Endurance, Deluxe Ed: The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told by Alfred Lansing

by Alfred Lansing

  They passed a number of very large bergs, some of them more than a mile square, which presented a majestic sight as they rode the swell with the seas breaking against their sides and leaping high into the air, like surf pounding against cliffs. The action of the sea had worn huge ice caverns in many of the bergs, and each breaking wave produced a deep booming sound as it rolled into one of these ice-blue caves. Also, there was the hoarse, rhythmic wash of the seas bursting against the graceful, undulating pack as it rode the steep swell.

  For two days they sailed east, skirting the edge of the pack, before they were finally able to turn south toward Vahsel Bay at midnight on December i i.

  The Endunmt-c enters the pack ice

  The Eii(htmiicc twisted and squirmed her way through the pack for nearly two weeks, but it was progress of a stop-and-go sort. Frequently she was barely able to push her way through, and sometimes she was stopped altogether, and had to heave to until the ice loosened.

  In an open sea she could make io to i i knots without the aid of sails, and could easily have covered Zoo miles a day. But by midnight of December 24, her average daily run was less than 30 Miles.

  Before leaving South Georgia, Shackleton had estimated that they would be ashore by the end of December. But they had not yet even crossed the Antarctic Circle, though the summer had already officially begun. It was now light twenty-four hours a day; the sun disappeared only briefly near midnight, leaving prolonged, magnificent twilight. Often during this period, the phenomenon of an `ice shower,' caused by the moisture in the air freezing and settling to earth, lent a fairyland atmosphere to the scene. Millions of delicate crystals, frequently thin and needlelike in shape, descended in sparkling beauty through the twilight air.

  And though the pack in every direction appeared to stretch in endless desolation, it abounded with life. Finner, humpback, and huge blue whales, some of them a hundred feet long, surfaced and sported in the leads of open water between the floes. There were killer whales, too, who thrust their ugly, pointed snouts above the surface of the ice to look for whatever prey they might upset into the water. Overhead, giant albatross, and several species of petrels, fulmars, and terns wheeled and dipped. On the ice itself, Weddell and crabeater seals were a common sight as they lay sleeping.

  And there were penguins, of course. Formal, stiff-necked emperors, who watched in dignified silence as the ship sailed past them. But there was nothing dignified about the little Adelies. They were so friendly they would flop down on their bellies and toboggan along, pushing with their feet and croaking what sounded like `Clark! Clark!'... especially, it seemed, if Robert Clark, the gaunt and taciturn Scottish biologist, happened to be at the wheel.

  In spite of the disappointing progress, they celebrated Christmas festively. The wardroom was decorated with bunting, and they had an excellent dinner of soup, herring, jugged hare, plum pudding, and sweets, washed down with stout and rum. Afterward there was a hearty songfest, with Hussey playing a one-stringed violin he had made himself. That night before he turned in, Greenstreet recorded the day's events in his diary, concluding the entry with these words:

  `Here endeth another Christmas Day. I wonder how and under what circumstances our next one will be spent. Temperature 3o degrees.'

  He would have been shocked could he have guessed.

  But the coming of the New Year of 1915 brought some changes in the pack. Sometimes they were hemmed in on all sides by dense, hummocky old floes. Yet more and more often they found only brittle young ice in their path, and they raced ahead, hardly even slowed by it.

  At 11:3o a.m. on January 9, they passed close to a berg so magnificent they gave it a name: The Rampart Berg. It towered 150 feet into the air, more than twice the height of the Eidiira,ice's mainmast. So close did they come to it that looking down into the indigo water they saw it stretching away beneath them, 40 feet below the keel of the ship, and going ever deeper, a thousand feet beneath them, Worsley estimated, becoming bluer and bluer until they could see it no more. And just beyond it was the dark, rolling, icefree ocean, stretching to the horizon. They were through the pack.

  `We feel,' said Worsley, `as pleased as Balboa when, having burst through the forest of the Isthmus of Darien [Panama], he beheld the Pacific.'

  They set a course of south by east and ran at full speed for i oo carefree miles through open water with whales sporting and blowing on all sides. At 5 p.m. on January lo, they sighted land which Shackleton named the Caird Coast in honor of the expedition's principal backer. By midnight they were steaming west in the twilight Soo feet off a succession of i,ooo-foot ice cliffs, collectively termed `the barrier.'

  The Ei diiratrcc was now about 400 miles northeast of Vahsel Bay, and Shackleton headed her in that direction. For five days they ran parallel with the barrier, and their progress was excellent. By January 15, they were within 200 miles of Vahsel Bay.

  At about 8 a.m. on the sixteenth, heavy pack was sighted ahead from the masthead.They reached it at eight-thirty, and saw that it was kept from moving by a number of giant bergs that were grounded on a shoal. They furled sail and proceeded under steam along the edge of the pack looking for a way through, but none could be found. Toward noon, the wind freshened from the ENE, and by mid-afternoon was blowing a gale. At 8 p.m., when they saw that no real progress could be made, they took shelter under the lee of a large grounded berg.

  The gale continued on the seventeenth, and even increased in intensity. Though the sky overhead was blue, clear, dense clouds of snow driven off the land filled the air. The E,id:irancc dodged back and forth, keeping under the sheltering protection of the berg.

  The northeast gale began to moderate about 6 a.m. on January 18, so they set the topsail and proceeded south with the engines at slow. Most of the pack had blown away to the southwest leaving only a small amount trapped by the stranded bergs. They made their way through it for about i o miles until at 3 p.m., they ran into the main body of the pack once more, stretching from the face of the barrier away to the northwest as far as could be seen. But dead ahead the dark streak of a so-called water sky held promise of a large patch of open ocean. They decided to work through the pack, and the Eidiiia,ice entered it at S p.m.

  Almost immediately they realized that this was a different sort of ice from anything encountered before. The floes were thick but very soft, and consisted mostly of snow. They floated in a soupy sea of mushy brash ice composed of ground-up floes and lumps of snow.The mass of it closed in around the ship like pudding.

  At 7 p.m., Greenstreet headed the Eiidiiraiice between two large floes toward a pool of open water. Halfway along, the ship got mired in the brash and then another floe closed in behind her. Even with the engines at full speed ahead, it took her two hours to push her way through. What seemed like a routine decision was recorded inWorsley's log: `We therefore lie to for a while to see if the Pack opens at all when this N.E. wind ceases.'

  But it was six cold, cloudy days until, on January 24, the northeasterly gale dropped off. By then, the ice was packed snugly around the E,,ditra,icc in every direction as far as the eye could see.

  The Eiidui Glue in full sail in the ice

  And Worsley wrote in his log: `We must possess ourselves in patience till a Southerly gale occurs, or the ice opens of its own sweet will.'

  But no southerly gale occurred - nor did the ice open of its own sweet will. At midnight on January 24, a crack 15 feet wide appeared about 50 yards ahead of the ship. By mid-morning the crack was a quarter of a mile across. A full head of steam was raised, all sails set, and the engines put full speed ahead in an attempt to break through to the crack. For three hours the ship leaned against the ice with all her might - and never moved a foot.

  The Eid iirancc was beset. As Orde-Lees, the storekeeper, put it, `frozen, like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar.'

  The Endura,iu' frozen in the ice, January 1915

  Chapter Four

  What had happened was simple enough. The northerly gal
e had compressed and crowded the whole Weddell Sea pack against the face of the land, and no force on earth could open up the ice again - except another gale from the opposite direction. But instead of southerly gales, there were only very moderate winds.Worsley's diary tells the story of day after day of waiting for the gale that never came: `Light SW breeze' .... `Mod. East'ly breeze' ... . `Gentle SW breeze' .... `Calm and light airs' .'Light West'ly breezes.'

  It was a chance, a freak. A hard northerly gale - then quiet cold.

  Among the men the realization that the Eiidiiraiice was really beset for good came very slowly - like a kind of creeping resignation - a bad dream from which there was no waking. Anxiously they watched each day, but the face of the pack remained substantially unchanged.

  The story again was told in their diaries. Dour old Chippy McNeish, the carpenter, wrote at the end of the gale on January 24:

  `Still fast & no sign of any opening. The pressure is still a serious business & if we don't get out of it soon I would not give much chance of ever getting away from here ... '

  On the twenty-fifth: `Still fast. We tried to cut away the ice to relieve the ship, but it was no use ... '

  On the twenty-sixth: `Still fast. The water has opened out a bit ahead of us, but the floe we are in is still as sound as ever ... '

  The twenty-seventh: `Still fast. We had another trial to break the ice ... gave it up.

  The twenty-eighth: `Temperature 6°.Very cold. Still fast & no signs of any change.'

  The twenty-ninth: `Still fast ... no signs of any change.'

  The thirtieth: `Still fast ... '

  The thirty-first: `Still fast ... '

  Nevertheless, full watches were maintained, and the ship's business was carried out as ever. On January 31, they made the first attempt to use their radio. It was a battery-powered affair, capable only of receiving spark transmission messages in Morse code. Its intended function was to pick up time checks for the chronometers and news programs which were to be broadcast to them on the first of each month from the Falkland Islands, now 1,650 miles away.

  In view of the distance to the transmitter, Hubert Hudson, the navigator, and Reginald James, the expedition's academic-minded young physicist, did all they could to increase the range of the set. They attached an extra i 8o feet of wire to the antenna, and soldered all the joints to improve the connections.

  At three-twenty the following morning, a small group of men gathered around the receiver in the wardroom. They fussed with the dials for more than an hour, but as everyone expected, all they heard was static. There was, in fact, a notable lack of interest in the radio, primarily because it was considered not only a novelty but an unserviceable one. In 1914, radio was barely out of the infant stage, at least as far as long-distance reception was concerned. Nobody on board the Endurance expected very much of it, and they were neither surprised nor disappointed when their expectations were realized. Had the radio included a transmitter so that they could have broadcast news of their plight and position, the attitude of the crew might have been very different.

  Two or three times early in February they tried to free the ship when cracks developed reasonably close to her, but these attempts failed completely. Then, on February 14, an excellent lead of water opened a quarter of a mile ahead of the ship. Steam was hurriedly raised and all hands were ordered onto the ice with saws, chisels, picks, and any other tools that could be used to cut a lane through the floes.

  The Endurance lay in a pool of young ice only about a foot or two thick. This was systematically sawed and rafted away to give the ship room to bat ter at the floes ahead. The crew started work at 8:4o a.m., and worked throughout the day. By midnight they had carved out a channel about i so yards long.

  Early the next morning, the Wien resumed the effort, working more desperately to reach the lane of water before it closed.The ship was eased astern as far as she would go, then thrown full speed ahead toward the floes. A Vshaped slot had been sawed in the ice so that the bow of the ship might split the floe more easily.

  Again and again, she slammed into the ice, throwing a wave of water up over the floe, then staggered and rolled and slipped backward. Each time she bit off a little more. The crew on the ice hurriedly threw wire hawsers around each chunk, some of them weighing more than 20 tons, and the E??cl??ra??cc, going full speed astern, dragged them back and away in preparation for another run. But she never had a really good crack at the floes ahead. There was always too much loose ice floating around her and freezing up. It slowed her repeated onslaughts and softened all her blows.

  At 3 p.m., after she had smashed one-third of the way through the 6oo- yard ice field leading to the open water, it was decided that the expenditure of coal and effort was useless. The remaining 400 yards of ice was 12 to 18 feet thick, and Shackleton, abandoning hope of getting through, ordered the fires let down.

  Desperate attempts are made to cut a path through the Ice, 14 and I February 19

  Still the crew refused to give up and during their watches turned out on the ice to continue cutting away at it. Even frail Charlie Green, the cook, hurried through his bread-making to join his shipmates trying to saw the ship clear.

  But by midnight the volunteers themselves could no longer deny the hopelessness of the task, and they returned to the ship. Green made hot porridge for all hands to warm them up before they turned in. The temperature was 2 degrees above zero.

  Greenstreet, always plain-spoken and never one to dodge the issue, summed up the general feeling in his diary that night. In a tired hand, he wrote: `Anyway, if we do get jambed here for the winter we shall have the satisfaction of knowing that we did our darnest to try & get out.'

  Their time was running out. They noticed the approaching end of the Antarctic summer on February 17 when the sun, which had shone twentyfour hours a day for two months, dipped beneath the horizon for the first time at midnight.

  At last on February 24 Shackleton admitted that the possibility of getting free could no longer be seriously considered. The sea watches were canceled and a system of night watchmen was instituted.

  Shackleton's order merely made official what long before they had all come to accept: they would have to winter on board the ship - with whatever that might bring. Word of Shackleton's decision was passed along routinely by Wild - and, if anything, it was almost welcome. The end of sea watches meant that at least the men could sleep all night.

  For Shackleton, however, it was another matter. He was tormented by thoughts, both of what had happened and of what might happen. Hindsight now told him that if he had landed the transcontinental party on one of the places they had passed along the barrier, they would at least have been ashore, ready to strike out for the Pole the next spring. But no one could have foreseen the disastrous chain of events that had brought them to their present predicament - unseasonable northerly gales, then calms and subzero temperatures.

  Nor was there now any chance of landing the party that was to cross the continent. The drift of the pack since the Eidiurance was beset had carried them to within about 6o miles ofVahsel Bay - a tantalizingly short distance, it would seem. But 6o miles over hummocky ice with God knows how many impassable tracks of open water in between, carrying at least a year's supply of rations and equipment, plus the lumber for a hut - and all this behind sledges drawn by ill-conditioned and untrained dogs. No, 6o miles could be a very long way, indeed.

  Leonard Hussey and his dog team

  Even had there been no obstacle to putting the transcontinental party ashore, this was hardly the time for the leader of an expedition to forsake his ship and leave others to see her through - assuming she would get through. She would drift - to the west, probably, under the prevailing winds and currents. But how far? And to where? And what would happen when the break-up came in the spring? Clearly, Shackleton's duty lay aboard the E,idiim,icc. But that realization did not lessen the bitterness of the fact that the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition's chances of succeeding, while alw
ays uncertain, were now a thousand tinges more problematical.

  He was careful, however, not to betray his disappointment to the men, and he cheerfully supervised the routine of readying the ship for the long winter's night ahead.

  A dog igloo on the ice

  The dogs were removed to the floes and individual `dogloos' built for them of blocks of ice and snow. Warm winter clothing was issued to all hands, and work was begun to transfer the officers and scientists from their regular wardroom area in the deckhouse to warmer quarters in the between-deck storage area. They moved in early in March and christened their new quarters `the Ritz:

  The conversion of the Eiiditraiice from a ship into a kind of floating shore station brought with it a marked slowdown in the tempo of life. There simply wasn't much for the men to do. The winter schedule required of them only about three hours' work a day, and the rest of the time they were free to do what they wanted.

  Their only really vital task was to lay in a large supply of meat and blubber. The meat was needed to feed both men and dogs over the winter, the blubber to be used as fuel to make up for the overexpenditure of coal on the trip south.

  During February it was easy.The floes in every direction teemed with life. Sometimes they could see as many as 200 seals from the masthead, and it was simple to harvest the number needed. Approached quietly, the seals rarely attempted to get away. Like the penguins, they were devoid of fear when on the ice since the only enemies they knew - sea leopards and killer whales - were creatures of the sea.

  However, with the coming of March, when the days grew shorter, the number of animals dropped off noticeably as the seals and penguins migrated north, following the sun. Toward the end of the month, only an occasional maverick seal could be seen - and sharp eyes were needed for that.