Despite the instantaneous nature of these decisions, Shackleton's intuition for selecting compatible men rarely failed.
The early months of 1914 were spent acquiring the countless items of equipment, stores, and gear that would be needed. Sledges were designed and tested in the snow-covered mountains of Norway. A new type of rations intended to prevent scurvy was tried out, as were specially designed tents.
George Marston
By the end of July, 1914, however, everything had been collected, tested, and stowed aboard the Erndliratice. She sailed from London's East India Docks on August i.
But the tragic political events of these dramatic days not only eclipsed the departure of the bidt,rarue, but even threatened the whole venture. Archduke Ferdinand of Austria had been assassinated on June 28, and exactly one month later Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The powder trail was lighted. While the Eidiiraiice lay anchored at the mouth of the Thames River, Germany declared war on France.
Then, on the very day that George V presented Shackleton with the Union Jack to carry on the expedition, Britain declared war on Germany. Shackleton's position could hardly have been worse. He was damned if he did, and damned if he didn't. He was just about to leave on an expedition he had dreamed about and worked toward for almost four years. Vast sums of money, much of it involving future commitments, had been spent, and countless hours had gone into planning and preparation. At the same time, he felt very strongly about doing his part in the war.
He spent long hours debating what to do, and he discussed the matter with several advisers, notably his principal backers. Finally he reached a decision.
He mustered the crew and explained that he wanted their approval to telegraph the Admiralty, placing the entire expedition at the disposal of the government. All hands agreed, and the wire was sent. The reply was a oneword telegram: `Proceed' Two hours later there was a longer wire from Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, stating that the government desired the expedition to go on.
The bid:irancc sailed from Plymouth five days later. She set a course for Buenos Aires, leaving Shackleton and Wild behind to attend to last-minute financial arrangements. They were to follow later by faster commercial liner and meet the ship in Argentina.
The trip across the Atlantic amounted to a shakedown cruise. For the ship, it was her first major voyage since her completion in Norway the year before; and for many of those on board, it was their first experience in sail.
In appearance, the Eiiditraircc was beautiful by any standards. She was a barkentine - three masts, of which the forward one was square-rigged, while the after two carried fore-and-aft sails, like a schooner. She was powered by a coal-fired, 350-hp steam engine, capable of driving her at speeds of up to 10.2 knots. She measured 144 feet over all, with a 2 _S-foot beam, which was not overbig, but big enough. And though her sleek black hull looked from the outside like that of any other vessel of a comparable size, it was not.
Her keel members were four pieces of solid oak, one above the other, adding up to a total thickness of 7 feet, i inch. Her sides were made from oak and Norwegian mountain fir, and they varied in thickness from about 18 inches to more than 21/2 feet. Outside this planking, to keep her from being chafed by the ice, there was a sheathing from stem to stern of greenheart, a wood so heavy it weighs more than solid iron and so tough that it cannot be worked with ordinary tools. Her frames were not only doublethick, ranging from 9 to 1 i inches, but they were double in number, compared with a conventional vessel.
Her bow, where she would meet the ice head-on, had received special attention. Each of the timbers there had been fashioned from a single oak tree especially selected so that its natural growth followed the curve of her design. When assembled, these pieces had a total thickness of 4 feet, 4 inches.
But more than simple ruggedness was incorporated into the Ettdttrattccc. She was built in Sandefjord, Norway, by the Framnaes shipyard, the famous polar shipbuilding firm which for years had been constructing vessels for whaling and sealing in the Arctic and Antarctic. However, when the builders came to the Ettclttrattcc, they realized that she might well be the last of her kind - as indeed she was - and the ship became the yard's pet project.*
She was designed by Aanderud Larsen so that every joint and every fitting cross-braced something else for the maximum strength. Her construction was meticulously supervised by a master wood shipbuilder, Christian Jacobsen, who insisted on employing men who were not only skilled shipwrights, but had been to sea themselves in whaling and sealing ships. They took a proprietary interest in the smallest details of the Ettditmttce's construction. They selected each timber and plank individually with great care, and fitted each to the closest tolerance. For luck, when they put the mast in her, the superstitious shipwrights placed the traditional copper krone under each one to insure against its breaking.
By the time she was launched on December 17, 1912, she was the strongest wooden ship ever built in Norway - and probably anywhere else - with the possible exception of the Fraimt, the vessel used by Fridtjof Nansen, and later by Amundsen.
OPPOSITE. The Endorancc in full sail
However, there was one major difference between the two ships. The Frnm was rather bowl-bottomed so that if the ice closed in against her she would be squeezed up and out of the pressure. But since the Eiirhira»cc was designed to operate in relatively loose pack ice she was not constructed so as to rise out of pressure to any great extent. She was comparatively wallsided, much the way conventional ships are.
However, on the trip from London to Buenos Aires, her hull was altogether too rounded for most of those on board her. At least half the scientists were seasick, and strapping young Lionel Greenstreet, the outspoken First Officer, who had long experience in sailing ships, declared that she behaved in a `most abominable way.'
The trip across the Atlantic took more than two months. During the voyage the Ettdit?attce was under the command of Frank Worsley, a New Zealander who had been to sea since he was sixteen.
Worsley was now forty-two years old, though he looked much younger. He was a deep-chested man of slightly less than average height with a coarse-featured yet handsome face which had a built-in mischievous expression. It was very difficult for Worsley to look stern, even when he wanted to.
Frank Worsley
He was a sensitive, fanciful individual, and the manner in which he claimed to have joined the expedition, whether it was true or not, characterized him perfectly. As he told it, he was ashore in London, staying at a hotel, when one night he had a dream in which he pictured Burlington Street, in the fashionable West End, as being filled with blocks of ice through which he was navigating a ship.
Early the next morning, he hurried over to Burlington Street. As he was walking along he saw a nameplate on a door. It read: `Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.' (The expedition's London office was, in fact, at 4 New Burlington Street.)
Inside he found Shackleton. The two men were immediately drawn to one another, and Worsley hardly had to mention that he wanted to join the expedition.
`You're engaged,' Shackleton said after a brief conversation. `Join your ship until I wire for you. I'll let you know all the details as soon as possible. Good morning.
With that he shook Worsley's hand and the interview, if that is what it was, had ended.
Worsley had thus been appointed captain of the Didiirallce. That is, he was put in charge of the physical running of the ship under the overall command of Shackleton, as leader of the entire expedition.
Temperamentally, Shackleton and Worsley had some of the same characteristics. Both were energetic, imaginative, romantic men who thirsted for adventure. But while Shackleton's nature drove him always to be the leader, Worsley had no such inclinations. He was fundamentally light-hearted, given to bursts of excitement and unpredictable enthusiasms. The mantle of leadership which fell to him on the trip across the Atlantic did not rest too comfortably on his shoulders. He felt it was his duty to
play the part of commander, but he was woefully out of place in the role. His tendency to indulge his moods became obvious one Sunday morning, when a church service was being held. After some appropriately reverent prayers, the idea struck him to sing a few hymns - and he broke up the proceedings by clapping his hands and demanding impetuously, `Where's the ruddy band?'
By the time the Endurance reached Buenos Aires on October 9, 1914, Worsley's lack of discipline had let morale slip to a sorry state. But Shackleton and Wild had arrived from London, and they applied a firm hand.
Frank Hurley
The cook, who had been an indifferent worker on the trip over, came aboard drunk and was immediately paid off. Amazingly, twenty men applied to fill the vacancy. The job went to a squeaky-voiced man by the name of Charles J. Green, who was a different sort of person altogether, conscientious almost to the point of being single-minded.
Later, two of the seamen, after a stormy night ashore, tangled with Greenstreet and were similarly let go. It was decided that the complement would be adequate with only one replacement. The berth went to William Bakewell, a twenty-six-year-old Canadian who had lost his ship in nearby Montevideo, Uruguay. He arrived with a stocky eighteen-year-old shipmate, Perce Blackboro, who was hired temporarily as the cook's helper during the Eidiiraf,ce's stay in Buenos Aires.
Meanwhile, Frank Hurley, the official photographer, had arrived from Australia. Hurley had been on Sir Douglas Mawson's last expedition to the Antarctic, and Shackleton had hired him solely on the basis of the reputation he had achieved as a result of his work there.
OPPOSITE. The deck of the ErrdUrarrc(' on the outward journey, lined with kennels for the sixty-nine dogs taken on the expedition
Finally, the last official members of the expedition came on board - sixtynine sledge dogs that had been purchased in Canada and shipped to Buenos Aires. They were kenneled in stalls built along the main deck amidships.
The Eidi,raiice sailed from Buenos Aires at 1o:3o a.m. on October 26 for her last port of call, the desolate island of South Georgia off the southern tip of South America. She proceeded out of the ever-widening mouth of the River Plate, and dropped her pilot the next morning at the Recalada Lightship. By sunset the land had dropped from sight.
Chapter Three
They were on their way at last, really on their way, and Shackleton was immensely relieved.The long years of preparation were over ... the begging, the hypocrisy, the finagling, all were finished. The simple act of sailing had carried him beyond the world of reversals, frustrations, and inanities. And in the space of a few short hours, life had been reduced from a highly complex existence, with a thousand petty problems, to one of the barest simplicity in which only one real task remained - the achievement of the goal.
In his diary that night, Shackleton summed up his feelings:'... now comes the actual work itself ... the fight will be good.'
Among some men in the forecastle, however, there was more a mounting air of tension than of relief. The crew list carried the names of twenty-seven men, including Shackleton. Actually there were twenty-eight men on board. Bakewell, the seaman who had joined the Ettdttrattce at Buenos Aires, had conspired with Walter How and Thomas McLeod to smuggle his pal, Perce Blackboro, on board. As the Etidii atue rose to the increasing swell from the open ocean, Blackboro half crouched behind the oilskins in Bakewell's locker. Fortunately, there was a great deal to be done on deck, so that most of the forecastle hands were employed elsewhere and Bakewell could periodically slip below to give Blackboro a bite of food or a drink of water.
Ernest Shackleton with an unnamed dog, aboard the F.IIdilraiicc
Early the next morning, the three conspirators decided their time had come; the ship was too far from land to turn back. So Blackboro, who by now was severely cramped, was transferred to the locker assigned to Ernest Holness, a fireman who was due to come off watch shortly. Holness arrived, opened his locker, saw two feet protruding from under his oilskins, and hurried back to the quarterdeck. He found Wild on watch and told him of his discovery. Wild immediately went forward and hauled Blackboro out of the locker. He was brought before Shackleton.
Few men could be more forbidding than Ernest Shackleton in a rage, and now, squarely facing Blackboro, his huge shoulders hunched, Shackleton berated the young Welsh stowaway mercilessly. Blackboro was terrified. Bakewell, How, and McLeod, standing helplessly by, never had expected anything of this nature. But then, at the height of his tirade, Shackleton paused abruptly and put his face up close to Blackboro's. `Finally,' he thundered, `if we run out of food and anyone has to be eaten, you will be first. Do you understand?'
A smile slowly spread over Blackboro's round, boyish face, and he nodded. Shackleton turned to Worsley and suggested that he assign Blackboro to help Green in the galley.
The EiiAralicc arrived at the Grytviken whaling station on South Georgia on November S, 1914. Depressing news was waiting. Ice conditions in the Weddell Sea, while never good, were the worst they had ever been in the memory of the Norwegian whaling skippers operating in the area. Several of them predicted it would be impossible to get through, and some even tried to dissuade Shackleton from trying until the following season. Shackleton decided to remain at South Georgia for a time in the hope that the situation would improve.
The whalers were especially interested in the expedition, because their first-hand knowledge of the Antarctic seas gave them a very real appreciation of the problems Shackleton faced. Moreover, the arrival of the Endiiraiice was an occasion at South Georgia; ordinarily there was very little in the way of diversion at this southernmost outpost of civilization. There were a number of parties on board the ship, and the whalers reciprocated with gatherings of their own ashore.
The Flensing Pan, Grvtviken Whaling Station, South Georgia
Most of the crew were entertained at the home of Fridtjof Jacobsen, the manager of the Grytviken whaling station, and Shackleton even made a fifteen-mile trip to Stromness where he was the guest of Anton Andersen, the off-season factory manager there.
While Shackleton was at Stromness, the regular factory manager, Thoralf Sorlle, returned from his vacation in Norway. Sorlle was a powerfully built man of thirty-eight, with dark hair and a handsome handlebar mustache. In his sea-going days, Sorlle had been perhaps the best harpooner in all the Norwegian whaling fleet, and he had vast knowledge of polar ice navigation. During the following month, Shackleton drew upon the experience of Sorlle and many of the whaling captains to form an overall picture of the movements of ice in the Weddell Sea. In the end, this is what he had learned:
The Weddell Sea was roughly circular in shape, hemmed in by three land masses: the Antarctic continent itself, the Palmer Peninsula, and the islands of the South Sandwich group. Consequently much of the ice that formed in the Weddell Sea was held there, prevented by the encircling land from escaping into the open ocean where it might have melted. The winds in the area were light, by Antarctic standards, and not only failed to drive the ice away, but even allowed new ice to form at all seasons of the year, even summer. Finally, a strong prevailing current moving in a clockwise direction tended to drive the ice in an immense semicircle, packing it tightly against the arm of the Palmer Peninsula on the western side of the sea.
But their destination was Vahsel Bay, more or less on the opposite shore. There was thus reason to hope that the ice might be carried away from that particular stretch of coast by the prevailing winds and currents. With luck, they might slip in behind the worst of the ice along this lee shore.
Shackleton decided to skirt the northeast perimeter of the Weddell Sea and its evil pack and hope that they would find the coast in the vicinity of Vahsel Bay ice-free.
They waited through December 4, hoping that the supply ship for the whaling station would arrive with the last mail from home before they sailed. But it didn't, so at 8:45 a.m. on December 5, 1914, the Endurance weighed anchor and proceeded slowly out of Cumberland Bay. When she had cleared Barff Point, the command `Sail
stations!' rang out. The mizzen, main, and foresails were set, then the fore topsail and royalsail were braced before the freshening northwest wind. A raw, numbing mixture of drizzle, sleet, and snow was driving across the leaden sea. Shackleton ordered Worsley to set an easterly course for the South Sandwich group. Two hours after the Euditraiice had sailed, the supply ship arrived with their mail on board.
The view of Grytviken from Dowsie Fell, with the Endurance moored in the harbour below
Frank Worsley at the helm
The hidiiraiicc skirted the coast of South Georgia, running before a high following sea. The ship herself presented an appalling sight. Sixty-nine quarrelsome huskies were tied forward; several tons of coal were heaped on the deck midships; and up in the rigging hung a ton of whale meat for use as dog food. It dripped blood constantly, spattering the deck and keeping the dogs in a near frenzy of anticipation hoping a piece would tall.
The first land sighted was Saunders Island in the South Sandwich group, and at 6 p.m. on December 7, the Eidit?a lice passed between it and the Candlemas Volcano. There, for the first time, she encountered the enemy.
It was only a small patch of light stream ice which the ship negotiated without difficulty. But two hours later they cane up against a band of heavy pack ice several feet thick and a half-mile wide. Clear water was visible on the other side, but it would have been extremely dangerous to push into the pack with the heavy swell that was running.
So for more than twelve hours they searched along the edge of it until, at nine o'clock the next morning, they found what appeared to be a safe passage, and they started through, with the engines at dead slow. Several tinges the Ertditmiicc smashed head-on into floes, but no damage was done.
Like most of the others on board, Worsley had never seen polar pack ice before, and he was tremendously impressed by it, especially the excitement of dodging large floes.
Endurance, Deluxe Ed: The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told by Alfred Lansing Page 3