Endurance Page 19

  Blackborow was lifted over the gunwale and carried ashore. Greenstreet was next. He was lifted over the side but was able to stand, although shaking as if with palsy. He stumbled through the wash onto the shingle and stood transfixed watching Green the cook who, wanting blubber for fuel, was walking through the seals wielding a cast-iron poker. Greenstreet approached the nearest stunned animal and dropped to his knees. He pulled out his knife and sliced the seal open just below the ribcage. He thrust his bare hands through the incision up into the seal’s chest cavity and rested in that position with his head embracing the seal for several minutes, hoping to restore sensation and save his fingers.

  Docker was pulled up and Green soon had a fire going in the blubber stove. Wild, Worsley and the boss embraced. I lay down on the bare rock some distance away. A wave of sobs took me by surprise and it was some time before I could stop shaking and return to the group.

  Tents were raggedly erected on stones at the foot of the cliff, and in our stupor we fell asleep. We slept the sleep of the almost-dead until the cold morning light, the rising tide and threatening waves told us this was no haven. We had to move.

  Wild was dispatched westwards with several others in Stancombe Wills to find a landing that offered shelter. The boss and I took a climbing rope and clambered eastwards along the foot of the cliff, squeezing between basalt spires and edging across thin crevices above the waves. We craned our necks to see through sleet and snow past jagged headlands, only to see more of the same.

  Night fell and Wild had not returned. A large blubber fire was maintained with the stove door open and facing out to sea. Hours later a cry was heard, and out of the darkness Stancombe Wills streaked ashore with phosphorescence in its wake.

  In the morning the boss is anxious to move. ‘Boats in the water, everyone! Mr Wild has found a landing seven miles along the northern shore.’

  At least half the men do not shift at all. I can understand this of Blackborow, Greenstreet and Hudson, who are genuine invalids, but it is contemptible of the sailors who think only of their present comfort.

  The boss directs himself to a group from whom the most grumbling is heard. ‘If we do not leave before the bay fills with ice, there will be no chance of survival here.’

  Meanwhile, Wild and Worsley have laid down oars as makeshift rollers between Caird and the sea. The boats reach the water, but three oars are shattered. There is a toll exacted for every gain.

  We row as close to shore as we dare to avoid being blown out to sea. Above us the cliffs rise vertically over a thousand feet. There is a constant stream of snow blasting off the tops and eddying down on us. At Cape Valentine, however, we are unable to hide from the squalls that come screaming down the glacier in a headwind against which we bend our backs but make no progress. Docker is loaded with extra bodies and, with only three oars, is blown sideways.

  We steer closer to shore and it is almost evening when Wild guides us in. The keel of Caird bumps between shallow rocks and runs aground. We are all done in and are raked by snow and sleet as supplies and belongings are heaved onto a narrow gravel spit. Seaman Cheetham stumbles out of the water and faints, falling heavily on the shingle. One of the crew has had a heart attack and McIlroy too has chest pains and is carried ashore. I am shaking and numb but able to help haul up the boats. Many of the others are oblivious or, worse still, simply ignore the labours of those few who empty the boats and drag them up the beach.

  Green is incapacitated, but others cook up a hoosh. Tents are erected on the highest part of the beach. Gear has been dumped in the snow and sleeping bags are wet but the men are beyond caring.

  No sooner do I sleep than I am awakened by canvas hurling and cracking over my head. Wooden tent poles fly through the air like clubs. A storm has hit our little camp and nothing is secured. Two tents have ripped and come down, and ours is about to take off. The boss and I drop the poles and flatten the tent on the ground, weighing it down with rocks, and then crawl underneath. Others have climbed into the boats to escape the gale.

  Daylight does come, but there is nowhere to hide from wind or rain. Wild has brought us aground on a narrow spit of snow-covered gravel that juts out due north and connects what would otherwise be a rocky islet some two hundred yards out from an unclimbable precipice. This rocky hillock, which we name Penguin Hill due to its numerous occupants, rises only a hundred feet and would be a good lookout point, but its view of the ocean to the north is impeded by a much larger rock, which stands a further hundred yards offshore. Penguin Hill, from its smell, is a long-established rookery for penguins and seals. The spit itself, which is our only walking area, is forty yards at its widest. On either side to the east and west are exposed rocky bays which will choke with ice at the onset of winter. To the south-west a large glacial tongue descends into the bay and has formed a collar of ice on the base of the spit.

  ‘They’re about to leave! Quick, they’re about to leave!’ It is Orde-Lees. He is pointing out along the spit and is almost in tears as he raves at the boss.

  Through the sleet and early morning gloom, all the penguins have come down from the rookery and are gathered on the beach. They actively inspect the water’s edge.

  ‘Alright, Lees.’ Shackleton waits for Wild as he gathers tent poles, sledge runners, hammers and other instruments to use as clubs. Meanwhile Shackleton has pulled the remains of a tent off a huddle of bodies wrapped in drenched sleeping bags.

  ‘Get up, I say! Every one of you form up in line with a club or else these penguins will be gone and you will starve on this godforsaken rock.’

  The grimy faces of the sailing crew emerge from the bags. ‘We can’t, boss. We ain’t got proper clothing and our hands and feet are frostbitten. We can’t even stand, let alone walk.’

  ‘I’ll not have the same men doing all the work. Where are your mitts and hats?’

  ‘They’re gone, sir, last night in the storm, sir—we’re all fucked.’

  ‘Holy Christ, you blaggards can’t e’en take care of yourselves. Get up, man, before I take to you with a club.’

  The boss drags one of the sailors by the scruff of his neck over rocks and onto the shingle.

  ‘Mr Orde-Lees wants every one of those penguins in a pot. There’s a couple of hundred now, but there’s about to be none if you don’t move.’

  Green speaks up. ‘The aluminium cooking pots have all gone, boss. Whoever was on watch . . . a fair lot of the stores and spare clothing have blown away in the night.’

  Shackleton’s face is dark. ‘Only Blackborow, Hudson and Greenstreet are excused. Every other hand, get down to the beach.’

  He and Wild kick and push the sailing crew from where they lie prostrate on the ground. Crean then leads the men in single file along the edge of the spit to cut off the penguins from the sea, but the penguins are already leaping, first one, then another disappearing in the black waves.

  We run now to get into them, lashing out on either side. Careless of whether we kill or maim, we strike them down, crack their skulls. It has dawned on us that this hellhole is now our home; there is nothing else. Better to be a penguin in such a place. But we are humans and we slay them. Most escape, but some turn back and retreat up into the rookery and are killed there.

  ‘Seventy-seven, boss,’ says Orde-Lees. ‘We have seventy-seven. That’s a good three or four days of food and fuel.’

  The fury over, the truly appalling part is now the butchering and flensing away the blubber in the freezing cold, using small pocketknives in our bare, frostbitten hands.

  Later, Shackleton assembles the whole group. ‘This place is named Cape Wild, in honour of the man who found it.’

  ‘It’s a wild bloody cape!’ retorts Hussey.

  ‘We could easily stay put here till the spring. As you see, there are seals and penguins in good numbers. The glacier provides fresh water. However, I do not propose waiting for the spring. Mr Blackborow needs an operation in the next several weeks. I intend to take Caird to South Georgia, w
here I will arrange for a vessel from Grytviken to bring our whole group off this island. Mr Wild will be in charge in my absence. I will be asking for volunteers to accompany me. Captain Worsley has already agreed. Lastly, as I have told you, I brought you here—and I am determined to get every single one of you home.’

  Next morning, Chips is again hard at work strengthening James Caird.

  Wild tells me, ‘The boss is taking Chips. He doesn’t like him, but he needs him to make sure Caird is seaworthy. He’s taking that other troublemaker, Vincent, off my hands and Crean has twisted the boss’s arm to go and that other Irishman, McCarthy, too.’

  ‘You disappointed?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in a few months. It’s eight hundred miles to South Georgia. The wind blows straight from Cape Horn and if they miss South Georgia, well there’s nothing else really and there’s no coming back against the westerlies. But, you know, it’s the boss we’re talking about; I think he can do it.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t make it?’

  ‘If we’re still here in the spring, then it’s my turn. The boss has told me I’m to take Docker. There are bound to be whalers up around Deception Island.’

  ‘They might come past here.’

  ‘No, no one’s been here since the 1830s, when they finished off the last of the elephant seals. Have you noticed there’re no rats? Not even they can survive here!’

  So not even whalers come near the island. And no one will know to look for us here. Nor is there a resident seal population as a food source during winter. That means starvation. To stay here can only mean death, unknown and unrecorded.

  ‘Frank,’ I say, ‘if it comes to that, I’ll come with you in Docker.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t be worried about that, Hoyle. Shackleton will save us.’

  ●

  Caird was twenty-two feet long. To avoid rolling over in the swells, which were expected to be sixty to eighty feet, she needed ballast, and a lot of it. Bags sewn from blankets were filled with stones to be laid down along the keel. Chips used some two thousand pounds of stones, which could only be brought on board after the boat was launched. To strengthen the keel, Chips took Docker’s mast and lashed it along the floor of Caird. The sailors used a mixture of wax and Marston’s oil paints to caulk the seams between planks. Knowing seas would regularly wash over the whole boat, Chips used timber and canvas to fashion an almost complete deck cover.

  During preparations, the boss took me aside. ‘Hurley, if I don’t make it, I want you to get all the cine film and photographs to Ernest Perris at the Daily Chronicle in London. Perris runs the business side of the syndicate and he’ll work out what’s required. You just need to hand over the films to him. Frank Wild will do the lecture tours with the photographs and be in charge of fundraising. He’s met Perris.’

  ‘Boss, I can do the lectures synchronised with the photographs, and there’s the film, also. Really, Wild knows nothing about all that.’

  ‘Perris will help Frank with all he needs to know.’

  I’d been thinking about this already and was surprised by Shackleton’s insistence.

  ‘Boss, if you’re serious about raising money, you need me involved. There are too many things that can go wrong—and with all respect to Frank, he can’t be expected to fix ’em. The slides and film have to be put together properly if you want to get the crowds in.’

  ‘I tell you what, Hurley: I’ll agree you can do lecture tours in the United States, but Frank is to do Britain and the Continent, and you have to do everything in your power to cooperate with Perris in terms of developing and editing and so on.’

  ‘I’ll do that, but it means a commitment of my time and, well, it’s disappointing I won’t be involved in presenting my own work the way I want to present it. Why can’t I have that opportunity?’

  ‘Blast it, man, so long as the syndicate’s debts are paid and my debts are paid and my wife is not a pauper, then you can have your bloody films!’

  ‘Well, that’s how we should do it. Look, there’s one other thing: I haven’t met Mr Perris. He may be good at what he does, but I can tell you Mawson’s syndicate made a right mess of Home of the Blizzard. The footage was excellent, but they didn’t edit it properly, they didn’t show people what they wanted to see of Antarctica. They didn’t do proper titles. They didn’t make anything near the money they could have.’

  ‘Well I expect you won’t make those mistakes.’

  ‘I won’t. That’s why you chose me. But, boss, we’re assuming the worst, which we don’t believe will happen. But, assuming it does, you’ll need to give me something in writing saying I am to have control of the cinefilm. Mind you, this is only if you’re . . .’ I hesitated. ‘If you’re not able to be there yourself.’

  Shackleton agreed and I wasted no time finding a blank page in my expedition diary to record the terms and have the boss’s signature witnessed. While Shackleton was a genius at raising money, he was not a great one for detail, and with the stroke of a pen he passed ownership of the films to me.

  Shortly afterwards, Caird was ready to launch. In a gap between storms, but with a moderate swell still breaking along the spit, all hands except those incapacitated heaved the boat into the shallow surf. Stancomb Wills was alongside, loaded up with ballast and supplies to be transferred into Caird once out past the breakers. I stood on the beach with my pocket Kodak like a tourist, trying my best to record the scene, but all the time thinking what the caption would be: Last photograph of the Great Shackleton maybe.

  ‘How long, boss?’ someone called.

  ‘Two weeks’ fine sailing to South Georgia is what I expect,’ replied Shackleton. ‘Once we’ve a ship, the six of us will come straight back to get you all.’

  ‘Lucky there’s no sheelaghs wanderin’ the streets of Grytviken, else Crean might fergit about us.’

  ‘Too right, and McCarthy too. Doan you go feckin’ any sheelaghs till you’ve picked us oop!’

  ‘Too many bloody Oirishman on one feckin’ boat, if you ask me!’

  They had to yell now to be heard, and excited voices carried in the wind back to where I stood on the spit. I watched with apprehension as the undertow grabbed the stern of Caird and dragged her out till she was side on to the incoming waves. Standing on the upper deck wielding the oars, Chips and Vincent desperately tried to straighten her up. A white roller struck the port side and Caird, without ballast, rolled ominously to starboard, throwing the hapless Chips and Vincent into the sea. There was a collective groan from those on shore.

  Soon, however, Caird was in deep water, and over successive trips Stancombe Wills loaded over a tonne of ballast and supplies into her till she sat down neatly in the water with just two feet of freeboard. I took another shot of the men in the foreground on the water’s edge with their backs to me, arms raised as they waved to the ever-more-tiny boat, which all too soon disappeared below the swells on its way to the horizon. I hoped this simple shot of the farewell to our rescue mission might one day become famous for the right reasons. As things turned out, of all the days for the Irish it was Easter Sunday, 24 April 1916.

  With no shelter from the weather, we spent days digging a snow cave into the ice foot of the glacier. However, so damp was the cave inside that no one was prepared to stay in it.

  Wild then directed construction of two low stone walls some eighteen feet apart on the Penguin Hill end of the spit. We upturned Dudley Docker and Stancombe Wills and suspended them alongside each other from bow to stern on the stone walls. The remnants of the tents and tent floor cloths were then draped across the whole structure and formed walls held down by stones and ropes. An old tent doorway was sewn into place as an entrance that could be opened and shut.

  As the ground was part of the rookery, the stench was considerable, and being only several feet above sea level, it looked to be impossible to have a dry floor. So we excavated and removed layers of slimy guano, and then used beach rocks and gravel to lay out a new floor. It was less than five fe
et high inside, so not even Frank Wild could stand upright. But it was about twelve feet across and there were twenty-two of us needing shelter. A number of sly sailors quickly seized on the idea of making beds above ground in the thwarts of the boats by improvising additional decking and stretchers. Eventually twelve men slept on this mezzanine level and the rest dossed down on the ground. The blubber bogie stove I had made was brought inside and a small chimney added.

  I did not fancy being at such close quarters with the whole sailing crew. They were an illiterate bunch, coarse in their language and personal habits, and passed their time talking only about their stomachs. I still had the tent I had shared with the boss. I set it up in the most sheltered place I could find, but storms again brought it down in the middle of the night and I had to barge into the hut in the pitch-black and sleep where I could. No tent could survive on the exposed spit and I was forced to make my home with all the others in what became known as the Snuggery.

  ●

  The Snuggery is a stinking miserable hovel. We are trapped here like rats. I am lying cheek by jowl to men with infected boils, pustules, gaping ulcers and weeping sores. We can make no more boat journeys without first destroying this, our only shelter. In any case, the bays on both sides of the spit are now iced in. The boss left in the nick of time. He has taken the best boat, the skipper and the most able of the sailors, and I for one feel their loss keenly. Over half our group already have severe frostbite. I would not like to be the young stowaway Blackborow in these conditions, for despite his pluck he is the most likely to go first. The weather is appalling and winter has not yet started. God knows how long this is to be our home. Amid this grimness I resolve to myself that I will survive.

  In the evening Wild seems his usual self and doles out serves of hoosh while Hussey, with his back turned to avoid accusations of favouritism, selects the recipient by calling out a name from us survivors. Even with this system there is nasty bickering. After the meal, washed down with weak black tea, Hussey pulls out the banjo which the boss insisted he bring from the wreck of Endurance. Accompanied by the wind ripping though gaps in the canvas, Hussey picks at the chords while Wild sings slowly in his rich baritone: