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

by Alfred Lansing

  The following night, cagy Dr Mcllroy `brought to light' a pair of dice he happened to find among his things. He first shook with Greenstreet to see who would buy champagne when they got home. Greenstreet lost. By that time several men had gathered around the table in the Ritz, and in subsequent rolls of the dice, an entire evening's entertainment was wagered. Wild got stuck for buying the dinner, Mcllroy himself lost the roll for the theater tickets, Hurley the after-theater supper, and parsimonious `Jock' Wordie, the geologist, was committed to pay for the taxis home.

  They held a special celebration on Midwinter's Day, June 22. The Ritz was decked out with bunting and flags, and Hurley built a stage of sorts which was lighted by a row of acetylene gas footlights. Everyone gathered for the festivities at 8 p.m.

  Shackleton, as chairman, introduced the participants. Orde-Lees was dressed as a Methodist minister, the `Rev. Bubbling-Love,' and he exhorted his listeners against the wages of sin. James, as `Herr Professor von Schopenbaum,' delivered a lengthy lecture on the `Calorie.' Macklin recited a tropical verse he had written about `Captain Eno,' the effervescent seafarer, who could have been no one but the effervescent Worsley.

  Greenstreet described the evening in his diary: `I think I laughed most over Kerr who dressed up as a tramp and sang "Spagoni the Toreador". He started several keys too high and notwithstanding the accompanist, Hussey, who was vainly whispering `Lower! Lower!' and playing in a much lower key, he kept going until he lost the tune altogether. When he came to the word Spagoni he had forgotten the word so came out with Stuberski the Toreador and had completely forgotten the chorus, so simply saying, "He shall die, he shall die, he shall die!" It was killing and we laughed until the tears ran down our cheeks. Mcllroy dressed up as a Spanish girl and a very wicked looking one at that, with very low evening dress and slit skirt showing a bare leg above her stocking tops ... gave the Danse Espagnol.'

  Midvinter's Day celebrations, 22 June 1915

  Marston sang, Wild recited `The Wreck of the Hesperus,' Hudson was a half-caste girl, Greenstreet was a red-nosed drunk, and Rickinson was a London streetwalker.

  The evening ended at midnight with a cold supper and a toast. Then everyone sang, `God Save the King.'

  And so the winter was half done.

  Chapter Six

  The men's thoughts began to turn to spring, the return of the sun and warmth when the Endurance would break out of her icy prison and they could make a new assault onVahsel Bay.

  Only once in the last part of June did they hear any sounds of pressure. That was on the twenty-eighth, and Worsley described it in his diary: `At times during the night a distant, rich, deep booming note is heard - changing at times to a long creaking groan which seems to carry a menacing tone. It starts up gradually but stops abruptly, and sounds best in the distance - the greater the distance, the better the sound.'

  But then on July 9, the barometer began to fall - very, very slowly. For five consecutive days, the reading slid downward: 29.79 ... 29.61 ... 29.48 29.39 ... 29.25.

  On the morning of July 14 the bottom fell out of the glass - 28.88. An ominous gloom came on about noon. The wind backed to the southwest and began to blow, though not much at first. It wasn't until 7 p.m. that the snow began to fall.

  By two o'clock the following morning the whole ship vibrated as the wind screamed through the rigging at 7o miles an hour. The snow was like a sandstorm blown up from the Pole. Nothing could keep it out, though they lashed tarpaulins over the hatches trying to seal them off. By noon it was impossible to see much more than half the length of the ship. The temperature was 34 degrees below zero.

  Shackleton ordered that no man venture farther than the dog kennels which were only a few feet from the ship. The men who fed the dogs had to crawl on their hands and knees to keep from being blown away. Within two minutes after leaving the ship the blinding, suffocating snow blocked their eyes and mouths.

  On the Endurance's lee side, the force of the wind eroded the ice, leaving it grooved and channeled. On the windward side, snowdrifts 14 feet high built up, weighing probably ioo tons overall. The floes alongside the ship bent downward under the weight of it, and the ship herself, with the load she was carrying, sank a foot.

  On the following day the temperature dropped to -35 degrees, and the dogs were fed a half-pound of lard each to help them ward off the cold. After breakfast Shackleton ordered all hands onto the ice to try to clear the floes on the port side of snow. The area around the kennels was becoming dangerously weighted down, and he feared it might buckle under, carrying the dogs with it.

  All that night the blizzard raged; but on July 16 the snow began to thin out and by early morning there were patches of clear sky overhead. In the faint glow of light at noon, newly created pressure ridges could be seen in every direction.They looked like hedgerows separating different fields of ice. Against these, banks of snow had drifted, but otherwise the howling wind had blown the surface of the ice free from snow and polished it smooth.

  A line of ice mounds linked by rope constructed to guide the men back to the ship during the perpetual dark of the polar winter and its incessant blizzards, March 1915

  Before the storm the pack had been almost one solid mass of ice, but now it was broken into pieces, and there was an area of open water to the north.

  It was a situation that made pressure inevitable. The ice, now that it was twisted and broken up, provided ten million new surfaces to catch the wind. And each floe was capable of movement independent of the rest. The pack would move with the wind, and a kind of behemothic momentum would be set up through the ice.The resulting force is called pressure - and it began on July 21. Not against the ship herself, for she was in the center of a thick, tough floe. But there were sounds of ice working toward the south and southwest.

  The floe cracking up

  The noise continued all night and into the next morning. After lunch Worsley decided to have a look around. He put on his knitted helmet and watch coat, and climbed the ladder. Almost immediately he returned with the news that their floe had cracked. There was a rush to grab Burberrys and helmets and everyone dashed on deck. The crack was there, about 2 feet wide, running from the outer edge of the floe, where extreme pressure had jumbled one slab on top of another, to within about 40 yards of the Enduraince's port quarter. The sledges were immediately brought on board and the sea watches set.

  A breakup seemed imminent. They waited all that day and into the night and all the next day. No breakup occurred. The pressure could be heard all around, and occasionally they felt a heavy shock transmitted through the ice, but still the Eiidiiraiice remained locked in the unbroken center of the floe. The crack on the port quarter froze over, and as the days wore on without any significant change in their situation, the sense of expectancy diminished. The sea watches were canceled and sledging practice was resumed on a limited scale.

  Each time a party went out, they came upon pressure, and occasionally a demonstration of power the like of which they had never witnessed before. On July 26, Greenstreet went with Wild's team for a short run. Seeing some working ice, they paused to watch. As they stood looking, a solid, blue-green floe 9 feet thick was driven against a neighboring floe, and together they rose as easily as if they had been two pieces of cork.

  When he got back to the ship, Greenstreet wrote in his diary: `Lucky for us if we don't get any pressure like that against the ship for I doubt whether any ship could stand a pressure that will force blocks like that up.'

  Among the other men, too, the feeling of security was rapidly disappearing. After supper that night there was a somber quiet in the Ritz. The whole party had been cheered by the sun's refracted image appearing over the horizon for one minute just after noon. It was the first time they had seen it in seventy-nine days. But it did not quite offset the general uneasiness.

  McNeish, who was never one to dodge the issue, came straight to the point in his diary that night:

  `That [the sun] means a lot to us now as we wi
ll have more daylight as we go along. We are looking for higher temperatures now but we don't want this floe to break up until there is some open water for it would mean the ship being crushed if we got adrift at present.'

  Six days later, at io a. m. on August i, while the dog drivers were shoveling snow away from the kennels, there was a tremble, followed by a scraping, grinding sound and the Eiiditrn»cc rose suddenly upward, then heeled to port and dropped back into the water again, rolling slightly. The floe had broken and the ship was free.

  Shackleton was on deck immediately, followed by the rest of the crew. Swiftly, he saw what was happening and he shouted to get the dogs on board. All hands dropped onto the shuddering floe alongside the ship and went among the dogs, wrenching their chains out of the ice and hurrying them up the gangway. The entire operation took only eight minutes.

  It was just in time. As the gangway was being hoisted, the ship moved violently forward and sideways, propelled by the force of the ice driving in and under her. The stout old floe that had protected her so long became an attacker, battering her sides and churning the little dogloos to bits against her.

  The worst of the pressure was toward the bow, and all hands watched in helpless anxiety as the floes below broke into fragments, reared up, and were overlapped by other fragments which smashed into the greenheart sheathing along the waterline.

  It went on for fifteen agonizing minutes, and then, driven from astern once more, the Etdttrarice's bow slowly climbed up onto a floe ahead. The men could feel her rise, and a spontaneous shout of relief went up. For the moment, she was safe.

  The ice near the ship remained under intense pressure until shortly after noon, and then settled down. The Erditraucc remained perched atop the ice, with a s-degree list to port. The boats were cleared for lowering and all hands were instructed to have their warmest clothing handy in case they should have to `get out and walk.' But all remained quiet throughout the afternoon and into the evening.

  Worsley, after recording the day's events, concluded the entry in his diary that evening: `If anything held the ship from rising to such pressure she would crush up like an empty egg-shell. The behaviour of the dogs was splendid ... They seemed to regard it as an entertainment we had got up for their benefit.'

  During the night the wind picked up from the southwest, and by morning it was blowing a gale.These winds, compressing the pack ahead of them, had been responsible for the pressure.

  By morning, the chunks of ice around the ship had refrozen into a solid mass. Curiously, in the general breakup, one large section of the old floe had come through intact. But it had been driven in against the ship and tilted up at a 45-degree angle so that the well-worn sledge tracks in its surface were now running uphill.

  Most of the men were put to the task of building new kennels on deck for the dogs. The job required several days' work, and amazingly, even before it was finished, the memory of what had happened was beginning to fade.

  On August 4, just three days after the breakup, Shackleton came upon a group of men in the Ritz speculating confidently that the Ettcl?t?attce was equal to any pressure. He sat down at the table with them.

  Shackleton said there once was a mouse who lived in a tavern. One night the mouse found a leaky barrel of beer, and he drank all he could hold. When the mouse had finished, he sat up, twirled his whiskers, and looked around arrogantly. `Now then,' he said, `where's that damned cat?'

  In spite of Shackleton's meaningful parable, the growing confidence among the men refused to be stifled.They knew now what pressure was like. They had seen the ship come through it, and she was none the worse for having done so. The returning sun also did much to raise their spirits. There was now actual daylight for about three hours every day, plus seven or eight hours of twilight. The men resumed their hockey games on the ice, and some spirited contests were held. When oversized Tom Crean harnessed up the puppies for their first attempts at sledging practice, his efforts stimulated great interest. Worsley observed: `Partly persuaded, mainly driven, they pursue a devious and uncertain course, even more erratic than the poor ship's, across the Weddell Sea.'

  Playing football during the hold-up

  Again, in an entry for August 15, Worsley reflected the general high spirits among them. In describing the intense rivalries among the dog team drivers, or `owners,'Worsley related, with a characteristic touch of exaggeration:

  `... some very tall bragging is indulged in by some in respect to their teams' merits and performance. 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 who often indulges in whoops and yells of `Yoicks Tally Ho,' 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. It is my painful duty to relate that this Awful Vulgar Person the very next day being out with an ordinary team gave vent to his fearsome bellow when passing the `Heart Disease' Team. The result was disastrous, 2 of the poor creatures fainted and had to be brought round with hartshorn, etc., while the remainder went into hysterics until the Vulgar Person and his associates disappeared over the hori- zoIl.

  Training the dogs' teams

  The `Heart Disease' team belonged to Macklin, who believed in treating his dogs as gently as possible. The `Awful Vulgar Person' was Worsley himself.

  Another factor contributing to the general cheerfulness of the party was their drift. Ever since the blizzard in July they had been blessed much of the time with strong southerly winds, and during that period they had covered a distance of more than i 6o miles.

  But just at midnight on August 29 a single heavy shock struck the ship. A moment later there was a sound like a distant clap of thunder. The men sat up in their bunks, waiting for something more to happen, but nothing did.

  The next morning they saw a thin crack running out astern, but that was all. The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Then, about 6:30 p.m., just as the crew was finishing supper, the Endurance shuddered to the blow of a second shock. Several men jumped up from the table and rushed on deck. Again there was nothing, except that the crack astern had widened to a mere half inch.

  The thirty-first was quiet until about ten o'clock in the evening. Then the Endurance began to creak and groan like a haunted house. The night watchman reported that the ice ahead and along the port side was on the move, but there was nothing the men could do so they turned in. But a series of loud snapping noises which reverberated throughout the ship kept them awake most of the night.

  Those whose bunks were on the port side suffered the most. As they lay trying to sleep, they could hear the ice scraping and battering against the hull outside - less than 3 feet from their ears.The noise stopped just before dawn, but it was a tired, jittery group of men who sat down to breakfast that next morning.

  The pressure began again late in the afternoon and continued into the evening. That night it was the worst it had been. Worsley described it in his diary:

  A lead through the old floe, 30 August 1915

  `Just after midnight there was a series of loud and violent cracks, groans and bumps to the ship making her jump and shake fore and aft. Many dressed hastily and rushed on deck. Personally, I've got tired of alarms against which we can do absolutely nothing, so when the loudest crash came I listened to make sure that no ripping, tearing sound of smashing timbers was indicating an entrance of the ice into the hold, then turned over and went to sleep.'

  By the next afternoon, the pressure had ceased - and the Eidiiraiice had survived her second attack.

  Chapter Seven

  The confidence of the men in their ship should have improved. As Greenstreet recorded in his diary on September I: `She is stronger than we thought, and providing we don't get much heavier pressure ... we should pull through all right.
'

  But there was no real ring of confidence in Greenstreet's words. Who could say that there wouldn't be heavier pressure? It was not that they doubted the staunchness of the Erdiira,icc, but they were acutely aware that she had not been designed to encounter real pressure, much less the fearful pressures of the Weddell Sea, unquestionably the worst on earth.

  Furthermore, the three-day attack on the ship had left them all tired and on edge. They had no idea what the future might bring. The novelty was past, and so too was their optimism. The pack was not yet through with them, and they knew it. But all they could do was to wait in helpless, frustrating uncertainty, living through the passage of each day as the drift of the ice carried them north in its own good time, and hoping every day that the Eiidiivaiice would encounter nothing worse than what she had already endured.

  Even Worsley, whose spirits rarely flagged, reflected the general anxiety in his diary:

  `Many of the tabular bergs appear like huge warehouses and grain elevators, but more look like the creations of some brilliant architect when suffering from delirium, induced by gazing too long on this damned infernal stationary pack ... doomed to drift to and fro till the Crack of Doom splits and shivers it N., S., E. & W. into a thousand million fragments - and the smaller the better. No animal life observed - no land - no nothing!!!'

  They felt most keenly the absence of seals, which would have provided both the pleasures of the chase and the opportunity to taste some fresh meat - a treat they had not had for five months.

  Trawling the Weddell Sea for specimens