5. ‘a wild & inhospitable coast’
After landing on Elephant Island at Cape
Valentine the crew were mostly in a dismal state. Some laughed maniacally, some
wept, and other shivered uncontrollably, letting the stones of the beach sift
through their fingers. Although even Shackleton looked haggard, he later wrote
that the Antarctic ‘old-timers,’ Crean, Wild, Hurley and himself, had coped
best due to their previous experience of the harsh conditions. However, the ‘privation
and exposure’ endured by the others had badly left their mark.[1]
Hurley said that many ‘suffered from temporary aberration’ since landing on the
island.[2] It
was both the physical and psychological welfare of the men that worried
Shackleton.
Among all twenty-eight, those who had sailed
in the smaller boats—the Dudley Docker
and the Stancomb-Wills—suffered
worst. Blackborow was, of course, in the smallest of the three boats, and by
the end of the week at sea, Crean was the only one of the Stancomb-Wills team who was reasonably fit. As Wordie said, ‘none
of us suffered like this in the Caird’.[3]
Regardless of which boat they had arrived in, some of the men were demoralised
and despondent as Wordie’s description vividly tells: ‘dejected men were
dragged from their bags and set to work’.[4]
Perce was, at this time, in considerable pain.
His legs were swollen and as his feet began to thaw, the agony only increased.
He was mostly immobile and spent the majority of his time in his sleeping bag
doing small jobs like stitching, if he could. He perhaps felt ashamed at being
corporeally useless to his crew mates, as McKernan imagines, but Shackleton
would have realised that Blackborow, as the youngest and the physically
worst-affected, was crucial to the maintenance of the overall morale.[5]
Having landed at Cape Valentine on 15 April
1916, it was soon deemed an unsafe location for a protracted stay. Despite the
idea being abhorrent to the men, on 17 April, Shackleton led them back into the
boats, out to sea, and to another spit of land seven miles to the west. Those
incapacitated, such as Perce, were carried to the new home, Cape Wild—named
after Frank Wild, who had scouted the location earlier, and the area’s wild weather conditions.[6]
Hurley said of it: ‘Such a wild & inhospitable coast I have never beheld’.[7] As
if proving their unwelcome presence, a blizzard raged for five days after their
arrival. At Cape Wild, the men were open to all elements, and their crude cover
from the 100mph winds required daily repair.[8]
Reaching Elephant Island was a success in the
short-term. However, the island could not sustain continued habitation. No
trade routes sailed nearby, the party was lost to the world and the Royal Navy
had greater priorities for its resources at a time of global warfare than to
search for twenty-eight men in Antarctica. With this in mind, on 20 April,
Shackleton announced his intention to lead a party and set out in the James Caird making for the whaling
stations of South Georgia. To sail a twenty-two-and-a-half-foot open boat the
eight hundred miles through the most challenging waters on Earth sounded
impossible, and much like madness. The next day McNish began repairing the Caird, taking what he could from the
two sister boats. He wrote in his diary:
Some repairing the Caird’s gear, 2 sewing canvas for the deck. Myself Marsten [sic.]
& McLeod are busy getting the Caird
ready.[9]
McNish recycled wood he had used from the Endurance to previously raise the
gunwales of the Dudley Docker to then
increase the sides of the Caird by
ten inches. Nails were salvaged from their remaining food cases and gaps in the
boat’s frame were filled with a curious mixture of George Marston’s paints,
strands of lamp wick and seal blood. The Stancomb-Wills
donated its mast to be thrust along the keel of the Caird, bow to stern.[10]
Orde-Lees was rightly impressed by McNish’s clever use of that available to
him: ‘The carpenter had contrived wonderfully with the very limited resources
at hand’.[11]
The Boss was honest about the journey’s
prospects. He addressed his men plainly: ‘I’m afraid it’s a forlorn hope and I
don’t ask anyone to come who has not thoroughly weighed the chances’.[12]
Perhaps Shackleton was driven on by the words of Robert W. Service, in his poem
‘The Lone Trail’:
Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow
it,
Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the
pit.[13]
Although the more difficult path in decisions
always had the chance of utter failure, Shackleton had the disposition to
follow it, especially when in the leadership role of the expedition.
Worsley, the accomplished seaman and champion
navigator, was chosen to command the James
Caird. Henry McNish and John Vincent had proved themselves very capable in
the boats to Elephant Island and although Shackleton was aware of their skill
and experience he may also have wished to keep potential troublemakers close.
Tim McCarthy, who had shown himself to be one of the best handlers of small
boats, and Tom Crean, with an unyielding strength of character to persevere,
boosted the Irish presence in the Caird
party to three of the six men.
Perce could merely look on as the six men
prepared themselves for their daunting journey. He watched as men loaded a ton
of rocks and shingle into the boat as ballast and enough supplies to last a
month.[14] He
could see his old lifeboat, the Stancomb-Wills,
bringing the last of the supplies, and then Shackleton himself, out to the Caird awaiting departure. Before being
finally ferried out to the boat, Shackleton shared a last smoke with Frank
Wild, his close friend with whom he entrusted the leadership of the remaining
men on Elephant Island.
Wild, a tough, quiet Yorkshire who was not
easily impressed, had been on Shackleton’s Nimrod
expedition of 1907-1909 and was among the four-man furthest-south trekking team
led by Shackleton.[15]
Wild was overawed by Shackleton’s frequent acts of selflessness and regarded
him with near reverence.[16] ‘I
have every confidence in you and always have had, may God prosper your work and
your life,’ Shackleton wrote in his letter to Wild before leaving Elephant
Island. With a hint of dread at the task ahead, Sir Ernest finished: ‘You can
convey my love to my people and say I tried my best’.[17]
Reflecting on simultaneous, conflicting
emotions, Michel de Montaigne wrote in his essay How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing that ‘no one characteristic
clasps us purely and universally in its embrace’.[18] The men on shore must have
felt a mixture of powerful emotions as they waved the James Caird out of sight on Easter Monday, 24 April, 1916—hope and
loss; elation and exhaustion; pride and foolishness; levity and fear. Victoria
McKernan went amid these emotions in imagining Blackborow’s feelings on the eve
of the Caird’s departure:
That is it, then. The end of our crew after so
long together. We can’t make much fuss of them going. We only talk about when
we will see each other again and how it will be… We pretend there isn’t death
waiting out there. I know they should die on this trip. Odd, I don’t think
about the rest of it, that if they die, then we die too… I do want this to be
over. But I also don’t. This is crazy but true. I know this for sure, that I
would rather die being one of these men than otherwise live my whole life
without knowing them.[19]
[1] Shackleton, South, pp. 151, 172.
[2] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 127.
[3] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 127.
[4] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 131.
[5] McKernan, Shackleton’s
Stowaway, pp. 188-192.
[6] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 329.
[7] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 132.
[8] Smith, Unsung
Hero, p. 304.
[9] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 133.
[10] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 332.
[11] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 135.
[12] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 330.
[13] Mayer, A
Life in Poetry, pp. 99-102; http://worlds-poetry.com/robert_service/the_lone_trail.
[14] For supplies and equipment taken on the James Caird, see: Shackleton, South, p. 179.
[15] For the Nimrod
and British Antarctic Expedition, see: Shackleton, The Heart of the Antarctic (Philadelphia, 1909); Smith, Shackleton, chapters 15-22.
[16] K. Tyler-Lewis, The Lost Men: The Harrowing Story of Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party
(London, 2006), p. 21.
[17] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 141.
[18] M. de Montaigne, How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing (London, 2015), p. 4.
[19] McKernan, Shackleton’s
Stowaway, pp. 205-206.