Endurance Page 18

  One morning, Orde-Lees excitedly rouses our camp, having discovered that overnight large numbers of Adelie penguins have come up to rest on our floe. These birds have no reason to be afraid of man and show no fear. Their dark eyes ringed in white bands record astonishment and consternation at our violence. It is an unfair contest, by the end of which we have killed over three hundred Adelies. This is two weeks of food for us and their blubber will fuel our stove even longer.

  The ice further deteriorates and it is obvious our camp will not be moving again until we take to the boats. As the dogs are unable to come with us, they have completed their service to the expedition.

  I hear Orde-Lees complaining to the boss, ‘They eat a seal each day. They’re now competing with us for food.’

  There is no argument I can make. Shakespeare is not my dog. The dogs belong to the expedition. There is no room in the boats even for one dog. They will not survive if abandoned on the ice; Wild says they would turn on each other. But there are several expedition members I would rather leave behind.

  My team is the first chosen. I have no say in this. Wild takes the pack behind a nearby ridge. I have fed them and said my goodbyes. I have a camera to clean.

  A gunshot reverberates through the camp. I know Wild has killed Shakespeare, the pack leader, first. A minute later a second shot rings out. I carry on cleaning my equipment. A third shot and I clean the same lens again.

  One by one the dogs are dispatched with a bullet to the head. The boss has agreed to this, despite bullets being a precious resource. It is the most humane way, said Shackleton. He is, I surmise, thinking more about Frank Wild than the dogs.

  I count through the eight shots. I try to concentrate on anything else, but by the end I am completely distraught and storm off so I don’t have to face anyone. I tell myself it’s a necessity but it hurts in a way I haven’t experienced for some years, and I realise I was closer to my dogs than my expedition colleagues.

  That evening, my foul mood is made darker when Orde-Lees pipes up, ‘I say, Wild, have you added the carcasses to the larder?’

  I leap to my feet, but Wild steps in and pins my arms before I can knock Orde-Lees’s head off.

  By the end of January we are only one hundred and fifty miles from Paulet Island, but Wild tells me confidentially we have drifted too far east and have no chance of reaching it, though we may come close to the South Shetland Islands. With the movement of the icepack, Ocean Camp has, ironically, moved a few miles closer to us. The boss must be having doubts that twenty-eight men can fit into two boats, as he now orders retrieval of Stancomb Wills from Ocean Camp.

  This is just in time, as the ice is dangerously soft with many cracks and leads opening. Killer whales regularly appear in the narrow pools to observe our travelling circus. Eventually the boss bans all further excursions. Since the loss of Endurance our icy raft has floated some two hundred and fifty miles northwards. It is now a roughly circular island about twelve hundred yards in circumference. Frustratingly, the ocean remains clogged with ice floes, making boat navigation impossible.

  Life on an iceberg is disorientating. On the morning of 15 February—the boss’s birthday—we wake to discover that the wind, accompanied by foul weather, appears to have swung to the north, reversing our progress. It is only later in the morning, when Wild checks the compass, that we realise our ice floe has pirouetted and the wind has remained steady.

  At the end of March we are still stuck on our ice floe, with the weather getting colder as winter approaches. Game has become scarcer, and the boss puts us on half rations. Our floe starts to split in half and we madly scramble to move sledges and food supplies across to where the tents are. The boss introduces four-hour watches. Soon our floe is not much bigger than our camp. It moves with the swell and constantly bumps and grinds against surrounding floes. In all directions I look out on thousands of bergs, rhythmically rising and falling like an embroidered white quilt across a huge bed. But to us sleep seems like a gamble. Our floe sinks lower in the water and looks ready to split again.

  The boss orders camp be struck and all equipment that’s coming be stowed in the three boats. In the early afternoon we launch. I am in James Caird with the boss and Wild, as well as Clark, James, Hussey, Wordie and the sailors Vincent, Green and McCarthy. Chips is also with us, no doubt so the boss can keep an eye on him. I glance up from my oar and there, left behind on the ice, are the scattered boxes and rubbish of Ocean Camp, and my abandoned wooden tripod. All I have is a pocket Kodak and three rolls of film.

  Despite having craved escape from the clutches of the icepack for over a year, the sensation of floating in a small wooden boat is unsettling. Even heavily laden, Caird rolls and pitches as men climb over each other to swap positions. More than once, the oar handles punch me in the jaw as they seesaw up and down with the motion of the boat. The scientists have little experience in rowing. It is in any case impossible to row, as the oars jam up against the ice. Wild takes charge, standing at the stern wielding an oar first against this floe, then the other, pushing us clear.

  ‘The bloody sledges are dragging on the ice,’ cries Wild. The boss had directed that the boat sledges be strapped and partially suspended off the stern in case of future need.

  ‘Alright,’ calls Shackleton. ‘Cut them off.’

  Their bindings are slashed and they drop below the waves. We are now committed to ocean travel. After four hours we half push, half row ourselves into open sea, followed by Worsley in charge of Dudley Docker and Hudson in charge of Stancombe Wills.

  Hours after emerging from the ice, I look up and rub my eyes at what I see—the ice pack is now bearing down on us. We are caught in a tidal surge that is sweeping us straight back into the icepack. As fast as we can row, we are being sucked back to the ice, in front of which there is a foaming pressure wave.

  The boss calls for a mighty effort.

  ‘Stroke . . . and stroke . . . and stroke,’ urges Wild.

  All three boats gradually pull away and manoeuvre across to an outlying berg, where we tie up for the night. We are exhausted, our hands blistered, none of us having laboured at oars in such trying circumstances. We have had almost no carbohydrates in our diet now for many weeks and have no reserves of energy. The boats are hauled onto the floe, tents put up and my portable stove gets a workout cooking a hoosh to restore some sense of wellbeing.

  Just before midnight I am awakened by the boss crying, ‘She’s splitting up, she’s splitting up!’

  I sit bolt upright in darkness. The boss is not in the tent, and as I emerge I see collapsed tents and hear people in the water. The boss is lying flat on the ice, pulling a dark lump out of the water. It’s a finnesko sleeping bag without its occupant. Again he reaches down, and this time he grasps an arm. Up out of the black soup comes Clark, his eyes bulging and a look of terror on his face.

  Others clamber along the edge of a two-yard-wide crack, retrieving what they can before the bergs have a chance to crunch back together.

  ‘Pull Caird across,’ calls the boss as the split in the floe leaves our tent and the boat at risk of drifting away in the dark. The tent and our belongings are thrown into Caird and a dozen souls drag and propel it across the crack in the floe. One by one we then leap across the water to the main part of the floe. The boss insists on going last, and by then the gap has widened and he does not jump. We stand facing him across the open lead. The boss disappears into the night, his cries muffled by falling snow.

  Wild runs back to launch Stancomb Wills, but the sea is awash with jostling icebergs pushing and grinding. Launching a boat in darkness between bergs on the move is to risk being crushed. Fortune intervenes and the newly calved berg is shunted back towards us. The boss finds an opportune moment and leaps across safely.

  Our hearts are pumping and there is no interest in returning to the tents. A rollcall reveals all are safe. The stove is lit and pieces of dryish clothing are volunteered to stave off hypothermia for those who were plunged into
the drink. We huddle around the stove and wait for morning.

  As soon as it is light and a lead opens, we launch the boats, leaving behind heavy boxes of food, as the boats have been sitting dangerously low in the water. In James Caird we take hourly shifts at rowing until we emerge from the pack. An easterly is blowing, so we take advantage by setting sail and heading nor’-west, but around midday snow squalls hit us from the nor’-east and the wind increases to gale force. Dudley Docker and Stancomb Wills are unable to make headway and bash themselves uselessly into the foaming swells. Stancomb Wills did not have its gunwales raised and ships a lot of sea. Its sail is too small and it is unable to sail into the wind.

  Spray drenches the boats and freezes solid in our clothing, and ice gradually builds up inside the hull and on the deck. The boss directs Wild to turn and run south, leading the other boats back into the pack, where the bergs flatten the sea and shelter us from the rollers. That evening we again haul the boats onto a large iceberg and set up tents. Our camp remains intact overnight, despite the berg splitting and being eroded down to about a hundred feet long. We remain surrounded by churning ice, and it is not until afternoon that we are able to launch into a small lead. Caird navigates westwards through the pack, followed closely by Dudley Docker and Stancombe Wills.

  That evening we are too nervous to sleep on the ice, so instead the three boats tie up to a reasonable-sized floe and Green, the cook, goes ashore with the blubber stove to prepare hot milk and Bovril. No sooner is food served than we are forced to cast off to avoid being holed by unstable bergs eddying around us. We are compelled to spend the night in the boats, sometimes rowing, sometimes pushing off bergs, sometimes resting and trying to keep the three boats together. We slump across the rowlocks and huddle together for warmth. Clark and James are horribly seasick and lie prostrate under a canvas sail. I am shivering with cold; sleep is impossible. Throughout the night we listen to a pack of killer whales which take a close interest, surfacing and blowing their spume over us.

  At noon on 12 April there is enough sun for Worsley to check our position. He stands up straight in Dudley Docker, braced against the mast, and somehow, despite the boat rolling in the swells, he looks down at his sextant and takes a reading while all eyes are on him. The boss leaps across to Docker and he and the captain check their calculations.

  ‘Not as favourable as I wanted,’ the boss says as he rejoins us.

  Shortly after, Wild whispers in my ear, ‘We are no nearer land than when we started. In fact, we’ve gone bloody backwards. We are sou’-east of Patience Camp.’

  It is a bitter blow. Our hopes of reaching the South Shetland Islands are dashed. Instead, due to the persistent nor’-easter, the boss determines to head for the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, Graham Land. I feel bitter disappointment, as few whalers go that far south, but the alternative of missing all landfalls and being adrift in the Atlantic Ocean does not bear thinking about.

  We steer west-sou’-west in a heavy following swell, and about 9 p.m. a solid-looking floe provides a mooring for Dudley Docker, with Stancombe Wills attached to its stern and Caird attached to Stancombe Wills. However, during the night the wind swings south-west and Worsley has to cut the mooring line to save the boats being dashed against the ice. The boats stay tethered together, with the poor crew of Dudley Docker directed by the boss to row into the breeze throughout the night so as to keep the three boats head to wind.

  The temperature is minus-seven degrees and sleep is again impossible as the boats jerk and pull against each other in the swells. We huddle together in the middle of the boat for warmth. In the morning our Burberry coats have a white covering of snow and frost. My companions’ faces are haggard, with cracked lips, red eyes and ice frozen in their beards. I have developed painful boils on my buttocks and feet from constant wetness and chafing. Like the others, I have been eating uncooked pemmican and have diarrhoea. Consequently I spend time sitting uncomfortably, my nether regions exposed, over the edge of the gunwale while I hang on grimly to the side stays.

  Overnight each of the boats has become heavily laden with ice and Wild takes to it with an axe. The oars are too heavy to lift until the ice is removed. The wind having changed in our favour, Shackleton, after conferring with Wild and Worsley, decides to have an attempt at an island to our north, Elephant Island. We hoist sail and head west and north through the floes, and after some hours we again emerge through the pack into open ocean. The wind picks up until we are forced to reef the sails. So excited are we by our favourable progress and escape from the ice that we forget to secure any ice for drinking water. That evening Worsley fashions a sea anchor from oars tied together, and he lets this drag from the prow of Docker to keep head to wind with Caird and Stancombe Wills tied in a row behind.

  Elephant Island is no more than a pile of jagged cliffs, glaciers and mountainous rock rising up over half a mile out of the South Atlantic Ocean. It appeared to us after dawn that morning of 14 April like a saintly vision, even though it was still more than thirty miles away.

  We had survived another night at sea, although my companions were by then seriously incapacitated. Frostbite and hypothermia were the main concerns. We were all fighting to keep circulation in our hands and feet. Blackborow’s feet had gone and he could no longer row. Greenstreet was the same. My own hands were in agony from the cold, but at least I could feel them, which was a good sign. Orde-Lees was out of sight, dry-retching on the floor of Docker and apparently unable to row. I heard much dreadful abuse heaped on him. In Stancombe Wills, Hudson had been hallucinating and collapsed. Crean had taken over. The day was fine, however, and winds stayed favourable until fading away at midday, when it again became necessary to take to the oars. Now we regretted our failure to secure ice for drinking. We were all parched and had not slept for over three days. How did Coleridge know all this so well?

  Stancombe Wills continued to lag behind, so we took it in tow. I spent most of the day at the oars, constantly shifting my weight to find a less painful way of sitting. When I could, I would glance over my shoulder to make sure Elephant Island was still there. By 5 p.m. I was still seeing the same outline of ridges and glacier.

  ‘How far now, Frank?’ I asked Wild.

  ‘Ten miles.’

  ‘You said that hours ago,’ I said, and Wild and Shackleton glanced at each other.

  ‘Hoyle, there’s a current,’ said Wild. ‘We are holding our own.’

  Alongside me, Chips McNeish cried out, ‘Holy Mother of Jesus, what are yer sayin’? We been rowing for nought! We shoulda bin restin’ while we can, before the wind comes oop . . .’

  ‘Chips,’ responded Wild, ‘I’ve been at the helm for two days straight. You take over and I’ll row.’

  Darkness fell and snow squalls arrived from the south-west so we could no longer see our destination. Dudley Docker disappeared into the gloom. The wind turned gale force with fifty-mile-an-hour gusts bringing a large cross sea broadsides on our port bow. Spray from the waves lashed everyone in the boat, then turned to ice. By this time, Clark, James, Hussey, Wordie and Green had each collapsed from exhaustion and were lying under a sail in the bottom of the boat. As I still had feeling in my hands, the boss asked me to take the sheet, which even with a reefed sail was hard work. I held that rope for several hours, half sitting, half lying on the floor of Caird. My hands were locked frozen with the rope wrapped around them. Unable to play the rope, the wind gusts pulled me bodily towards the ratchet block.

  I was swaying back and forth with my eyes shut when freezing water poured across my back and swamped the boat. Looking up, I saw Chips had fallen asleep at the helm and was now sprawled below the tiller. Wild leaped up and pushed the tiller leewards to force Caird into the wind. We bailed to save ourselves. Wild resumed the helm.

  I looked back and could see white rollers breaking off the bow of Stancomb Wills, its black shape sitting low in the water, riding the crests then being swallowed whole in the following troughs. The boss th
ought he could hear a surf breaking but it may have been nerves.

  Dawn brought blessed relief. There, but a mile off, was Elephant Island. Stancombe Wills, though low in the water, was still afloat. Docker, however, was nowhere to be seen. We sailed into the lee of the island and took to the oars. Dark forbidding cliffs towered above us.

  For some twelve miles of coast we rowed, seeing no beach, nor cove nor even a ledge at the foot of the cliffs that would provide a landing. We rounded a glacier and took ice on board to quench our thirsts. Eventually, a small shingle beach was spied and the boss transferred to the smaller Stancombe Wills and navigated in over a shallow reef. Stores were taken ashore and Caird was then guided in until she scraped and stranded in the kelp. It was all I could do to straighten up and clamber over the gunwale. It was such a long time since I had known solid ground, the shingle beach swayed beneath my feet. I clung to the boat to avoid collapsing.

  We were ashore. There was relief in that. But what sort of refuge was this and where were our companions on the Docker?

  10

  Elephant Island

  More than half the crew on board James Caird and Stancombe Wills were utterly useless in getting the boats up on the beach. A number of men had to be carried. Our spirits lifted when, around the headland, Dudley Docker hove into view. I walked stiffly to the water’s edge to assist her.