3. Afloat and Adrift
As the men surveyed the wreck of their ship, they stood 350 miles away from the nearest land and were surrounded by solid ice. Shackleton declared that the plan was a march across the ice, followed by a boat journey for Paulet Island. Two of the lifeboats and as much supplies as possible were stocked up, ready to go. The men faced difficult terrain. The ‘condition of the surface is atrocious,’ wrote Hurley, ‘there appears scarcely a square yard of smooth surface which isn’t covered by a labyrinth of hummocks and ridges’.[1] Due to this, the march was called off on 1 November. Their new home, Ocean Camp, was on a sturdy floe, twenty feet thick and only a mile and half from the Endurance wreck. The men initially kept busy with scavenging missions back to the ship for personal items and extra supplies, until Shackleton and Wild deemed it too dangerous. Hurley saved his photographic glass plates from the wreck, for the benefit of posterity. Also, the third lifeboat, the Stancomb-Wills was recovered.[2] A routine was quickly established at Ocean Camp. Mornings saw the crew get up, wash their faces with snow and be ready for breakfast at 8.30am. Daily chores included chopping ice for drinking water, shovelling snow over their latrines, skinning penguins, cutting blubber for the stove and tending to the dogs. Lunch at 1pm was followed by free time for the afternoon. The men passed this time by reading, mending their clothes, walking about their floe, playing with the dogs and playing cards. Dinner was at 5.30pm. More self-entertainment ensued but occupying the sleeping bags was the most popular after-dinner pastime.[3]
At Ocean
Camp, there were five tents in all. In tent 1, Shackleton kept those ‘he
thought wouldn’t mix with the others,’ according to Greenstreet.[4]
Shackleton often displayed an acute understanding of his men and organised them
to minimise discord, for, as Mill wrote, he ‘knew intimately the disposition
and idiosyncrasies of every man’ in his team.[5] Blackborow was put into tent
5, one of two larger tents, along with Clark, Greenstreet, Kerr, Macklin,
Orde-Lees and Rickinson, all under the watch of Worsley. The tents were
cramped, with thin canvas walls and small tensions were thus exacerbated.
Orde-Lees
proved an irritating character in any case but his snoring was the most grating
for his tent mates. In early November he wrote: ‘there is a movement on foot to
eject me from the 8 man pole tent & make me sleep in the rabbit hutch’.
Perce and the men of tent 5 were successful and Orde-Lees was soon establishing
his sleeping quarters in the camp’s storeroom.[6] Orde-Lees kept himself somewhat aloof from the others and was regarded
as rather eccentric. Referred to by his nicknames, either ‘the Colonel’ or the ‘Old
Lady,’ he took on the responsibilities of store-keeper and Worsley wrote that
he ‘really deserves a VC for the gallant way in which he has taken charge of
& stuck to the Culinary Dept. under the most severe conditions’.[7]
Chances are—here and at many other times—Worsley was being playfully sarcastic.
Mill described Worsley as having a ‘cheery personality and gay contempt for
danger [that] fitted him well for the post’ of captain of the Endurance.[8] He
was a romantic like Shackleton, had ‘quaint little peculiarities’ as Orde-Lees
wrote, but was an expertly skilled sailor and navigator.[9]
The plan of a second march did not go down
well with the men. Not even the blowout feast on 23 December 1915, an early
Christmas celebratory meal, could prepare them for the dismal slog ahead. The
work ahead brings to mind the poem Shackleton wrote, ‘Two Ways,’ contrasting
the easy life and the more difficult, but overall more gratifying, way:
The gloom and cold of the long stern night
The work with its strain and stress
Hold sterling worth and sheer delight,
And these soft bright times hold less.
For all is new on our ice bound shore
Where white peaks dare the stars
There strong endeavour and steady hand
Alone can unloose the bars.[10]
However, the unrewarding progress and
dreariness of the second attempted march caused tensions and disagreements
amongst the men, especially Henry McNish who had thus far occupied himself by
reinforcing the lifeboats with wood, nails and other supplies salvaged and
saved from the Endurance. McNish, a
Scot from the Clyde region, was a working-class socialist with a tendency to
rub people up the wrong way, including Shackleton.[11] The march was testing for
the men’s resolve and Shackleton’s abilities to hold discipline and morale
together. Writing of his companion, Mill later wrote that
The little community began to show signs of
cleavage from the workings of privation and hardship on minds and bodies of
unequal resisting power. This constituted Shackleton’s greatest preoccupation
and received his most vigilant attention. If dissension appeared there would be
no chance for safety for all.[12]
The men hauled their lifeboats (again leaving
the Stancomb-Wills behind) and
supplies until 29 December. The conditions were much the same as before and
tired and frustrated men make an unsettled crew. In that week they had
travelled just ten miles.[13] The
disappointment of the trek was evident. Although, as Shackleton recounted
Harold Begbie—a companion who published a memoir soon after Shackleton’s
death—years later, ‘you can get so tired in the snow,’ he knew he had to
maintain optimism for the team’s sake—’but if you’re a leader, a fellow that
other fellows look to, you’ve got to keep going’.[14]
Their new residence on the ice was named
Patience Camp and severe conditions brought hardships upon the stranded crew.
Harsh blizzards kept the men in the tents for days at a time. However, the
fierce winds had blown their previous home, Ocean Camp, to within sight.
Shackleton hesitantly authorised the retrieval of the Stancomb-Wills on 2 February 1916. It raised morale as it gave a
possible boat journey for all twenty-eight men credibility again, and the
retrieval party loaded the boat with extra supplies rescued from Ocean Camp.[15]
Life at Patience Camp was dull and dreary.
Hurley wrote of the ‘disappointment, awful monotony, inactivity, and the return
of wretched weather’. They were ‘everlastingly hungry’ and the ‘biting cold of
the blizzards pierced through [their] threadbare garments.[16] McKernan imagines Perce
writing a February 1916 diary entry:
Patience Camp is wet, ugly, dirty, and cold.
And boring. No place much to walk. No more jokes that haven’t been told… Even
tired of Hussey’s banjo… Nothing to eat but seal and penguin, and they are
growing scarce, migrating, we think. Wish it were as easy for us.[17]
The men still used their imaginations to
create distractions for themselves. They played word games and, thanks to
Reginald James, one of their favourites called ‘animal, vegetable, or mineral’
has come down to the modern reader.
one of the players has to guess some object
agreed upon by the rest, by asking questions to which the only answer allowed
is ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Shackleton had quite an uncanny skill at this game. By a few
judicious questions he would narrow down the field of inquiry and rapidly
arrive at the answer, however remote the thing might be.[18]
Food, an endless topic of conversation and
tension, was certainly unexciting and unvaried. Shackleton knew that diet was
crucial for morale and he fretted, with Orde-Lees and Green, over the daily
menu. With Perce assisting in the preparation of the meals, they conspired to
make anything more satisfying for the men.[19] James wrote about
Shackleton’s concern for the crew’s diet and its psychological effects:
During this period he [Shackleton] was very
particular about the meals of the party. He believed in good food and plenty of
variety as a specific against discontent, and insisted on everything being as
clean and well served as possible. He believed in the maximum amount of
civilisation possible under the circumstances, and was a stickler for
punctuality at meals.[20]
Green’s makeshift stove (‘Our meals were now
cooked on a portable ‘bogie’ which I improvised from two oil drums and sundry
scraps of metal’[21])
burned seal or penguin blubber, producing thick black smoke that constantly
blackened the faces of himself and Blackborow, much to the amusement of the
others.[22]
Despite the gloom, unfulfilling diet and despair, a moment of contentment could
be glimpsed every now and again in the unique place of the Antarctic pack ice.
McKernan inventively takes up the pen of young Perce:
Sometimes, though, a day comes up beautiful.
Maybe once a fortnight, but when it’s there, it seems a miracle. The day sky is
blue like doesn’t even exist back home. The sunset is all gold and pink, dark
blue shadows on the ice, fiery sparkles where it hits the frost. Then at night
you can see the stars and it’s so grand, I do forget all the awfulness and
being lost. You can look at the stars and go to them in your mind. If a moon,
even better. It’s so bright and soft. Makes you think things are possible.[23]
In moments alone, Shackleton too was
awe-struck by the scale and ‘grimly majestic’ Antarctic landscape and icescape.
The size and immediacy of the continent almost made one feel insignificant.[24]
Star-gazing had a calming effect on Sir Ernest and he may have recalled lines
from Matthew Arnold’s poem ‘Self-Dependence,’ or even shared it with Perce or
anyone willing to listen:
Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o’er the starlit sea.
And a look of passionate desire
O’er the sea and to the stars I send:
“Ye who from my childhood up have calm’d me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!
“Ah, once more,” I cried, “ye stars, ye
waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you!”[25]
The Patience Camp floe had been floating north
over the three months that the men had been living upon it. It had melted in
depth and width, making the camp more cramped and tenuous. On 9 April 1916, as
the floe holding on to the last of the camp was falling apart, Shackleton
ordered the three lifeboats to be launched into the open waters of the Weddell
Sea.[26]
Perce was in the Stancomb-Wills, the
smallest of the lifeboats that had been rescued twice despite its size. It was,
according to Worsley, twenty feet eight inches long and five feet six inches
wide.[27]
Alongside Blackborow in the tiny vessel were Hubert Hudson, Tom Crean, How,
Bakewell and James McIlroy. At last they were moving, but the greatest danger
and trials lay ahead. In Hurley’s words:
At last we were Free! Free!! No more idle
captives with capricious winds and tides for gaolers but free to shape our
destinies by our own wills and strength. Our adventures during one hundred and
fifty-nine days on the floe had come to an end. How thoroughly the happenings
of the next six days were to eclipse them and indeed all the experiences of the
preceding sixteen months![28]
[1] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 95.
[2] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 309; Shackleton, South, p. 119.
[3] Alexander, Endurance,
pp. 101-103.
[4] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 103.
[5] Mill, Life
of Sir Ernest Shackleton, p. 218.
[6] Alexander, Endurance,
pp. 106-107.
[7] King (ed.), South, p. 85n.
[8] Mill, Life
of Sir Ernest Shackleton, p. 199.
[9] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 63.
[10] Mayer, A
Life in Poetry, p. 76.
[11] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 290.
[12] Mill, Life
of Sir Ernest Shackleton, p. 218.
[13] Smith, Shackleton,
pp. 304-307; Shackleton, South, pp.
112-116.
[14] H. Begbie, Shackleton:
A Memory (London, 1922), p. 43.
[15] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 309; Alexander, Endurance, pp.
114-116.
[16] Hurley, Argonauts
of the South, p. 214.
[17] McKernan, Shackleton’s
Stowaway, p. 158.
[18] Mill, Life
of Sir Ernest Shackleton, pp.
217-218.
[19] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 117.
[20] Mill, Life
of Sir Ernest Shackleton, p. 217.
[21] Hurley, Argonauts
of the South, p. 204.
[22] Alexander, Endurance,
pp. 111, 114.
[23] McKernan, Shackleton’s
Stowaway, pp. 165-166.
[24] Mayer, A
Life in Poetry, p. 94.
[25] http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172858;
Mill, Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton, p.193.
[26] Worsley, Shackleton’s
Boat Journey, p. 3; Alexander, Endurance,
p. 119; Smith, Shackleton, pp.
313-314.
[27] Worsley, Shackleton’s
Boat Journey, p. 5.
[28] Hurley, Argonauts
of the South, p. 223.