by Tod Olson
As they fought their way through the giant swells, the men took four-hour watches in groups of three. The sailors on duty took turns steering and pumping seawater out of the hold.
For the men below there was no escape from the water. It sprayed into the hatch near the stern. It trickled through the seams in the canvas. As fast as they could pump it out it pooled in the cracks between the supplies and the ballast. It soaked underwear and socks, boots and mittens, sweaters and sleeping bags. When the men went below for their four hours’ rest, their bags had frozen solid. All they could do was crawl inside and wait for their body heat to thaw the skins.
On the 28th, McNish took off his boots and socks to find his feet swollen and stark white. Frostbite had set in, and Vincent had it even worse. He was already having trouble moving around. They had made 146 miles by Worsley’s reckoning—650 to go.
Shackleton kept a close eye on the men. When someone looked to be struggling, he noticed. But instead of singling the poor sailor out, he simply ordered an extra ration of hot milk or a biscuit for everyone.
Food, however, was a chore. It took three men just to heat a pot of hoosh. One man held the oil-burning camp stove; the other two protected it from the spray and kept the pot from overturning when the boat rocked. Every cup of hoosh came clogged with reindeer hair from the sleeping bags. The biscuits were drenched and tasted like the sea.
They made 92 miles the fifth day and 78 the sixth. At times the swells rose so high that when they rode into the troughs the wind died and their sails slackened. If the men looked sideways, it seemed they were riding in a tunnel made of water.
The temperature plummeted the night of April 30, and they woke around 3 a.m. to find the boat riding dangerously low in the water. Shackleton and Worsley stood up in the hatch and discovered the reason. A thick sheet of ice coated the entire deck, and the extra weight was slowly sinking the Caird.
One by one in the pitch dark, the men climbed onto the deck to hack away at the ice. The wind whipped and the boat lurched under their feet. They fought to keep their balance on the sheer surface. Every five minutes, one man would crawl back, exhausted and fingers frozen. Another would take his place.
At one point the boat lurched and Vincent, whose frostbitten feet would barely support him anymore, lost his footing. He slid toward the edge of the boat. Worsley leaned over to grab his hand but missed. Vincent managed to clutch the mast just before he went overboard into the Drake Passage.
Worsley took Vincent’s place and breathed a sigh of relief. He found it less stressful to be out on the deck himself than to watch the others, knowing that with one slip he might have to sit helpless while a boatmate disappeared into the frigid ocean.
Two hours later, the Caird still had six passengers. Once again she rode high enough in the water for the men to relax. They retired below for a cup of hair-infested hoosh. That day and the next they would have to perform the de-icing ritual again.
Just after noon on May 2, a wandering albatross soared in on a southwest wind. It swept down to within 10 feet of the Caird. Its wings, built for long-distance flight, stretched nearly half the length of the boat. The bird circled the men for hours, filling them with envy. Worsley figured it could fly Elephant Island to South Georgia, hundreds of feet above the bone-chilling spray, in 15 hours.
They had been at sea for eight days. They were not yet halfway there.
Back on Elephant Island, the men rallied after the blizzard swamped their hut. With Wild’s encouragement, they patched the holes in the walls and brought in a blubber stove to warm the cramped space. Someone decided to call their home the “Snuggery.” It became a haven from the wind, the sleet, and the snow.
During the day, the men arranged crates around the Snuggery so they could sit for meals. Over hoosh or penguin steak they debated the date of their liberation. Guesses ranged from May 12 to June 1. Lees was among the few willing to disagree out loud. He was convinced they would have to winter on the island. Even if the Caird made it to South Georgia, he thought, the pack would close and the Boss wouldn’t make it back until spring.
Finally, after two weeks of brutal weather, May 2 brought a welcome sight: the sun. “This is the first time we have seen it since reaching the God forsaken spot,” Lees wrote. By midmorning a display of soggy sleeping bags and clothes lay around the camp, drying in the air.
By their tenth day at sea, the men on the Caird had been enjoying the sun for two full days. During the day the boat looked like the camp at Cape Wild, sleeping bags and clothes draped over the deck to dry. “We manage to get most of our gear into a pleasantly moderate state of dampness,” wrote Worsley.
That was about all they could hope for. And the sun hadn’t made any real improvement in their condition. No one on board could feel his feet anymore. Without any room for exercise, all they could do was sit and wiggle their toes, hoping they wouldn’t get any worse. Their hands were raw and blistered from frostbite. Knees were scraped and bleeding from crawling among the rocks in the keel. Nasty boils from the saltwater rose on their wrists, ankles, and backsides.
They’d been making 30 to 50 miles a day for several days. As they made their way through a relatively calm sea on May 4, Crean noticed they had finished one cask of drinking water. He tapped into the second and last cask and took a drink. To his horror, it was only half full and tasted salty. He immediately thought back to the day they left. As they were loading the Caird, one of the casks had been dropped overboard. Crean realized that it must have been punctured on the rocks.
South Georgia still lay 300 miles to the east, and the only water they had left was contaminated with salt. Drinking it could dehydrate them faster than not drinking at all.
Crean called Shackleton down from the deck to give him the news. The Boss, feeling the strain of the voyage, snapped at his loyal second officer. Obviously they had no choice, he said; they would have to drink it anyway.
They made more than 150 miles the next two days. But everyone grew weaker by the day. On May 6, Shackleton cut the daily water ration to half a cup. Vincent grew sullen and dejected. McNish had stopped writing in his diary. The men sometimes begged for an extra drink, but the Boss refused to bend. If Worsley’s reckoning could be trusted, they should see land in two days. But if the wind shifted they could spend another week on the boat, and they couldn’t afford to exhaust their supplies.
The next day, the boat lurched on unpredictable seas. Worsley tried several times to calculate their position. He told Shackleton he could be at least 10 miles off. They had been planning to aim for the northwestern tip of South Georgia and sail around the north edge to one of the whaling stations in Stromness Bay. Now, Shackleton didn’t want to risk missing the island to the north. If they did, there would be nothing but 3,000 miles of ocean between them and the African coast. Instead, they decided to make for the broad southwestern shore. That would put them on the other side of the island from the whaling stations. But at least they would be standing on dry ground.
On May 9, 200 Gentoo penguins popped up from the ocean onto the dry ground at Cape Wild. The men had been killing penguins since they arrived, and they had it down to a system. They would chase the 2-foot-tall birds up the sloping side of the glacier. Lees would then climb up and herd seven or eight of them down at a time, where they were met by a mob of salivating, bearded men with clubs and axes.
On this day, Lees had made the climb six or seven times when Wild called off the hunt. Fifty penguins was enough for the day, Wild said.
The storekeeper was livid. Two men could go through meat from a penguin in a single meal. At this point they had six weeks’ worth of seal meat. They were eating the penguin meat as fast as they butchered it. Why wasn’t Wild taking every opportunity to stock up for the winter?
The next day, Hurley arranged 20 bearded, grim-faced men in front of the Snuggery for a picture. They were a sorry-looking lot. Wordie was nursing an infected hand. Rickinson was recovering from his heart attack and had a giant b
oil on his backside from the boat journey. Greenstreet was still hobbled from frostbite. Blackborow, whose feet were beginning to turn black, didn’t make it out of the hut for the photograph. Hudson hadn’t been out of his sleeping bag much at all. No one knew exactly what was wrong with him, but they described his condition as a “nervous breakdown.”
They were “the most motley and unkempt assembly that ever was projected on a plate,” Hurley thought. “All looking forward to the relief which we earnestly hope to be here in a few days.”
On May 8, their “relief” woke to choppy seas and a thick mist. The crew of the Caird ate breakfast quickly so they could go on deck to look for land. They had made good time the day before, and Worsley figured they were getting close. The mist gave way to tantalizing breaks of sun. Then the sky closed again and they couldn’t see a thing. Could it be that Worsley’s calculations had been wrong all along? Had they missed South Georgia and were now headed out to sea?
Then, just after 10:30 a.m., Vincent saw a clump of seaweed floating in the surf. Not long after, a cormorant appeared in the sky above the boat. As all sailors knew, cormorants rarely stray more than 15 miles from land.
The fog lifted again just after noon, and the men heard McCarthy call out, “Land!” Sure enough, to the northeast, a black cliff rose from the sea, spotted with patches of snow. It couldn’t have been more than 10 miles off, but clouds moved in and cut it off from view.
Shackleton said simply, “We’ve done it.”
No one responded. They stared toward the horizon, as if needing another glimpse before they were convinced it was true. In a minute or two the clouds parted again and the land reappeared. Now they could make out grass on the hillside—the first vegetation they’d seen since they left the very same island in December 1914.
The Caird touched the shore at 5 p.m. two days later. She’d been battered by hurricane force winds on the way in, and for a time it seemed as though she would be smashed against the land they’d been dreaming of for two weeks. Now, she floated in the calm waters of South Georgia’s King Haakon Bay.
Shackleton jumped into 3 feet of water and dragged her toward the beach. Three others jumped out and held the boat against the pull of the surf while Shackleton fixed the rope around a rock.
They all came ashore and stood as best they could on shaky legs. To the side, someone noticed a small stream of clear, cold water, running to the sea. In an instant, six men were on their knees, funneling water into their mouths with cupped hands.
Above the kneeling men rose a line of craggy, snow-covered peaks. Thirty miles beyond the mountains, on the northeast coast of the island, lay the only human settlements within 950 miles. No one had ever set foot more than a mile inland on South Georgia. But the six men couldn’t think about that now. At the moment, they were just grateful to be alive—and back on solid ground.
At 2 a.m. on May 19 Shackleton, Worsley, and Crean climbed out of their sleeping bags and into the cold morning air of King Haakon Bay. They made a pot of hoosh and devoured it. By the light of a full moon they gathered a 50-foot length of rope, an ice ax, a compass, and binoculars. They shoved three days’ worth of sledding rations and biscuits into socks. They picked up a small pot, a box of 48 matches, and the oil-burning stove with enough fuel for six hot meals. Shouldering the socks and the rest of their equipment, they headed east along the beach.
The men picked their way across the foot of a glacier, with the surf lapping at their feet. Then they turned inland up a long, snow-covered slope in the general direction of the whaling stations at Stromness Bay. In their path lay an obstacle course of 6,000-foot peaks and valleys filled with glacier ice. The whalers Shackleton had spoken to in the past assumed it was land that no one could cross. Then again, no one had ever needed to.
Shackleton, Worsley, and Crean had no choice. The Caird had been battered on her way into King Haakon Bay, and no one thought she could stand a 150-mile journey around South Georgia to Stromness Bay. The overland route was the only option. Worsley figured it was 17 miles in a straight line. But the rugged terrain would force them onto a much longer path.
Since they beached the Caird, the men had spent the last week gathering strength. They feasted on albatross and elephant seal. But even after they’d consumed all the clean water and hot food they could, Vincent and McNish were in no shape to travel. They would stay behind with McCarthy.
With the moonlight guiding them, Shackleton, Worsley, and Crean trudged up the slope, sinking shin-deep in snow. They roped themselves together for safety. Shackleton broke trail, Crean followed, and Worsley brought up the rear. The Skipper checked his compass and called out “Starboard!” “Port!” or “Steady!” as though they were still aboard a ship.
To the east lay a range of peaks silhouetted against the sky like the fingers of a hand. Between the fingers the ridgeline dropped into high passes. Through one of those passes, Worsley figured, lay a route to Stromness Bay.
When the three men reached the foot of the range, they had no idea which pass would give them the easiest path. Twice they trudged up the mountainside, carving steps in the ice when the slope got too steep. Twice they peered over the edge of a pass to find a sharp slope that dropped off into a 1,500-foot cliff a few yards away.
By the time they reached the third pass it was late afternoon. They sat atop a ridge so sharp they could straddle it. The light was slipping away. A dense fog crept up the mountain range on either side. They could barely see the slope below them. It looked more gradual than the last two, but no one could be sure.
Shackleton decided they had to risk it. The ridge stood at about 4,500 feet. If they got caught at this elevation at night without sleeping bags, they could easily freeze to death.
Still roped together, they made their way down, the Boss hacking steps into the slope. A half hour later they had descended 100 yards at best. With darkness closing in, Shackleton carved out a ledge big enough for the three of them and peered down the slope. It seemed to be flattening out, but it vanished in the fog before they could see the bottom. There was no way to be certain it didn’t fall off into a sheer cliff.
Shackleton told the men they had to speed up their descent, no matter the risk—and he knew exactly how. At the Boss’s instruction, each man looped his section of rope into a coil. Worsley sat on his coil and linked his legs and arms around Shackleton in front of him. Crean did the same behind Worsley. Then, with the fate of 28 men resting in their laps, they launched themselves into the fog.
On May 19, as the three men careened down a mountainside on South Georgia, pack ice moved in and choked Cape Wild. For weeks, the Elephant Island party had been watching the wind the way they had at Patience Camp. When it blew from the south, the pack ice loosened. Penguins gained access to their beach, oblivious to what lay in store for them. When the wind blew hard from the north, the ice moved in. Their food supply vanished—and so did any path a relief ship might follow to the shore of Cape Wild.
But no matter how icebound the cape became, Wild woke the men every morning with the same hopeful greeting: “Lash up and stow! The boss may come today.” In a few minutes, sleeping bags were rolled and ready to go—not that any of the men ever wanted to see the inside of one again.
The entire day revolved around meals—supplying food for them, preparing them, eating them, and talking about them. At 9:30 a.m. they sat around the stove for a breakfast of fried penguin breast. Wild assigned tasks for the day: There might be mending to do on the Snuggery, but mostly they hunted, skinned, and butchered penguins. They ate hoosh at 12:30 p.m. and hoosh again at 4:30 p.m. At night Hussey often played banjo while some of the men sang. By 7 p.m. they were in their sleeping bags and they didn’t come out for 14 hours.
As winter closed in, Lees’s anxiety grew. Seals were few and far between. And if the pack clogged the cape for good, penguins would probably vanish too. In the middle of May they ran out of seal blubber to fuel the fire and started burning penguin skins. The stove consumed 20 or
25 of them a day, and on May 15 they had enough for just two weeks.
As May wore on, Lees counted off the dwindling supplies. On May 23: “goodbye sardines.” The next day: “Farewell tapioca.”
Fewer and fewer of the men in the Snuggery were willing to bet on an early escape. “Installing ourselves for the winter, little hope being entertained of immediate relief,” wrote Hurley on May 23. “It is now a month since the Caird’s departure.”
But most of the men shared Macklin’s reluctance to give up hope. Every morning, even when pack ice clogged the ocean as far as the eye could see, the doctor climbed to the highest point on Cape Wild and scanned the water for a sail. “In spite of everything,” he wrote, “I cannot help hoping to see a ship coming along to our relief.”
When Shackleton, Worsley, and Crean pushed off the lonely South Georgia ridge on their improvised sled, Worsley was terrified. Snow lashed at their faces as they hurtled through the darkness. At any moment the ground could disappear beneath them, and they would plummet a thousand feet to their deaths. The months of cold and starvation, the mind-numbing hours in the tents, the harrowing boat journeys through the ice—all of it would come to nothing.
Then, as they gathered speed and the mountain rushed past, Worsley suddenly realized he was grinning. Maybe it was delirium from lack of food and water. Maybe it was months of tension finally breaking loose. But before long all three men were yelling into the wind like they were out for a toboggan ride on Christmas Day.
After a minute or two the slope began to flatten out. They slowed and came to a stop in a snowbank. The men stood up and looked at one another. In the strangely formal gesture they used to mark the milestones of their survival, they shook hands.