Bear Grylls

by Bear Grylls

  In the end, we didn’t call until 2.30 a.m., more than an hour and a half late, and Mick spoke to her. I couldn’t face the cubbyhole again, I was feeling so seasick. Mick had volunteered instead. He told Chloë the conditions were not improving, but that we were stable and hanging on. We would call again at 8.30 in the morning. Chloë duly passed the news on to Willie. Our base team was all working well, but right now there was nothing they could do to help us. We were going to have to get through this alone.

  This night was the time I needed to lead. This was no longer the time to stand back. It was the moment for me to step forward.

  Throughout my life, from my army days to the Everest expedition and since, I have never regarded myself as a natural athlete. There have always been people, in all these different fields, who were stronger and fitter than me. But when it comes down to the crunch times, I have always somehow managed to find a little bit extra when it matters most. I’ve never understood where it comes from.

  On Everest, for many weeks early on, I really struggled on the lower sections of the mountain, and there were times when I felt weak and slow, as a climber. But as the months passed and just two of us were finally approaching the summit, I somehow felt my strength return. It shouldn’t have been returning then: we hadn’t eaten for days, or even peed for over thirty-six hours, our bodies were not functioning and our reserves were gone – we were in the Death Zone and our bodies were physiologically dying, above 26,000 feet. But something was keeping me moving. This strength is not athleticism, it’s not fitness; I think it is heart.

  And as I clung on in the boat, I felt this was another of those critical moments. It was 1 a.m. and the sea was winning. We were in a crisis, and this was my time to find that heart again.

  I didn’t want to be impulsive and I didn’t want to be cavalier. I was aware that I had to be calm and responsible, and concentrate; I also knew that right now I had to lead. I had been helming for an hour, getting a feel of the conditions, coping, every cell in my body focused, and I knew I shouldn’t let go.

  ‘We’re stopping the rota,’ I shouted. ‘I’m going to keep the wheel with Mick for the rest of this night.’ The RIB was then hit side-on by a wave that had appeared from nowhere. We all braced against the impact, and then I continued: ‘I want you three to get in the sardine tin together and get some rest. I’m going to need your strength for the morning.’

  That was my decision. This time, there was no discussion.

  I had been as terrified as anyone else as the storm had built up. It was now in full force. We were being pummelled by waves that came at us out of the dark, drenching us, battering us and hitting from all angles. But now, in the heart of this Force Eight gale, hundreds of miles from any land, I felt this strange determination return.

  So I kept the helm. I felt emotional and raw, but I was also clear about what Mick and I were doing. Together, the two of us would bring the boat through the storm and through the night. We would keep the boat upright; we would bring it into port. I would need the others to rest and be ready to take over when it was light, but I needed Mick, my oldest friend, to be with me now, beside me.

  I didn’t want any loose helming during the night as our margin for error had been reduced from maybe 10 per cent to 2 per cent. One mistake, one slip, and the boat could be taken and rolled. You make the right call a thousand times, but just one error of judgement can so often prove fatal. The mountains had shown me that. There was no longer the margin for someone to misjudge a wave or react nervously to a breaking wall of water in front of the bows. The only way I was going to make certain we survived the darkness and the night was by doing the helming myself.

  I had pushed everyone to leave Greenland. I had got us all into this hellhole. I would get us through it as well. These were my best friends’ lives, and I wouldn’t tire now.

  Every time we had reached the safety of port before, we had felt as though we had been pardoned. When you walk down a street, it’s solid and it doesn’t move. There are no surprises. But the ocean is different. It rolls and heaves. It is unpredictable. When you put out to sea – far out to sea, in a small boat – it’s like being put out for sacrifice, and ultimately it is the monster of the sea that decides your fate.

  That’s how I felt. We were being put out for sacrifice, like the heroes in the children’s books my mum used to read me when I was young. Waiting to be consumed, devoured, forgotten, never even missed. But I wanted, with every bone in my body, to be home, to hold my wife and son again, and to be safe.

  Mick and I would do this together, this one last time.

  Mick recalls:

  It was the right decision. We were really struggling in the twenty-five-foot waves, and they seemed to be increasing in height and ferocity as the night closed in. Bear and I were just finishing our watch, but Bear had learned how to handle these conditions; he had got the feel of the boat and the sea, and it was just more sensible for the two of us to soldier on through the night than for each guy to come in and start all over again from scratch.

  Throughout the previous hour, out of desperation, I had been experimenting with the jet bucket at the stern of the boat. This is a large hood that lowers hydraulically over the jet to give you, effectively, a reverse gear. But we knew that if we lowered it partially over the jet, it would begin to dig the nose of the boat down into the sea slightly. Lowered even further though, it made all the difference, providing stability and grip in the waves. Instead of taking off wildly and slamming off the wave crests, the boat could edge her way over the face of the waves; when the bucket was dipped as she punched through the crest, it pulled the bows sharply down the other side of the wave. Our speed would drop dramatically but it held us more tightly on to the waves’ surface.

  This all took control though: to feel the different pitch of the bucket and to know at which point to apply it. We were ploughing through the swell at around 10 knots, and by trial and error we learned how the bucket could have a positive effect.

  As a wave approached, I would bring the bucket right down, forcing the bow into the sea as the wave tried to pick us up. It was working – the slamming was being reduced.

  Up until now we had been nearing a point where we knew something would give way soon. The boat would not be able to take this sort of punishment for ever. Something would go. The engine was labouring under the pounding the hull was taking from these waves. And each whine we heard made us hold our breath until it regained its momentum. But the bucket helped: we were regaining some control over the ferocity of the sea.

  This strengthened my resolve to keep helming until dawn. I seemed to have caught the rhythm and the feel of the waves. The boat was still upright and I wasn’t going to let her go now.

  My decision to helm was not about wanting to be a hero. I just didn’t want to die.

  I had only one goal in my head, and that was to pull the boat through the night and eventually into port. It wasn’t even about being the best helmsman. I wasn’t – Andy and Nige were probably better. But right there and then I had this thing under some semblance of control and my instinct said hold on.

  So I did.

  By 3 a.m., Mick and I were still firing on adrenalin in our determination to keep the RIB level. Every sinew in our exhausted bodies was reacting to the sea beneath us.

  Suddenly, though, the boat was struck by two waves simultaneously. Two converging walls of water collided over us. The Arnold and Son Explorer lurched violently to starboard and began to corkscrew. I clearly remember thinking she was going over. But she rose up again. The three bodies in the sardine tin were lifted at least 4 inches off the soaking wet thin foam covering, then landed in a heap as the boat crashed back into the water.

  Mick was literally washed off his seat, and the force of the water threw him on top of me. We both clutched at anything solid around us. In the dark, and in blind panic, I grabbed hold of the wheel again and frantically tried to guess where the next freak wave was coming from. We were like blin
d men in a boxing ring, alone and afraid, taking punches from every direction.

  Over and over again we were picked up like a feather on the swell and then dropped back to the water surface, with an impact equivalent to 7 tonnes of aluminium and fuel being dropped from the second storey of a house.

  We had no idea how long our electrical equipment could withstand the combined effects of the relentless physical battering and the regular drenching by water pouring over the boat.

  I was more frightened than I have ever been in my life, yet I have never wanted so desperately to live.

  Our forward speed was almost zero, and we still had such a long way to go. The weather was getting worse, not better, and I wondered how much longer we could stay upright.

  And what if we capsized?

  I recalled how in diver training we had been told we would be able to survive for about fifteen minutes in the waters of the North Sea. We would have much less time up here in these icy seas just south of the Arctic Circle. We knew the drill: to try to clamber to the stern of the boat, which would then be upside down. Then keep together. But if you were separated in the capsize, the bottom line was that you would be lost to the waves. You would die.

  I remember looking back at Charlie and seeing a look of terror on his face. He was ashen-white. His eyes looked a million miles away. They stared at me blankly. Empty. He didn’t even bother to spit the water away from his mouth as the spray hit him in the face. He just lay there, beyond caring.

  Nige was in the deckchair. He was holding his knife in one hand and his flares in the other. He looked deadly serious and truly scared. I looked back to the helm. I had seen all I needed to in those three brief seconds.

  Time was moving so slowly, but everything was hurtling through my head at treble speed. I suddenly saw familiar faces in the sea and the waves. I reached out to touch Mick. I just needed to know he was there.

  I was tiring. I had to be stronger.

  The only light on the boat was a dull green glow from the screen but it was enough to see what I had spotted. Glued to the edge of the console was a small, laminated photograph of Shara, holding our little Jesse; and she was smiling at me.

  I had never felt in such danger of not seeing them again. I felt sick. I stared at Jesse, my little son. It broke my heart. ‘How have I got into this situation?’ I murmured. ‘I promise you I will come home. I will see you again.’

  I started muttering even louder to myself, almost talking out loud. I was speaking to Shara. My love.

  ‘I will get this boat back safely. I will get back to you. Watch me, baby, this one last time.’

  Shara has always believed in me. She thinks I am stronger than I am. She thinks I am nicer than I am. She defends me and always takes my side. If I am annoyed with someone, so is she. If I am exhausted, she soothes me. She makes me calm when I am nervous. And I have always loved her. She’s my buddy. I would not break the promise I had made her at Heathrow.

  Together, we had the world to live for. We had a son.

  My mind raced back to that afternoon when little Jesse was born. I remember so vividly how people had warned me against watching my wife give birth: ‘It’s so animalistic,’ they said.

  It was a strange word. Yet every ounce of me wanted to be alongside her. It was our time, the biggest moment of our lives, and I knew we should be together.

  It felt as though the world was standing still. I sat there and held her as she writhed in pain. In her weakness, she somehow looked so strong, so feminine, so pretty. Not animalistic. I was witnessing so much more than the birth of a child; I was also watching the birth of a woman. Shara.

  This was my family, all I had ever dreamed of, and the two of them both looked so frail as they lay there wiped out, exhausted. We had always wanted to call him Jesse. Shara said it was after King David’s father in the Bible. King David had been quite a player. He even killed a giant called Goliath when he was only a kid. I liked the name though because it reminded me of Uncle Jesse in The Dukes of Hazzard – in dungarees, with a big white dirty beard.

  But Jesse also means ‘God’s gift’. That felt so right to us.

  As I watched them both sleep in the hospital, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of protectiveness. I would do anything for them; I would even die for them. I had never felt that before.

  And right here, in the pitch black of the storm, utterly drained, sodden and frightened, I felt as though I was being asked, ‘Could I now live for them?’

  ‘Come on, Bear, we’ll get through this,’ Mick shouted in my ear, thumping me on the back. ‘We’ve been through worse than this and come out alive. We’ll do it again. We’ll just get through this . . . then we’ll never go anywhere again!’ And he slapped me once more.

  Then Mick rummaged through the sodden food sack and pulled out another can of Red Bull. He swigged at it, then lifted my visor. I opened my mouth and tilted my head back so he could pour the liquid caffeine down my throat. It went everywhere.

  ‘Come on, Bear, you’re doing great, keep going! We can do this, buddy. Just keep going.’

  Adrenalin was still surging through our bodies as on and on, through the night, we kept shouting at each other, punching each other, encouraging each other. And somehow we kept going.

  Ever since Mick and I were eight years old, playing around in the Isle of Wight, there has been a bond between us. That bond was built through school, strengthened on the cold south-east ridge of Everest when he so nearly died; and now it was being reforged in the icy, choppy waters of the frozen North Atlantic.

  While we were fighting our own battles at the console, there were three other men on that boat, huddled in the sardine tin, desperately trying to cope with their own worlds of terror inside their heads.

  Charlie recalls:

  For ten hours or so, I was absolutely convinced I was going to die. It was not just a question of being afraid; rather, an utter conviction that I was near the end.

  It was not a question of ‘if’; it was rather a matter of ‘when’, because I really believed the boat was going to flip.

  Strangely, I had thought about this kind of near-death experience in advance. Before the expedition, I would get fit by running in the streets around my home in Manchester and, whenever I needed to motivate myself to push harder, I just imagined I had been thrown into the freezing water and I was swimming to get back to the boat. That image was very clear in my mind, and now it seemed to be about to happen, for real.

  In some ways, the thought of drowning had always sounded quite relaxing. That’s a bit morbid, I know, but the idea of being in the water, floating away, being numb to everything, thinking how nice it was not to have to worry about the bank manager – I must admit that I found that whole concept to be quite relaxing.

  However, when it came to the crunch, the human instinct for preservation did kick in. I remember deciding I really did want to do quite a lot of things before I die. I didn’t want to die here and now. I was not going to give up lightly. I was quite surprised by this. I thought of my immediate family: that kicked in, and very strongly. It was practical, not emotional. It was my decision: I didn’t want to die. I wanted to get through this.

  For me, time passed quite quickly. If you tell someone to sit in the corner, the first ten minutes go slowly, but then the hours pass quickly; and I wasn’t really aware of Bear and Mick although I could see them hitting each other and shouting at each other. When things had started getting serious, they had gone all military; they were both practical and impressive, but I was still terrified.

  Huddled beside Charlie, almost indistinguishable in a cold, wet heap, Nige shook with the cold and with his thoughts.

  He recalls:

  I understood Bear’s decision to helm through the night. He felt that was what he had to do in the circumstances, and, from my point of view, well, it meant I didn’t have to move – it was a bit of a result.

  My main concern, though, was that the boat would flip, and I was trying to plan how
I would get out of the boat from where I was lying. I imagined it would happen very quickly, and my strategy was to get myself around the back of the boat, pull the life raft out from where it was stowed and then help any of the guys who might be caught inside. We would set off our EPIRB distress signals, and call for help on the VHF radio.

  This was my plan, but, lying there in the sardine tin, I knew it would be futile. If that boat flipped, there was no doubt at all that there would have been five dead bodies in the ocean. That is for certain. We were more than 200 miles from land, and there was no sign of any other shipping in our vicinity.

  I didn’t know exactly what it would take to make the boat go over, but it felt as if it was going to go over at every wave. It was going upright, and slamming down; then we would get hit from the side. I have never wanted to be somewhere else so much. I’m not religious, but I did find myself asking for someone to help us.

  I prayed. We all prayed. We were praying for our lives.

  And, somehow, we kept the boat upright.

  Dawn seemed never to arrive. It was the blackest night I had ever seen. Mick and I would imagine the dawn ahead of us, to the east. We would then be convinced we could see it. But it was always an illusion; or worse, another wall of white water.

  We knew that dawn would bring the light with it, and that would mean we would be able to read the seas once more.

  Finally, though, the night sky began to brighten in the east. Together, shoulder to shoulder, Mick and I watched as dawn crept slowly over the distant horizon. The wind was just as strong, and the waves were just as menacing; we were still in danger, but we knew that our greatest enemy, the darkness, was disappearing before us.

  My eyes settled on one of the laminated sayings stuck around the boat. It had been placed on the console just beside the photograph of Shara and Jesse and read, ‘Each day ends so that a new beginning can be made.’