6. ‘Was there ever a place so pitiless and inhospitable’?[1]
Elephant Island was a tricky place to call ‘home’
as it was evident that the island did not have a welcoming nature. Camp Wild,
the men’s narrow rocky spit was open to all the elements and their shelter,
after their tents proved useless, was the resourcefully-made hut. The skeletons
of the Dudley Docker and the Stancomb-Wills were flipped over, rested
on flat stones and canvas was stretched over the gaps to create an improvised
shell for their residence. The space under the boats measured sixteen by ten
feet, a terribly cramped area for twenty-two men.[2] Worsley recalled Shackleton’s
remark, that in the hut, ‘if you wanted to go from one room to the other, you
stopped where you were’.[3] ‘The
entire party of twenty-two sleep in this small space snugly packed like smoked
sardine’, wrote Hurley, the heavy smoke and soot from the small blubber stove
leaving the men’s breathing an issue and causing their eyes considerable pain.[4]
Waking after the first night spent under the boats, Macklin wrote: ‘I think I
spent this morning the most unhappy hour of my life—all attempts seemed so
hopeless, and Fate seemed absolutely determined to thwart us’.[5]
The most challenging thing about the hut for
Wild was the ‘perpetual darkness’. Although it wasn’t much better outside the
hut, ‘and most of the time we could not tell whether the sun was up or not,’
Wild was determined to create enough light so that the men could at least see
each other. They made lamps out of sardine tins, with bits of surgical bandage
for wicks and used oil from seal blubber.[6] Although these innovations
gave only very poor light, it was an improvement on the total darkness and must
have been enough to raise spirits and allow conversation and delay polar winter
madness. Despite the fact that the hut was a makeshift hovel, it was
nonetheless, inspiration enough for, and worthy of, musical praise:
My name is Frankie Wild-o,
Me hut’s on Elephant Isle.
The Wall’s without a single brick
And the roof’s without a tile.
Nevertheless I must confess,
By many and many a mile,
It’s the most palatial dwelling place
You’ll find on Elephant Isle.
Music and singing came in, again, as an
indispensable method of entertainment and group engagement. James wrote these
words and Hussey accompanied him with his banjo in praise of Wild and his
efforts to create the most habitable conditions with few resources and in the
worst of environments.[7]
Many of the men were listless and were
suffering from grave hopelessness. They thought about the likelihood of the Caird’s success, the chances of a rescue
party and the best and worst case scenarios. Regardless of an individual’s
enthusiasm, Frank Wild’s call on fine mornings was always the same: ‘Lash up
and stow! The Boss may come today!’[8]
Despite Wild’s determination to continue Shackleton’s inspired leadership, its
effectiveness sometimes waned for many of the men.
Sleeping was a favoured activity on Elephant
Island and it could provide relief from reality. Like Philoctetes in Sophocles’
drama, also inflicted with an excruciatingly painful foot wound, Perce could
have found solace in sleep, a temporary rest:
Come down, sweet sleep,
Wherein there is no memory of pain,
No suffering.
Come happy, happy sleep
All conquering.
Hold thou before his eyes
The light of peace that now begins to fill
them.
Come sleep, we pray, o come
With healing wing.[9]
However, sleep was rather difficult in the
cramped, smelly hut (nicknamed the ‘Snuggery’) with the strong winds howling
through the threadbare canvas walls.[10] Even if sleep came,
nightmares could invade and ruin even the safe haven of slumber. Wild laid out
a strict routine of breakfast, daily chores—hunting, skinning, preparing seal
steaks, mending the hut—hoosh for lunch, more chores, a seal dinner and evening
amusements.[11] In
spite of Wild’s efforts in very challenging circumstances, the men spend an
increasing amount of time in their sleeping bags, in the dark, blubbery smoke
of the hut. ‘So passes another goddamn rotten day,’ wrote Greenstreet.[12]
Food was a constant preoccupation and topic
for conversation, dreams and communal fantasies. Although nobody was starving,
they were always hungry and talking about feasts. Marston’s Penny Cookbook was one of the books that
was saved—along with one or two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica—and it granted the men many hours of
imaginations and visions of decadent cuisine.[13] McIlroy conducted a poll,
asking the men what they would have if they were permitted any one dish. Below
are responses given:
Bakewell Baked
pork and beans
Cheetham Pork,
apple sauce, potatoes and turnips
Clark Devonshire
dumpling with cream
Green Apple
dumpling
Greenstreet Christmas
pudding
Hussey Porridge,
sugar and cream
James Syrup
pudding
Kerr Dough
and syrup
Macklin Scrambled
eggs on toast
McIlroy Marmalade
pudding and Devonshire cream
Rickinson Blackberry
and apple tart with cream
Wild Apple
pudding and cream
Perce Blackborow, the young stowaway, showed
the simplicity and scarcity of luxuries of the life he left behind in Newport
by his reply to McIlroy’s poll; he simply wanted plain bread and butter.[14]
Bartering food and chores became a
preoccupation for all at Camp Wild. The negotiations could get rather intricate
as glimpsed from the following diary entry from the supplies-obsessed
Orde-Lees:
McLeod exchanged a cake of nut-food with
Blackborow for seven half penguin steaks, payable at a rate of half a steak
daily at breakfast time.[15]
Even when the opportunity arose to enjoy food,
acquired through rations or trade, it was somewhat ruined by the continual
presence of reindeer hairs everywhere as they shed from the well-worn sleeping
bags.[16]
*
By early June 1916, six weeks after the Caird’s departure, Perce’s right foot
was healing well but his left foot was gangrenous—a condition where the death
of body tissue is caused by reduced, or lack of, blood supply to the affected
area. The doctors, Macklin and McIlroy, had monitored the circumstances and,
with dismay, decided that, on the morning of 15 June, it required action. The
hut was converted into an operating theatre with a platform of food boxes
covered with blankets serving as the operating table. Wild and Hurley
volunteered to assist in the procedure as everyone else able-bodied enough to
evacuate the hut did so promptly. Blackborow was well-liked among all hands and
his health and survival was of prime concern for the Elephant Island party and,
of course, for their morale.[17]
The thought of amputating Perce’s toes had
been on the doctors’ minds since reaching the island. As Shackleton recalled:
Blackborow’s feet were giving him much pain,
and McIlroy and Macklin thought that an operation would soon be necessary. At
that time [22 April] they thought they had no chloroform, but they found some
in the medicine chest after we left [in the
Caird].[18]
Though there was no local anaesthetic
available, enough chloroform was found to knock Perce out for the duration of
the operation, a tense fifty-five minutes which displayed the resolution and
skills of the doctors.
Dr Alexander Macklin was reliable and loyal.
He was the ship’s only Antarctic novice selected by Shackleton for the planned
cross-continental team, showing either the trust that the Boss had for Macklin,
or perhaps his foresight that he would need him and his skills. Macklin was
Scottish and though born in India came from a physician’s family practising on
the Scilly Islands. He could, at times, be quick-tempered but was mostly
soft-spoken and hard-working.[19]
McIlroy was about thirty-five years old,
rather handsome and sardonic. Following his education in Birmingham he
practised medicine in far-flung places such as Egypt, Malaya and Japan as well
as serving as ship’s doctor on East Indian passenger steamers. Born in Ulster,
to a father from Ballyclare, Co. Antrim, perhaps it was his Irish roots or his
wicked sense of humour that attracted Shackleton. On his character, Greenstreet
was blunt, saying that he was a ‘sardonic, sarcastic blighter’.[20]
As Hurley stoked the stove until the hut was
warm enough at 79 degrees Fahrenheit and Wild gave Perce the comfort of jumper
as a pillow, the doctors stripped to their undershirts as they were the
cleanest clothes they had. Macklin carefully administered the chloroform and
McIlroy performed the surgery. He operated with just the blubber stove for heat
and an insufficient selection of instruments which were sterilised in boiling
water. Of the operation, Greenstreet wrote:
[Blackborow had] all the toes of his left foot
taken off ¼ inch stumps being left… the poor beggar behaved splendidly and it
went without a hitch.[21]
Shackleton had briefly considered taking Perce
on the Caird as it was thought that
the need for surgery would come sooner than later. Although he did worry about
the Welshman’s life, Shackleton knew that there was no room for a passenger in
the lifeboat.
It would be hard enough for a fit man to live
in the boat. Indeed, I did not see how a sick man, lying helpless in the bottom
of the boat, could possibly survive in the heavy weather we were sure to
encounter.[22]
Shackleton praised the doctors’ work on
Blackborow’s toes:
That this operation, under the most difficult
circumstances, was very successful speaks volumes for the skill and initiative
of the surgeons.[23]
Worsley too was rightly impressed and
commended the men on their care of Blackborow. He later wrote that the
operation not only saved Perce’s foot, but probably also his life.[24]
As heard in Greenstreet’s accreditation quoted
above, Blackborow was much admired for his cheerfulness before and after the
operation. He was not, however, in the clear. In August, the swelling and
inflammation of his foot indicated osteomyelitis, the infection of the bone.[25]
*
Blackborow was not the only case that needed
the medical expertise of the doctors. They willingly and attentively cared
particularly for Hudson and Rickinson. Hubert Hudson, son of a Church of
England clergyman, was navigating officer of the crew’s seamen. He suffered
psychological distress during the long months confined at Ocean Camp and
Patience Camp. He had not recovered for the journey to Elephant Island when
frostbite and a painful boil on his derriere only added to his ailments, mental
and physical.[26]
Lewis Rickinson, the generally shy and quiet
Chief Engineer, was afflicted with heart troubles. On arriving at Elephant
Island, Shackleton recalled the scene:
We were still labouring at the boats and I saw
Rickenson [sic.] turn white and stagger on the surf. His heart had been
temporarily unequal to the strain placed upon it, and he needed prompt medical
attention.[27]
Despite remaining as cheerful as he could, he,
in time, collapsed from his severe heart strain.
Initially these three invalids—Blackborow,
Hudson and Rickinson—preferred to remain alone in their tents, but when their
flimsy cover was blown asunder they moved in with the others to the ‘Snuggery’.
[1] Hurley, Argonauts
of the South, p. 247.
[2] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 336.
[3] Worsley, Shackleton’s
Boat Journey, p. 40.
[4] Hurley, Argonauts
of the South, p. 257.
[5] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 173.
[6] Worsley, Epic
of Polar Adventure, p. 187.
[7] Mayer, A
Life in Poetry, pp. 132-133.
[8] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 374.
[9] Sophocles, ‘Philoctetes’, in Sophocles, Electra and Other Plays, trans. E. F.
Watling (London, 1953), p. 191.
[10] Shackleton, South, chapter 16.
[11] Hoosh was a mix of pemmican (lard and crushed
beef jerky), biscuits (more like sailors’ hardtack made from flour, water, milk
powder and sodium bicarbonate) and boiling water that made a porridge-like
all-in-one meal. Tyler-Lewis, Lost Men,
p. 71.
[12] Alexander, Endurance,
pp. 176-177.
[13] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 177; Shackleton, South, p. 250.
[14] For McIlroy’s poll, the men’s food fantasies
and heated culinary discussions, see: Lansing, Endurance, pp. 202-204.
[15] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 177.
[16] King (ed.) South,
p. 160.
[17] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 178.
[18] Shackleton, South, pp. 172,175.
[19] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 288; Alexander, Endurance, pp.
59-60; Endurance Obituaries, Macklin.
[20] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 288; Endurance Obituaries, McIlroy.
[21] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 178.
[22] Shackleton, South, p. 174.
[23] King (ed.) South,
p. 163.
[24] Worsley, Shackleton’s
Boat Journey, p. 40.
[25] Alexander, Endurance,
p. 181.
[26] Smith, Shackleton,
p. 316.
[27] King (ed.) South,
p. 111.