaps Chippy should have built his sloop. McNish's brief rebellion had suggested the unthink-able—that the Boss was capable of significant error.

  In this fraught context, Shackleton's reluctant decision to suspend the march two days later was both bitter and courageous. The ice ahead was completely unnegotiable, forcing not only a halt, but a retreat of half a mile to stronger footing. The men retired at 10 p.m., without a meal.

  Patience Camp

  Hurley and Shackleton sit before the entrance to their tent. Hurley (left) is skinning a penguin for fuel for the blubber stove between them, which he built.

  “Turned in but could not sleep,” Shackleton wrote in his diary. “Thought the whole matter over & decided to retreat to more secure ice: it is the only safe thing to do.… Am anxious. … Everyone working well except the carpenter: I shall never forget him in this time of strain & stress.”

  A sturdy-looking floe was chosen for the new camp; but the following day the opening of a deep crack forced them to shift again. The ice, they now discovered, was not as stable as it had been at their previous camp.

  “All the floes in the neighborhood appear to be saturated by the sea to the very surface,” wrote Worsley. “So much that on cutting 1 inch below the surface of a 6 or 7 feet thick floe, water almost at once flows into the hole.” But the men were stuck; the floes behind them had disintegrated too much for further retreat.

  A week's backbreaking labor had gained the party eight miles. Behind them, at Ocean Camp, lay additional stores, books, clothing, an efficient stove, wood for the floors of their tents—a comfortable routine. Moreover, the boats they dragged with them at such cost had been damaged by the journey.

  “I heard the Carpenter say that if we had to go over much more such rough ice, the boats would not float when we did reach open water,” Bakewell recalled. One can be sure McNish took pains to make this piece of information widely known. He had got his revenge; above all else, the sailors feared damage to the precious boats.

  Despite all bitter setbacks and second thoughts, life on the floes had to be reestablished. The tents were set up in a line along the treacherous snow, parallel to the dogs.

  “We have called our camp Patience Camp,” wrote Lees.

  It was now January 1916, and still the pack
showed no sign of breaking up. Moreover, the wind had stalled, keeping the crew just short of the 66th parallel. The days and weeks passed with renewed tedium and moody tension.

  “Playing a game of wait almost wearies one's patience,” Hurley wrote, with uncharacteristic impatience; he was normally as resilient to their circumstances as any member of the expedition. To pass the time, the men took walks around the perimeter of their floe, read, played bridge, and lay in their sleeping bags. McNish ostentatiously recaulked the damaged boats, using seal blood. Their predicament was now analyzed as it had not been before.

  “The Boss at any rate has changed his mind yet once again,” wrote Wordie dryly. “He now intends waiting for leads, and just as firmly believes he will get them, as he did a week ago that the ice would be fit for sledging the boats at the rate of ten miles a day.” Shackleton himself was preoccupied and moody, and not at all amenable to well-intentioned suggestions. Lees was openly frantic over the state of their supplies, and daily roamed off on unauthorized seal hunts across the rotting ice; Worsley was eventually put in charge of “minding” him. Green-street's suggestion that every seal and penguin that approached the camp should be killed and stored was met with impatience by Shackleton.