Endurance Page 17

  On our return, we find the boss fuming at the risk taken to retrieve the photographic plates.

  ‘Mr Hurley, you think you are above my command! You put in jeopardy the life of someone whom I’m responsible to bring home.’

  ‘Boss, it’s because we’ll make it home I rescued the plates. We’ll need them; they tell the expedition’s story better than any one of us.’

  I talk him round and he agrees we can keep one tin, which amounts to a hundred and twenty of the five hundred plates.

  ‘I’ll get the best plates into one box.’

  ‘No, Mr Hurley, we’ll do it together.’

  Sitting alongside each other, we pull out the glass plate negatives, hold them up to the sky and peer into the milky light. One by one, we select the pictures we wish to save. The boss is the final arbiter. One hundred and twenty are resealed in the box. Then, whether through lack of trust in me, Shackleton smashes each rejected plate with a hammer. I watch as the images are forever fractured and the shards of glass fall into the snow.

  9

  Ocean Camp

  Our new base we called Ocean Camp. It was just a mile or so north from Endurance. We could see her masts in the distance. Here we awaited the thaw with the prospect of a lifeboat journey to islands frequented by whalers. There was simply no telling how long the ice surrounding Ocean Camp would take to break up, or if it would break up at all in the coming summer.

  Every few days I made my way back across the ice to Endurance. She was our crippled loved one, abandoned by her erstwhile companions. Her sails and spars could no longer obey Worsley’s commands, but she was still a fine-looking ship and a rare sight wedged in the pack ice. I lugged over my glass plate camera and tripod as if I was off to a portrait sitting. On suitable days I took the cine camera instead. Each day, as Endurance came into view among the ridges and boulders of ice, I felt relieved to see her, to know she was still with us.

  I looked for changes in the ship and how she was held in the vice-like grip of the ice plate. I watched for warping in the timbers in the hull, but they still looked strong and impregnable. The masts and spars stood tall against a grey featureless sky. The ice had pushed up hard on the stern and starboard side, and she now heeled ever so slightly, as if there was a wind in her furled sails or she was a model ship on a pedestal.

  I always checked the light carefully. Most days there was low cloud. With high levels of reflection and glare, Endurance was a black silhouette through the eyepiece, a shadow puppet against a brilliant white backdrop. I wished then she had been painted any colour but black. Nevertheless, I applied my craft, adjusting the aperture and shutter to pick out the detail of timber, hawsers, chains and pulleys, though many of those deemed useful had already been stripped by Chips the carpenter.

  There were rare days of sunshine which sculpted the ice in soft blue shades and shapes of infinite variety. On these days I used my limited supply of Paget colour plates and framed Endurance with a mixture of icy foregrounds both turbulent and serene.

  I found different ways to approach Endurance from the camp, and each of these cast the ship in a different perspective. Facing her bowsprit jutting up into the sky she looked fine and brave, as if nothing could stay her. She was stayed, however, frozen like one of my photographic plates, captured in a moment in time. She had been caught and held, tossed on the frozen sea but not yet at rest.

  On some days, before I thought better of it, I climbed in Endurance’s rigging. I felt like a young boy comfortably perched in a favourite backyard tree. To the north, the Weddell Sea was still frozen as far as the eye could see. I would leave the camera on deck, hitched securely to a halyard. If I deemed it worthwhile, I would string up some pulleys then haul up the camera to capture the icy vista through the boat’s rigging.

  Spring loosened the grip of the icepack on the southern continent. As the floes flexed and heaved, Endurance rose one day and fell the next, riding and enduring the mounting pressure waves that radiated from the pack. One morning I found the ice had wrenched the entire sternpost and rudder from their cast-iron fittings. Endurance now heeled dangerously to port, more than if the fiercest gale was blowing. The massive weight and solid carpentry of the ship were as nought to the icepack, which was now very much on the move. Groans came from the hull below the waterline. Timbers buckled and twisted. Joints severed irreparably. Water entered and moved through the hull. Wooden planks in the solid decking first bowed then popped, leaving gaping holes. It was unnerving to be on board in what had once been home to us all.

  Worsley was a regular visitor, mulling on repairs he might undertake, but otherwise he kept his own counsel. Despite the gloom I saw his face wet with tears. This had been her maiden voyage. It seemed unnecessarily cruel that, having survived winter, it was the spring that should wreak such havoc on Endurance. I knew little of the forces at work and did the only thing I could do, taking photographs to record her passing. I knew from the twisting and straining of ropes that the rigging must soon collapse. I set up the tripod for the cine camera in the ideal spot, and after three days came the catastrophe I had been anticipating. I saw the early signs of movement and started hand-cranking through the motion picture film when, with a mighty crack, the top half of the mainmast snapped and toppled, dragging spars and rigging to the deck.

  The boss came up shortly after, and I told him what I had just filmed. Shackleton nodded in a self-absorbed manner and, scarcely moving his lips, said deadpan, ‘What the ice gets, the ice keeps.’

  Beneath the prow of Endurance and running back from where the bowsprit extended there was some fine timber carving to which I had previously paid scant attention. Now I could walk alongside and inspect the patterned handiwork just above eye level. I would have loved to keep this carving, but it belonged to the ship, and the ship now belonged to the deep. I drew up my camera so at least an image of the carving might be retained.

  The timber masts were now puppets for the ice that gripped the hull. The masts and rigging twisted and turned and tangled. Spars crashed to the deck. Canvas sails unfurled, shook off the ice of winter and flapped noisily. Over several days the hull became a mangled wreck, smashed and crushed beyond belief, but all before my eyes and recorded by my camera. The images I had taken were safe for the time being, but Endurance herself, our link with civilisation, was as good as gone. Our small fraternity was well and truly marooned on the now-melting icecap.

  On the morning of 21 November 1915 I saw the wreck had stirred further. The funnel had rolled over. The bulk of the hull had dropped below the surface of the ice. The stumps of the three masts with horizontal cross spars stood out against the sky. I had raced across from Ocean Camp without my Burberry jacket and now shivered with cold. There was a roaring sound. The wreck shuddered. I saw three twisted crosses pushing skywards before drunkenly cavorting as the ice shifted around them, and then they sank and were swallowed whole. Then all was still.

  Ocean Camp is a small settlement barely afloat on the ocean’s surface. We do not belong here. How can we survive here when our bulwark Endurance could not? If we are still here when winter comes, we will surely perish. Our flimsy canvas tents will not withstand winter blizzards and we only have enough decent winter clothing for several men. Chippy’s idea of building a sailboat from the wreckage of Endurance was rejected by Shackleton. Instead we are to drift northwards on the ice until it breaks up, then take to the lifeboats. Some three hundred miles now to the nor’-west is Paulet Island. Though uninhabited, sealers frequent the seas nearby.

  Wild explains, ‘The boss wants to sledge the boats further westwards while we still can. If we don’t, and we launch the boats in westerly winds, we run the risk of missing Paulet and the South Shetland islands.’

  In the meantime, the ice protects us from the turbulent swells and cold depths of the Weddell Sea. The ice is our world. We walk on the ice, we sleep on the ice, we build with it, we drink from it, we defecate on it. The iceshelf provides the game for our survival, food to eat
and fuel for our stove.

  Ocean Camp has the appearance of an old prospector’s settlement: a series of grimy tents, scattered boxes, tins, building materials and rubbish. A black greasy smoke comes from the blubber stove and soot covers everything. The trodden-down pathways between the tents are black with ash from our boots. The blackened snow fast absorbs heat from the sun’s rays and gradually the path melts down until one is in danger of slipping through to the ocean beneath.

  Soon it is the height of the Antarctic summer. The surface snow is soft and moist. My boots are permanently damp. The sun does not set and in the middle of the day the tents heat up inside, condensation forms and drips on our sleeping bags so they are heavy with moisture. After only a few weeks we have to move a hundred yards before the whole camp sinks into the ocean.

  The boss has allocated us to five tents. He has selected Hudson, James and me to share his tent. I am unsure what to make of this. I would like to be flattered, but I think he sees me more as competitor than companion. Reg James is our bespectacled physicist, completely inept in the outdoors and, in Shackleton’s eyes, the most likely to meet with an accident. James has become withdrawn since the loss of Endurance and says little. Hudson, the first officer without a ship, is in my opinion and the opinion of the others quite mad.

  Within several days, Orde-Lees has so aggravated the occupants of his tent that they eject him. In the middle of the night they forcibly carry him outside. He is left to sleep by himself in the tiny wheelhouse storeroom. There is only enough room for him to lay his bag across the top of the stores, so he is unable to lie straight. His crime is his snoring. I am surprised the boss allowed his eviction, but I figure the boss is happy to see Orde-Lees isolated, as he has become a doom-and-gloom merchant and pessimism is infectious.

  And still the ice surrounds us. I struggle with the boss’s copy of Browning, but greatly enjoy Nicholas Nickleby. There is competition for respective volumes of the Encylopaedia Britannica. One day I learn all about rope making.

  ‘Hurley, what is your stove doing here?’ Shackleton has emerged from our tent, where I know he has just groomed himself with his hand mirror.

  ‘It’s going to be in our photograph,’ I explain.

  ‘You said it was a picture of me you wanted.’

  ‘Yes, boss, but the idea is to show life at Ocean Camp. Orde-Lees is going to take the shot and I’ll be alongside you skinning a penguin.’

  ‘I see, a picture of domestic bliss. And are those skis meant to suggest you’re a champion skier?’ He sits down in front of our tent and puts on his favourite black hat. He looks fierce but is quite accommodating about having this photograph taken even with me, and even with his expedition now reeling from catastrophe.

  It is clear to me that, if we do make it home, our survival on the ice will be a big part of the story. I am keen to capture some idea of what life is like in our frozen camp suspended above the ocean. One morning, when there is ample sunlight, the boss gives permission for me to interrupt chores and photograph our group at Ocean Camp. I call the boss and Wild into the foreground. Orde-Lees creeps forwards and I send him back to where I have lined up several of the men. No one minds too much the standing around for a photograph when the weather is mild. I call out, ‘Goggles off, everyone,’ and I get my shot.

  Chippy is the busiest among us. He has been directed to improve the seaworthiness of two of our three boats, James Caird and Dudley Docker. With timber from Endurance he rigs a mast for Dudley Docker and raises the height of the gunwales of both boats.

  Hussey, like a wandering minstrel, plays banjo and leads singsongs every night in our tents.

  ‘Does your banjo know any new songs?’ I ask him.

  ‘Och, ’tis only Shackletunes now,’ says Clark, keeping a straight face.

  ‘My banjo,’ says Hussey, ‘is under orders from the boss to keep the orcas away.’

  I laugh. ‘My singing does that.’

  The boss, meanwhile, is struck down with a mystery illness and is unable to get out of his sleeping bag. He says it is a cold. Macklin says it is not warm enough here for bacteria to survive, so it must be rheumatism or exhaustion or both.

  By the time the boss rises from his sickbed, there is a strong sense of desperation across the camp. Christmas Day is approaching and there is no sign of the ice breaking up to enable the launching of the boats. None of us want to be on the ice for the onset of winter. Inactivity feels like a death wish.

  One month after the sinking of Endurance, the boss accompanies Wild on his sledge and I take Crean on mine to survey the ice surface. It does not look promising, but that evening the boss announces we will make a start dragging two boats westwards across the ice shelf to reduce the distance between ourselves and Paulet Island. Worsley leaves a note in a pickle jar inside the bow of the third boat, Stancomb Wills, which records our sorry state: ‘Endurance crushed and abandoned in ice 69 degrees S, 51 degrees W. All hands tomorrow proceeding to Westward. All well. December 23 1915. EH Shackleton.’

  A massive effort achieves just over two miles, and on Christmas Eve progress is stymied by leads opening in the ice. Even travelling at night the surface is soft and unreliable. We start again Christmas Day and find it tough going, clambering over hummocks and falling through cracks in the ice. My dog team pulls magnificently, but it is the eighteen men hauling the full weight of James Caird who are quickly exhausted. We have all lost condition and it is backbreaking to pull the lifeboat over the slightest rise. In some sections the men plunge down into the sea beneath the icecap until yanked up again by their harnesses. The brine means their clothing never properly dries out. After a mile they retrace their steps and attach themselves to Dudley Docker to drag it up to James Caird. On Boxing Day we manage less than two miles.

  Conditions are worse the next day. We set off before midnight and Shakespeare leads the way through the worst obstacles. The dogs are a joy to work with and handle the conditions far better than men. I avoid thinking of what will become of my team when we launch the boats.

  The men with James Caird are struggling. Their sledge sinks a foot or more into the snow, and momentum becomes impossible. Several hours of effort sees a gain of only a few hundred yards. Around 4 a.m. I pass James Caird and hear an altercation between Worsley and Chips, who has undone his harness trace and is refusing to pull any further. The boss is fetched and Chips, who is a big fellow, unleashes his complaints.

  ‘It’s feckin’ madness, and I for one am not going to see these boats ruined. It’s not just the sleds breakin’ up! The men are done in and we hae na done a mile. An’ wha’ for? The feckin’ ice is doin’ five miles a day!’

  There’s a substantial audience to this outburst. The fo’c’sle crew stand in their traces in sullen support. All eyes look to the boss.

  ‘If we don’t go west, McNeish, we’ll miss Paulet completely. You’ve been ordered to get back in your harness.’

  ‘I’m not obliged to obey his orders, nor yours for that matter. Worsley is no feckin’ captain ’cause he ain’t got no feckin’ ship! No one’s paying us when we is marooned.’

  Only the boss’s eyes show his fury. Wild is sent to fetch the case containing the ship’s articles. The dog teams are tied up and the whole crew is gathered. Shackleton speaks so all can hear.

  ‘I am in charge of this expedition. I am responsible for the expedition members and for the ship’s crew. When I joined Endurance at Buenos Aires I signed on as master of the ship. The ship’s articles—I have them here—provide for loss of the ship. You’ve given your oaths to obey my command. The articles expressly give me that authority on board ship and onshore and in the lifeboats. Anyone who does not obey lawful orders, the usual punishments apply. Anyone who is mutinous . . . so help me, God, I’ll not be bringing them home. Ship’s articles have not terminated and wages continue until we reach port.’

  Chips backs down. He is probably right, though, I think, about sledging the boats.

  A break is taken and hoos
h is served. Wild walks through camp brandishing the shotgun. He shoots a dog that has been injured by a sledge.

  Dragging the boats continues. One day later, just ten miles from Ocean Camp, the boss orders a stop, the going only being worse. We set up a third, hopefully final camp—Patience Camp, the boss calls it.

  New Year’s Day 1916 is spent at Patience Camp. The usual toasts are made. The boss and most of the fellows are homesick for their families. There is murmuring among the sailors they’ll never see another Christmas. As for me, I have now been in the Antarctic for five Christmases in a row. It is not a special day for me. I have only distant memories of being excited as a child at Christmas. I do remember the dreadfully hot Christmas day after Pa died when Ma, having had too many sherries, burned a rabbit in the pot as she slept through the afternoon.

  However, in light of the expedition’s predicament, I make some personal resolutions on New Year’s Eve. One, I won’t make the mistake again of abandoning my films and photographs on a sinking ship. To think they almost went to the bottom and I may have returned to civilisation as impoverished as I began. They should never have been abandoned. Shackleton’s judgement can’t be trusted. Two, I am going to have to look after myself to ensure I am there at the end. Not everyone will return home. Many of the sailors and some of the scientists will not cope with winter conditions. They have no idea how to look after themselves on the ice, let alone help anyone else.

  Our northward progress on the drifting ice is at the mercy of wind and currents. We like southerlies as they break up the ice and blow us homeward. Our camp is no longer connected with the main pack where Endurance was abandoned. The surface remains soft and walking anywhere is perilous. Leads constantly open and can cut you off from camp. Orde-Lees is the only person allowed any distance from camp as he can travel more safely on skis. Each day he scouts for seals to supplement our stores. He is fanatical in his belief that fresh seal meat keeps off scurvy, and Macklin and McIlroy agree, though without bread and cereal it plays havoc with our bowels. To save bullets Orde-Lees stuns the seals with a blow to the head then cuts their throats. If a seal or penguin comes up near the camp, we do the same. We each carry a pocketknife at all times. Likewise, we carry with us and lick clean our own spoon for mealtimes.