Iced In

by Chris Turney

  And if that doesn’t happen, there’s also the Fedorov.

  We do have options.

  As long as those bloody icebergs stay put.

  Greg comes up to the bridge and hands me a sheet of paper. “Chris, check this out.”

  It’s an email from the Chinese.

  “They are stuck after all. It’s exactly what we feared.”

  There it is. The Chinese look like they’re trapped. They kindly offered to remain on station but are now in trouble themselves. Two ships now need help. Two ships surrounded by icebergs. The situation has gone from bad and jumped straight to bloody terrible. If only the wind would change direction.

  * * *

  The men from the Endurance spent six months at Patience Camp, six very long months waiting. As they drifted north, the conditions became warmer. Rain, fog, and wet snow became the norm. It was a miserable period. Most of the men suffered from cabin fever, cooped up in their tents for large stretches of time. During most of March, Worsley became depressed and withdrew from everyone, including Shackleton. Arguments would break out, often about something Orde-Lees had said or done. Many had bad dreams, with Hurley describing how he tried to “drown multicoloured hounds . . . My endeavours were not fraught with great success, for the Dachshunds, after assuming the form of seals, eyed me complacently with gummy eyes.” They needed a change in the wind to break up the ice and allow them to sail for land on the salvaged lifeboats. If not, there was a danger the ice could swing south and they would be trapped for another winter. The wind became a major point of conversation. James wrote at this time:

  We also suffer from “Anemomania. ” This disease may be exhibited in two forms, either one is morbidly anxious about the wind direction and gibbers continually about it, or else a sort of lunacy is produced by listening to other Anemomaniacs.

  With their northward drift, cracks started to form around the camp, revealing small leads of water that promised future escape. In case the call came to break camp urgently, the men would often sleep in their day clothes, only taking off their socks to dry. In early March, they saw the ice rise and fall. It was the first time the men had felt the sea in over a year. They must be close to open water.

  Shackleton used this time to plan for every contingency, to prepare for the worst. The expedition was split in two watches, so half the men were always on lookout. They needed to be alert for anything. One day, Worsley described how two icebergs suddenly set a path toward the camp, ploughing through the pack. Shackleton ordered the men to be ready to move, but destruction seemed inevitable:

  For miles behind them there was a wake of chaos, floe piled on floe and crashing in all directions . . . Suddenly, some freak or eddy of the current—or was it some greater Power?—swept the bergs off on to a new line.

  The danger passed . . . at least for the moment. This was just one of the myriad risks the expedition faced every day.

  At eleven o’clock in the morning, 9 April 1916, a crack dramatically appeared through the middle of the camp. The men suddenly found the sea ice below their tents was breaking up to reveal a large lead of water. Here was their chance, an opportunity to get away before winter choked the area with ice once again. Shackleton wrote: “Our home was being shattered under our feet and we had a sense of loss and incompleteness hard to describe.” But it was time to go. It was just sixty miles to the nearest land, Elephant Island, at the very tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Mixing experience and temperament, Shackleton assigned the men to one of three boats that would take them to safety.

  At sea, the men fought new hazards. They had to contend with storms and ice floes that threatened to crush them at a moment’s notice alongside the very real risk of being eaten: killer whales followed the boats, blowing “blood-curdling blasts.” The men were fearful that a slight nudge would toss them into the sea. Sleeping on and off nearby floes, the men of the Endurance slowly worked their way into open water. After six terrible days, they reached Elephant Island. The twenty-eight men were frostbitten, hungry and completely and utterly spent. They had been in the ice for an extraordinary 497 days. Some staggered around the shingle beach, struggling to find their balance. Others lay on the beach and joyfully dropped stones on themselves.

  It may have been one of the most desolate spots on the planet, but they had reached solid ground.

  * * *

  I sit bolt upright, wide awake.

  Annette is sleeping next to me. I take a deep breath, but nothing seems to have changed. The ship is silent. We’re not tilting. We’re okay.

  I don’t normally sleep well in the Antarctic. It’s something to do with the twenty-four-hour light, but this time around it’s been so much worse. Different scenarios are constantly flickering through my mind, most of them not good. I’m hardly getting any sleep, and it’s running me ragged.

  It’s five in the morning, New Year’s Eve. Eight days trapped.

  No point in lying around.

  I rub my face wearily and gingerly get out of bed, careful not to disturb Annette.

  I drag on my clothes and climb the steps to the bridge as I’ve done every day on this expedition. In the bridge, I check the logbook. Not a lot to report. The Aurora Australis hasn’t made any progress toward us and the monitor shows the Xue Long remains obstinately immobile. I zip up my jacket, throw on my hat, and step outside.

  It’s colder this morning, and the deck has turned treacherously icy. I walk with exaggerated care. The last thing I need now is to break my bloody leg.

  The satellite connection works straight away. I load the video diaries from Erik and Janet up onto YouTube and check the viewing figures on the others; Terry’s entry from yesterday already has a couple of thousand views. It looks like Alok’s idea has really worked, and it’s noticeably helping morale on board.

  I download the weather forecast. Conditions may be improving sooner rather than later. Sunny, clear skies are predicted for 2 January. If so, a helicopter flight might be possible. It looks like the winds could change as well.

  Could the winds really change? That would be fantastic. With just a couple of hours of westerly winds the Shokalskiy, Xue Long, and Aurora Australis might get out of here. It would all be just a bad dream.

  I keep hold of this beautiful idea for a precious moment.

  After breakfast, we talk logistics in my cabin. Chris is looking better, rested after a good night’s sleep. Ben Maddison, well, Ben looks like he always does: completely relaxed and comfortable with everything that’s happening. Even Greg and Nikki are smiling.

  Unfortunately, in carrying out Chris’s suggestion to approach from the southeast, the Aurora Australis met with thick ice and has had to retreat. The weather may be crap at the moment, but the forecast has suddenly brought the helicopter evacuation forward. If so, we need to organize. We’ll need a landing area, preferably near the ship—the closer the better. We might be getting more familiar with our surroundings, but it remains dangerous outside and after all the recent warm weather we’ve had, who knows how solid it is underfoot.

  “We checked out the exercise floe just off the starboard side and it’s a perfect place to land,” said Ben. “We can put the helipad there.”

  “What can we use for marking out the area?” I ask. Putting a chopper down on a white surface is notoriously dangerous. With no real contrast, it would be all too easy to come in too close and plough straight into the snow and ice. Trying to estimate distance in these conditions is not something you want to do without help.

  “Milo,” Nikki replied with a broad smile. “We have tins of the stuff and hardly anyone’s touched it.”

  A genius idea. When I saw all the malt chocolate powdered drink being loaded in Bluff, I was mystified about what we were going to do with it. Now it’s found a purpose.

  Milo it is.

  “We’ll need to prepare the helipad,” Ben said. “How about after lunch?”

  There are nods of agreement. We’ll use the whole team. It will be good to get everyo
ne off the ship and take some exercise. We’re going to have to flatten a very large area. There’ll be lots of linking arms and stomping back and forth. Knowing Ben, there’ll be singing. It should be a lot of fun. Shackleton would have approved, I’m sure.

  “Great,” says Nikki. “I’ll go and let everyone know.”

  A moment later, her cheerful voice comes out over the ship’s tannoy, announcing our plan for the helipad. Everyone is to be at the gangway at two o’clock, fully kitted up.

  “But before lunch,” she continues, “today’s movie showing in the lecture room is the ABBA sensation Mamma Mia!”

  I hear a roar of approval downstairs.

  We really do need to get out of here.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Escape from the Ice

  “Ten, nine, eight . . .”

  We’re on countdown.

  “Five, four, three, two, one . . .”

  It’s 2014. A new year. The Shokalskiy’s horn blasts three times in celebration, its sound carried away by the Antarctic wind. No one has reached us; no one can hear us.

  Cheek by jowl in the lounge, everyone is here. We’ve had moments of doubt, of uncertainty, but tonight is about celebrating hope and a new start. Whatever lies outside, whatever is still to come, we’ve made it this far together. Our isolation and fears momentarily put aside, it’s time for heartfelt hugs and cheers. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

  This afternoon was typical of what this remarkable team are capable of. Under heavy cloud, fifty men and women, young and old, linked arms and, under Ben Maddison’s watchful eye, happily paraded outside. Singing “Auld Lang Syne,” they stomped snow as if their lives depended on it, Annette in the middle, with Kerry and Cara, Robert with Sean. When someone fell over, they were helped to their feet, accompanied by laughter and cheering. And when the bedraggled line reached the edge of the area, Ben would get it back in some sort of order, turn them around and off they would go again. In an hour, the helipad was done, as flat and compact as you could hope for. Returning to the ship, all that remained to be done was watch from the decks, clutching steaming mugs of tea and coffee as Graeme and Ziggy marked out the landing area with our vast supply of Milo, and in a final flourish, an enormous “H.” If the helicopter does come, we’ll be ready.

  I’ve no idea what the next days will bring, but nothing is going to get the better of us. The men on the Endurance knew all about the value of celebrations. New Year’s Eve couldn’t have come at a better time. After eight days being trapped, it’s become a target, something to hold on to, keeping everyone’s mind off the uncertainty.

  As the music cranks up, I look at my wonderful family. We’ve been through one of the most grueling experiences imaginable. It would have broken many people, but my kids have taken it in their stride without missing a beat. I don’t know where they get it from; it’s certainly not from me. Annette has been a tower of strength to us all while Cara has a new-found confidence and Robert has become a man, all in just over three weeks. I’m very proud and very grateful.

  Tomorrow is another day, but I know we’ll always have one another.

  * * *

  Elephant Island wasn’t the safe haven it first appeared to the men of the Endurance. Ship wreckage lay strewn along the back of the rocky beach, testament to a high-water tide, something that could happen at any moment with a strong north-easterly wind. They had to move, but Shackleton let the men get some much-needed sleep before wearily rowing along the sheer-cliffed coast to find a more protected area. Seven miles away they discovered a spit of land that sat far above the high-water mark. As Shackleton remarked, their new home “was by no means an ideal camping-ground; it was rough, bleak and inhospitable—just an acre or two of rock and shingle, with the sea foaming around it except where the snow-slope, running up to a glacier, formed the landward boundary.” Covered in guano, the place stank, but at least it meant there was a plentiful supply of local wildlife to supplement the expedition’s meagre rations. Two of the boats were immediately upturned to make a shelter. They were safe . . . for now.

  The twenty-eight men had made it to land, but they faced a distressing fact: There was almost no chance of rescue if they all stayed. It was mid-April. They were over a hundred miles from the nearest whaling area, and the end of the hunting season was fast approaching. Even with the local wildlife, they didn’t have enough food to survive indefinitely, and with the approach of winter, sea ice was threatening to surround the island. They had to get help, and fast. It was then that Shackleton made one of the most courageous decisions of his life. A small group would have to sail to South Georgia, the very island where the expedition had set out from. The journey would be an epic in its own right. Eight hundred miles across the stormiest seas on the planet. The men were exhausted, the boats completely unsuitable, and if their navigation was off by only the slightest degree, they would miss the island and disappear into the South Atlantic, never to be seen again.

  For the trip, Shackleton chose the James Caird. Twenty-three feet long and six feet across, she was the largest of the three boats and capable of taking six men with thirty days of supplies. The men would need to be able to sail, navigate, cook and make repairs on the go, all in a space no larger than a small hatchback. Shackleton needed experienced hands, but he was also acutely aware that some couldn’t be trusted to behave in his absence; left to their own devices they could easily poison the minds of those left behind, threatening the team’s morale and ultimately survival. To this end, Worsley, Crean, sailor Timothy McCarthy, and malcontents McNeish and John Vincent were chosen to go with him. Wild was given leadership on Elephant Island, with strict instructions that if they were not back by spring, he should take one of the other boats and attempt to reach Deception Island some 180 miles into the prevailing winds, where supplies and help might be available.

  Although McNeish had pessimistic tendencies, he was a fine carpenter, and Shackleton immediately set him to work improving the James Caird as best he could. Cannibalising wood from the other boats, McNeish went about raising the gunwales of the small boat and covering the top with tent cloth to keep out the worst of the elements. For caulking the planks, the Scottish carpenter used anything he could lay his hands on: flour, seal’s blood, paint, scarf wool. Anything. The result was a boat as watertight as it could be, with space inside for three men to sleep. They were ready to go. The men were rowed out to the waiting boat, but in the heavy surf on the beach, McNeish and Vincent were tossed out. Coming ashore, swearing and sodden, Vincent refused point-blank to change his clothes. The men later discovered he was hoarding some of the gold sovereigns so publicly discarded by Shackleton months before. It was a good job he was leaving.

  In a moderate westerly wind, the James Caird left on 24 April with the six men aboard, cheered on from Elephant Island. She was “soon lost to sight on the great heaving ocean,” wrote Orde-Lees, “as she dipped into the trough of each wave, she soon disappeared, sail and all.” Shackleton immediately set about establishing a schedule: three men on, three men off, rotating every four hours. Of the men on duty, one had to look after the sails, another the tiller and a third bailed “for all he was worth.” The men fought waves and storms, in full knowledge that if they failed they would also, in all likelihood, be condemning the men on Elephant Island to death. The ice that formed on the boat became so thick during the voyage that it threatened to capsize the craft, forcing the men “in turns to crawl out with an axe and chop off the ice . . . after four or five minutes—‘fed up’ or frostbitten—[they] slid back.” The weather was so bad, Worsley only managed to get a sighting of the sun four times.

  In the early hours of 6 May, Shackleton called the men’s attention to a clearing in the sky. His excitement quickly changed to horror when he realized the “brightening” sky was in fact the crest of an enormous wave. “During twenty-six years’ experience of the ocean in all its moods I had not encountered a wave so gigantic,” wrote Shackleton later. “It was a mighty upheav
al of the ocean, a thing quite apart from the big white-capped seas that had been our tireless enemies for many days. I shouted, ‘For God’s sake, hold on! It’s got us!’ . . . We felt our boat lifted and flung forward like a cork in breaking surf.” The crew bailed for their lives, and the small craft somehow stayed afloat.

  Dog-tired, the men sailed on, hoping against hope that Worsley’s dead reckoning was right. Were they on the correct course? Or had they already sailed past South Georgia? Fifteen days after they’d left Elephant Island, seaweed and seabirds appeared. Hope was renewed. They were close, and they knew it. On the afternoon of 8 May, McCarthy suddenly cried, “Land oh!” The men looked, and “there, right ahead, through a rift in the flying scud, our glad but salt-blurred eyes saw a towering black crag, with a lacework of snow around its flanks. One glimpse and it was hidden again.” With teamwork that no doubt surprised McNeish and Vincent, they had made the greatest ever journey in a small boat, just as Shackleton said they would.

  * * *

  Up on deck it’s warm, 34F and rising.

  It’s a perfect day.

  Almost too perfect.

  I undo my jacket and look off the starboard side. Never still, the icescape around the Shokalskiy is changing again. Under a beautifully intense blue sky, everywhere seems to be melting. What had been rough, sharp-edged blocks of chaotically thrown ice are now being softened, moulded into weird and wonderful shapes. Floes are splitting, and water is starting to pond on the surface. And with the break-up of the pack comes the sobering risk that the nearby icebergs may resume their travels. I nervously look toward the flotilla off the rear of the ship. If they have shifted, it’s nothing substantial.