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Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

Alfred Lansing

Last accessed on Tuesday October 29, 2019

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The popularity of this once-forgotten survival tale was part of the trend that also made best sellers out of Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm and Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, both published in 1997.

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He enjoyed fancying himself as a country gentleman, divorced from the workaday world, with the leisure and wealth to do as he pleased. Shackleton came from a middle-class background, the son of a moderately successful physician. He joined the British Merchant Navy at the age of sixteen and though he rose steadily through the ranks, this sort of step-by-step advancement grew progressively less appealing to his flamboyant personality.

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Unlike most of the others, he was a married man with children.

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greenheart, a wood so heavy it weighs more than solid iron and so tough that it cannot be worked with ordinary tools.

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the Endurance was designed to operate in relatively loose pack ice she was not constructed so as to rise out of pressure to any great extent.

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He was careful, however, not to betray his disappointment to the men, and he cheerfully supervised the routine of readying the ship for the long winter’s night ahead.

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Macklin, though a gentle individual by nature, developed a technique that was more effective than almost any amount of effort with a whip. He simply struck the aggressor dog a thudding uppercut under the jaw with his mittened fist. No harm was done, and the

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Early in April, Shackleton decided that permanent dog drivers should be assigned with full responsibility for their teams.

Note:Ownership

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But there was very little depression on board the Endurance.

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“To our sweethearts and wives.” Invariably a chorus of voices added, “May they never meet.”

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The following night, cagy Dr. McIlroy “brought to light” a pair of dice he happened to find among his things. He first shook with Greenstreet to see who would buy champagne when they got home. Greenstreet lost. By that time several men had gathered around the table in the Ritz, and in subsequent rolls of the dice, an entire evening’s entertainment was wagered. Wild got stuck for buying the dinner, McIlroy himself lost the roll for the theater tickets, Hurley the after-theater supper, and parsimonious “Jock” Wordie, the geologist, was committed to pay for the taxis home.

Note:So mich imagination

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discomfort, of unending wet and inescapable cold. A little more than a week before they had slept in their own warm bunks and eaten their meals in the cozy atmosphere around the mess table. Now they were crammed together in overcrowded tents, lying in reindeer or woolen sleeping bags on bare ice, or at best on odd pieces of hard lumber.

Note:Adjusting to new challenge

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Shackleton felt that if dissension arose, the party as a whole might not put forth that added ounce of energy which could mean, at a time of crisis, the difference between survival and defeat. Thus he was prepared to go to almost any length to keep the party close-knit and under his control. Though Hurley was a skilled photographer and an excellent worker, he was also the sort of man who responded best to flattery, who frequently needed to be jollied along and made to feel important. Shackleton sensed this need—he may even have overestimated it—and he was afraid that unless he catered to it, Hurley might feel slighted and possibly spread discontent among the others.

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Several other tent assignments were made with an eye to avoiding trouble.

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About 9 P.M. they heard the sound of a splintering crack, and looking over they saw her foremast come crashing down, carrying the blue ensign with it.

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Unlikely as escape was, every man was assigned a specific duty in case the party should suddenly have to strike camp. If their route was to be over the ice, the sledge drivers would harness their teams with all possible speed while the other men gathered stores and equipment, struck the tents, and then stood by the sledges. Or if, as they hoped, they could escape by water, they were to ready the boats.

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The subject of sex was rarely brought up—not because of any post-Victorian prudishness, but simply because the topic was almost completely alien to the conditions of cold, wet, and hunger which occupied everyone’s thoughts almost continually. Whenever women were discussed, it was in a nostalgic, sentimental way—of a longing to see a wife, a mother, or a sweetheart at home.

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“Really, this sort of life has its attractions,” Macklin wrote. “I read somewhere that all a man needs to be happy is a full stomach and warmth, and I begin to think it is nearly true. No worries, no trains, no letters to answer, no collars to wear—but I wonder which of us would not jump at the chance to change it all tomorrow!”

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After spending four hours sewing an elaborate patch on the seat of his only pair of trousers, Macklin wrote one day, “What an ingrate I have been for such jobs when done for me at home.” Greenstreet felt much the same way after he had devoted several days to scraping and curing a piece of sealskin to resole his boots. He paused in the midst of his task to write in his diary: “One of the finest days we have ever had . . . a pleasure to be alive.”

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“Sweethearts and Wives”

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The note was very simply a message to posterity, explaining to those who might come after what had happened to Shackleton and his men in 1915. Shackleton had purposely refrained from leaving the note until after the party had left Ocean Camp for fear that the men might find it and interpret it as a sign that their leader was not sure they would survive.

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In the soaked state, each weighed about 7 pounds. It was an exhausting exertion at every step to lift one foot and then the other out of 2-foot holes full of snowy slush.

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argued that legally he was under no obligation to follow orders since the ship had gone down, and therefore the articles he had signed to serve on board her had been terminated, and he was free to obey or not, as he chose. It was the “sea lawyer” in him coming out.

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Each day on the march had intensified his feeling that their journey was useless. So instead of reacting decisively in the face of McNeish’s stubbornness, Worsley impulsively notified Shackleton. This served only to aggravate McNeish’s resentment.

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But the incident had worried Shackleton. In case others might feel similarly, Shackleton mustered all hands before they turned in and read aloud the articles they had signed.

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Until the march from Ocean Camp they had nurtured in the backs of their minds the attitude Shackleton strove so unceasingly to imbue them with, a basic faith in themselves—that they could, if need be, pit their strength and their determination against any obstacle—and somehow overcome it.

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This indomitable self-confidence of Shackleton’s took the form of optimism. And it worked in two ways: it set men’s souls on fire; as Macklin said, just to be in his presence was an experience. It was what made Shackleton so great a leader. But at the same time, the basic egotism that gave rise to his enormous self-reliance occasionally blinded him to realities. He tacitly expected those around him to reflect his own extreme optimism, and he could be almost petulant if they failed to do so. Such an attitude, he felt, cast doubt on him and his ability to lead them to safety.

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Shackleton made no mention of killing the dogs the next morning. Instead he ordered the men to shift camp because their floe was melting at a dangerous rate. The soot from the blubber stove had been tracked all over the surface of the ice, and it was holding the heat of the sun. The men began at noon to construct a roadway of blocks of ice and snow to bridge the gap to a floe about 150 yards to the southeast. The move was completed early in the afternoon. They named their new location “Patience Camp.” Then, in a quiet, level voice, Shackleton ordered Wild to shoot his own team along with McIlroy’s, Marston’s, and Crean’s. There was no protest, no argument. The four drivers obediently harnessed their teams and drove the dogs about a quarter of a mile away from the camp. The drivers then returned alone, except for McIlroy; he and Macklin were to assist Wild.

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That night Shackleton wrote, almost timorously, “This may be the turn in our fortune.” By now the wind was not taken lightly. “It is spoken of with reverence,” Hurley observed, “and wood must be touched when commenting thereon.”

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Shackleton, the man of unbridled optimism, confined himself to guarded phrases lest he somehow hex this glorious wind. “We ought to be making North some now,” he said with the utmost restraint.

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They also obtained a good number of books, among them several volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which were especially welcome. Even McNeish, a devout Presbyterian, allowed as how he would enjoy a change from his Bible, which he had repeatedly reread from cover to cover.

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“I don’t think any of us will have nightmares from over-eating.”

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That afternoon Shackleton ordered a drill to see how quickly the boats could be removed from their sledges and loaded with stores in case of an emergency. The men did what they had to do, but the raw edge of their tempers was beginning to show and there were a number of savage exchanges. Nor were matters improved when the stores were placed in the boats, and everybody could see for himself just how pitifully small their supplies really were. Certainly overloading was not going to be one of their problems. After the drill, the men returned moodily to their tents, hardly speaking to one another.

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“I think the Boss was a bit improvident in not getting in all the food possible whilst the going was good. It was worth the risk.” Then on the eighteenth: “Lees tackled the Boss a few days ago about getting in all food possible [from Ocean Camp] in the event of having to winter on the floe. Boss rather snapped at him saying ‘It will do some of these people good to go hungry, their bloody appetites are too big!’”

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If a man wanted a drink, he packed snow into a small can, usually a tobacco tin, and held it against his body to melt, or slept with it in his sleeping bag. But a full tobacco tin of snow yielded only a tablespoonful or two of water.

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When it was butchered, they found in its stomach nearly fifty undigested fish, which were carefully set aside to be eaten the next day. It was nine o’clock by the time the job was finished.

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Macklin was almost sick as he unharnessed one dog at a time and took it around the protective mound of ice. Wild, as before, sat each dog down in the snow, placed the muzzle of the revolver almost against its head, and pulled the trigger. Songster died with the penguin head in his mouth, and Bos’n died gripping his bone. When all the dogs had been killed, Macklin skinned and gutted the carcasses, preparing them for eating. Crean’s team of puppies was also killed and butchered.

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The suggestion was made that they sample the dog meat, and Shackleton agreed. Crean cut small steaks from his dog, Nelson, and Macklin did the same with Grus. When the meat had been fried, Crean hurried around to distribute it. He went first to Shackleton’s tent, poking his weathered, Irish face through the flap. “I’ve just brought a bit of Nelson for you to try,” he said puckishly.

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The meat of the dogs was universally acclaimed. “Their flesh tastes a treat,” McNeish remarked. “It is a big treat to us after being so long on seal meat.” James found it “surprisingly good and tasty.” Worsley said that the piece of Grus he ate “has a better flavor than the sea leopard.” And Hurley went so far as to say it was “exquisitely tender and flavorous, especially Nelson, which equalled veal.”

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Thus, the store of provisions was growing steadily. As it did, and their rations were increased, the morale of the whole party improved accordingly. The gloomy, morose grumblings of a few days before, when they had faced the prospects of eating putrid seal meat raw, vanished, and occasionally their attention even turned to matters outside the sphere of simple survival.

Note:Maslow

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Though everyone was fully aware that their situation was becoming more critical by the hour, it was much easier to face danger on a reasonably full stomach.

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If we fail to make a landing, and it is quite likely, I think it might be a good plan to make an effort to get on a berg. Indeed many of us have talked and wished for this for many weeks now, but of course there are other more weighty opinions.” Those opinions belonged to Ernest Shackleton. He was dead set against moving onto a berg unless it became unavoidable. He knew that bergs, though they looked substantial, could become off balance because of one portion melting faster than another and might suddenly and unpredictably upend.

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“Strike the tents and clear the boats!” The men jumped to their tasks. In minutes the tents were struck, and the sleeping bags gathered and stowed in the bows of the boats. Then one at a time the boats were pushed on their sledges to the edge of the floe. Crack! Again the floe had split in two, this time exactly through the spot where Shackleton’s tent had stood some minutes before.

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The birds were so thick their droppings spattered on the boats and forced the rowers to keep their heads lowered. Whales, too, seemed everywhere. They surfaced on all sides, sometimes frighteningly close—especially the killers.

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Just as they drew abeam of it, they became aware of a deep, hoarse noise that was rapidly getting louder. Looking to starboard, they saw a lavalike flow of churning, tumbling ice at least 2 feet high and as wide as a small river bearing down on them out of the ESE. It was a tide rip, a phenomenon of current thrown up from the ocean floor which had caught a mass of ice and was propelling it forward at about 3 knots. For a moment they stared in disbelief. Then Shackleton swung the bow of the James Caird to port and shouted for the other two boats to follow. The oarsmen dug in their feet and pulled with all their strength away from the onrushing ice. Even so, it was gaining on them. The rowers were facing astern, looking straight at the ice, almost at eye level as it drove toward them. Those men who were not rowing urged the oarsmen on, counting cadence for them, and stamping their feet at the same time. The Dudley Docker was the most cumbersome boat to row, and twice she was almost overtaken, but she just managed to keep clear. After fifteen minutes, as the strength of the men at the oars began to fail them, the tide rip showed signs of flattening out. Five minutes later it seemed to lose its strength, and before long it had disappeared as mysteriously as it had arisen. Fresh men took over the oars from the weary rowers, and Shackleton brought the James Caird back onto a northwest course. The wind gradually swung around to the southeast so that it was blowing from astern, and it greatly aided their progress.

Note:Still in some shape

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They were 21 feet 9 inches long, with a 6-foot-2-inch beam, and they had three seats, or thwarts, plus a small decking in the bow and in the stern.

Note:So small

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Toward eleven o’clock, Shackleton became strangely uneasy, so he dressed and went outside. He noticed that the swell had increased and their floe had swung around so that it was meeting the seas head on. He had stood watching for only a few moments, when there was a deep-throated thud and the floe split beneath his feet—and directly under No. 4 tent in which the eight forecastle hands were sleeping.

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he saw a shapeless form wriggling in the water—a man in his sleeping bag. Shackleton reached down for the bag and with one tremendous heave, he pulled it out of the water. A moment later, the two halves of the broken floe came together with a violent shock.

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He took hold of the rope and tried to bring his chunk closer; but with only one man pulling it was useless. Within ninety seconds he had disappeared into the darkness. For what seemed a very long interval, no one spoke; then from the darkness they heard Shackleton’s voice. “Launch a boat,” he called.

Note:Decisive action

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To prevent Holness from freezing, Shackleton ordered that he be kept moving until his own clothes dried. For the rest of the night, the men took turns walking up and down with him. His companions could hear the crackling of his frozen garments, and the tinkle of the ice crystals that fell from him. Though he made no complaint about his clothes, Holness grumbled for hours over the fact that he had lost his tobacco in the water.

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Shackleton ordered the Docker into the lead. The Caird was made fast to her stern, and the Wills brought up the rear. Two oars were put out from the Docker to keep the line of boats head up into the wind, and to prevent them from bumping into one another. By ten o’clock they were in position.

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Orde-Lees was worst off, or at least he complained the most. But there was little sympathy for him. He had done less than the others ever since they had taken to the boats. Often when it came his turn to row, he pleaded with Worsley to let him off, claiming that he was sick or that he didn’t know how to row well enough. As usual, Worsley found it difficult to be stern, and since there were always plenty of volunteer oarsmen wanting to get warm, Orde-Lees was frequently allowed to skip his turn. On the rare occasions when he was ordered or shamed into taking up an oar, he managed to exhibit an ineptitude which won him a speedy relief. Several times when he was rowing ahead of Kerr, he kept just enough out of rhythm so that when he leaned back after every stroke he smashed into Kerr’s fingers behind him. Curses, threats—nothing had any effect on him. He seemed not even to hear. Finally Kerr would ask Worsley to replace Orde-Lees.

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Wills needed constant looking after. Not only was she the least seaworthy of the three boats, but Hudson, who was commanding her, was one of those less equal to the strain, and he was obviously weakening, both physically and mentally. Shackleton was certain the Wills would be lost if she got separated from the others.

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When it was in position, the crews of all three boats settled down to wait for morning. Never was there a worse night.

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Most of all they cursed Orde-Lees, who had got hold of the only set of oilskins and refused to give them up.

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“Turned in and slept, as we had never slept before, absolute dead dreamless sleep, oblivious of wet sleeping bags, lulled by the croaking of the penguins.” It was the same for all of them. “How delicious,” wrote Hurley, “to wake in one’s sleep and listen to the chanting of the penguins mingling with the music of the sea. To fall asleep and awaken again and feel this is real. We have reached the land!!”

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It was a joy, for example, to watch the birds simply as birds and not for the significance they might have—whether they were a sign of good or evil, an opening of the pack or a gathering storm.

Note:Superstition When scared

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And though day after day no ship appeared, they attributed it to a dozen different reasons—the ice, the gales, the fog, arrangements for getting a proper ship, official delays—and all or any of these factors combined. There was almost never any mention of the most probable reason of all . . . the Caird had been lost.

Note:Superstition bottom behavior

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There was also a good deal of bartering in the matter of rations, and several food pools were formed. Typical of these was the “sugar pool” in which each man who belonged passed up one of his three lumps of sugar each day in order to partake of a feast when his turn came around every sixth or seventh day. Wild made no objection to this sort of thing. In fact he permitted a wide range of flexibility in most matters. It served to avoid friction and it gave the men something to occupy their minds.

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Arguments rambled on the whole day through, and they served to let off a great deal of steam which might otherwise have built up. In addition, the party had been reduced to an almost classless society in which most of them felt free to speak their minds, and did. A man who stepped on another man’s head trying to find his way out at night was treated to the same abuse as any other, regardless of what his station might once have been.

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When the sun did shine, the island became a place of rugged beauty, with the sunlight shimmering off the glaciers, producing indescribably vivid colors that were constantly changing. For all the party, it was difficult to be unhappy on days like this.

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Orde-Lees wrote: “Wild is always saying that ‘the ship’ will be here next week; but, of course, he says this just to keep up the spirits of those who are likely to become despondent. Optimism it is, and if not overdone, it is a fine thing. . . . He says . . . that he will not get uneasy about Sir Ernest until the middle of August.”

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The treasured nut food had been finished, and the powdered milk, too. And though these were sorely missed, their lack could hardly be compared with the tragedy when the tobacco finally ran out.

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But the desire to smoke was so strong that before long experiments were begun to find a substitute. McLeod started it all by removing the sennegrass insulation from his boots, then filling his pipe with it. “The smell,” wrote James, “is like that of a prairie fire rather than of tobacco.”

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“Lichen has also been tried,” James continued, “and we live in fear that some one will start on seaweed.”

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Lees, who continually disturbs our peaceful slumbers by his habitual trumpeting, was the first offender for the experiment. A slip noose is attached to his arm which is led by a series of eyelets across the bunks to [Wild’s] vicinity. As the various sleepers are disturbed they vigorously haul on the line—much as one would do to stop a taxi. It might do the latter—but Lees is incorrigible, scarcely heeding our signals.

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“It is hard to realize one’s position here,” Macklin wrote, “living in a smoky, dirty, ramshackle little hut with only just sufficient room to cram us all in: drinking out of a common pot . . . and laying in close proximity to a man with a large discharging abscess—a horrible existence, but yet we are pretty happy. . . .”

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In varying degrees it was the same with all of them. In their interminable discussions of when and how they might be rescued, there had been one possibility that was rarely mentioned—the loss of the Caird. It was considered somehow bad luck even to discuss it, and any man who brought it up was looked upon as speaking out of turn and in bad taste, almost as if he had sullied something that was sacred.

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He now faced an adversary so formidable that his own strength was nothing in comparison, and he did not enjoy being in a position where boldness and determination count for almost nothing, and in which victory is measured only in survival.

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The 2,000 pounds of ballast in the bottom gave the Caird a particularly vicious action, and she jerked upright after every wave.

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prevails there. This, then, was the Drake Passage, the most dreaded bit of ocean on the globe—and rightly so. Here nature has been given a proving ground on which to demonstrate what she can do if left alone. The results are impressive.

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In the prosaic, often studiously understated language of the U.S. Navy’s Sailing Direction for Antarctica, these winds are described categorically: “They are often of hurricane intensity and with gust velocities sometimes attaining to 150 to 200 miles per hour. Winds of such violence are not known elsewhere, save perhaps within a tropical cyclone.”

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Once every ninety seconds or less the Caird’s sail would go slack as one of these gigantic waves loomed astern, possibly 50 feet above her, and threatening, surely, to bury her under a hundred-million tons of water. But then, by some phenomenon of buoyancy, she was lifted higher and higher up the face of the onrushing swell until she found herself, rather unexpectedly, caught in the turmoil of foam at the summit and hurtling forward.

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Her crew consisted of six men whose faces were black with caked soot and half-hidden by matted beards, whose bodies were dead white from constant soaking in salt water. In addition, their faces, and particularly their fingers were marked with ugly round patches of missing skin where frostbites had eaten into their flesh. Their legs from the knees down were chafed and raw from the countless punishing trips crawling across the rocks in the bottom. And all of them were afflicted with salt water boils on their wrists, ankles, and buttocks. But had someone unexpectedly come upon this bizarre scene, undoubtedly the most striking thing would have been the attitude of the men . . . relaxed, even faintly jovial—almost as if they were on an outing of some sort.

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They had been the underdog, fit only to endure the punishment inflicted on them. But sufficiently provoked, there is hardly a creature on God’s earth that ultimately won’t turn and attempt to fight, regardless of the odds. In an unspoken sense, that was much the way they felt now. They were possessed by an angry determination to see the journey through—no matter what. They felt that they had earned it. For thirteen days they had absorbed everything that the Drake Passage could throw at them—and now, by God, they deserved to make it.

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The strain on Shackleton was so great that he lost his temper over a trivial incident. A small, bob-tailed bird appeared over the boat and flew annoyingly about, like a mosquito intent on landing. Shackleton stood it for several minutes, then he leaped to his feet, swearing and batting furiously at the bird with his arms. But he realized at once the poor example he had set and dropped back down again with a chagrined expression on his face.

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It was a strange time, a time of eagerness and expectation—underscored by grave, unspoken doubts. It was all so nearly over. An occasion for excitement, even jubilation. And yet, in the back of their minds was a nagging voice which refused to be silent—they might very well be looking in vain. If the island was there, they should have sighted it hours before.

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Afterwards they turned in and slept for twelve glorious hours without a single interruption.

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From here the ascent became increasingly steep, and they labored upward, a foot at a time, with Shackleton in the lead. They climbed what seemed to be an almost vertical slope, cutting steps in its face with the adz.

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It had taken more than three hours of strenuous effort to reach the summit, but now the only thing to do was to retreat, to retrace their steps again and try to find a different way, perhaps around the second peak.

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It was a tortuous climb, much steeper than the first, and they had to cut steps with the adz beginning halfway up the face of the slope. The height and the exertion were a terrible strain and they found it impossible to keep going steadily. Every twenty minutes or so they sprawled on their backs with their legs and arms flung out, sucking in great gulps of the rarefied air.

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Altogether it took a little more than a minute, and Shackleton did not permit any time for reflection. When they were ready, he kicked off.

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All the years of Antarctic experience told him that this was the danger sign—the fatal sleep that trails off into freezing death. He fought to stay awake for five long minutes, then he woke the others, telling them that they had slept for half an hour.

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Now word came that the Discovery, which had originally carried Scott to the Antarctic in 1901, was finally on her way from England.

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Endurance: Shackleton&#39;s Incredible Voyage

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage