Endurance Page 21

  June comes to an end with no sign of rescue. Inside the Snuggery, I can’t avoid hearing the talk.

  ‘Wild said the boss would be here by now.’

  ‘It can only mean one thing.’

  ‘Did you really think a wee cockleshell of a boat could sail hundreds of miles in those seas?’

  ‘You’ve seen the feckin’ waves, man, some are more’n eighty feet high.’

  ‘But if anyone could do it, the boss and the skipper could.’

  ‘Well why ain’t they here then?’

  ‘The boss wouldn’t give up. They had food for a month or longer.’

  ‘They didna’ hae water for a month, I know that. You believe what you like.’

  Wild intervenes. ‘Stop that rubbish talk, you lot. Your brains must be frozen. Say the boss does take until June to reach Grytviken. He won’t want to take the risk of coming here and getting stuck in ice in an iron whaler. He knows he needs a wooden boat and you know there are nonesuch in South Georgia. So where’s he going to get one? Well I suppose he could try the Falklands, but he’ll be wanting Aurora, which has to come all the way from New Zealand. So he has to cable, but there’s no cable in South Georgia, so he has to go to the Falklands anyways. It’s at best seven weeks’ passage from New Zealand to here, so that would mean the end of July. So for God’s sake give it a rest!’

  It is only a few weeks later, as I am lying in my sleeping bag reading Nordenskjöld’s account of his ship being trapped in the Weddell Sea ice, that our forced hibernation is disturbed by the sound of a loud cannon firing.

  ‘Ship!’ cries one voice then another, and there is a mad scramble for the tent flap.

  ‘Stand by, stand by!’ Marston, who was already outside, is yelling and running towards the Snuggery, but as I emerge no one is looking out to sea. Marston is pointing back across the spit to the west. ‘It was large as a cathedral, I swear.’

  The glacier has cracked with a loud boom and a huge section has fallen into the bay. Snow and ice is still avalanching down vertically in a cloud of mist and spume. Some four hundred yards away, a long black line emerges from the base of the cliff and advances towards Cape Wild, where we stand on our low-lying spit of shingle.

  There is less than a minute, no time to move Blackborow and Hudson. The waves gather height and are at least twenty feet high as they hit the pack ice surrounding the spit. The waves first lift then crack the ice like a bedsheet in the wind as an invisible submarine force propels towards us. Slabs of ice are lifted skywards and thrown forwards in a churning maelstrom. Thank God my films are stored high up on Penguin Hill, so I know they are safe as the first wave rushes up along the spit and inundates the Snuggery.

  The next wave goes no further. The icepack has acted as a damper. Ice boulders are left stranded on the spit but our home has survived with only a dunking.

  The incident is unnerving and strips away any sense of security I had in our abode. We may have been more secure on the icecap. Our tiny strip of land is no more than shingle and guano pushed by current and wave action into a spit joining Penguin Hill to the prison-wall cliffs of Elephant Island. The island itself remains inaccessible, but by appearance its hinterland is a forbidding combination of precipice and glacier. For much of the time our shingle spit is covered by snowdrift up to twelve feet deep in parts. We constantly shovel snow to prevent collapse of the stretched canvas roof of the Snuggery.

  ●

  From mid-July onwards we experience increasing problems with the volume of water produced from snow thaw and the heat generated by the cooker. One night my slumbers are disturbed when I shift my arm and find it plunged into icy water. Our floor is lower than surrounding snow levels and heavy rain has formed an undercover lake, luckily still an inch or so from my bag. I wake Wild, James and McIlroy, and together we bail out some sixty gallons of evil-smelling water and guano sludge. At 5 a.m. we do the same again, and every three or four hours for the next day. High tide aggravates the problem. We excavate the hut interior and construct elaborate drains, which help, but do not eliminate the need for bailing.

  The winter gales are terrifying but they have a beauty I admire even though I am unable to capture them on film. They are very much part of our daily experience. If I happen to be outside during such a maelstrom I will sometimes linger. Only in the midst of the elements at their wildest do I find an escape from our crowded abode. The wind howls and the sea rises up until Elephant Island and Penguin Hill disappear, as does the ocean itself. Instead there is just spume from crashing waves and constant pelting of ice fragments and spray that flies across the spit like shrapnel. Eventually self-preservation kicks in and drives me back inside the Snuggery. Fearful as these storms are I have come to prefer a wild sea to the deathly quiet of being iced in and surrounded by a frozen vista. The sea brings food and hope of rescue and the tides and currents are my connection with other lands and the rest of mankind, marooned here as I am on this most desolate piece of rock.

  July runs out of days and there is still no sign of Shackleton. The unavoidable conclusion is that we have not been rescued because the boss, Worsley, Crean, Chips, McCarthy and Vincent have all perished. There is really no other explanation. Even Wild now accepts this. He issues orders for gathering the items needed for another sea voyage.

  It is now the two-year anniversary of when Endurance was first commissioned and the expedition left London. It is also two years ago that the war in Europe started. All the men have friends and family that were expecting to join up.

  ‘Be all over now and we’ll hae missed our chance.’

  ‘Aye, they’ll hae forgotten aboot us.’

  Orde-Lees pipes up. ‘I don’t believe that. It could only be over by now if it was a draw, and Britain would never accept a draw with Germany.’

  The conversation is interrupted by an outbreak of coughing caused by acrid smoke from the latest tobacco substitute. The sailors, all nicotine addicts, have consumed their entire tobacco ration. Cheetham, as chief tobacco scientist, has persuaded them to remove the sennegrass padding from their finnesko boots, never mind they will have frostbitten feet. He has then boiled this in water with the remains of several broken-up old pipes in the expectation that the sennegrass, when dried out, will be infused with tobacco flavour. Other additives include lichen, seaweed, navel lint, reindeer hairs and any other hairs and flammable detritus from the sleeping bags. Cheetham has much scorn heaped on him for his efforts. I am pleased I have never succumbed to being a regular smoker.

  Orde-Lees for once gets it right with his protest, ‘Good Lord, it smells like a cross between a fire in a feather factory and a third-class smoking carriage on a working man’s train!’

  Monday, 7 August 1916, and Wild insists we celebrate the bank holiday with a biscuit pudding. It’s very nice, too, although Orde-Lees insists on reminding us there is only another four or five weeks of biscuits left. These are our last treats, as the milk powder has all gone and the last of our Streimer’s nut food will be gone in a week.

  The following Saturday, our regular toasts are accompanied by our final ration of methylated spirits, a tablespoon each. Wild is particularly mournful at this. We have two cases of Bovril rations left for making hoosh, along with some sugar cubes. There are still twenty-two mouths to feed.

  Three or four days later, in the middle of a violent storm, I am startled by Orde-Lees bursting through the Snuggery entrance.

  ‘Gentoos!’ he cries. ‘Lots of them! Wild, I can lead a party and get them now before they go.’

  Wild looks up. ‘Where, Colonel? Where and how many?’

  ‘About thirty, I should say, on the rocks at the foot of the hill.’

  ‘Show us, Colonel. Hoyle, will you come too?’

  Outside it is bitter, but worse than that is the heavy drenching rain. My Burberry is almost worn through in parts and, while effective against snow, it is useless once wet.

  We are lifted and virtually blown to the water’s edge, where we see a group of pengui
ns huddled close together above the rock platform at the base of the cliff.

  Wild says, ‘No, Colonel, I’m not sending men out in this. Wait till the weather’s better.’

  ‘But they’ll be gone by morning,’ Orde-Lees protests.

  ‘It’s a good sign, but we should soon start to see seals. I’m damned if I’m going to slaughter thirty penguins when one seal will give us five times the amount of meat and blubber. Leave them be, Colonel. I’m giving the penguins a day off.’

  With that Wild was gone.

  ‘You would have had to gut them yourself in the rain.’ I have to yell my consolation to Orde-Lees to be heard. ‘No one was going to come out in this.’

  ‘I’ve done it before.’

  ‘I know, but why should you? Don’t say you don’t feel the cold.’

  ‘Feel the cold! Is that all you feel, Hurley? Do you know how close to the edge things are here? I thought you would know about starvation. What do you think is holding things together here? It’s not Wild. The men don’t respect him like they did the boss. And it’s not God’s law! There’s no religion holding things together on this island. The only thing that counts with those sailors is food in their bellies. That’s all they think about. Run out of food and they’ll turn into cannibals. I’ve heard them talk about me. I’m the one who’s going to meet with an accident. I understand that.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I say and turn to head back in.

  ‘Hurley, it’s Wild who let the larder run down, but it’s me that will pay. It’s me they want!’

  For much of August, the spit is surrounded by pack ice. Few penguins arrive and fewer seals. Orde-Lees does a stocktake of frozen carcasses and informs Wild there are only twelve penguin skins left for fuel, penguin meat for four days and seal meat, much of it putrid, for nine days.

  Within a short time, it becomes apparent this information has reached the sailors.

  ‘No rescue means we starve to death.’

  ‘We’ll eat the first to die, that is what it means.’

  Wild interrupts. ‘Colonel, you are a God-fearing man; surely you do not believe the Almighty God, after all our sufferings, will let us starve here without a soul knowing.’

  Orde-Lees responds, ‘Believing in Almighty God is no excuse for being improvident, Mr Wild.’

  Wild shot a leopard seal in August but we were unable to prevent it swimming off. The rifle has only fourteen cartridges left.

  We have better luck a week later, when a pregnant Weddell cow wanders up on the spit and is quickly butchered. And on the positive side, we have by experimentation found that if Elephant Island seaweed is boiled for several hours it forms a palatable jellylike substance. However the process uses up considerable fuel and we are very low on blubber.

  The real challenge is clearing snow and ice from the rock platform. The rock pools, we discover, are lined with limpets which, if collected in sufficient volume, add welcome variety to our diet. Fifty limpets are a worthwhile snack, but they are often deep in the pools and difficult to collect before losing sensation in your arm.

  For some time I have been wondering whether I will have a choice to leave by boat with Wild on a rescue attempt or stay in the relatively safe, although dismal, landfall of Elephant Island. Conversation in the Snuggery is now so openly desperate there is no longer a façade that we are waiting for the boss to return. When Wild asks me to accompany him, I readily agree. Macklin is to come, along with two others. Deception Island is two hundred and fifty miles away against the prevailing south-west headwinds. Sealers should arrive in those waters from early November. Wild figures it could take up to six weeks rowing in Dudley Docker. Docker is smaller than Caird and sits lower in the water. We have five oars left, one of which needs to be converted to a mast. The remnants of a tent will be cut into a mainsail. It will be a wet voyage. Of course, I already know my films cannot be risked and I am going to have to leave them cached on the island. They are more important than me.

  11

  Rescue, September 1916

  It says somewhere in the Bible that you know not the day, nor the hour. That’s how it was for us. August had come to an end. I had spent the morning in a working party shovelling snowdrift away from the Snuggery. The tide had dropped, so we quit clearing snow to fossick in the tidal zone for limpets and seaweed. ‘Hoosh-oh!’ had been called for lunch, and the sailors and all had trooped back inside. Despite the anxiety of being fed, it was my wont to tarry at times like these and delay my return to the crowded squalor of the hut. Marston, too, was lingering as he finished shelling his morning’s haul of limpets.

  ‘I say, Hurley, have a look at that, will you?’

  I looked. It was unmistakable, yet it was unbelievable. Marston rose to his feet.

  We both rubbed our eyes. It was a ship—not an iceberg that looked like a ship (of which there were many), but a real ship. As if from nowhere this small black object had just rounded the rocky island that stood offshore from our spit. It was a mile or so off, and just before the horizon. I shook my head and looked again, It was still there and it was moving. It was not a sailing ship, but a small steamboat.

  Marston’s shelled limpets fell across the rocks. ‘Ship ho!’ he called as he turned and ran to the hut with me hot on his tail. ‘Wild, Wild, there’s a ship!’ he yelled.

  The hut exploded with great commotion from within. One by one, bodies came out through the flap till the flap was no more, and the more impatient pushed through the canvas walls.

  Since there was no certainty as to the boat’s purposes, I retrieved our last tin of paraffin, put a pick through it and poured its contents onto a small bundle of sennegrass and added some rather frozen strips of blubber. I struggled to induce flames, and the sennegrass was so dry there was little smoke. At the same time, Wild, Macklin and Orde-Lees made a dash up Penguin Hill, only to find our flag was a frozen lump at the base of the oar which served as a mast. Instead, Macklin’s Burberry jacket was quickly hoisted, but the lanyard jammed when it was only halfway.

  By this time it was clear the steamboat was heading straight for Cape Wild. Orde-Lees, Clark and Hudson carried Blackborow outside in his bedding so he could behold the wondrous sight. The four of them were in tears.

  The boat, which was flying a Chilean naval ensign, dropped anchor some hundred and fifty yards offshore and a rowing boat was lowered. I immediately recognised Shackleton’s solid features. I retrieved my Vest Pocket Kodak and quickly captured the scene, the final shots on the roll and my last photographs on Elephant Island.

  As they drew closer ashore, Worsley and Crean were recognised. Shackleton in the prow of the boat called out to us and Wild answered, ‘All well, all well.’ We would learn later that the boss had been troubled when he had looked through the binoculars and seen Macklin’s Burberry flying at half-mast.

  With small waves breaking along the spit, Wild signalled the boss to come alongside a rocky outcrop. Shackleton declined point blank Wild’s invitation to step ashore and inspect our quarters, and so the first of three boatloads of castaways clambered aboard, one of whom asked, ‘Are you all well, boss?’

  Shackleton paused and replied, ‘Don’t we look alright now that we have washed?’, and those being rescued looked at their greasy destitute selves seated among their clean-shaven and clean-faced Chilean rescuers and laughed heartily.

  I retrieved the logbooks, photographic plates and cinefilm from Penguin Hill, Hussey carried his banjo. An uneaten hoosh was left still warm in the cooking pot inside the Snuggery. I was in the final load as we pushed off and commenced rowing back to the steamboat when a cry was heard from on shore and a figure came running furiously across the spit. We rowed back to the rocky point. It was an emotional Orde-Lees who dived headlong into the boat. He had gone back inside the hut. I could only imagine he had been having a quiet moment with his Maker.

  Our rescue boat was a Chilean navy tug called Yelcho. Once on board, the sailors went straight to the downstairs mess to enjoy a meal, and in sho
rt time had drunk themselves silly on Chilean wine. The scientists and officers and myself, along with Yelcho’s Captain Luis Pardo, stayed on deck to listen to Shackleton, Worsley and Crean tell the story of their voyage in Caird over eight hundred miles to South Georgia. They then had to cross the mountains of South Georgia to reach a whaling station. This voyage to Elephant Island was their fourth attempt to reach us after being defeated each time by the icecap.