Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance Expedition
Story 2 in the nonfiction serial, Into Danger with the Adventurers - Twelve Epic Lives of the Twentieth Century
Part 1
Ernest Shackleton felt the deck of the Endurance breaking and heard the loud cracks of snapping beams. The floes, large sheets of floating ice, were crushing the ship on all sides. Then the pressure eased for a while, but this only allowed the ship to sink a little lower as water poured into the bilges. The steam-driven pumps could no longer cope. In any case, if the cold water reached the boilers they could explode and so he ordered the men to extinguish the fires. Ernest knew the moment he had been dreading had come. At 5 p.m. on 27 October 1915 he ordered his men to abandon ship.
The men made their way onto the ice together with the dogs. Ernest took one last look through the skylight down into the engine room. The engines had broken free from the metal plates which had held them in place. They were now leaning to one side and would soon fall through the breaking hull and sink into the depths of the sea. As the deck continued to shudder, Ernest climbed over the side and joined his men.
The previous day they had carried the essential supplies and equipment onto a nearby floe. These included sledges, tents and three boats. As soon as they left the ship they pitched the tents, but as evening came the floe began to break up. Ernest ordered them to take the tents down and move everything onto a bigger floe. Once they had pitched the tents again they had a hot meal prepared by the cook using a makeshift stove. Then, except for the man on watch, they crawled into their tents to try and get some sleep.
But Ernest was too worried to sleep. He stayed outside with the watchman and paced up and down on the floe. The floe was part of a jigsaw of jumbled, heaving ice which stretched to the horizon. By now it was midnight and the temperature well below freezing. As the groaning and creaking of the remains of his ship pierced the night he thought about how they might escape.
All the men called Ernest the ‘Boss’ and they all trusted him, but Ernest knew they were in a hopeless situation. They were the only people in the Antarctic. The nearest civilization was hundreds of kilometres across the ocean. As he looked around the desolate landscape he thought of the plan he had explained to his men. There was an island in the Antarctic called Paulet Island. This island had a hut built by Swedish explorers in 1902. Although it was now unmanned, Ernest knew that emergency supplies had been stored there. His plan was to walk to the hut across the frozen sea. But they were 557 kilometres away from the island. And even if they made it, how could twenty-eight men get out of the Antarctic across the ocean without a ship? Ernest continued to pace up and down. It was then that he saw the crack in the ice spreading right through the middle of the camp.
Part 2
Sir Ernest Shackleton was born in 1874 in Kilkea, Ireland. He had one brother and eight sisters. His father was a farmer, but in 1880 he gave up the farm and moved with his family to Dublin to study medicine. In 1884 his father qualified as a doctor and they moved to England, in Sydenham, a suburb of London. Ernest was a mischievous boy. He once convinced a housemaid that there was buried treasure in the garden and got her to help him dig a hole to find it. He also fooled one of his sisters by telling her that the great Monument in London, set up to commemorate the Great Fire of London in 1666, was really set up in his honour. In 1887 he went to a school called Dulwich College. He did not enjoy school much and found the work boring. He left at the age of sixteen to join the merchant navy.
Ernest’s first ship was the Hoghton Tower, a fully rigged sailing vessel. It sailed from Liverpool around Cape Horn to Chile. It was a horrendous voyage, but it did not put Ernest off sailing. He spent the next five years on voyages to the Far East and America. In 1896 he qualified as a First Mate and later became a Master Mariner. By now he had joined the Union-Castle Line Company which sailed between Southampton and Cape Town. But then he heard about an expedition being organized by the British explorer, Captain Scott. Scott aimed to explore the region of the Ross Sea in the Antarctic in a purpose-built ship, the Discovery. Ernest was keen to go and he managed to get a place on the expedition.
The Discovery left Britain on August 1901 and arrived in the Antarctic in January 1902. The ship was moored for the winter in a place called McMurdo Sound. A large square hut was built. During the dark, Antarctic winter, the men were confined to the hut. To help keep morale up, Ernest produced a regular ‘newspaper’, the South Polar Times. In November, as summer came, Scott set out across the ice with Ernest and another expedition member, Doctor Wilson. After just over three weeks they reached 800 south. Nobody had ever been this far south before. But they had not taken enough food and their clothing was inadequate. By this time Ernest was showing the first signs of scurvy. They went further and reached 82°17', but then they turned back. Ernest was weak and unable to help pull the sledges on the return journey. Ernest was too ill to be of further use on the expedition and left the Antarctic in March 1903 on a relief ship which had taken supplies to the men. He had tears in his eyes as he left his friends behind and sailed away.
Back in Britain Ernest made money from giving talks about the Antarctic and he became the secretary of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. During this time he married and then, in January 1905, he gave up his job to try and become a member of parliament, but he was not elected. By now he had a newborn son and the next two years were difficult without a steady income. But by the beginning of 1907 Ernest had set his sights on leading his own expedition to the Antarctic. His ultimate aim would be to reach the South Pole.
Ernest acquired an old sealing vessel, called the Nimrod. The expedition left England in early August, 1907 and by the end of January they had moored at Cape Royds in the Antarctic. Within a month they had built a hut and unloaded all the stores. At the beginning of March a small party climbed the volcanic mountain, Mount Erebus. Then, after the winter had passed, a small group set off to go to the magnetic pole, reaching it by mid-January. This was one of the main achievements of the expedition. Meanwhile, Ernest had set off at the end of October with another team to try and reach the geographical South Pole. The journey was harder than they expected and their rations of food were not large enough. They got to 88°23’, 156 kilometres from the pole. But by then they were running out of food and were very weak. Ernest made the sensible decision to turn back. Although he had not reached the pole, he returned to Britain a hero. He wrote a book about the expedition and he gave talks all over Europe. Parliament gave him money to pay off debts he owed from the expedition and he was knighted by the king.
Ernest was determined to go back to the Antarctic, but in the meantime, in December 1911, the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, reached the South Pole. So Ernest decided to lead an expedition which would be the first to cross the Antarctic from one side to the other. There would be two ships. The Endurance would sail to Vahsel Bay in the Weddell Sea on the northwest of Antarctica, the continent at the heart of the Antarctic. The Aurora would go to McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea to the south. Ernest would be in the Endurance and he and his party would walk to McMurdo Sound via the South Pole. The men on the Aurora would walk partway towards the South Pole and lay food depots which Ernest and his men could use once they had passed the Pole.
Ernest began fundraising and preparing for his expedition in the summer of 1913 and within a year he was ready to depart. But on 4 August 1914 Britain declared war on Germany as the First World War began. Ernest asked the government if he and his crew should abandon the expedition and join the armed forces, but the government told him to continue. The Endurance, with twenty-eight men on aboard, left Plymouth on 8 August. By November the Endurance had reached the small British island of South Georgia in the south Atlantic. The people who lived here were mostly involved in the whaling industry. After four weeks of final preparation, the Endurance left South Georgia on 5 December and headed for the Antarctic. Later that month, the Aurora, which had been in Sydney, Australia, for a refit, would also set sail for the Antarctic with its team led by a man called Aeneas Mackintosh.
The Endurance had both a steam engine and sails. The sails were used as it headed south to save fuel. But within a day they came across dangerous icebergs and loose pack ice. Ernest ordered the sails to be taken in and they fired up the engine. They moved slowly because he was worried that the ice could damage the propeller and rudder. Ernest was desperate to get as far south as possible and reach land, but for the next few weeks progress was slow. There were very few gaps in the ice. It was like going through a maze. They went back and forth, sometimes in open sea, running east or west along the edge of the ice, trying to find a way through. By 30 December they had crossed the Antarctic Circle, but they were still unable to get to the land. Then, on 18 January, in a narrow channel with no way ahead, they decided to stop and hope that the way ahead would clear in the morning. But the next day, the small area of water around the ship had frozen. The Endurance was now embedded in the ice.
During the coming weeks Ernest tried everything he could to free the ship. On one occasion he had all the men on deck and then asked them to run together from side to side to try and rock the ship free. The men also tried cutting a way out with pick axes and ice saws. But it was no use, all they could do was wait and hope the ice would crack. There was plenty to do. Some men trained the dogs on the ice to get them used to sledging. Others hunted seals and penguins for food. Some men made alterations to the insides of the ship so that it was more comfortable. As winter came Ernest made sure the men remained cheerful. They even had a concert to mark the day when the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. But as the weeks passed it was clear the ship was in great danger. The pressure of ice was beginning to build.
The ice was not flat like the ice on a pond. It had high ridges, large blocks and icebergs which were changing and moving all the time under great pressure. By the end of July the men heard regular rumblings in the ice. Ernest ordered essential supplies to be kept on the upper deck in case they needed to evacuate in a hurry. By the end of September, there were roaring sounds from the ice and the pressure of the ice against the ship increased. The metal plates and wooden beams of the ship began to buckle. The ice was destroying the Endurance.
Part 3
The crack was splitting the camp into two unequal halves. The watchman blew his whistle and the men scrambled out of their tents. They took the tents down on the smaller part of the floe and moved everything across to the larger piece. They eventually got back into their tents, but most could not sleep. The following day everybody moved to a larger floe nearby. Then Ernest issued fresh clothing from the supplies to each man. It was vital they kept as warm as possible.
Over the next couple of days they marched, dragging the three boats on sledges over the ridges and hummocks of ice. But the going was slow and it was pointless trying to move further. Ernest chose a thick floe where they could stay in the hope it would drift northwestward towards Paulet Island. They called it Ocean Camp. They were still only around two and a half kilometres from the ship and some men went back to salvage what they could from the wreckage. They even removed the wheelhouse, which the cook used as a galley. But on 21 November the Endurance finally sank. ‘She’s gone, boys,’ said Ernest, as they watched it disappear.
Life on the ice was very hard. They rationed the food saved from the ship and hunted seals and penguins for meat for themselves and the dogs. They had a few books to read which helped pass the time. But as the Antarctic summer continued the winds became more changeable and the floe did not always drift towards Paulet Island. So, on 24 December they broke camp and started to march across the ice. However, after a week the men were exhausted. They set up a new camp, called Patience Camp. They stayed there for three and a half months. Food was running short and they shot most of the dogs. There was also the constant danger of leopard seals. One attacked a man and he was only saved when another man shot it.
By late March they had drifted to within ninety-seven kilometres of Paulet Island. By April there were clear channels of water snaking between the floes. On 9 April Ernest decided it was time to take to the boats. For the next four days they rowed between the floes. At night they would tie the boats to a floe and either camp on the ice or stay in the boats. One night a man fell through the ice in his sleeping bag, but he was rescued. On another occasion the ice on which Ernest was standing broke away and the men had to come in a boat to get him. They ran out of water and sucked ice to quench their thirst. They were freezing cold and could not sleep. Ernest thought some may die before they reached land. He decided to aim for the nearest land, which was by then, Elephant Island. On 13 April they reached open sea and put the sails up. After a torrid night, the three boats made it onto a stony beach on the island. They were finally on solid ground. Some of the men were so happy they staggered round the beach laughing, lifting up handfuls of pebbles as though they were gold.
Part 4
Even though they had reached land, they still needed rescuing. Ernest appointed Frank Wild as the leader on the island and within ten days Ernest and five other men set off in one of the boats to try to get to South Georgia. The boat had been strengthened by the carpenter and he had added a canvas cover. South Georgia was 1,287 kilometres away and it was a dangerous journey for such a small boat. Yet, after just over two weeks, they made it to the island, exhausted and ravaged by hunger and thirst. But they landed on the uninhabited side of the island, the opposite side from the whaling stations. Two of the men were too ill to continue, so leaving a man to look after them, Ernest and the other two set off to walk across the island. The route was perilous. They cut ice steps up mountains, crossed glaciers and slid down snow slopes. But after thirty-six hours of continual walking on 20 May they staggered into Stromness whaling station.
The men at the whaling station looked after them well, giving them food, drink and fresh clothes. But all Ernest was concerned about was the safety of all his men. The three men across the island were soon rescued. And on 30 August, after several unsuccessful attempts, Ernest rescued the men on Elephant Island, in the Yelcho, a ship lent by the Chilean government. Wild had played an important part in keeping their morale high. They had lived in a cramped, makeshift hut using the two remaining boats as a roof. But they all survived and had trusted that the ‘Boss’ would return.
The Yelcho returned directly to Chile and there were great celebrations. But Ernest’s thoughts were now with the men at Ross Sea. He made his way to New Zealand where the Aurora had docked after returning from dropping off the Ross Sea party. However, the governments of Britain, Australia and New Zealand had taken control of the mission to recover the men at Ross Sea. Ernest was allowed to sail on the Aurora but he was not in command. When they reached the Ross Sea they found that, although the depots had been successfully laid, three of the team, including the leader, Mackintosh, had died.
Ernest headed to America where he gave lectures about the expedition. He finally returned to Britain in May 1917. He wanted to help in the war effort and the Government sent him to South America to encourage support for Britain in the war. He then took part in a British army mission to supply Russian forces in the port of Murmansk. But the war ended in November 1918 and in February of the following year, Ernest resigned from the army.
Ernest resumed giving lectures, but, although his health was poor, he could not resist organizing another expedition to explore the Antarctic. He managed to acquire enough money and bought a Norwegian ship which he called the Quest. He set sail from Plymouth in September 1921, but he never reached the Antarctic. Whilst in South Georgia he died in his cabin on 5 January 1922, aged forty-seven. He was buried on the island, a fitting resting place for this great explorer who will always be remembered for the epic rescue of his men after their ship was crushed by ice.
A particularly helpful source was:
Smith, M. (2015) Shackleton: By Endurance We Conquer (Cork: The Collins Press).
