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

by Alfred Lansing

  The trip to Ocean Camp to bring up the Staiicoiiib Wills changed the attitude of many men. Until then some vestige of anticipation that the pack might open had remained. But they had observed during the 12-mile round-trip journey to Ocean Camp that the ice was tighter than ever. The days of wishful thinking were over; there was nothing to do but sit down and wait.

  Day after day after day dragged by in a gray, monotonous haze. The temperatures were high and the winds were light. Most of the men would have liked to sleep the time away, but there was a limit to the number of hours a man could spend inside his sleeping bag. Every available time-killing pastime was exploited to the fullest and often much beyond. On February 6, James wrote: `Hurley & Boss play religiously a set of six games of poker patience every afternoon. I think each rather regards it a duty but it certainly passes away an hour. The worst thing is having to kill time. It seems such a waste, yet there is nothing else to do.'

  Each day became so much like the one before that any unusual occur rence, however small, generated enormous interest.

  `We got quite homesick tonight,' James wrote on the eighth, `at the smell of a piece of burning twig which we found [in some old seaweed]. Any new smell or a smell bringing old associations appeals to us in a wonderful way. Probably we smell a little ourselves & would be very noticeable to strangers since it is nearly four months since we had a bath ...

  `Just now,' he continued, `we regard the panels of our tent most earnestly to see which bellies out under the influence of the wind ... I long for a place where the direction of the wind does not matter a Tinker's cuss.'

  `We also suffer from "Aliu'lioiiiariia" [literally - it'ind-iiiadiiess],' he wrote later. `This disease may be exhibited in two forms: Either one is morbidly anxious about the wind direction and gibbers continually about it, or else a sort of lunacy is produced by listening to the other Ariic,ioiliariiacs. The second form is more trying to hear. I have had both.'

  Only one topic other than the wind was sure to spark a discussion - food. Early in February they had gone for almost two weeks without getting a seal, and while their meat supply was not yet too small, their stock of blubber for cooking was alarmingly low - only about enough for ten more days. On February 9, Shackleton wrote: `No seals. Must reduce blubber consumption ... oh for a touch of dry land under our feet.'

  The following day, a party of men was set to digging into the snow-covered refuse heap to recover all possible blubber from the bones there. Seal flippers were cut up, and the decapitated heads of seals were skinned and scraped of every trace of blubber they would yield. But the amount obtained was insignificant, so Shackleton reduced their ration to one warm beverage a day - a serving of hot powdered milk at breakfast. The last of their cheese was served out the next day, and each man received a i -inch cube. McNeish commented: `I smoked myself sick through trying to stifle the hunger this afternoon.'

  They had looked forward to Shackleton's birthday on February 15, when a good meal had been promised them, `But owing to lack,' Macklin wrote, we cannot have it. We are going to have a bannock made with flour and dog pemmican, and are looking forward to it.'

  Then on the morning of February 17, as the blubber situation was becoming really desperate, somebody saw a flock of little Adelie penguins - about twenty altogether - sunning themselves a short distance from camp. A score of men seized any weapons that were handy - axe handles, picks, lengths of broken oars - and crept cautiously along almost on their hands and knees. They stealthily surrounded the flock, cutting off their escape into the water. When everybody was in position, the men rushed forward, clubbing furiously at the squawking, skittering Adelies. They secured seventeen penguins in all. Other little bands were sighted during the morning, and parties of men were sent out to get them. Before a dense fog rolled in early in the afternoon, they had a total of sixty-nine penguins. Later in the day, as they sat in their fog-shrouded tents, the men could hear Adelies in every direction, calling and quarreling in their raucous voices. `Had the weather been clear,' Worsley wrote, `we probably would have seen hundreds.'

  Shackleton called this photograph `Loneliness'. Ocean Camp is in the distance

  Despite the welcome addition to their larder, supper that night was frugal, consisting, McNeish noted, of `stewed penguin heart, liver, eyes, tongues, toes & God knows what else, with a cup of water' to wash it down. `I don't think any of us will have nightmares from over-eating.'

  After supper, a northeast gale came up, with heavy snow falling. It continued the next day, forcing the men to remain inside their tents. But all the while the croaking of Adelies continued. The weather finally cleared on February 20, and as soon as it was light, the men emerged from their tents - and it seemed almost as if it were in the midst of an Adelie rookery. Thousands of penguins dotted the pack in every direction, strutting around the floes, frolicking in the water, and making a frightful racket. The penguins must have been migrating north, and Patience Canip fortunately lay in the path of their trek.

  All hands were put to the slaughter, bringing in every penguin that could be reached. By nightfall, they had killed, skinned, gutted, and cut up 300 Adelies. The following morning the men saw that the migration had moved on as suddenly as it had arrived. But though only about 200 penguins were observed during the day, the men managed to kill about fifty. For several days afterwards, small bands of stragglers continued to appear, and by February 24 the party had secured a total of nearly boo. The Adelie, however, is a small and not very meaty bird, so that the amount of food obtained was not nearly so impressive as might be supposed. Futhermore there is very little blubber on an Adelie.

  Nevertheless, the sudden appearance of the Adelies had removed, for the moment, the most serious threat they faced - starvation. And with starvation no longer an immediate danger, their thoughts inevitably turned once more to their ultimate escape.

  Greenstreet observed: `The food now is pretty well all meat. Seal steaks, stewed seal, penguin steaks, stewed penguin, penguin liver, the latter being very good indeed. The cocoa has been finished for some time and the tea is very nearly done and soon our only beverage will be [powdered] milk. Flour also is very nearly finished and is now used only with dog pemmican in the making of bannocks, which are damn fine. Our distance from Paulet I. is now 94 miles which means we have completed 3/ of the distance we had to do when we got on the floe. I wonder if we shall ever get there.'

  Macklin noted: `We have just been a third of a year on the floe, drifting as Nature has willed. I wonder when we shall see home again.'

  And James, ever the scientist, put it into laboratory terms: `We make all kinds of theories based sometimes on what we see about us of ice condi tions, but more of this based on nothing at all. Can't help thinking of "Theory of Relativity." Anyhow we have only an horizon of a few miles & the Weddell Sea is roughly 2oo,ooo sq. miles [actually it is closer to 900,000 square miles]. A bug on a single molecule of oxygen in a gale of wind would have about the same chance of predicting where he was likely to finish up.'

  Reginald James

  Chapter Three

  It had been slightly more than a month since the end of the southerly gale. They had covered 68 miles, or an average daily drift of a little more than 2 miles. The over-all direction was northwest, but the day-by-day drift was an erratic, patternless movement, sometimes northwest, sometimes due west, even south, and, for a time, straight north. But they were definitely approaching the end of the Palmer Peninsula.

  Worsley spent long, cold hours every day atop a small berg fragment looking anxiously to the west, hoping to sight land. On February 26, he saw `what may be Mount Haddington thrown up by refraction, 20 miles beyond its ordinary limits.'

  They wanted to believe it, but few of them did, least of all McNeish. `The skipper says he has seen it,' he wrote, `but we know him to be a liar.' Worsley was guilty of a bit of wishful thinking. Mount Haddington on James Ross Island lay more than i i o miles west of their position.

  The year 1916 happened to
be a leap year, and Shackleton seized the feeble excuse offered by February 29 to boost the men's morale. They celebrated a `Bachelor's Feast' with a very sparing `gorgie." For the first time for many days,' said Greenstreet, `I have finished a meal without wanting to start all over again.'

  And so they drifted into March. On the fifth, Greenstreet wrote: `l)ay passes day with very little or nothing to relieve the monotony. We take constitutionals round and round the floe but no one can go further as we are to all intents and purposes on an island. There is practically nothing fresh to read and nothing to talk about, all topics being absolutely exhausted ... I never know what day of the week it is except when it is Sunday as we have Adelie liver and bacon for lunch and is the great meal of the week and soon I shall not be able to know Sunday as our bacon will soon be finished. The pack around looks very much as it did four or five months ago and with the low temperature we have been getting at night, i.e., zero and below, the open patches of water get covered with young ice which is neither fit to go over nor would allow the passage of the boats. My opinion is that the chances of getting to Paulet Is. now are about i in i o .. '

  Indeed, the chances of reaching Paulet Island did appear more remote each day. It now lay exactly 9 i miles away. But it was off to the WNW, and their drift had steadied onto a course almost true north. Unless there was a radical change in the northerly movement of the pack, it seemed that they would simply pass Paulet Island by. And there was nothing they could do about it, except to wait helplessly.

  Robert Clark

  Shackleton was just as hard put to find ways to pass the time as everyone else. His tentmate, James, noticed on March 6 that `the boss has just discovered a new use for blubber and is industriously cleaning the backs of our cards with it. These playing cards have got so dirty that some are almost unrecognizable. The blubber, however, cleans it all off again. Truly, the seal is a useful beast.'

  Worst of all were the days of bad weather. There was nothing then to do but stay inside the tents. And to avoid tracking snow inside the men restricted exits and entries to those `who must answer nature's call.' March 7 was such a day, with a strong southwest breeze blowing and heavy snow falling. Macklin described conditions in No. S tent:'... there are eight of us living in it, packed like sardines ... Clark has an almost intolerable sniff - he sniffs the whole day long and almost drives one mad when one has to remain inside with him. Lees and Worsley do nothing but argue and chatter about trivial matters, and the rest of us can do nothing to escape from it. Lees at night snores abominably, and also Clark and Blackboro, but not so badly ... at times like this, with Clark sniff-sniffing into my ear, my only relief is to take up niy diary and write ...'

  Then, on March 9, they felt the swell - the undeniable, unmistakable rise and fall of the ocean. There was no wishful thinking this time. It was there for all to see, and feel, and hear.

  They noticed it first early in the morning as a strange, rhythmic creaking in the pack. The men gathered outside their tents and looked, and they could see it. The loose chunks of ice around the floe drew apart and closed again, 4 to 6 inches at a time. The large floes rose almost imperceptibly - not more than an inch - then, ever so slowly, fell again.

  The men stood in excited little groups, pointing out to one another what was perfectly obvious to everyone - a gentle, lazy movement across the entire surface of the pack. Some pessimist suggested that it could be a tidal seiche or rise, caused by a local atmospheric condition. But Worsley took his chronometer out to the edge of the floe and timed the interval between swells - eighteen seconds, much too short to be a tidal seiche. There was no doubt - it was the swell from the open sea.

  But how far away was it? That was the question. `How far,' Janies pondered, `can the swell make itself felt through the dense pack. Our experience suggests not far, but of course we never examined the ice with the minuteness approaching that which we employ now ...'

  Long, speculative discussions were held all day as Worsley crouched by the edge of the floe and continued to time the infinitely slow rise and fall of the ice. By evening everyone was satisfied that the open ocean lay, at most, 30 miles away. Shackleton alone seemed to sense in the swell a new and far more grave threat than almost any they had faced. He wrote that night: `Trust will not increase until leads form.'

  He knew there could be no escape if the swells were to increase while the pack remained closed. The action of the sea would then crack and break the floes, ultimately grinding the ice to bits on which they could not camp, and through which they could not sail.

  Before he turned in, Shackleton took one final look around the camp to satisfy himself that the tents and boats were not so close together that their combined weight might in itself crack the floe. A further advantage of this precaution was that, while their equipment was spread out over a large area, they were not likely to lose a sizable amount of gear into a crack.

  The men crawled out of their tents the next morning expecting to see that the swell had increased. Instead, there wasn't the slightest suggestion of movement in the pack, and the ice was as close as ever. A disappointment amounting to grief swept through most of the party. The first real sign of the open sea, the tantalizing promise of escape for which they had waited so long, had been dangled in front of them briefly - then snatched away.

  That afternoon Shackleton ordered a drill to see how quickly the boats could be removed from their sledges and loaded with stores in case of an emergency.The men did what they had to do, but the raw edge of their tempers was beginning to show and there were a number of savage exchanges. Nor were matters improved when the stores were placed in the boats, and everybody could see for himself just how pitifully small their supplies really were. Certainly overloading was not going to be one of their problems. After the drill, the men returned moodily to their tents, hardly speaking to one another.

  `Nothing to do, see or say,' James recorded. `We find ourselves getting more taciturn daily.'

  Until the appearance of the swell, many of the men had struggled for months not to let hope creep into their minds. For the most part, they had convinced themselves not only that the party would have to winter on the floes - but even that such a fate would be quite endurable.

  But then came the swell - the physical proof that there really was something outside this limitless prison of ice. And all the defenses they had so carefully constructed to prevent hope from entering their minds collapsed. Macklin, who had consistently struggled to remain hard-headedly pessimistic, found it impossible to hold out any longer. He let himself go on March 13, saying, `I am absolutely obsessed with the idea of escaping ... We have been over 4 months on the floe - a time of absolute and utter inutility to anyone.There is absolutely nothing to do but kill time as best one may. Even at home, with theatres and all sorts of amusements, changes of scene and people, four months' idleness would be tedious: One can then imagine how much worse it is for us. One looks forward to meals, not for what one will get, but as definite breaks in the day. All around us we have day after day the same unbroken whiteness, unrelieved by anything at all.'

  A sense of mounting desperation began to infect them.James wrote on the following day: `Something decisive must occur soon & what ever it may be will be preferable to continued inactivity. This is our fifth month since our shipwreck. When we left we were going to be ashore in a month! "Man proposes -"* applies here with a vengence.'

  Even the southerly gale that blew up that afternoon did little to raise their spirits. They all found it increasingly difficult to endure the hardships such a gale brought with it - even though they knew, as Worsley put it, that `we are probably hurtling to the NORTH at the incredible speed of i mile an hour!'

  The squalls in the gale,Worsley continued, `tear and haul at our flimsy tent as though they would burst it to tatters. It rattles, flaps and trembles incessantly ... So thin is the material that the smoke from our pipes and cigarettes eddies, swirls and sways about with every gust of the wind outside.'

&nbs
p; Each hour of the night, one man left to take up his watch and another returned, crawling into the tent and then trying to brush off the snow in the pitch blackness before making his way to his sleeping bag. Invariably, the returning watchman awakened most of the other men. How could one sleep, said Worsley, through such things as `snow on your face, feet on your tummy, the low pitched thunder of the wind, the drumming of the tent or the raucous bellow of the Colonel's snore?'

  That night, as the gale howled across the pack, pushing them north, James observed darkly: `Paulet Island probably already to the South of us.'

  Chapter Four

  To make matters worse, the problem of food - especially blubber for cooking - was again approaching the critical point. It was three weeks since they had killed a seal, and the meager store of blubber from the Adelies was almost gone.Their stock of provisions from the ship was also nearly exhausted. On March i 6, the last of their flour was used up. It was made into dog pemmican bannocks, and several men nipped and nibbled at their i -ounce portions for more than an hour.

  Inevitably the old resentments against Shackleton's refusal to get in all possible game when it was available cropped up. Even Macklin, who had refrained from all criticism of Shackleton's policy in the past, felt so strongly that he devised a code so he could comment on the subject in his diary without fearing that his thoughts would be read by others.

  On the seventeenth, he wrote in code: `I think the Boss was a bit improvident in not getting in all the food possible whilst the going was good. It was worth the risk.' Then on the eighteenth: `Lees tackled the Boss a few days ago about getting in all food possible [from Ocean Camp] in the event of having to winter on the floe. Boss rather snapped at him saying "It will do some of these people good to go hungry, their bloody appetites are too big!" '

  As the days went by their rations had to be steadily decreased. The tea and coffee now were finished, and because of the shortage of blubber for fuel to melt ice into water, they were allowed only one ration of `very diluted' powdered milk a day. It was served at breakfast, along with five ounces of seal steak. Lunch was cold, a quarter can of frozen broth and one canned biscuit. Supper consisted of a serving of seal or penguin hooch.