Shackleton had by now made his final selection of the six-man party for the historic crossing of the Continent. It was to be Shackleton, Wild, Macklin, Hurley, Marston and Tom Crean. In contrast to Scott’s secrecy over the final polar party and poorly considered last-minute choices, Shackleton was prepared to name his men before setting out, thus avoiding any disputes and disappointments when the expedition was under way.
Shackleton was a supreme optimist, which he demonstrated by proposing to cover the 1,800 miles (3,000 km) across the largely unknown Continent in only 100 days – a staggering performance for someone who was no expert at driving dogs. Amundsen had taken 99 days to cover much the same distance to and from the South Pole, but Amundsen and his companions were experts and experienced at both ski and dogs.
Wild was to be Shackleton’s deputy on the expedition and another Discovery veteran, Alf Cheetham, was third officer. Captain of the ship was Frank Worsley, a tough Anglo-New Zealander widely known as ‘skipper’, who joined up in strange circumstances. He claimed to have dreamt one night that Burlington Street in central London was blocked with ice and he was navigating a ship along the thoroughfare. Next morning he went along to Burlington Street and found the offices of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition and he was signed up after meeting Shackleton for only a few minutes.
In another bizarre episode, Shackleton decided to take a young medical student, Leonard Hussey, because ‘I thought you looked funny’. Also on board was Frank Hurley, an adventurous photographer from Australia who had previously been to Antarctica with Mawson. The rest of the Endurance team included a crew of officers and hardened seamen, plus a mixture of doctors, biologists, geologists and other scientists. Shackleton, to one and all, was known as ‘The Boss’.
Shackleton had already found his two ships. He bought the 350-ton Norwegian polar vessel, Polaris, and renamed her Endurance. She was destined for the main chunk of the expedition, crossing the largely unmapped Weddell Sea and dropping the trans-continental party somewhere on the Antarctic coast near Vahsel Bay. He had arranged with the Australian, Mawson, to take over the specialist polar ship, Aurora, for the Ross Sea party at Cape Evans. The Ross Sea party was to be led by Mackintosh and included Wild’s brother, Ernest, the Antarctic veteran, Ernest Joyce, and a blend of scientists, engineers and even a padre, Rev Arnold Spencer-Smith who would go as photographer.
As ever, Shackleton’s biggest problem was raising money. The Government had agreed to advance £10,000, which left about £40,000 (today: £3,300,000) to be raised from a variety of wealthy private donors. Typical of the supporters were the industrialist, Dudley Docker, who gave £10,000 and Janet Stancomb-Wills, the rich adopted daughter of a tobacco millionaire. The biggest contribution came from Sir James Caird, a jute manufacturer and philanthropist from Dundee, who generously gave Shackleton £24,000 (today: over £1,900,000), almost single-handedly ensuring that the expedition would go ahead.
The Endurance, specially built in Norway as an ice ship, was brought to London in June and berthed at Millwall Docks, Isle of Dogs. Work began to load the mountain of stores and equipment, including a wooden hut which would serve as a base camp on the Weddell Sea side of the Continent.
There was a constant trickle of curious visitors, eager to catch a glimpse of the explorers. On 16 July, the Dowager Queen Alexandra came on board, as she had done on the eve of the departure of both Discovery and Terra Nova. She later gave Shackleton a bible, with her handwritten message inscribed on the flyleaf. Worsley said the royal party stayed for an hour, taking their own photographs and showing ‘a huge interest in everything’.
Crean, as second officer, was introduced to the glittering array of guests, who included Princess Victoria and the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia, and the formidable Lord ‘Jackie’ Fisher, Admiral of the Fleet. One of the party’s doctors, Alexander Macklin, would later recall a humorous moment when the tall, burly Irishman was being introduced to the refined, well-heeled dignitaries. Macklin remembered a lady in Queen Alexandra’s entourage:
‘… laying a small delicate finger on Crean’s massive chest opposite [a] white ribbon, asked “And what might that be for?” Tom replied, “That is the Polar Medal.” “O,” said the lady, “I thought it was for innocence.”
One had to be familiar with Tom’s hard bitten dial to really appreciate this piece of irony.’4
But in the midst of the preparations, the shadow of the coming war was growing by the day. The heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Ferdinand, had been assassinated at Sarajevo on 28 June and the relentless countdown to the Great War had begun.
On 1 August, Endurance moved out of her berth at Millwall Docks and into the Thames; there was little of the celebrations which had seen Discovery and Terra Nova away from English shores. Attention was focused on the worsening diplomatic situation and the growing prospect of war with Germany. This time there was a small crowd and a solitary piper to wish the men bon voyage. In deference to Shackleton, Crean and the other Irishmen onboard, the Scottish piper thoughtfully played ‘The Wearing O’ the Green’.
The low-key send-off was no surprise given the deteriorating political climate, which was getting worse by the day. The world was moving inexorably towards war and on 1 August the final pieces of the macabre jigsaw were moved into place as Germany declared war on Russia. It drew Britain closer to the brink and many people felt that the expedition would have to be abandoned.
However, the ship sailed down the Thames to Margate on the north Kent coast where Shackleton called the entire party together and said each man was free to leave and join the war effort if he chose. Several men accepted the offer and immediately left to enlist. He then telegraphed the Admiralty offering to place the ship and its provisions at the military’s disposal. Within an hour, the First Lord, Winston Churchill, had telegraphed a laconic one-word reply:
‘Proceed.’5
On 4 August, Endurance sailed round the southern coast of England to Eastbourne where Shackleton disembarked and hurried to London to meet the King. Events were moving apace and Britain had now moved one step from war by giving the Germans an ultimatum to respect the neutrality of Belgium. Despite the mounting crisis, King George V saw Shackleton for 25 minutes, gave him a Union Jack and urged him to go South. At 11 p.m. on 4 August the ultimatum expired and the First World War had started.
Endurance went first to Plymouth and then sailed for Buenos Aires in Argentina on 8 August as the first shots of war were being fired in Europe. It was a largely uneventful trip under the leadership of the easy-going Worsley, although Crean was on hand to save the life of one fortunate sailor as the Endurance crossed the Equator in mid-September.
In the exuberant celebrations of ‘crossing the line,’ several seamen became very drunk and one tried to throw himself overboard. Crean rushed forward, grabbed the man’s leg and saved him from certain death.
Shackleton remained behind in England, finalising his money-raising plans. He was still deeply concerned about the wisdom of disappearing off to Antarctica while the country was plunging into war but on 25 September he finally sailed from Liverpool and eventually caught up with Endurance in Buenos Aires in mid-October. There he weeded out the more unruly and drunken seamen, took on a few more willing hands and prepared to depart a world which, in itself, was on the brink of unimagined horror and sweeping change.
On 25 October the small British community in Buenos Aires gathered on the quayside to bid farewell to Endurance as she set forth for the island of South Georgia, the most southerly point in the British Empire. There was concern that the ship, despite its peaceful intentions, might be vulnerable to attack from one of the many German warships gathering ominously in the South Atlantic for what would later materialise into the Battle of the Falklands on 8 December. Shackleton, fortuitously, decided to abandon his original plan to visit the Falklands and instead headed for the island of South Georgia.
Endurance sailed peacefully southwards, the only diversion being t
he discovery of a stowaway on the third day out of Buenos Aires. This turned out to be a nineteen-year-old Welsh seaman, Percy Blackborrow, who was given a full-scale dressing-down by Shackleton. With a twinkle in his eye, he finally told the terrified lad that stowaways were the first to be eaten if things got tough on polar expeditions and the party ran out of food. Blackborrow’s unusual recruitment brought the Endurance party to 28.
Endurance put into Grytviken, the Norwegian whaling station on South Georgia, in early November and stayed for a month, as the party made final preparations and took on the last supplies of coal. During this time, Shackleton spent many hours talking to the seasoned Norwegian whalers, who were in the middle of their hunting season and knew more than anyone on earth about ice conditions in the Weddell Sea.
South Georgia had been a centre for adventurous and entrepreneurial seamen for well over a century. Captain Cook had made the first landing in January 1775 and named the island after King George III. But his published account two years later, which gave the first reports of South Georgia’s teeming wildlife, brought a huge influx of seal-hunters from Britain and America. By the turn of the twentieth century, after over 100 years of plunder, the seals had been hunted to near-extinction and new booty was sought. Norwegian whalers arrived and in 1904 established a base at Grytviken, South Georgia’s most attractive natural harbour. Grytviken, which means ‘Pot Cove’, was named after the sealers’ trypots found on the site.
However, what the whalers had to say was not very encouraging. The ice in the Weddell Sea, they divulged, was further north than any of the seamen could remember and they urged caution before allowing the ship to enter the hazardous, mostly uncharted waters.
But Shackleton was impatient to get under way. The expedition could wait no longer and on 5 December 1914, Endurance quietly severed links with the civilised world and pulled out of Grytviken on the first leg of the 1,000-mile (1,600-km) journey to the coast of Antarctica. The world would be a different place when they returned.
Departure was another subdued affair with none of the fanfare which saw off Discovery or Terra Nova from the New Zealand staging post of Lyttelton. There was no flag-waving, no bands to play stirring patriotic tunes and no thronging, cheering crowds to bid the party of 28 men a warm farewell. Shackleton remembered:
‘I gave the order to heave anchor at 8.45 a.m. on December 5th and the clanking of the windlass broke for us the last link with civilisation. The morning was dull and overcast, but hearts aboard Endurance were light.’6
The mail ship, carrying the last letters from home, steamed into Grytviken two hours after Endurance had disappeared across the southern horizon.
Tom Crean’s memory of home was still carried in the scapular he wore around his neck.
16
Trapped
Endurance, heavily laden with coal and equipment in the tradition of all polar vessels, pushed slowly across the Southern Ocean towards the Weddell Sea. But, as if to warn of the dangers ahead, three days out of South Georgia the ship ran into heavy pack ice at latitude 57°. This was farther to the north than anyone had expected and confirmed the fears of the experienced Norwegian whalers on the island.
It was just the first of many brushes which Endurance would soon encounter with the ice. The advice from the Norwegians to wait until the southern summer was more advanced must have weighed heavily on the minds of Shackleton and his senior lieutenants.
There followed several days as Endurance picked her way through the belt of ice, which Shackleton graphically described as a ‘gigantic and interminable jigsaw-puzzle’. The worry, however, was that the ice stretched unbroken as far as the eye could see and Vahsel Bay, the ship’s intended destination, was still nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away to the south. To reach it, Endurance would have to sail in a semi-circle around the daunting pack of ice, heading first eastwards and then turning south, deep into the Weddell Sea.
The Weddell Sea, named after the nineteenth-century Scottish naval captain, James Weddell, was a largely unexplored area as the Endurance pressed south in late 1914. Weddell had sailed into the region in 1823 and named it after King George VI. It was not until 1900 that it was finally given Weddell’s name, by which time its heavy pack ice had gained a fearsome reputation among seafarers. Even today ships rarely penetrate the waters.
By 1914, the sea had been only partially mapped by another Scottish explorer, William Speirs Bruce. It was Bruce who a decade earlier had crossed the sea and discovered Coats Land on the Antarctic continent, which he named after his industrialist backers. Ominously enough, Bruce was lucky to escape disaster when his ship, Scotia, came close to being crushed by the ice in the seas that were now Endurance’s intended destination.
Progress was painfully slow. Endurance, dodging and weaving, took twenty days to cover just 480 miles (770 km), or about one mile an hour southwards. Spirits were lifted by a typical celebration of Christmas, which included the now-traditional indulgence of a massive feast and a hearty sing-song. Hussey enlivened proceedings with an impromptu session on his banjo and there was a big demand for Irish jigs.
By early January the ship had passed 70° south and appeared to have cleared the worst of the pack by judiciously picking her way through the ice belt. Open water lay ahead and Endurance began to make good progress, eventually sighting the snow-shrouded peaks of far-off Coats Land. On 12 January they passed the land mapped by Bruce and ran close to new territory on their left which Shackleton named Caird Coast in honour of his prime benefactor, Sir James Caird, another Scottish industrialist to have part of the continent named after himself.
A little later on 15 January, Endurance came across a natural bay which had been formed by a glacier disgorging out into the sea. Worsley, the captain, wanted to seize the opportunity, land supplies and set up a base camp immediately. Shackleton disagreed. A base there would have added about 200 miles to their overland crossing and the proposed journey would be long and hazardous enough without adding to the mileage, he reasoned.
The ship pressed on, making good progress and raising hopes that Vahsel Bay would soon come into sight. A gale struck from the north on 17 and 18 January forcing the ship to seek shelter behind a mighty iceberg which towered over the ship like a floating mountain. The crew watched with considerable apprehension as smaller, highly dangerous bergs hurried past and crashed into each other in the swirling storm. Without the shelter afforded by the giant berg, Endurance would have struggled to survive the storm.
As soon as the gale abated, Worsley ploughed on, covering 20 miles (32 km) in a southwesterly direction and spirits were lifted at the prospect of making a landfall in a matter of days. However, these hopes were soon dashed when the pack ice suddenly reappeared and formed an insurmountable barrier.
The strong northerly gale had blown the ice pack against the land mass of Antarctica and Endurance was surrounded by an endless plain of ice which stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. Only a similar gale from the opposite – southerly – direction offered any hope of opening the ice and releasing them.
It had taken almost seven weeks to reach this spot and the 28 men were now resigned to sit back and wait for the winds that would open up a pathway to the safety of Vahsel Bay. In maritime terms the landing spot was almost within spitting distance, barely 80 miles (130 km) across the horizon.
The party awoke next day to find that the ice had closed all around Endurance. The ship was stuck fast. It was 19 January 1915, at latitude 76° 34′. Endurance was a tiny, lonely speck of stranded humanity in a million square miles of frozen, treacherous and unmapped seas.
There was no immediate concern on board, partly because there was still perhaps six weeks of summer weather ahead for the ship to work herself free. Experience had shown that the ice frequently broke up towards the end of the season. Discovery, for example, had been imprisoned for two years and not freed until mid-February, the equivalent of late summer in the northern hemisphere. Also, the ship was drifting slowl
y in a southwesterly direction which, if it continued, would bring them nearer to their intended destination at Vahsel Bay.
But the weather was ominously poor for the time of the year and after ten days of captivity, Shackleton ordered that the ship’s boilers, which devoured half a ton of coal a day, should be allowed to go out to save fuel. As the dull repetitive chugging of the engines died away, an eerie silence descended over the white plain, interrupted only by the idle chattering of the men and occasional yelping of the discontented dogs. Thoughts began to turn to the prospect of the ship remaining in the icy grip of the pack throughout the coming winter.
Winter routine, which men like Crean, Wild and Shackleton knew only too well, gradually took over as they began to reconcile themselves to perhaps months of captivity. Few could take their minds off their predicament. One crew member gloomily recalled that the German explorer, Wilhelm Filchner, was beset in the Weddell ice only a few years earlier and had drifted over 600 miles (1,000 km) before finding open water.
Endurance, though firmly ice-bound, was still drifting slowly in a southwesterly direction. Ironically, the ship was edging ever more slowly towards Vahsel Bay. But as the days and weeks passed by, it became necessary to make plans for the Stygian gloom of a dark, isolated winter before the sun disappeared for months. For some it would be their first time. For others like Crean, Wild and Shackleton it was all too familiar, but no less threatening.
An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor Page 21