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

by Alfred Lansing

  There were other significant preparations for the journey. Hurley buttonholed Shackleton, who signed the following letter in Hurley's diary:

  Harry McNeish sets to work preparing the Jai 's Caird for its voyage, 20 April 1916

  21st April, 1916

  To whom this may concern viz. my executors assigns etc. Under is my signature to the following instructions.

  In the event of my not surviving the boat journey to South Georgia I here instruct Frank Hurley to take complete charge & responsibility for exploitation of all films & photographic reproductions of all films & negatives taken on this Expedition the aforesaid films & negatives to become the property of Frank Hurley after due exploitation, in which, the moneys to be paid to my executors will be according to the contract made at the start of the expedition. The exploitation expires after a lapse of eighteen months from date of first public display.

  I bequeath the big binoculars to Frank Hurley.

  E. H. SHACKLETON

  Witness

  JOHN VINCENT

  The next day the blizzard rose to new heights. Several men were cut on the face by bits of flying ice and rock. All work except the simplest cooking was out of the question, and the men stayed in their sleeping bags all day. Wild predicted that if conditions didn't improve shortly, some of the weaker men would not survive. And Shackleton met secretly with Macklin to ask how long he thought the men who were remaining behind could hold out under such conditions. Macklin said he thought about a month. Fortunately the wind eased considerably during the night, though a heavy snowfall continued. The temperature dropped sharply. In the morning McNeish got busy once more with the Cairo. All that remained was to finish the canvas decking. Alf Cheetham and Timothy McCarthy were put to sewing the bits of canvas together, but in the bitter cold it was so stiff they had to pull the needle through it with a pair of pliers at every stitch.

  At the same time, the welfare of the men who would be left behind was under consideration. For a while they thought of building a hut of stones, but all the available rocks had been worn by the action of the sea until they were very nearly round; since there was nothing to use for cement this plan had to be abandoned. Instead, a party of men with picks and shovels began to dig a cave in the face of the glacier at the head of the spit. But the ice proved to be almost rock-hard and it was slow work.

  Shackleton spent the day supervising the various activities. He saw that the Caird was very nearly finished, and announced that she would sail as soon as the weather permitted. As evening came on and the weather looked more promising, Shackleton ordered Orde-Lees and Vincent to melt ice to fill the two water casks to be carried aboard the Caird. They made every effort to find fresh-water ice from the glacier, but all of it had been tainted slightly by salt-water spray that had frozen against the face of the glacier. When it was ready, Orde-Lees took a sample of the melted water to Shackleton, who tasted it. He noted the trace of salt, but he said it would do all right.

  Shackleton spent almost the whole night talking with Wild about a hundred different subjects, ranging from what should be done in the event that a rescue party failed to arrive within a reasonable length of time to the distribution of tobacco. When there was nothing more to discuss, Shackleton wrote a letter in his log, which he left with Wild:

  April 23rd, 1916 Elephant Island

  Dear Sir

  In the event of my not surviving the boat journey to South Georgia you will do your best for the rescue of the party.You are in full command from the time the boat leaves this island, and all hands are under your orders. On your return to England you are to communicate with the Committee. I wish you, Lees & Hurley to write the book.You watch my interests. In another letter you will find the terms as agreed for lecturing you to do England Great Britain & Continent. Hurley the U.S.A. I have every confidence in you and always have had, May God prosper your work and your life.You can convey my love to my people and say I tried my best.

  Yours sincerely

  E. H. SHACKLETON

  FRANK WILD

  Chapter Three

  Throughout the night the successive watchmen kept a close watch for a break in the weather; it came during the very early morning hours. The wind moderated considerably. Shackleton was immediately notified and he ordered that all hands be called at the first streak of light. The men were turned out just before 6 a.m.

  McNeish went to work putting the finishing touches on the Caird's canvas decking, while Green and Orde-Lees began to render some blubber into oil to be poured on the sea in the event that they had to heave to because of extremely bad weather. Others collected stores and equipment for the boat.

  The Caird party was to take a six weeks' supply of food, consisting of three cases of the scrupulously hoarded sledging ration, two cases of nut food, a supply of biscuits, and powdered milk and bouillon cubes to provide the party with hot drinks. The cooking would be done on a Primus stove, and two were to be taken so they would have a spare. What little extra clothing could be found in the way of socks and mittens was rounded up, along with six of the reindeer sleeping bags.

  For equipment, the Caird would carry one pair of binoculars, a prismatic compass, a small medicine chest originally intended for a sledging party, four oars, a bailer, the pump that Hurley had made, a shotgun and some shells, a sea anchor and a fishing line, plus a few candles and a supply of matches. Worsley had gathered together all the navigational aids he could find. He took his own sextant and another which belonged to Hudson, along with the necessary navigational tables and what charts were to be had.These were packed into a box that was made as watertight as possible. He still carried his sole chronometer slung around his neck. Out of twenty-four on board the E»diiraiice when she sailed from England, this one alone had survived.

  A farewell breakfast was prepared, for which Shackleton permitted two extra biscuits and a quarter pound of jam per man. For the most part, the men stood around joking. McCarthy was admonished by the other forecastle hands not to get his feet wet during the voyage.Worsley was cautioned against overeating when he reached civilization, and Crean was forced to promise that he would leave some girls for the rest of the party after they were rescued. But the tension in the air was unmistakable. Both groups knew they might never see one another again.

  Shortly after breakfast the sun came out. Worsley grabbed his sextant and quickly obtained a sight, which, when he had worked it out, proved his chronometer to be fairly accurate. It seemed like a lucky omen.

  Toward nine o'clock, Shackleton went with Worsley up the lookout point to survey the ice conditions offshore. They saw a band of floes parallel to the coast about 6 miles out, but there was an opening through which the Caird could pass easily. They returned to camp and found that McNeish was finished and the boat was ready.

  Under the circumstances McNeish had done a magnificent job. The entire boat was decked over with canvas except for an open hatchway aft that was about 4 feet long and 2 feet wide.Yoke lines like reins ran back to the rudder for steering. So far as appearances went, she looked seaworthy enough.

  All hands were mustered to launch her. She was lying with her stern toward the sea, and there was a long line attached to her bow. The men tried to shove her off the beach, but the heavy, volcanic grit at the shoreline held her fast. Marston, Greenstreet, Orde-Lees, and Kerr waded into the icy surf up to their knees, and with the rest of the men shoving, attempted to rock her free. She still refused to move. Wild tried to pry her bow free, using an oar as a lever, while all hands pushed. But the oar broke and the boat was fast as ever. The Caird's crew, except for Shackleton, scrambled on board in the hope of poling her off with oars; as they did so, a large wave broke on the beach, and she rode out on its backwash into deeper water.

  The moment she was afloat, the weight of the five men sitting on the decking made her top-heavy and she rolled heavily to port. Vincent and McNeish were thrown into the sea. Both men made their way ashore, cursing furiously.Vincent traded with How for a semi-dry p
air of underwear and trousers, but McNeish refused to exchange clothes with anybody and climbed back on board the boat.

  The Caird was then paddled out past the reef, and she waited at the end of her bowline while the Wills was launched and loaded with about half a ton of ballast. This cargo was rowed out and transferred to the Caird; on her second trip, the Wills took out another quarter ton of ballast sacks, and an extra Soo pounds of large rocks.

  Shackleton was now ready to go. He had spoken to Wild for the last time and the two had shaken hands. The provisions were placed on board the Wills, and Shackleton andVincent climbed aboard and she pulled away from the beach.

  `Good luck, Boss,' the shore party called after him. Shackleton swung around and waved briefly.

  When they reached the Caird, Shackleton and Vincent jumped on board, and the stores were rapidly passed across.

  The Wills then returned for her final load - the two i 8-gallon casks of water and several pieces of ice, weighing perhaps 125 pounds altogether, which were intended to supplement the boat's supply of water. Because of their weight, the casks were made fast astern of the Wills, and she towed them out. But just as she was clearing the reef, a huge swell rose beneath her and swung her broadside to the surf. She got across, but one of the water casks was torn loose and went drifting toward the beach. The Wills quickly delivered her load and went after the stray water cask. She picked it up just as it was about to wash up on the beach, and returned with it to the Caird.

  Launchin the /anres Caird from the island

  Launching the Caird

  For a few minutes, the two boats lay alongside one another, bumping heavily. Shackleton was terribly anxious to get away, and he was urgently directing the stowage of ballast and equipment. Finally the two crews leaned across and shook hands. Again there were several nervous jokes. Then the Wills let go and headed for the beach.

  It was just twelve-thirty. The three little sails on the Caird were up when the men ashore saw McCarthy in the bow signaling to cast off the bowline. Wild let go of it, and McCarthy hauled it in. The party on shore gave three cheers, and across the surging breakers they heard three small shouts in reply.

  The Caird caught the wind, and Worsley at the helm swung her bow toward the north.

  `They made surprising speed for such a small craft,' Orde-Lees recorded. `We watched them until they were out of sight, which was not long, for such a tiny boat was soon lost to sight on the great heaving ocean; as she dipped into the trough of each wave, she disappeared completely, sail and all.'

  Chapter Four

  For the twenty-two men who turned their faces inland, the excitement was past and the trial by patience had begun. Their helplessness was almost total, and they knew it. The Caird had sailed, taking with her the best of everything they had.

  After a while they pulled the Wills farther up onto the beach, then turned her over and crawled underneath. `As we sat there, cramped, crowded and wet,' wrote Macklin, `we wondered how we were going to face the month ahead of us, which was the ... very least we could hope for before relief.' And this, he admitted, was a `most optimistic' expectation, based upon a half-dozen assumptions - the first among them being that the Caird would actually get through.

  On this score, their general feeling, at least outwardly, was confident. But how else might they have felt? Any other attitude would have been the equivalent of admitting that they were doomed. No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail.

  Supper was served early, and the men turned in almost immediately. They awoke the following morning to a bleak, forbidding day of half mist, half snow. The bad weather only made it the more imperative that some sort of shelter be devised, so all able hands returned to the work of excavating the ice cave in the face of the glacier. They kept at it all that day, and the next, and the next. But by the morning of the twenty-eighth, four days after the Caird had sailed, it was obvious that the idea would have to be abandoned. Whenever they were inside the cave, which was now large enough for several men to enter, the heat given off by their bodies would melt the interior so that streams of water ran down the walls and along the bottom.

  Only one possibility remained - the boats. Greenstreet and Marston suggested that they might be inverted to form the roof of a hut, and Wild agreed. They began to collect rocks to build a foundation. It was exhausting toil. `We are all ridiculously weak,' Orde-Lees wrote. `Stones that we could easily have lifted at other times we found quite beyond our capacity, and it needed two or three of us to carry some that would otherwise have been one man's load ... Our weakness is best compared with that which one experiences on getting up from a long illness.'

  Unfortunately, most of the suitable stones lay at the seaward end of the spit, which meant they had to be carried nearly 150 yards to the site chosen for the shelter. Finally, when the foundation walls were about 4 feet high, the boats were placed on top, side by side. It took more than an hour to chock up the wall a little here, and lower it somewhat there. The few scraps of wood that remained were laid across the upended boats from keel to keel, and a tent was stretched over the whole affair; its ropes were anchored at each side to serve as guys. As a final touch, pieces of canvas were lashed around the foundation so that the wind might not find its way in between the stones. There was a gap in the foundation on the shoreward side to serve as an entrance, and two overlapping blankets were hung there to keep the weather out.

  At last Wild pronounced the hut ready for occupancy, and the men gathered up their sodden sleeping bags and crawled inside. They were allowed to select whatever spot they wanted, and some men immediately crawled up into the upper story formed by the inverted seats of the boats. Other men took positions on the ground, wherever it looked the snuggest, or the driest, or the warmest. Supper was issued at 4:45 p.m., and the men wearily crawled into their bags the moment they had eaten. For the first several hours, they lay in dreamless, exhausted sleep. But shortly after midnight, a new blizzard blew up, and from then until dawn their sleep was fitful at best. The gale screaming down from the peaks inland shook the hut, and it seemed that each new gust would knock the boats off their foundation. And the force of the wind penetrated every chink, so that snow whistled in through a thousand tiny openings. But somehow when dawn came the shelter was still intact.

  `... then what a miserable getting up,' wrote Macklin. `Everything deeply snowed over, footgear frozen so stiff that we could only put it on by degrees, not a dry or warm pair of gloves amongst us. I think I spent this morning the most unhappy hour of my life - all attempts seemed so hopeless, and Fate seemed absolutely determined to thwart us. Men sat and cursed, not loudly but with an intenseness that showed their hatred of this island on which we had sought shelter.'

  But if they were to survive there was work to be done. In spite of the cold and the wind, which was sometimes so furious that they had to duck inside until the gusts eased off, they set about making the shelter more secure. Some men rearranged the tent over the roof and lashed down the guy ropes more solidly. Others tucked in bits of blankets around the foundation and packed wet grit from the beach against the whole affair to seal it up.

  But again that night the blizzard raged on. Snow once more found its way inside, though not nearly so much as the night before. On the morning of April 30, James, Hudson, and Hurley, who had been trying to sleep in their tent, gave up and moved into the shelter with everybody else. Hurley wrote: `Life here without a hut and equipment is almost beyond endurance.' But little by little, as the wind revealed their vulnerable spots, they sealed them up, and each day the shelter became just a little more livable.

  A but constructed from the boats ren]ainll]On ti Elephant Island

  They tried cooking their meals inside, but after two days Green succumbed to smoke-blindness and had to be relieved temporarily by Hurley. They remedied the problem of smoke to a large degree by extending a chimney up through the roof between the two boats. But then, som
e wild caprice of wind would frequently rush down the chimney, expelling great, thick masses of smoke into the hut, and making the air inside so dense that the men would be forced into the open, half-choked, with tears running down their cheeks.

  During the day enough light filtered through the canvas roofing so that the men could make their way about, but long before dusk the hut grew much too dark to see anything. Marston and Hurley experimented and found that, by filling a small container with blubber oil and draping pieces of surgical bandage over the edge as a wick, they could obtain a feeble flame by which a man might read if he were not more than a few feet away. By such methods they gradually eliminated one little misery after another.

  At last on May 2, eight days after the Caird had sailed, and more than two weeks after their arrival, the sun came out. The men hurriedly carried their sleeping bags outside to spread them out to dry. It was clear again on the third, and on the fourth. Even after three days of sunshine, their sleeping bags were not completely dry, though the improvement was a notable one.' ... we are already much drier than we ever expected to be again,' James wrote.

  There were lengthy debates about how long it would take the Caird to reach South Georgia, and how long after that it would be before a rescue ship arrived. The most optimistic figured that by May I2, a week hence, they might expect to see a ship. More conservative guesses said that it would be June 1 before there could be any thought of rescue. But again it was a matter of fighting back hope. Even as early as May 8, long before they could expect anything to have happened, all of them were already worrying about whether the ice conditions around the island might prevent a relief ship from approaching.