by David Barrie
Having moved the battered James Caird to the head of the sound, Shackleton, Worsley, and one other crew member (Tom Crean, second officer of the Endurance) now had to trek well over twenty miles as the crow flies across the high mountains and glaciers that separated them from the settlements on the northern side of the island. The interior of South Georgia consists, as Worsley put it, of a “sheet of ice and snow some hundreds of feet thick except where rocky cliffs and peaks break through.”14 The highest mountains rise over 7,000 feet and one reaches 9,200. The island had only once before been traversed and this was at its narrowest point, where the distance was less than five miles.
Starting out at 3 A.M. on Friday, May 19, 1916, under clear skies and in bright moonlight, they trudged upward and in the light of day they were confronted by a “prospect of spacious grandeur, solitude, and the exquisite purity of Alpine scenery . . . brilliant sunshine on the snow valleys and uplands, with black, upthrusting crags, and peak beyond peak . . . snow-clad and majestic, glittering like armed monarchs in the morning sun.”15 The climb continued, and when the sun dipped behind the mountains the cold was fierce. They finally reached a “razor-back of ice” as darkness closed in. They straddled the ridge, “legs dangling,” and debated what to do next while fog rolled in behind them. Having descended for two hundred yards on the far side of the ridge, they stopped and peered into the darkness, unable to see whether the “slope steepened to a precipice or eased out on to the level that seemed so dim and far below.” Their chances of survival if the weather worsened would be slight, so Shackleton decided to take the risk of descending by the fastest means:
Each coiling our share of the rope beneath us for chafing gear, I straddled behind Sir Ernest, holding his shoulder. Crean did the same to me, and so, locked together, we let go. I was never more scared in my life than for the first 30 seconds. The speed was terrific. I think we all gasped at that hair-raising shoot into darkness. . . . Then, to our joy, the slope curved out, and we shot into a bank of soft snow.16
Pausing occasionally to eat some “hoosh” heated on their Primus stove, they struggled on, finally staggering into the whaling station at Stromness after an almost nonstop journey of thirty-six hours—“a terrible-looking trio of scarecrows.” Two young Norwegian lads who bumped into them ran off thinking they were “the devil,” but after a bath, shave, and change of clothes, “feeling clean, proud and happy,” they had a “royal dinner” with their host, the Norwegian station manager. Worsley at once set off in a whaling vessel to rescue the three men left behind under the James Caird in King Haakon Sound, and fell asleep as a gale blew up. “Had we been crossing [the island] that night,” he commented, “nothing could have saved us.”17 They afterward learned that there was no other day during the rest of that winter fine enough for them to have traversed the mountains in safety. When Worsley returned with the James Caird, the tough Norwegian whalers “would not let us put a hand to her, and every man on the place claimed the honor of helping to haul her up to the wharf.” An old captain who “knew this stormy Southern Ocean intimately” told them that it was an honor to shake their hands and declared simply: “These are men!”
Shackleton now faced the challenge of rescuing the twenty-two men left behind on Elephant Island, where they were trying to survive the Antarctic winter under the shelter of two upturned boats on a diet of seal blubber. “During the next hundred days,” commented Worsley, “he, Crean and I fought against the elements and every kind of difficulty to effect this purpose.” They made four attempts in different vessels. In one small whaler they reached to within sixty miles of their destination but were forced back “by pack-ice, snowstorms and shortage of coal.” They then tried in a trawler lent by the Uruguayan government, but were again thwarted by “the accursed pack.” From Punta Arenas in southern Chile they next set out in an auxiliary schooner, seventy foot on the waterline:
I have commanded small sailing craft in some of the stormiest seas in the world, but that little schooner—with her 40-ft main boom, trying to take charge—flogging her way south from Cape Horn to the pack-ice in the dead of winter, beat them all.18
Again they encountered the ice, the auxiliary engine broke down, and again they were forced to retreat. At last the Chilean navy came to their rescue, and in the little steamer Yelcho they groped their way through fog and ice and reached the camp on Elephant Island. As Worsley carefully maneuvered the steamer through icebergs and reefs, Shackleton scanned the beach through binoculars:
I heard his strained tones as he counted the figures that were crawling out from under the upturned boat. “Two—five—seven—” and then an exultant shout, “They’re all there, Skipper. They are all safe!” His face lit up and years seem to fall off his age.19
Not one man had been lost.20
WORSLEY’S EXTRAORDINARY NAVIGATIONAL feat in the James Caird depended as much on good judgment as on his skill with a sextant. He knew that his DR calculations were wildly unreliable, and experience told him that he could not safely rely on his latest longitude estimate as they closed the northwestern tip of South Georgia.
Worsley exploited every clue offered by close observation of the natural world around him, though in this he was not unusual. Successful navigation, in the pre-electronic age, depended on the skillful integration of information from many different sources. It was never just a matter of compass, log, and sextant observations: the journals of all the great explorers are full of references to the color of the water, its depth, the nature of the “ground,” wave and swell patterns, the clouds, and much else besides. Animal behavior—especially that of birds—was also crucial. FitzRoy commented that he was “not at all surprised that the early voyagers should have taken so much notice of the appearance and flight of birds, when out of sight of land; since in my very short experience I have profited much by observing them, and I am thence led to conclude that land, especially small islands or reefs, has often been discovered in consequence of watching particular kinds of birds, and noticing the direction in which they fly, of an evening, about sunset.”21 Seasoned navigators all over the world instinctively attend to such natural phenomena.
For thousands of years mariners relied on their unaided senses to find their way when they ventured on the open sea, but the native navigators of the Pacific islands were probably the most sophisticated and daring exponents of this kind of “natural navigation.” As Bougainville noted with amazement, Polynesian seafarers were able to make successful landfalls without instruments or charts—even on low-lying atolls—after crossing hundreds or thousands of miles of ocean. Modern research22 has shed a good deal of light on their methods and some of their long ocean passages have been replicated. In 1976, for example, a 65-foot double canoe named Hōkūle’a—the Star of Gladness in Hawaiian, or Arcturus—whose design was partly based on drawings of the old voyaging canoes left by Captain Cook, sailed safely from Maui to Tahiti in thirty-one days. She made the journey of 2,500 nautical miles, piloted by a Micronesian navigator named Piailug, who used no instruments of any kind.23
From a Western perspective, the most puzzling aspect of the Pacific islanders’ navigational methodology is their working assumption that the vessel in which they are sailing is at rest, while the sea and islands “flow” past them. Thomas Gladwin, an expert on the navigators of the Caroline Islands, describes this system as being rather like riding in a train watching the world pass by, only in this case the passing scenery consists of islands:
You may travel for days on the canoe but the stars will not go away or change their positions aside from their nightly trajectories from horizon to horizon. . . . Back along the wake, however, the island you left falls farther and farther behind, while the one towards which you are heading is hopefully drawing closer. You can see neither of them, but you know this is happening. You know too that there are islands on either side of you. . . . Everything passes by the little canoe—everything, except the stars by night and the sun by day.24
After long and
rigorous training, the native navigators carried in their heads a vast store of knowledge about the rising and setting of the sun and stars, the seasonal behavior of the winds, the relative positions of the different islands, atolls and reefs, and the effects of these on the deep ocean swells as well as on the local, wind-driven waves. They knew exactly where on the horizon each prominent star rose and set and used this information to maintain a constant course when sailing out of sight of land. They may well also have known which star would stand vertically above each important island (“in its zenith”) when it crossed that island’s meridian. This would have enabled them to determine when they were in the same latitude as the target island, though not whether they were to the east or west of it.25 The clear nights of the tropical Pacific, which often allow an unimpeded view of the night sky, would—as Bougainville noted—have been a great help to them.
The traditional navigators of Oceania made up for their inability to measure longitude by taking advantage of the distinctive patterns of waves and swells, which revealed to them the presence and the direction of land long before it was visible. When the horizon was obscured and its changing slant could not tell them how their boat was responding to the waves, they apparently stood with their legs apart, using the inertia of their testicles as a guide.26 Of course they also carefully observed the behavior of birds, the nature of the clouds, and changes in the color of the water. In fact every sense was put to work: sometimes even the taste of the sea could help them fix their position. It was extraordinary skills like these that enabled people not only to settle nearly all the islands of the Pacific, but to develop and maintain a cohesive culture embracing this vast area of ocean over many centuries.27
Cook was so impressed by the navigational knowledge displayed by one Tahitian navigator that he agreed to take him aboard the Endeavour. Tupia, as he was called, helped Cook explore the neighboring islands and later to communicate with the native Maori population of New Zealand—with whom, it turned out to everyone’s amazement, he shared a common language. Sadly he was among those who succumbed to illness contracted in Batavia. Cook and his colleagues do not appear to have made any serious attempt to understand Polynesian navigation, and it was only much later—when the traditional techniques had almost died out—that Westerners began to study the subject seriously.
THE INVENTION OF the sextant allowed the navigator for the first time to attach a numerical value both precise and accurate to the height of a heavenly body above the horizon. It thereby opened up new realms of navigational possibility for Western seafarers. It was a brilliant product of technical ingenuity, but its use still depended on the observer’s own eyes, and to obtain the best results skill and practice were required. With the appearance of the chronometer, by contrast, the navigator came to rely on a device that called for nothing from him beyond the ability to wind the mechanism without breaking it. It was a “black box” from which the crucial information issued as if by magic. As the electronic revolution gathered steam during the twentieth century, the navigator’s personal contribution to the navigational process diminished still further. With the emergence of GPS this technological “distancing” has reached the point at which fixing one’s position is simply a matter of pushing a button.
But there are signs of a reaction setting in. Not everyone wants to be completely in thrall to GPS. The old Polynesian skills are being kept alive by devotees who still practice them today.28 In fact natural navigation—both by land and by sea—is attracting increasing interest in the West and is once again being taught and practiced.29 Long voyages without instruments have been made by daring yachtsmen. Perhaps the most remarkable of these was undertaken by Martin Creamer, who set off in 1982 to sail around the world without so much as a compass to steer by, returning home safely after eighteen months.30 Yet there is no need to go to such extremes to rediscover the challenges and rewards of pre-electronic navigation. The sextant is no more than an extension of the navigator’s senses; though far more accurate, it differs not at all in kind from the mariner’s astrolabe employed by Mendaña. It offers, I would suggest, a happy compromise: accuracy and reliability coupled with deep immersion in the natural world.
Chapter 18
Two Landfalls
Day 22: Clearer skies and making 5–6 knots in S force 3. At 0600 surrounded by large school of dolphins. A wonderful sight as they kept station around us for about an hour, leaping, diving and criss-crossing under our bows. Beautiful sunshine. A lovely day’s sail and more dolphins visited us at 1600. Set spinnaker, which put our speed up to 5 knots. Noon position 49°10' N, 9°20' W. 109 miles run.
We are now back in “soundings”—the depth sounder showed we were in a mere 40 fathoms this afternoon and the water color has changed. The deep blue of the ocean has given way to something greener and murkier and the waves are choppier.
Talked as we all sat in the sun about colonialism—had British done more harm than good? Captain Cook. Tahiti. Harrison’s chronometer and lunar distances.
A lovely day and everyone v cheerful.
Day 23: Another grey dawn but the southerly wind still favors us. More ships are passing us as we approach the Scillies. Discussed why we had been set 20 miles to south of DR. Odd—maybe some current. Saw gulls and gannets again for first time in weeks. And lots of trawlers.
Slowly passed south of Scillies at about 20 miles off following Round Island radio beacon on RDF. Picked up Lizard radio beacon and set spinnaker again at 1645.
As night fell we made our landfall—Wolf Rock light (single flash, 30 seconds) looming up on 010°. I turned in and slept, but first we lowered spinnaker to avoid nocturnal disturbances.
Colin and I had taken several sextant sights, as well as bearings of the radio beacons that were now in range, so we knew where we were as we neared the reef-bound Scilly Isles—unlike Shovell. But there are strong tides and many isolated reefs around the Scillies, so accurate pilotage is essential. As the sun went slowly down we scanned the horizon to the northeast for a glimpse of the lighthouse that was our intended landfall. Shortly after sunset it winked into view just where we expected it to be and we all cheered. The next twelve hours, however, were anxious as the almost empty ocean gave way to an overcrowded nautical thoroughfare, full of yachts, fishing boats, and ships heading in almost every direction. For the first time since leaving Halifax, the risk of collision meant that a continuous, careful lookout was vital.
Next morning I came on watch at four in a heavy drizzle, poor visibility, and very light airs. Powerful foghorns were audible all around, and when they came too close I would let off a blast on our own. Once or twice I heard big diesel engines drumming nearer and nearer, but happily they faded safely into the distance. There was very little I could do to avoid passing ships, not least because it was so hard to work out where they were in the murky dawn light, so I just had to hope we were visible on their radar screens.
The sky was lightening and I knew the sun had risen, when quite suddenly—according to my journal—“the mist cleared and I saw the Mulvin Rocks and Lizard Point.” The scene of countless shipwrecks, this bold, granite headland was our first sight of land since leaving Halifax. In June 1769 its longitude was fixed exactly for the first time when a party of astronomers sent by Maskelyne observed the Transit of Venus there.1 Now not only did we know where we were, but we could also see the vessels around us—and there were a lot of them. There was very little wind and we still had plenty of fuel, so we motored most of the way into Falmouth and picked up a visitor’s mooring off the town at 11.40 A.M. Saecwen showed few signs of her twenty-four-day passage, except for the rust streaks running down her sides, but her crew looked weather-beaten and grubby. Although we were just one of many yachts in an English harbor, we had a secret—we had crossed an ocean.
To step (unsteadily) on dry land, take a long, hot shower and enjoy an uninterrupted night’s sleep, to speak again to family and friends—this was all a delight. My mother’s excitement at hearing my voice
again was touchingly obvious, and from her I learned that the Tanamo had indeed reported our position to Lloyd’s, who had in turn passed the information on to Colin’s family. I vividly recall walking down the narrow high street of Falmouth with Alexa, dodging the crowds and the traffic. We joined a queue to buy ice creams: they tasted wonderful. We felt a deep sense of satisfaction, coupled with relief that the long period of enforced confinement was over and that we had arrived safely, but we also knew that the intense experience we had been through together was a rare one and that quite possibly we would never have such an adventure again.
My transatlantic passage with Colin and Alexa was both a challenge and an education. Not only did I learn how to use a sextant but I also gained new perspectives on time and space, and on my own limitations. Years later I discovered that John Ruskin, though not much of a sailor, was a firm believer in the virtues of the kind of slow, attentive travel in which I had been engaged aboard Saecwen:
All travelling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity. Going by railroad I do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely “being sent” to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel. . . . But if, advancing . . . slowly, after some days we approach any more interesting scenery . . . the continual increase of hope . . . affords one of the most exquisite enjoyments possible to the healthy mind; besides that real knowledge is acquired of whatever it is the object of travelling to learn, and a certain sublimity given to all places, so attained, by the true sense of the spaces of earth that separate them.2
Ruskin’s remarks apply with even greater force to modern modes of travel, and our stately progress in Saecwen—though seaborne—illustrated his point to perfection. Of course I was intellectually aware of the size of the ocean before we set out from Halifax, but spending twenty-four days crossing it under sail gave its dimensions a very different and truly sublime reality. The long night watches looking up at the stars in the black immensity of space were a lesson in humility, and the experience of a gale in mid-Atlantic left me wondering what it must be like to encounter a proper storm. People often talk idiotically about “conquering” mountains or “defying” the sea, but there is no contest. I was left with an overwhelming sense of nature’s vast scale and complete indifference, and this had a strangely calming effect. We come and we go, the earth too was born and will eventually die, but the universe in all its chilly splendour abides.