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

by Alfred Lansing

  Within thirty minutes they had entered an area of very open pack, and by two-thirty they were easily a mile away from Patience Camp. They could not have found it again even if they had wanted. Their course carried them close to a high, flat-topped berg which was taking a terrific pounding from the northwest swell. The seas broke against its ice-blue sides, flinging spray 6o feet into the air.

  Just as they drew abeam of it, they became aware of a deep, hoarse noise that was rapidly getting louder. Looking to starboard, they saw a lavalike flow of churning, tumbling ice at least 2 feet high and as wide as a small river bearing down on them out of the ESE. It was a tide rip, a phenomenon of current thrown up from the ocean floor which had caught a mass of ice and was propelling it forward at about 3 knots.

  For a moment they stared in disbelief. Then Shackleton swung the bow of the Janes Caird to port and shouted for the other two boats to follow.The oarsmen dug in their feet and pulled with all their strength away from the onrushing ice. Even so, it was gaining on them. The rowers were facing astern, looking straight at the ice, almost at eye level as it drove toward them. Those men who were not rowing urged the oarsmen on, counting cadence for them, and stamping their feet at the same time. The Dudley Docker was the most cumbersome boat to row, and twice she was almost overtaken, but she just managed to keep clear.

  After fifteen minutes, as the strength of the men at the oars began to fail them, the tide rip showed signs of flattening out. Five minutes later it seemed to lose its strength, and before long it had disappeared as mysteriously as it had arisen. Fresh men took over the oars from the weary rowers, and Shackleton brought the James Caird back onto a northwest course. The wind gradually swung around to the southeast so that it was blowing from astern, and it greatly aided their progress.

  The position when the boats were launched was 61'56' South, 5 3 ° 56' West, near the eastern reaches of what is called Bransfield Strait. This is about 200 miles long and 6o miles wide, lying between the Palmer Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands. It connects the hazardous Drake Passage with the waters of the Weddell Sea - and it is a treacherous place. It was named in honor of Edward Bransfield, who, in i 820, took a small brig named the Williams into the waters which now bear his name. According to the British, Bransfield was thus the first man ever to set eyes on the Antarctic continent.

  In the ninety-six years between the time of Bransfield's discovery and that afternoon of April 9, 1916, when Shackleton's men threaded their boats through the ice, precious little had been learned about conditions in these unfrequented waters. Even today, the U.S. Navy Department's Saili?i~ Directions for Antarctica, in describing conditions in Bransfield Strait, begins with an apologetic explanation that there is a'paucity' of information about the area. `It is believed,' the Saili?ig Directions continue, that strong, erratic currents are to be found, sometimes reaching a velocity of 6 knots. These currents are affected only slightly by the wind, so that often a condition known to sailors as a `cross sea' is set up - when the wind is blowing in one direction, and the current moving in another. At such tinges, angry hunks of water - 3, 6, to feet high - are heaved upwards, much as when breakers are thrown back from a bulkhead and collide with incoming waves. A cross sea is a perilous thing to a small boat.

  Furthermore, the weather in Bransfield Strait is reliably inhospitable. Some reports say the sky is clear only to per cent of the tinge. Snows are heavy and gales are common, beginning in the middle of February and becoming more frequent and more violent as the Antarctic winter draws closer.

  The boats in which the party set sail upon this forbidding sea were sturdy enough, but no open boat was really equal to the voyage they faced. The Dudley Docker and the Stawoml) Wills were cutters - heavy, square-sterned boats of solid oak. Their Norwegian builders called them `bottlenose killerboats,' or dreperimts, because they were originally designed for hunting bottlenose whales. In the bow of each was a stout post to which the harpoon line was intended to be fastened. They were 21 feet 9 inches long, with a 6foot-2-inch beam, and they had three seats, or thwarts, plus a small decking in the bow and in the stern. They also mounted stubby masts to which a sail could be secured; but they were primarily pulling boats, designed for rowing, not sailing. The only real difference between the two was that McNeish had added planks to the Dudley Docker, which raised her sides about 8 inches.

  The Jaifies Caird was a double-ended whaleboat, 22 feet 6 inches long and 6 feet 3 inches wide. She had been built in England to Worsley's specifications of Baltic pine planking over a framework of American elm and English oak. Though she was somewhat larger than the other two, she was a lighter, springier boat because of the materials of which she was built. McNeish had raised her sides about i S inches, so that even fully loaded she rose a little more than 2 feet out of the water. The Caird was thus by far the most seaworthy of the three.

  In terms of weight, the boats were not overloaded.The Wills carried eight men, the Docker nine and the Caird eleven; in less stormy waters, with less bulky gear, each might have accommodated at least twice that number. As matters stood, the boats were uncomfortably crowded. The hoop tents and the rolled-up sleeping bags took up a disproportionate amount of room. There were also cases of stores and a considerable amount of personal gear - all of which left scarcely enough space for the men themselves.

  Throughout the afternoon, as they held to a northwesterly course, the three boats made excellent progress. There were belts of ice that were fairly thick, but none so dense as to block their way. Shortly after five o'clock the light began to fail. Shackleton called to the other boats to stay close by until a suitable camping place was found. They rowed until about five-thirty when they came to a flat, heavy floe some 200 yards across, which Shackleton decided was sturdy enough to camp on. Nearly a half-dozen approaches were made in the surging swell before the boats were safely hauled onto the ice. It was six-fifteen by the time the landing was completed. Green set up his blubber stove while the remainder of the party pitched the tents, except for No. 5, which was so flimsy that Shackleton granted permission for its occupants to sleep in the boats.

  Supper consisted of a quarter-pound of dog pemmican and two biscuits apiece. It was finished by eight o'clock, and all hands except the watch turned in. It had been a tiring but exciting day. By Worsley's estimate, they had made a good 7 miles to the northwest. Though the distance itself was not impressive, the fact that they had finally taken to the boats was the fulfillment of a dream. After five and a half months on the ice, they were under way at last, `doing some good for oneself,' as Macklin put it. They dropped off to sleep almost immediately.

  `Crack-oh!' The watchman's cry rang out within minutes after the last man had turned in. The weary men stumbled out of their tents, some of them without even bothering to dress. But it was a false alarm; there was no crack, and the men crawled back into their sleeping bags.

  Toward eleven o'clock, Shackleton became strangely uneasy, so he dressed and went outside. He noticed that the swell had increased and their floe had swung around so that it was meeting the seas head on. He had stood watching for only a few moments, when there was a deep-throated thud and the floe split beneath his feet - and directly under No. 4 tent in which the eight forecastle hands were sleeping.

  Almost instantly the two pieces of the floe drew apart, the tent collapsed and there was a splash. The crewmen scrambled out from under the limp canvas.

  `Somebody's missing,' one man shouted. Shackleton rushed forward and began to tear the tent away. In the dark he could hear muffled, gasping noises coming from below. When he finally got the tent out of the way, he saw a shapeless form wriggling in the water - a man in his sleeping bag. Shackleton reached down for the bag and with one tremendous heave, he pulled it out of the water. A moment later, the two halves of the broken floe came together with a violent shock.

  The man in the sleeping bag turned out to be Ernie Holness, one of the firemen. He was soaked through but he was alive, and there was no time to worry abo
ut him then because the crack was opening once more, this time very rapidly, cutting off the occupants of Shackleton's tent and the men who had been sleeping in the Caird from the rest of the party. A line was pitched across and the two little groups of men, pulling toward one another, managed to bring the halves together once more. The Caird was hurriedly shoved across and then the men leaped to the larger floe. Shackleton waited until the others were safe, but by the time it was his turn, the pieces had drifted apart again. He took hold of the rope and tried to bring his chunk closer; but with only one man pulling it was useless. Within ninety seconds he had disappeared into the darkness.

  For what seemed a very long interval, no one spoke; then from the darkness they heard Shackleton's voice. `Launch a boat,' he called.

  Wild had just given the order.The Wills was slid into the water, and a halfdozen volunteers scrambled on board. They put out their oars and rowed toward Shackleton's voice. Finally they saw his outline in the darkness, and they pulled up alongside his floe. He jumped into the Wills, and they returned to the campsite.

  Sleep now was out of the question. Shackleton ordered the blubber stove lighted. Then he turned his attention to Holness who was shivering uncontrollably in his soaked clothes. But there weren't any dry garments to give him because their only clothes were the ones they were wearing. To prevent Holness from freezing, Shackleton ordered that he be kept moving until his own clothes dried. For the rest of the night, the men took turns walking up and down with him. His companions could hear the crackling of his frozen garments, and the tinkle of the ice crystals that fell from him. Though he made no complaint about his clothes, Holness grumbled for hours over the fact that he had lost his tobacco in the water.

  Chapter Two

  At 5 a.m., the first hint of a brightening sky marked the ending of the night. It was April io.

  The weather at daybreak was hardly encouraging - overcast and hazy, with a strong easterly wind driving intermittent snow squalls across the icy water. Neither Clarence nor Elephant Island was visible, and Worsley could only estimate that they lay generally to the north, between 30 and 40 miles away. The easterly wind had blown new masses of ice around their floe, so that once again they seemed trapped.

  But there were signs of an opening, and after breakfast everything was made ready for a quick start. Shackleton decided to lighten the boats by abandoning some ice tools and several cases of dried vegetables. Shortly before eight o'clock, the pack began to loosen, and at eight-ten Shackleton gave the order to launch the boats.

  The sea was broken by a nasty chop which made the boats lurch heavily, and rowing was extremely difficult. But before long the ice began to open up, and within an hour or so they found themselves in a vast expanse of icefree water, so broad they could hardly see the pack to either side. It was a welcome sight after more than a year of looking at nothing but ice. Shackleton had the word passed to hoist sail.

  The Caird was fitted with two masts for a main and a mizzen-sail, plus a small jib in the bow. The Docker carried a single lug sail, and the Wills mounted only a very small mainsail and jib. The boats were thus hardly fit sailing companions - and this fact immediately became apparent when the sails were set.The Caird caught the wind and heeled to port, drawing steadily ahead of the other two boats. Though the Docker was somewhat faster than the Wills, the difference was slight, and neither boat could sail into the wind. There was nothing for the Caird to do but to hang back so as not to outdistance the others.

  Toward mid morning the boats came to a boundary of pack ice stretching in a long, closely packed line, apparently following the current. The floes here were old and stately veterans that had survived years of pressure and had emerged at last from the Weddell Sea to melt on the fringes of Antarctica. Their edges, instead of being fresh and sharp where they had been newly broken, were worn and eroded by the water. For more than an hour, the three boats proceeded west along the edge of this line of ancient floes, and then, shortly after eleven o'clock, a passage was discovered and the men rowed through.

  They realized immediately that they must be in the open ocean. Ironically, here was the moment they had dreamed of ever since the days at Ocean Camp - but the reality was vastly different from the dream. As soon as the boats emerged from the protective barrier of the pack, they were struck by the full force of the wind, and a high, breaking sea was running down from the northeast. Freezing spray burst over them as they tried to beat their way to the NNE under sail. Time after time, icy blasts whipped them across the face, and the penetrating wind seemed all the colder because of their lack of sleep. In the Docker, Orde-Lees and Kerr slumped down onto the pile of sleeping bags, miserably seasick.

  Yet the men complained very little. They knew that somewhere through the mists, probably not more than two dozen miles to the north, there was land, and they were actually making for it, and getting closer all the time. When it came time for lunch, Shackleton permitted a hearty ration of biscuits, cold sledging ration, dog pemmican, and six lumps of sugar.

  Early in the afternoon, however, the wind increased considerably, and the boats began to take on water at a dangerous rate. For more than an hour, Shackleton kept to a northeasterly course, hoping that the boats would somehow prove equal to the seas. But toward two o'clock, he realized that it was foolhardy to press on, and ordered them back behind the protective line of the pack.

  The boats came about and sped southward before the following wind. Within minutes they had reached the edge of the pack, and they proceeded westward, looking for a floe to which they might make fast. The largest single piece of ice they could find was what Worsley described as a `floe-berg,' a thick mass of dark blue pressure ice about 35 yards square, which rose in some places to a height of i 5 feet above the water. It was floating alone, isolated from the rest of the line of pack, and it had obviously been adrift for a long time. The seas had eaten around its waterline, leaving an overhanging girdle of rotten ice.

  The perils of the sleepless night before were still altogether too vivid in Shackleton's memory to risk again.The party would have to spend the night in the boats. They pulled up alongside the floe-berg, and drove oars into the ice. Then they made the bow lines of the boats fast to the oars, and the boats lay off to wait for darkness.

  Within minutes, however, the wind freshened out of the northeast, and the sea picked up. The boats began to bump heavily against one another, and they threatened to uproot the oars which held them to the floe. In addition, the wind swirled across the surface of the berg, catching snow from its surface and hurling it straight into their faces. After about a half hour of this misery, Shackleton had no choice. If the men were to sleep - and they had to sleep - there was no alternative to camping on the ice. Reluctantly he gave the order.

  The boats were maneuvered alongside the floe-berg and about half the party scrambled onto the ice. The stores and equipment were quickly passed up. Then came the ordeal with the boats. The rotten overhang around the edge of the floe-berg was steep and treacherous, rising an almost perpendicular 5 feet out of the water. Thus the boats had to be hauled almost straight up while the men pulled from a safe distance back from the edge.

  The Wills was first, and she was raised without incident. The Docker was not so easy. She was halfway up when the ice gave way and Bill Stevenson, one of the firemen, plunged into the numbing water. A half-dozen hands pulled him to safety. The Caird was last, and again the overhang broke. Shackleton, Wild, and Hurley were just able to grab hold of the boat before they fell in. It was three-thirty before the boats were safe, and by then the men were very nearly exhausted. They had hardly slept for thirty-six hours. Their hands, unaccustomed to rowing, were blistered and a little frostbitten. Their clothes were soaked from the spray in the boats, and when they unrolled their sleeping bags they found them wet through.

  But all that mattered then was sleep. After a supper of cold dog pemmican, milk, and two lumps of sugar, they wriggled, fully dressed, into their sleeping bags. A few men, before t
hey closed their eyes, put forth one last bit of effort to record the day's events briefly in their diaries.Worsley wrote: By my reckoning we make today [northwest] io miles, and the current should run us well to the West before this strong Easterly breeze.' And Hurley recorded the one thought that was uppermost in all their minds: `... pray God [this floe] will remain entire throughout the night.'

  By some minor miracle it did, but long before dawn they became aware that something was seriously wrong. At sunrise, they awakened to a terrifying spectacle of nature.

  During the night, the wind had risen almost to gale force, and from somewhere to the northeast, great quantities of pack had drifted down on them. Now it extended unbroken to the horizon in every direction. Berg fragments and shattered floes in ten thousand different shapes obliterated the surface of the water. And out of the northwest, rollers 30 feet high, stretching from horizon to horizon, swept down through the pack in long, implacable lines a half mile apart. At their summits the floe-berg was lifted to what seemed like dizzying heights, then dropped into valleys from which the horizon was obscured. The air was filled with a dull, muddled roar - the low shriek of the wind, and the seas breaking hoarsely amongst the pack, along with the incessant booming grind of the ice.

  Because of its size, their berg was drifting more slowly than the rest of the pack which bore down upon it and pounded it on every side, while the surge of the swell was undermining it by eating away at the waterline. Periodically, decayed chunks dropped away from one side or another, and others were torn loose by floe fragments hurled against the berg by the seas. At each impact, the berg shuddered sickeningly.

  This was precisely the situation Shackleton had feared since the first appearance of the swell at Patience Camp. The berg was crumbling beneath them, and might split or upend at any moment. And yet to launch the boats would have been idiocy. They would have been splintered to bits in ninety seconds.