Soon after spirits were raised by, of all things, a howling gale. Although the winds roared to 70 mph, the men were delighted that it was a southwesterly wind which blew them further and further northwards towards open seas.
Shackleton said it was the ‘most cheerful good fortune for a year’ and estimated that the castaways were no more than 170 miles (270 km) from Paulet Island, a tiny volcanic outcrop little more than a mile in diameter. In six windswept days they covered 84 miles (135 km). But, crucially, there was no open water and therefore no hope of launching the boats. They were still imprisoned on their floating island of ice.
In early February, Crean and Macklin led teams across the ice to recover any remaining items of value from Ocean Camp, which was only about 7 miles away. They returned with some tinned fish, beef cubes and tobacco, which brought a welcome relief for the men whose digestion was struggling with the unrelenting diet of meat. It was causing horrid constipation and thunderous flatulence and Crean was among the men who suffered most. Worsley wrote:
‘A number of our stomachs were rebelling against the excessive meat diet. I expect we will soon get used to it but I think it was better for us if we cooked some blubber with it. Personally I suffer from, to put it mildly, pronounced flatulence, which might almost be described as squeak gut.’5
At the same time, Wild returned with eighteen men to recover the other cutter, Stancomb Wills. Worsley, who had long argued that all three boats would be needed when they finally encountered open water, was delighted. He insisted that it would be ‘a practical impossibility’ to bring 28 men out of Antarctica in only two boats.
The following day, Crean, Worsley and Macklin set out for another foraging trip to Ocean Camp and found their path blocked by leads of open water. The trip was abandoned and it was apparent that they had only managed to recover the Stancomb Wills at the last possible moment. Had they left 24 hours later, the 28 men would have faced the boat journey crammed into only two small boats.
As the month of February wore on, the supplies of food began to dwindle and the men began scrabbling about in the waste dumps to retrieve scraps of seal or blubber for cooking. The last of the cheese – a one-inch cube apiece – was served out in the middle of the month. Later some Adelie penguins were caught and on 29 February – 1916 was a leap year – the hungry men drank their final cup of hot cocoa. Most of the tea was gone and the only drink soon would be powdered milk, laced with sugar.
On one occasion, a massive sea-leopard climbed onto the ice and tried to attack one of the men. Wild shot the beast and after cutting it open, found several undigested fish in its stomach. It was the only ‘fresh’ fish they managed to catch on their long drift.
They were still hungry, however, and the prospect of once again dragging the boats across the ice was a miserable one. In addition, they were short of exercise after idly sitting around on the drifting ice floe for many months and lacked the fitness and strength for the task. The only good news was that, despite their discomfort, there was no sign of scurvy, thanks to the fresh supplies of meat.
The castaways were now less than 100 miles (160 km) from Paulet Island and there was some hope that the ordeal was finally nearing an end. It was an end that could not come soon enough for many of the trapped men. Spirits were now deteriorating and the mood had changed. Meals were getting smaller, the daily servings of hoosh growing noticeably weaker. Hot drinks were rationed to one a day.
There was an air of depression about the camp, despite the constant optimism conveyed by Shackleton. The patience at Patience Camp was wearing thin.
On 11 March hopes were again briefly raised when the men felt a distinct movement of the pack and dark-coloured leads of open water began to appear in the distance. The boats, which had been strengthened and improved over the past few months, were made ready for launching. One particularly important task was to ensure that the boats were seaworthy, which meant an unusual piece of improvisation to block any leaks between the seams of the little vessels. To caulk and waterproof the seams, the men replaced the traditional pitch and oakum with seals’ blood.
There was some cheer when, on 23 March, they made a definite sighting of land far off to the west, the first for five months. Again, however, their hopes were dashed. The land, probably Joinville Island at the northern tip of Graham Land, was an estimated 57 miles (91 km) away. It meant that Paulet Island, their intended destination, was now behind them to the south. Like a ship in the night, they had passed their hoped-for refuge.
In normal conditions it was probably no more than 24 or 48 hours’ sailing to Joinville, the largest of the three small islands at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. But the ice was too broken and thin to march across and, equally, far too dangerous for their tiny boats. They had to watch helplessly as their floe slowly drifted northwards and the land receded away in the distance.
The sight of Joinville Island, instead of cheering the men, only confirmed the gravity of their plight, for they were now drifting past known solid ground and out into the enormous seas of the fearsome Drake Passage between the Weddell and Southern Ocean. South Georgia, over 900 miles (1,500 km) to the northeast, was probably the ideal destination. But in their weakened, demoralised condition, there was no realistic prospect of all 28 men surviving a lengthy journey in open boats across the world’s most violent and dangerous stretch of water.
Instead, attention was focused on the much closer Elephant Island or Clarence Island, two small uninhabited dots of inhospitable rocks and mountains in the vast area of water that lay ahead.
Finding either island in the enormous expanses of water alone would be a massive task calling for a supreme act of navigation. But if they missed the islands, they were doomed. After Clarence or Elephant Islands, the nearest major landfall was Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America about 500 miles (800 km) to the north across the Drake Passage. But to reach South America, the little boats would have the improbable task of rowing or sailing against the powerful currents and winds which whip up the Drake Passage into the most fearsome expanse of water on earth. More likely was that if they missed Clarence or Elephant Islands, the men would drift into the vast uninhabited expanses of the South Atlantic.
While the men contemplated their fate, winter began to close in. It was late March, temperatures were dropping and the light was fading. More importantly, the supplies of seal and penguin were disappearing and the food shortage was becoming critical.
On 30 March the last remaining dogs and Crean’s last pup were shot, a sorry occasion for many. But, without hesitation, the animals were immediately cut up and fried before being served to the hungry men who, more than anything else, were relieved for the welcome change of diet. With a flourish Crean delivered a dog steak to Shackleton in his tent, like a Master Chef serving his favoured guests at their table in a high-class restaurant.
The loss of the dogs also signalled the inevitable fact that they would not be marching across the broken ice hauling the boats to Graham Land. Shackleton realised how the men’s condition had deteriorated and he knew that many were simply not up to weeks of heavy man-hauling the boats across the icy terrain. Instead they would be sailing or rowing to safety, which meant waiting for the drift to carry them northwards until they reached open water.
The ice floe, once about one mile across, had been whittled away by the constant weathering and battering on their long drift. It had now shrunk to only 120 yards (110 m) at its widest and was only large enough for their filthy, slushy home, Patience Camp.
But, frustratingly, the pack refused to budge open. All day and night the men kept a constant vigil, eager to detect even a slight sign of sea swell which would signal free-flowing water and an end to their captivity.
Endurance: The drift of the Endurance through the Weddell Sea and the expedition’s subsequent journeys to Elephant Island and South Georgia.
Over the following days they picked up the crucial signals for which they had been longing. The sea was taking o
ver from the ice, the thin dark grey lines of open water getting larger by day and the floes all around noticeably melting. Despite adverse northerly winds that should have pushed them back to the south, they were still drifting slowly northwards, which indicated that the currents had taken control. Birds could be seen flying overhead, an encouraging signal that land was nearby.
On 7 April the peaks of Clarence Island, the smaller of the two islands, could be sighted some 60 miles (96 km) to the north. A little later the winds picked up, driving their slowly disintegrating floe against other larger chunks of floating ice. The constant battering of their vulnerable floating home spelt disaster for the castaways and it became increasingly apparent that the time for launching the boats had arrived – whether they liked it or not!
On Sunday 9 April, the men ate a hearty breakfast and the tents were taken down. Everything was poised to go. All that was required was open water.
By lunchtime their prayers were answered as sizeable leads of open water began to emerge alongside and at 1 p.m. the order came to launch the boats. The Dudley Docker and Stancomb Wills, packed with food and equipment, were the first into the water, where a small skeleton crew held them steady while the bulk of the party man-handled the heavier James Caird into the sea.
Worsley’s log recorded their position as 61° 56′ S, 53° 56′ W. The 28 men had spent almost six months on their fragile ice floe and drifted close to 2,000 miles (3,220 km) in a huge semi-circle around the Weddell Sea since Endurance was beset fifteen months earlier.
Miraculously, there had been no casualties. But as they pushed their boats into the bitterly cold, ice-strewn water the most hazardous part of their ordeal was ahead of them.
18
Launch the boats!
The three lifeboats pulled away from Patience Camp on 9 April 1916, the floe by now a small slushy little island of ice littered with the debris of humans who had spent almost six months attempting to make life as palatable as they could in the frozen wilderness. As they rowed, the ice around them began to close in again, shutting off lanes of open water and once again threatening their escape.
Some of the men rowed while others tried to push away great lumps of ice which drifted threateningly close to their vulnerable little vessels. It was soon clear that the men were dreadfully unfit and not up to the task ahead. The months of idleness at Patience Camp, coupled with the inadequate diet, had left them in no fit state for the hard work of rowing. At the same time, it was apparent that in raising the gunwales of the Caird and Docker, McNeish had inadvertently made them significantly more difficult to row.
But, to their profound relief, the little cavalcade of boats made some progress. The ice seemed to be receding and the amount of open, navigable water increased all the time. Moreover, although the men found the pulling very hard, the fatigue was to some extent offset by the warmth being generated by the exertion.
The James Caird, the largest and safest of the three, was in the lead. The boat, which was built in London to Worsley’s specifications, was 22 ft 6 ins (7 m) long with a 6 ft (1.9 m) beam. Shackleton was in charge and he took with him another ten men, including Wild, McNeish, Hurley and Hussey. Next came the Dudley Docker, a 22-ft cutter built in Norway. There were nine men on board, led by Worsley and including Cheetham, Macklin and Marston.
Bringing up the rear was the Stancomb Wills, another cutter built in Norway, which was 20 ft 8 ins (6.3 m) long. Her beam was only 5 ft 6 ins (1.6 m) and she was barely 2 ft 3½ ins (0.7 m) from the inside of the keel to the top of the gunwale. Crammed inside her were eight desperate men, including Crean at the tiller.
In charge, nominally, was Hubert Hudson, navigating officer of Endurance. However, Hudson had struggled with niggling illnesses and the pressure of confinement on the ice floe, and was now heading for a nervous breakdown. Before the hazardous journey would finish, responsibility for the Wills would pass to the experienced hands of Tom Crean.
The imperturbable Irishman once again faced a crisis with equanimity and calmly rose to the occasion. As the difficulties worsened, he simply took control. It was, in many ways, similar to what he had done on the drifting ice floe to help rescue Bowers and Cherry-Garrard in 1911 and more recently, his heroic solo march to save the life of Teddy Evans in 1912. The difference was that previously Crean had displayed great courage by setting out alone to save other men. This time he was the leader, the skipper in charge of a tiny lifeboat struggling against the odds to combat the labyrinth of broken ice and ensure the safety of the seven other men in his charge.
What was particularly impressive, once again, was Crean’s composure and mental toughness. His physical strength was, as ever, readily apparent. But at moments of great stress, it was his capacity to remain calm, think clearly and obey orders that served him. While some of the men in the little boat struggled to cope with the strain, Crean stood out like a beacon. Shackleton, who possessed a masterful ability to judge and direct people, could not have chosen a better person to take the helm of the Stancomb Wills on the hazardous journey.
Crean’s seamanship was also to the fore as the little craft pulled away from their icy home. Hurley, who was in the Caird alongside Shackleton, remembered that the little flotilla was struck by an ‘ice-laden surge’ which threatened to capsize the more vulnerable Wills. He recalled:
‘One of these reached to within a few yards of the Stancomb Wills which was bringing up the rear end; disaster was only averted by the greatest exertion of her crew and Crean’s skilful piloting.’1
As darkness closed in, the men had rowed a total of 7 miles (11 km), an extraordinary achievement in the circumstances. Rowing in the dark was far too dangerous even to contemplate with so many icebergs blocking their path. Therefore, it was decided to tie up the three boats alongside a lengthy floe which, as luck would have it, contained a seal. The boats were hauled onto the ice and the seal made a welcome hot meal of fresh meat for the tired men.
By 8 p.m. the men, except two on watch, were into their sleeping bags. But at around 11 p.m. they felt the swell of the rolling sea beneath them and new disaster threatened. The floe suddenly lifted and cracked. The crack ran straight through one of the tents where some men were sleeping and they heard a splash as one of the party tumbled into the freezing black water. Shackleton rushed forward to see a frantic wriggling shape, trapped inside the sleeping bag and doomed to drown. In an instant he thrust a powerful arm in the direction of the writhing mass and hauled the man and sleeping bag back onto the ice. A second later the two halves of the broken floe crunched together. The wriggling man was Ernie Holness, a tough Hull trawlerman, whose sole concern was that he had lost his tobacco.
There were no dry clothes for Holness so volunteers marched him up and down the ice floe in the darkness to prevent him freezing to death in temperatures which had dropped to –12 °F (–24 °C). Throughout the night, the men could hear the crackling of his frozen clothing which sounded like a suit of clanking armour as he walked stiffly back and forth, grumbling about his lost ‘baccy’.
All the men were cold, of course, and the incident with Holness had reminded them of their vulnerability. Few slept easily for the remainder of the night.
The party was up at 5 a.m. with the first hint of light. But the news was not good. Ice floes had moved in during the night, threatening to trap them once again. Nor was there any sign of Clarence or Elephant Islands. Worsley reckoned the distance was between 30 and 40 miles (48–64 km). Three hours later, to the relief of all, the pack began to disperse and once again the boats were launched.
It was another fraught day of heavy pulling on the oars while at the same time, the men had to keep constant vigilance against the threat of being struck by a passing floe. The men were exhausted, freezing, wet and hungry. The boats were heavily overladen and moved sluggishly through the choppy seas, while the men continually struggled for an inch of comfortable space among the packing cases and supplies which were strewn about their feet. They were continually wet from
the spray, which frequently froze to their clothing and encased them.
To add to their woes, many of the party were struck by diarrhoea from the uncooked dog pemmican they had been forced to eat. Relieving themselves was a dreadful ordeal. It meant dangling their rump over the side of the heaving, swaying boat and exposing their most tender parts to a cold drenching from the breaking sea and painful frostbite where they would least want it to strike.
The Wills, whose gunwales had not been raised by McNeish, was undoubtedly the most exposed to the lumpy seas. Waves constantly poured over the sides and the weary men were occasionally up to their knees in the freezing water, though some reckoned that the sea water was warmer than the air. At the same time, the continuous salty spray left the makeshift canvas covering over the Wills smothered in a screen of ice, weighing her down even further into the sea. At regular intervals, men had to risk their lives by clambering forward in the rolling seas to chip away at the accumulations of ice.
Blackborrow, the stowaway, was developing severe frostbite in his toes because his leather boots offered no protection against the wet and Hudson had developed a mysterious and debilitating pain in his buttocks which was increasing his feelings of woe. Several others were showing emotional strain and the withering effects of exposure.
An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor Page 24