Endurance Page 15
Whatever Shackleton achieves, it is my job to be there to create the images. My photographs may be all that endures, and they will be what I make them. Shackleton may not like it, but he must know it is I who holds the power of the ‘vivid picture’.
8
76 Degrees South
Endurance is now seventy-six degrees south and less than eighty miles from where Shackleton wants to land at Vahsel Bay. I dash off letters to Ma and Elsa to accompany Endurance back to South Georgia. The letters are only a page each and I wonder momentarily if and when I will write again, and if the letters say enough—but there is nothing more. We will soon be on our way, that’s all.
There is a growing level of excitement on board. On Saturday 23 January, the clouds roll back from the east. For the first time land is visible, twenty miles away to the east and south. It can be seen rising up some three thousand feet. The scientists and crew mill on deck, and to escape the hubbub I climb to the crow’s nest on the mainmast, where I enjoy the isolation. Up here I am as remote as Endurance in the endless icepack.
Two days later the wind swings to the west, and just two hundred yards in front of us a broad lead opens in the ice. All sails are unfurled and the motor is at full speed, but Endurance does not respond. The ice surrounding her is in parts some twelve feet thick. Crean leads a group who, with picks and crow bars, try to loosen the grip of the ice, but without success. I take photos of Endurance ‘sailing’ while held rigid like a model toy ship in the ice.
After a few days of being stuck fast, Shackleton allows us to stretch our legs on the surrounding floes. Orde-Lees offers to carry the camera in a rucksack, and so we venture out on skis. I set up the tripod and experiment with new Paget Autochrome plates for colour photographs, keeping a record of exposure times for each picture. I take shots of Endurance and of Orde-Lees manoeuvring among hummocks of ice. He is very accomplished on his skis while I am a rank amateur. My elbows and backside take a pounding. After one of my falls, I find Frank Wild standing above me.
‘The boss is livid. He’s worried we’ll get a break in the ice and be stuck waiting for you two. You’d better get back there and take it on the chin.’
Orde-Lees is excessively apologetic, but I am not accustomed to being the object of the boss’s flashes of temper, especially when I have been attending my photographic duties. Orde-Lees is an easy target and my sense is that Shackleton is not unhappy to link me with him. It is as if the boss thinks I am also an odd bod.
Orde-Lees scampers ahead and I trudge back with Wild.
‘Do you think we’ll get breaks in the ice to make it further south?’ I ask.
‘One decent blizzard is all it would take to clear this ice,’ he answers. ‘Vahsel Bay is just twenty-five miles away. But I think the boss will try Orde-Lees’s motor sledges tomorrow, to see if they can move stores across the ice and up onto the Barrier. Otherwise, I don’t see how we can haul the hut that far along with fifty tonnes of supplies.’
But the motor sledges turn out to be next to useless. Orde-Lees has never been to Antarctica before and there was no time to trial the motor sledges in Norway as had been planned. Orde-Lees’ stocks take a tumble. I could have come up with a superior design for the variable Antarctic surface, but it’s way too late now.
That evening, being Saturday, we have musical entertainment from Hussey and Seaman Cheetham on banjo and fiddle, and our regular toast to ‘wives and sweethearts’.
Not everyone relaxes together easily and the sailors are openly rude to some of the scientific staff, of whom they think very little. Worsley is called out to deal with a fight among the crew which the carpenter, Chips McNeish, has stirred up in the fo’c’sle.
The boss knows activity is needed and games of football are encouraged to let off steam. I see little point in joining in. Both sailors and scientists are more able than me at kicking a ball. I take my camera onto the ice, but photographing a football match in Antarctica is difficult. The field is not defined and the players appear as black silhouettes on a glaring white background. Orde-Lees protests the non-observance of rules until he is silenced by big Tom Crean sitting on his chest.
I am keen to explore our surroundings. There is an iceberg several miles away that dominates the horizon. We have named it the Rampart Berg as it resembles a fortification. Worsley offers to climb it with me. He has the standing to persuade the boss to grant permission, and so at eight o’clock next morning Worsley, Wordie and I set out with a sledge of cameras and gear. We reach the berg by noon and it is quite imposing up close, even though it is only a few hundred feet high. What is particularly unnerving is that all around the berg the icepack is moving with the surface current, and to actually step onto the side of the berg is like jumping from a moving train. The surface ice is pushed inexorably against the steep edges of the Rampart Berg. The ice groans and scrapes and shifts and folds and jumps and is altogether frightening to stand near. I retreat three hundred yards to capture the massive berg within my camera lens.
After three weeks in which Endurance has remained firmly stuck, everyone on board has grown a little testy. Breaks in the ice appear but, more often than not, by the time the crew mobilises, the open water closes over. Worsley and the boss call for all hands to ‘sally’ the ship. With the engine running full astern, we all stand on the starboard gunnel and, on Worsley’s command, run to the port side then, on his call, all run back to starboard. The intent is to break the grip of the ice, but once again we fail. Worsley then has all hands gather on the poop and has everyone jump up and down in time. I detect little if any movement in the ice and suspect this activity is sponsored by Shackleton to invigorate everyone on board. There is much merriment and the activity warms us up.
Over breakfast on a mournful Valentine’s Day, Endurance shudders as her weight cracks the ice around her and, four hundred yards away to the south, a lead opens up. All hands take to the ice with picks, chisels, sledgehammers and saws. We dissect the ice plate in front of the bow and, with a full head of steam, Worsley propels Endurance forwards to open a gap. He has little distance in which to gain momentum, but some headway is made. We work at this all day and gain but thirty yards.
Overnight the open water we have created freezes over, and the next morning we start again. At day’s end the boss calls a halt. We have made one hundred yards, but there are hundreds of yards to go to the open lead and a brief survey shows the ice plate ahead of us is in parts more than ten feet thick.
The open lead remains in sight but out of reach. It becomes the domain of killer whales, which blow spume and push their sleek black-capped bodies out of the water until they are sitting on the edge of the ice. They are looking for seals and are very curious about us. Their white eye patches stare back at me as they lift their heads tauntingly and cast an evil eye in all directions before disappearing beneath the floe. They certainly make me ill at ease when working alongside open water or on thin, translucent ice. Killer whales, like ourselves, are enthusiastic predators. With winter approaching we are looking to find and slaughter as many seals as we can for our own larder before the killer whales take them. I have become quite adept at killing and butchering seals and penguins.
On 24 February, Sir Ernest announces the end of the ship watches. Instead we work during the day and take turns as nightwatchman, whose job it is to keep the bogie fires alight and take meteorological observations. Endurance has become a shore station.
The boss wants the dogs off the ship and they are mighty pleased to go. All hands are busy building canine igloos—or, as we call them, ‘dogloos’—which extend in a ring around Endurance. The dogs are secured by pouring water on the end of their chains in a small hole in the ice.
Over the next few weeks, Chips undertakes carpentry work in preparation for wintering-in. New WC shelters are constructed over the poop. The stove that was intended for the shore hut is installed in the main hold to create a living and dining room for the scientists and officers. This is dubbed ‘the Ritz’. A
round this, Chips has built a series of small cubicles to serve as living quarters, each with three or four bunks. Hussey and I are allocated a room with the doctors, Macklin and McIlroy. I wonder how Shackleton determines these arrangements. Macklin has barely said a word to me the entire voyage, though he and I are both in the shore party for the polar crossing. I get in early and nickname our cubicle ‘the Billabong’, and without too much objection soon have it decorated with an Australian flag, a boomerang and my photographs. I had expected to experience again the camaraderie I had enjoyed with Bob and Azzi but it seems unlikely. Our quest has slipped away from us and there is a tension in our enforced cohabitation with the sailing crew. The chaos of moving accommodation distracts from the overwhelming issue of what is to become of the expedition.
Winter clothing is issued by the boss to all hands, including finnesko mittens, Burberry boots, woollen helmets, Jaeger sweaters and so on. On 14 March, the boss starts winter routine with breakfast at 9 a.m., lunch at 1 p.m., free time in the afternoon and dinner at 6 p.m. The days grow shorter. The sun now lives on the horizon, often hidden, then coming out and casting long shadows and tingeing the ice with golden light. The atmosphere is laden with rime crystals. Refraction and the glimmering of light off the ice cause mirages on the horizon in all directions.
Perhaps it is just the cold and gloom, but our small civilisation seems to belong to another world, remote from homes and families. My sense is that God has lost sight of us; we are faraway objects, as if seen backwards through a camera lens. Even the sun shrinks, diffuses and splits into two, then three suns, which my naked eye gazes on, each sun linked by a halo as depicted in picture books of the holy saints. I blink and rub my eyes but there are still three suns glowing above the horizon. Mock suns, Hussey educates me, are a parhelic phenomenon. This comes and goes during the morning and reoccurs on subsequent days. Then, at the end of April, the sun sets and does not rise at all the next day. Hussey says we will not see the sun again until the end of July, and who knows where on earth Endurance may be then, if she can be found at all? Until that time, it is long days of blackness interspersed by several hours of twilight. This limits me severely as to what I can achieve with a camera. However, we put this time in the netherworld to good use, training the dogs to pull sledges.
On the AAE, Mertz and Ninnis looked after the dogs from the time they left England and developed a close bond with them. Knowing the importance of dogs to my survival in an Antarctic crossing, I am keen to work with them. Six dog teams of eight to nine dogs are formed, and as I am in the polar party I am designated master of one of the teams. Shakespeare, Hackenschmidt, Rugby, Rufus, Bob, Jerry, Martin, Sailor and Noel are my team. I am exclusively responsible for feeding and caring for them. Over time I learn much about them. Shakespeare is the natural leader of the team. He has the noble appearance of an English sheepdog and is both brave and wise. Bob is the brother of Shakespeare and a hard worker. Rugby is much like Bob, but has no tail to wag. Rufus is a revered elder of the pack, but still a good worker. Sailor is a cunning rascal who looks to be pulling hard, but a close check shows his trace is not quite taut. Hackenschmidt is in lean condition, but likely to become the biggest dog in the pack. Noel is the smallest, but has a rivalry with Hackenschmidt and attacks him at any opportunity. Noel stands on his hind legs to beg for food and comes with me on all my walks. Jerry and Martin are brothers. Martin is a terrific puller, but often in trouble for pinching other dogs’ food, and Jerry is too friendly with people for his own good, frequently jumping up on me when I am busy adjusting the camera.
The part of a photographer’s work that has never interested me is the taking of ordinary everyday portraits. There is far too much vanity involved, for which I have no patience. However Shakespeare and my dog team are free of vanity. They are diverse in their breeding and their faces are full of personality. I use the quieter days to obtain a series of classic portraits to reveal their unique characters, which range from Saint Bernard to pure wolf.
The dogs have had some sledging experience, but not for some time, and they have not worked together nor with me. First I train just with Shakespeare and a small bobsled until he and I have an understanding. Then the whole team must learn to behave in harness. Each dog learns its position along the main hauling trace. I teach the dogs to listen for my voice and to be ready to move together at the instant they hear a command. Time is short and I use the whip to expedite the learning process. ‘Mush!’ and the team steps forwards, ‘gee’ and Shakespeare leads them to the left, ‘haw’ to the right and ‘hoah’ to stop. For all their differences, my team quickly learns to combine well together. They have a natural leader in Shakespeare, who instinctively finds the best way around hummocks and thin ice, and puts a stop to any fights within the team.
In no time, my favourite activity is taking the dogs out to exercise and practise pulling a sledge. Worsley or Greenstreet often accompany me on the sledge. We dress warmly, for the temperature is below freezing. Despite wind and sleet stinging my face, I know I am alive on these hair-raising rides with the dogs, chasing the moon through a purple sky above the ice. The visibility is often abysmal and I rely on Shakespeare to lead us home to Endurance. In darkness he somehow finds long stretches of white powder snow and avoids the dull blue glow of wind-polished sastrugi.
By mid-June, all the trainers are boasting about their dog teams. A sledge race is organised and bets placed. Wild wins, but is only ten seconds ahead of my team. I challenge him to a rematch, but once again Wild is the fastest home. However Sir Ernest was part of his crew weight and had been thrown off, so my team wins by default. I make quite a few pounds, but collecting the winnings is another matter.
Progress with the dogs has been swift and they will be in good shape to pull heavy loads by the spring. But their unquestioning service and loyalty are a stark contrast to the increasing irascibility of Sir Ernest and my other companions. By choice, I spend more time each day with Shakespeare and the team than any of my fellow expedition members. With winter just starting, we are all wondering what is to become of us, of Endurance and of the expedition. No one dares ask the boss. But I have heard the crew talking: ‘Should have listened to the bloody Norwegians. We’re in for it now.’ At night-time, especially as I lie in my bunk trying to get warm, I am kept awake by ominous sounds, like distant cannon fire, of ice breaking and falling or, closer at hand, the groan of ice floes being pushed together.
More fights breaks out in the fo’c’sle. All hands point to the bosun Vincent; he is a powerful-looking man and rough as they come. He has been badgering and striking the other crew. The boss demotes him on the spot to trawling hand. Vincent lets it be known he has been unjustly accused and is especially aggrieved by the pay cut that accompanies his demotion. I would not like to be one of the sailing hands sharing the fo’c’sle with him.
Among the officers and scientists it is Orde-Lees who becomes the butt of all jokes and derision. He is store master and his cutbacks are unpopular. He abolished the supply of bread in the evenings, which is entirely sensible, but this has not gone down well with the sailors. They say he has his own secret stash of delicacies. He is a complete toady to Sir Ernest—‘Yes, sir; no sir; three bags full, sir’—which I find sickening to watch. I’m sure the boss is onto him.
We have our Midwinter Feast in traditional style, with hilarious dress-ups. I organise a stage and lighting, and we put together over three hours of entertainment, singing and dancing. Sir Ernest plays a pompous lord, Orde-Lees is a clergyman, Hussey a black minstrel with banjo and so on. Fortunately, Sir Ernest leaves the sailors to their own devices in the fo’c’sle with an extra portion of rum and tobacco to celebrate; they would otherwise inhibit the wit and entertainment of our celebration. We raise glasses with our regular toast—‘To our wives and sweethearts . . . and may they never meet!’ We conclude with ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
More often now the weather does not permit sledging trips. The temperature
is around minus-thirty degrees. Blizzards rage across the ice without warning. They strike savagely at Endurance so that she vibrates and trembles. The ropes and spars are solid with rime and resonate in a discordant ringing such that we are forced to shout to be heard. One morning I wake and immediately know something is missing. There is no sound of squabbling from the dogs. I put on my layers and emerge on deck to see all the dogloos down the port side of Endurance have gone; the blizzard has completely covered them with fresh snow. It is some hours before we find and extricate the dogs. They are not at all stressed by the experience and wonder what the fuss is about.
The blizzards come and go, often lasting a number of days. There is constant work shovelling snow from Endurance, as she would otherwise disappear save for her three masts. Around us the crusty icefloe is transformed. Fallen snow has been carved by blizzards into snow ramps and cornices. After one prolonged blizzard Rufus does not emerge from his dogloo, and on checking I find he has died and frozen solid.
Most days now we see no animal life. It is as well that we have taken in plenty during the autumn. We have cut a small hole in the ice near Endurance to tempt wandering seals or penguins, but there are none. Every so often the plate ice cracks and a lead of water forms, sometimes staying open a few hours or sometimes a few days. The ice groans day and night with pressure from the pack and the movement of bergs. Mostly the sounds come from afar, like the sound of surf on a distant reef. At times the movement is close, the ice shudders beneath my feet and my dogs whimper, raise their shaggy heads and look at me. I too look up, expecting to see a foaming wave racing towards us, but there is nothing and stillness resumes.
‘Endurance cannot live in this.’ It is Worsley passing on what the boss has said to him. ‘It is only a matter of time. We may have months, but then again it could be over in a few weeks.’