Chasing Shackleton

by Tim Jarvis

  I finished on what I hoped was a high note. We had achieved so much and should never forget that, and we would be making history if we could only keep focused for a bit longer. We had to finish this great expedition of ours and do so with the resolve we had shown across the ocean and in the years spent planning the trip. There were no men on Elephant Island relying on us making it, but we must approach our journey as if this were the case. If we didn’t make it we’d be letting down not just twenty-two men, but rather ourselves and the thousands of supporters who stood behind us. I saw nods of approval and perhaps a few knowing looks on some faces as I referred to the importance of not causing issues where none need exist. When I opened the floor to any dissenters, there was silence.

  That night Ed, Baz, and I polished off a whole bottle of Mackinlay’s in Travis Cave, singing and telling jokes by our driftwood fire in the hope that the meeting had cleared the air and that we stood on the verge of achieving our dream. Finding myself in this situation of needing to manage factions with conflicting views made me think of Shackleton’s leadership skills after the sinking of the Endurance. My admiration for him soared. Just as he had to guard against the breaking up of the ice floes on which they camped, so he was constantly on the lookout for cracks in the unity of his men, cracks that inevitably began to show with the strain of their ordeal. Reginald James, the expedition’s physician, noted that Shackleton “was constantly on the watch for any break in morale or any discontent, so that he could deal with it at once.” His care of his men and determination to keep spirits up were indefatigable, and his ability to maintain his optimism in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds now struck me more forcefully than ever. By comparison I was faced with relatively minor discontent and doubt among my team.

  South Georgia’s mountains and their unpredictable weather—never to be underestimated.

  Courtesy of Joe French

  Tough decision: with his feet in rotten shape, Ed made the call not to do the mountain climb.

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  I mused on how Shackleton managed dissent and stress among his men. He regularly served hot, sugary milk and food to soothe away troubles, and gave the best of their limited gear to those who needed it most. But he also read the riot act to all the men after McNeish questioned his authority on the ice. Perhaps the secret of his success was a combination of his keeping “a mental finger on each man’s pulse,” in Worsley’s words, and his utter conviction whenever he decided on a course of action. Perhaps one could call it stubbornness. Orde-Lees commented, “It is no use trying to convince Sir Ernest if he had formed an opinion of his own.” Whatever the case, the strain began to show on Shackleton. Worsley wrote of their time waiting at Peggotty Camp: “Meantime, the strain of waiting and anxiety for his men was telling on him. He was then more discouraged, worried, and nearer to depression than I had ever known him. He said to me one day: ‘I will never take another expedition, Skipper.’” I knew how he felt but, like Shackleton, was damned if I would give up now. Whisky seemed an appropriate anesthetic for my frustrations and I was sure the Boss would be raising a glass in spirit with us.

  Late the following morning, we moved our tent closer to the Gap, as activity on Australis’s deck indicated she was getting ready to begin her twelve-hour journey around to Possession Bay. Soon our tent was joined by two more, one containing Si and Joe, the other Larso and Seb. Our aim was to depart at 10 P.M. so as to give us two hours of light in which to cross the rocks that led to the ice at the base of the Gap. We felt a mixture of relief and excitement to be getting ready to leave. Ed, in the meantime, had been aboard Australis and now walked toward us along the beach looking hangdog, with Jamie close behind, camera in hand. “Here it comes,” whispered Baz under his breath. Sure enough, Ed wearily reprised Nick’s words about needing to pull out: his feet were too painful to walk on, regardless of him being covered by insurance. Ed was tough and uncomplaining, but the redness in his eyes indicated how disappointed he was. I consoled him as best I could, not really aware of what this might mean for him and the expedition, not to mention the film. His expedition now over, he embraced Baz and me before hastily returning to the Zodiac, almost wanting to distance himself from the scene of his disappointment as quickly as possible. Shoulders hunched, receding into the distance, he cut a dejected figure, as if the Zodiac were transporting him to a prison hulk.

  The fur seals nipped disrespectfully at our ankles, unaware of the enormity of the decisions going on in our little world. I wondered who had the high ground here: we humans, who with our superior intellect were voluntarily attempting this craziest of trips, or them, who made this harshest of places their home. It didn’t take much to imagine their forebears having prophesied the return of these inappropriately clad humans.

  CHARTING THE COURSE

  Celestial navigation involves working out where you are based on observation of the positions of the sun, moon, planets, or stars. You do this by knowing which point on the rotating earth a celestial object is above and measuring its height above your horizon. To do this using the technology available to Shackleton in 1916, you require a nautical almanac that lists the position of celestial objects at given times, a marine chronometer that keeps accurate time while at sea (the clock is on a “gimbal,” which prevents the rock of the boat from making the pendulum in the clock speed up or slow down and affect the chronometer’s accuracy), and a sextant to measure the body’s angular height above the horizon.

  That height can be used to compute distances from the subpoint, to create a circular line of position. A navigator shoots a number of celestial objects in succession—either stars, the moon‚ or in our case the sun to produce a series of overlapping lines of position. The point where these lines intersect is known as the celestial fix.

  In order to measure longitude (how far west or east you are), the precise time of a sextant sighting must be recorded. Each second of error is equivalent to fifteen seconds of longitude error, which at the equator is a position error of a quarter of a nautical mile, which is about the accuracy limit of manual celestial navigation.

  Latitude (how far north or south you are) is easier, particularly if you can measure the angle to the sun at your local noon when the sun is at its highest point, which is what we did on the expedition.

  Calculating latitude: If you imagine the sun is at the top of a giant pole and the height of the pole and the location of its base are known (provided by the almanac)‚ you can measure the angle between where you are and the sun and calculate how far you are from the base of the pole. This will give you your latitude. A second bearing on the sun can be taken and this will theoretically intersect the first latitude fix you took and give you your location.

  The one time during the day when you can obtain a precise bearing on the sun is at local noon, when the sun is as high in the sky as it will get that day. At that moment the sun is either directly north or south of you and any position fix from it will coincide exactly with your latitude. Finding latitude from a noon sight is therefore the easiest celestial navigation calculation and provides very accurate results. It works as follows:

  1. Subtract the sun’s altitude at your local noon from ninety degrees (the total number of degrees of latitude in your hemisphere). This gives you what is called your Zenith Distance (ZD).

  2. Look in your nautical almanac to see what the declination of the sun (or “latitude of the base of the pole”) is to the nearest hour of when noon occurred at your location.

  3. Add this to the ZD if you and the sun are in the same hemisphere; or subtract it if you are not. This result is your latitude.

  Calculating longitude: Obviously, if the sun is directly north or south of you at noon, you and the sun must be on the same line of longitude at that time. If you know exactly what time noon occurred at your location, you can simply look in the nautical almanac to find your longitude. This will be the same as the sun’s Greenwich Hour Angle (GHA), which is the equivalent to the longitude of t
he base of the sun’s pole.

  The tricky part is getting the exact time of the event. The sun moves quickly (or rather the earth turns quickly), and even a couple of seconds of timing error will throw your position fix off by several miles. Even if you have a perfectly accurate watch, getting an exact time for noon is problematic. The sun always seems to hang at its highest (or meridian) altitude each day for a couple of minutes or so, and to time noon precisely you need to figure out exactly when the middle of that “hang time” is.

  The technique to do this is fairly straightforward. I get out the sextant fifteen to twenty minutes before I expect noon to take place (I can easily get a rough estimate from the almanac) and take a leisurely series of sights as the sun climbs higher in the sky. The sights I feel particularly good about, I mark with an asterisk. After the sun reaches its meridian altitude, I preset the sextant to the altitudes for the three or four sights I felt were my best when the sun was going up and carefully record the time when the sun again hits those altitudes going back down. I then calculate the time spreads between each set of matched sights and figure out the time of the midpoint of each spread. These times I average together to arrive at a best estimate of when precisely noon took place. There are then various corrections you need to make to make any raw sextant sight accurate. These account for things like which part of the disc of the sun you’ve measured and inaccuracy in whatever timepiece you’re using (in our case a chronometer that did lose and gain time), et cetera.

  Paul’s take: A lot of the theory of a full course in astronavigation could be disregarded for the purpose of navigating the Alexandra Shackleton from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Obviously we read every account we could of the journey, paying close attention to Worsley’s own. It became obvious that the theory behind Worsley’s plan was directly applicable to our own journey. The logic was as sound then as it is now, so given the same tools, we followed it. The fact is that there were certain pressures on the navigation that made some of the choices obvious‚ and I’m sure we would have arrived at the same plan even independent of earlier accounts, e.g., the need to focus on getting north as soon as possible so as to distance ourselves from the pack ice . . . and ice in general.

  There are many reasons when undertaking this journey to get north early. Among other things, it gives you the best chance of “hitting” South Georgia, as the average wind is most likely to come from the west. I emphasize the word “average.” When missing South Georgia is not an option, you want to be setting yourself up with the best chance possible. This means coming in from the west. If, for example, you came in from the southwest and got a bout of strong NW-NNW winds, you could easily find yourself slipping below South Georgia toward the pack ice with a very real chance of missing South Georgia altogether. Remember that the Alexandra Shackleton has no keel and can’t sail back upwind. She can make ninety degrees to the wind at best. This plan to come in from the west ties in very nicely with the astronavigation. It is much easier to find latitude using a sextant than longitude. The most basic sight you can take with a sextant is called a “noon sight.” It is often referred to as the cornerstone of astronavigation. One of the big advantages of a noon sight is that it doesn’t require an accurate timepiece . . . or even one at all. While a noon sight does only give you latitude, that was perfect for this journey—the plan being to try to get as far north as possible until we were on the desired (and well known) latitude of South Georgia . . . and then hang a right turn and ride in with the prevailing winds on that latitude until we saw land.

  During that time when the sun seems to hang, on a slow boat like the James Caird or Alexandra Shackleton, the latitude should not change very much, or at all if you are heading due west or east. At any other time of the day apart from noon, you need to have an accurate idea of time in order to work out latitude and certainly longitude. To be honest, I was never totally confident in our timepieces. Whereas Worsley would have been totally familiar with the ones at his disposal, we weren’t. I’m sure Worsley would have done a better job of roughing it with his own timepieces if he’d had to (if no noon sights were usable due to weather, say) than we would have. That said, we did use our own clock in order to have a shot at longitude as we approached South Georgia . . . and it wasn’t too bad.

  Based on the aforementioned plan to head north first, we really didn’t need to take any sights at all for a while. What we needed to do was use whatever wind we had to just try to climb north. We had to get a good few hundred miles‚ and the Alexandra Shackleton doesn’t eat up distance that quickly. Seventy or eighty miles is considered a good day. I think around ninety-six was our best. We had a good break in the weather on day four and managed to get a great noon sight. It boosted our confidence in our dead-reckoning skills. I didn’t manage to get another noon sight until day nine or ten (it’s in the log), due to cloudy or impossible conditions. Some of the efforts turned to pure comedy, as everything from the sea state and cloud cover to the boat itself and helmsman conspired to throw me and the sextant overboard. It was often hard enough just to hang on to the mast, let alone take a sight. I always had one eye out for the sun in order to get a sight if possible, especially as we approached South Georgia. The fact was, there simply weren’t many opportunities.

  Our last noon sight did confirm that we were on the right latitude and if we stayed on it, we would hit South Georgia right by King Haakon Sound. The trouble was, with no accurate idea of longitude, we didn’t know exactly when we would hit it. We had an estimate, but this vagueness becomes very concerning when you approach a very dangerous shore in foggy conditions with night coming.

  10

  THIRD-MAN FACTOR

  The Tridents await us behind the Briggs Glacier and Murray Snowfield.

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

  J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

  Baz: “It’s now or never. Let’s make it now.” Preparing to walk the interior.

  Courtesy of Paul Larsen

  Nervous anticipation built as the light began to fade. We would now travel as three pairs, roping up once we had navigated the initial rock-strewn landscape beneath the ice snout of the Gap and gotten higher onto the ice itself. The goal was to set off late at night and try to make it to Stromness in twenty-four hours in a bid to avoid the need to spend two nights out in the wild without a tent. If we fell short, at least the last bit of the climb, beyond Breakwind Ridge, was the most straightforward. If we could get there by nightfall, at a push we could stumble into Stromness over what was relatively straightforward ground.

  Final gear checks completed, we were ready to go, Baz and I clad in old clothes, the others in modern gear. Our packs looked small and insignificant on our backs, belying the fact that they were full of the smallest and heaviest items of film equipment in an effort to ease the camera crew’s load. In a nod to Shackleton’s own insufficient footwear (light mountain boots into the soles of which McNeish had fitted several screws taken from the James Caird to give him some grip on the ice), I strengthened my well-worn leather boots, old friends from my Mawson expedition, with a number of old hobnails while waiting at King Haakon Bay. By the time he made the final descent into Stromness, the two-inch screws in Shackleton’s boots were worn down flush with the soles, offering no traction and almost leading to disaster. I hoped mine would fare better.

  At 11 P.M. we set off, picking our way up through the steep rocks rust red in the late evening sun. We followed the line of a watercourse that at least seemed to contain fewer boulders and provided a gravelly surface on which to walk. Baz and I were easy to follow, with sparks flying off the hobnails and screws that protruded from the bases of our boots. It amazed me to think that all of this rockscape would have been covered with ice perhaps 100 meters thick in Shackleton’s day, all melted away by the steadily increasing temperatures of the twentieth century. Worsley wrote of “huge ‘sno
uts’ of ice projecting over 200 yards off the beach” and “ice masses of 50 to 100 tons” littering the beach under them. Certainly there was no ice either on the beach or hanging over it now. The rocks underfoot as we made our way uphill presented us with multiple opportunities for twisting ankles or worse—something Shackleton wouldn’t have had to contend with, but a real risk for us after such a sedentary existence on the ocean.

  After twenty minutes we stopped to adjust clothing and packs. Overheating with the steepness of the climb, I removed the heavy, woolen grandpa long johns that had burdened me for so long, and which I’d been forced to endure due to the cold conditions on board the Alexandra Shackleton. An hour or more of steady ascent later, we approached the imposing wall of turquoise ice that marked the snout of the ice of Shackleton Gap. We stopped to marvel at its scale, tens of meters high. Seb, Paul, and the cameramen donned modern crampons. The rear man in each pair put a small glow stick on the back of his pack to guide the others, another modern advantage forbidden to Baz and me.

  The reflective surface of the ice compensated for the steadily dwindling light and, although there were cracks and holes in the ice, at least there were now no boulders to contend with. We regrouped 600 or 700 meters up the steep ice surface. Si was visibly limping and grimacing with intense sciatic pain that extended down into his back. After munching down some painkillers, he agreed to push on to the top of the pass as light snow began to fall. We had made a good start, but I could not help feeling that further problems were about to surface.