Chasing Shackleton

by Tim Jarvis

  The gale grew in strength and the boat became too much for one man to steer, so two men’s wet, gloved hands were called upon to pull the rough rope and move the rudder. All the while we were being thrown about violently like rodeo cowboys. “Left! Now right!” Nick would shout as the Alexandra Shackleton sluggishly pulled around after a five- or six-second time lag that had us fearing she would be turned sideways and rolled down the face of the wave. We spent much of our time in the dark valleys between the waves with menacing peaks of water peering down on us and obscuring our view of the sky. At least the two men in the cockpit were wedged so tightly they couldn’t be thrown anywhere. We were doing one-and-a-half-hour shifts at the helm at this stage but after half an hour of my first shift on day three, I realized I could barely stand, feeling lightheaded and sick in roughly equal amounts. When I was back on duty later with Seb, he easily contributed more grunt than I could, even though I was twice his size. Trying to think of when I’d last eaten or drunk, I couldn’t recall anything passing my lips in the past two and a half days.

  Reindeer skins: yes, they molted and smelled bad, but they were welcome against the freezing cold.

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  Baz sensed we were all hungry to the point where poor judgment and irritability were starting to creep in. The inevitable frustration of having too little personal space and poor-quality sleep provided all the reason a hungry person needed to snap, so we tried to force down some nougat and tack biscuits with water. Unfortunately it gave us little energy and Baz, who was used to dealing with the morale and well-being of large groups, realized we were slowly slipping into seasickness-induced apathy and listlessness. He decided to ignore any advice about not lighting the stove in such rough conditions in order to get a hot army-ration meal going. A brief disagreement between him and one or two of the guys followed, but he was undeterred and I fully supported his decision, realizing it was the lesser of two evils. Because the flames and boiling water were a significant danger in our confined quarters, he boiled up three lots of water to feed two men at a time. We all greedily consumed the hot meal-our first of the trip-feeling immediately better. Although the kerosene fumes may have contributed to feelings of nausea, feeding us a hot meal was the right thing to do and I was glad Baz had the presence of mind to act when he saw morale and energy levels were rapidly falling. It was one of many reasons he was on the team.

  The seas building to a fever pitch were a reminder, if we needed one, of the smallness of our boat.

  Courtesy of Jo Stewart

  Meantime, we had now started to “ship” or take in water for the first time, with large waves periodically dumping their contents on us as the boat heeled over sharply with the sails filled, occasional gusts pushing us even farther onto our side. It felt strangely disconcerting to be leaning over steeply, knowing we had no keel to lock us into position and that our stability relied solely on the ballast on board. Getting the ballast right was crucial on a keel-less whaler: too heavy and the boat would make sluggish progress; too light and she would be like a leaf at the mercy of the elements. The issue had led to a rare disagreement between Shackleton and his fiercely loyal skipper. Writing about it almost seven years after the event, Worsley obviously still thought he was right but managed to remain tactful: “It [the ballast] was too much by about 5 cwt. The overweighting was the cause of the Caird’s slowness, stiffness and jerky motion. It kept us constantly wet all the passage, so causing much unnecessary misery. I demurred strongly to Sir Ernest but other counsels prevailed. He, knowing the danger of under-ballasting, went to the other extreme.” We, like Shackleton, were happy to sacrifice speed and endure a more uncomfortable passage in the knowledge that the tonne of dedicated ballast plus our own weight and that of our gear gave us our best chance of remaining upright. Taking our boat out into the world’s roughest ocean without conclusive capsize drills meant getting to our destination fast was not our priority. Our priority was just getting there.

  7

  TEMPEST

  “Something wicked this way comes . . .”

  Courtesy of Magnus O’Grady

  “That defiance of nature which is born of contact with humanity had hitherto sustained them, and they felt that, though alone on the vast expanse of waters, they were in companionship with others of their kind.”

  Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life

  Even the irrepressible Larso couldn’t smile at this stage: water frozen into snow on the windward side of Larso’s head covering.

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  We dropped our smallest sail—the mizzen—on the morning of our third day as the wind continued to strengthen. It was an easy enough task, completed from the relative safety of the cockpit. This was followed by reefing the main and then taking it down altogether to leave up only the handkerchief-sized jib that on its own still had the boat heeled over at a steep angle. The mainsail was a far more challenging proposition, which Larso decided to take on. He advanced carefully toward the mast as Nick watched intently, pointing the Alexandra Shackleton upwind to try to dampen movement—something of a token gesture given that big waves hit us hard from all angles. Even Larso, the epitome of surefooted confidence and attached with a safety line, approached the task with the respect it deserved, struggling to tug the main down as the boat tried to throw him overboard. The slippery, slanting surface of the Alexandra Shackleton didn’t help. “Interesting,” he muttered as he rejoined Nick in the cockpit after his three-minute ordeal. I recall a good friend of mine, Dave, using a similar expression when we climbed together. If he was leading and said the next bit of the climb was “interesting,” I worried. The word meant far worse coming from a master of understatement.

  The wind was blowing a gale, causing the lines to thrum and whistle noisily; the sea was lumpy and malevolent. Every fifth or sixth wave broke into the cockpit and the foam and spray off the wave’s crests combined to soak us through. The freezing, ankle-deep water sloshing around in the cockpit saturated our leather boots and socks and left our feet numb with cold as each successive wave sent icy water straight through our jackets and trousers, drenching the woolen thermal layers beneath with ease and leaving us chilled to the bone. Clearly our labor-intensive attempts to waterproof our clothing at Arctowski had been futile.

  By evening of the third day, we’d lost any illusions about the ability of our leather boots and gabardine outers to protect us against the cold and wet. The gabardine kept a certain amount of wind out but had the unique characteristic of letting all the water in and then retaining it. The James Caird crew had a similar experience, with both Shackleton and Worsley commenting on the inadequacy of their Burberry gabardine against the “all-pervading water.” We could identify completely with their sodden misery and imagined them snorting in derision at the gushing words of Orde-Lees on the subject of the fabric: “This wonderful material has been so well tried and repeatedly used that no polar expedition would dream of going without suits made of it”; obviously the assessment of a man who was accustomed to remaining on solid ground and not on the Southern Ocean.

  As well as increasing in size, the sea was getting more “confused” as the wind began to shift to the west, bringing with it waves from a different direction and an increased chance of inundation or capsize from a big sideways impact. This was, according to Nick and Larso, our biggest danger, even worse than our pushing into big seas or having “following” seas run over us from behind. Worsley also held that “confused, lumpy seas were far more dangerous for small boats than the straight-running waves of a heavy gale in open sea.” We hadn’t expected ferocious headwinds and malevolent seas. The winds during our voyage were usually coming from the south or west, just as they had for Shackleton and his crew, giving rise to the Boss’s decision to make for South Georgia when he might have preferred the more populous South American mainland or the Falklands. Massive following seas could be managed by reducing sails as we had done and, if need be, by putting out our sea anch
or—a parachute that acts as a brake on the boat, stopping it surfing down the face of waves and pitch-poling. But the mixed sea state we were currently experiencing was not good. Shackleton and his crew encountered similar conditions early in their journey, Worsley describing the “cross sea” they found themselves in on day two as “two seas from different directions running through or across one another, the result of two gales.” “It found out our weak spots nicely,” he said. ‘The Caird was tumbling about with a hard, jerky motion and two or three bucketfuls of each sea came icy-cold over us.” Now enduring our own mixed sea state, it was easy to see why nearly all of the Caird crew were seasick.

  As we lay below, the swish and gurgle of water could be heard just centimeters from our heads through the thin skin of larch that protected us. The innocuous sound belied the speed and force with which the mighty Southern Ocean flowed past the boat, not with our forward momentum as much as its washing over us. Nick and Larso always seemed to get everything they could out of the Alexandra Shackleton, whatever the conditions. Skipper and navigator kept the sail flap to a minimum even in the increasing maelstrom, and I was impressed by their resilience. They weren’t the biggest men on board, but their physical presence was so much greater than their size alone as they stood silent and attentive, uncomplaining sentinels on their watches.

  The nonsailors subconsciously found themselves trying to read the sailors’ faces to discern how concerned they were about the conditions we were facing, but they gave little away. It’s an unspoken rule of expeditions, and one I always try to adhere to, that one must remain positive; if nothing positive can be said, it is best to say nothing at all. This attitude had echoes of Shackleton’s own policy of deliberately repressing any negativity felt by himself or members of his crew, an attitude perhaps best exemplified as the men finally abandoned the doomed Endurance. According to Orde-Lees, “Everyone kept their heads splendidly. Sir Ernest’s grand example inspired us all with a confidence in our leader. . . . For most of the time he stood on the upper deck holding on to the rigging, smoking a cigarette with a serious but somewhat unconcerned air.” Nevertheless, Nick and Larso’s increasingly businesslike attitude revealed all that needed to be known as they battled to keep the Alexandra Shackleton at right angles to the face of the waves. It was an unusual experience for Baz and me—more comfortable with extreme land-based expeditioning than small-boat sailing. And although Seb and Baz were in the Royal Navy, they spent much of their time on big ships. Even Ed, who had his yacht master’s certificate, was really a climber at heart. We deferred to Nick and Larso’s estimates of how much the Alexandra Shackleton could handle, but they, like us, were learning as they went along.

  The seas were mixed as one wave direction tried to impose itself on another with a shift in the wind buffeting us from one side to another with increasing violence. The surface seemed alive with waves moving in all directions, but at least the predominant wind was pushing us northward. As the Alexandra Shackleton scudded in that direction now at a good clip—perhaps 3.5 knots with just the jib up—we realized it was a trade-off. Strong winds were good until they became too big and made the sea dangerous, thus forcing us to reduce the amount of sail we had up and slowing our forward motion.

  We sailed due north as planned to offset the easterly drift of the currents that moved us relentlessly eastward at about half a knot an hour. It seemed strange to think of our puny efforts moving forward through the water while the whole column of water in which we traveled was itself moving en masse. After three days with no sun to fix our position, we weren’t sure where we were exactly but we were determined not to be pushed too far to the east toward either the pack ice or the South Orkneys, where notoriously big seas reign. The South Aris team had ended up there and capsized three times in short succession before narrowly escaping with their lives. This would happen to us too if we aimed straight for South Georgia. We knew too that the pack ice would stop us dead if we ventured into it; plus, if we headed too far east we’d never be able to sail back upwind and make South Georgia. And so we aimed at some imaginary place in the open South Atlantic that we would never reach, in the knowledge that South Georgia’s gravity would pull us around to the east. Like sailors of old, we would aim for the right latitude for South Georgia but keep to the west of it. When, or if, we were able to get a sun sight telling us we’d reached its latitude, we would turn right. It was a simple plan much like Shackleton’s, but like all simple plans its execution would be anything but.

  Certainly we appeared to be experiencing very similar weather to what Shackleton had. Worsley recalled that on “the third day it blew a hard W.S.W. gale with snow-squalls. Great torn cumulus and nimbus raced overhead. Heavy westerly seas rushing up on our port quarter swept constantly over the boat, pouring into the cockpit and coming through the canvas in little torrents soaking everything. After this, for the rest of the passage, the only dry articles in the boat were matches and sugar in hermetically sealed tins.” In among the misery of our conditions we could take great solace from the fact he was here with us in spirit.

  Almost twenty-four hours into the storm, the extreme cold and wet and the intense concentration required to keep us afloat meant fatigue was rapidly setting in and with it the need to share the sailing workload more evenly. A system of on-the-run coaching in rough sea steering followed for Baz, Seb, Ed, and me. Nick and Larso kept the hatch ajar to shout instructions from below, with waves routinely forcing bone-chilling green water into our cramped living area through even the smallest gap in the opened hatch, the closed air vents, and several of the forward deck planks. It was a difficult choice but we had decided that keeping the hatch ajar was safer than keeping it shut. It improved ventilation, reducing the chances of lethal conditions like hypoxia, caused by carbon monoxide fumes from the stove, and it also helped keep seasickness at bay, while allowing the backup man on watch to keep an eye on the helmsman to ensure nothing happened to him. It also meant when big waves crashed over the deck the helmsman could shout “Bail!” and the backup man could spring into action with the bilge pump that was situated below deck near the hatch. Arm-wrestling the bilge pump with frozen hands was exhausting, particularly in our state, and it repeatedly became blocked with food and other debris that washed around in the bilges. Seb, grim faced as he held back seasickness, took it apart and, on one occasion, retrieved a small plastic tie-wrap from the blocked outlet valve, a reminder of the twenty-first century. Seb was always taking on jobs uncomplainingly and with real application. It was one of the reasons I had chosen him.

  The downside of leaving the hatch ajar was that the giant waves crashing over us continually drenched whoever was sitting near it below deck, regardless of the speed with which the helmsman tried to close it as the next wave approached. The man on the helm in the cockpit would, of course, be utterly soaked but that was his lot. The routine of the hatch dramatically slamming shut every few minutes became one of the sounds of life aboard the Alexandra Shackleton, always in response to the helmsman spotting something big coming our way. It was always with some relief that the hatch opened again, indicating that the helmsman had survived the latest onslaught.

  Was Shackleton with us in spirit? A mistaken double exposure taken with our 1912 Vesta pocket camera shows two boats.

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  Life below deck: six men, one double bed, and a kitchen in the bedroom.

  Courtesy of Ed Wardle

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  For the nonsailors among us, the learning curve that our watches at the helm presented us with was as steep as the rock faces many of us were more used to climbing. The weight of responsibility to guide the boat through this environment that raged and rolled darkly around us was exhausting. We could identify with Worsley’s detailed descriptions of how he and his crew were soaked by “bucketfuls” of ice-cold water with every large wave and then had to start pumping frantically. Perhaps the most telling and symbolic observation he made was, ‘This was our ba
ptism—the beginning of the ordeal by water.” His analogy rang true for sailors and nonsailors alike in this watery battlefield we found ourselves in.

  Fear of being capsized was real now, especially as the boat heeled over at such a steep angle that the mast almost touched the waves. No one really spoke about how well our capsize drill would hold up and what the repercussions would be if we went over. Frankly, it didn’t bear thinking about if capsize occurred with the hatch fully open. The living space below deck was our only means of keeping the boat afloat, the air contained within it providing the boat with virtually all its buoyancy save an air bag we’d inflated in the forward bulkhead. So staying afloat relied on us keeping the hatch shut in big seas. But if we did go over and the boat failed to reright within ten minutes, the only thing for it would be to open the two mushroom air vents and deliberately flood the boat with about 200 to 300 liters of water to help offset the righting moment. In other words, our weight plus that of the water we’d deliberately let in could be transferred to one side and, with a very big wave’s assistance, hopefully we’d be knocked back upright. The resistance of the sails under the water would be a hindrance, of course, and all this would be going on in freezing cold, huge seas, and pitch darkness below deck, with the possible injury of one or more men and a certain degree of panic setting in. We’d also not know if the one or perhaps two men in the cockpit were still attached to the boat or even alive. We also knew that if we let in too much water through the vents, or if either vent should be stuck open, which they were frequently, we would flood completely and either drown or sink. And if rerighting took longer than fifteen minutes, the man in the water would likely have lost the ability to swim in the extreme cold and sunk beneath the waves.