4. A Week in the Wills with Weakening Wills
On
Sunday 9 April 1916 at about 1pm, the three lifeboats were launched from the
remnants of Patience Camp into the Weddell Sea. To the relief of most, the wait
was over and action was being taken. The boats, however, were still among the
floating pack-ice. Although conditions in the boats were wretched, the men felt
that they were, at least, doing something. They rowed heavily all day, avoiding
colliding floes and bergs, searching for new openings and leads in the ice.
Bakewell said that their ‘first day in the water was one of the coldest and
most dangerous of the expedition’.[1] Due to the time of the
year, it was dark in the early evening and that night the men camped on a
pitching floe of about two hundred by one hundred feet. It was, according to
Hurley, ‘a night of tension and anxiety’.[2] As Shackleton went to
inspect the camp, the ice floe cracked under his feet, collapsing the tents,
destroying the camp, causing havoc and throwing two men into the ice-cold
waters. Walter How managed to climb out himself but Ernest Holness, still
caught up in his sleeping bag, was dragged out onto the ice by Shackleton,
seconds before the ice crashed back together again. Although his life had just
been saved by the Boss, it didn’t stop Holness from complaining that his
tobacco was wet.[3]
Worsley tells of the scene:
Said
one of the others to him, ‘You might have thanked Sir Ernest for saving your
life.’ ‘Yes,’ replied the dripping sailor; ‘but thanking him won’t bring back
my tobacco.’[4]
The
following day had the men rowing against heavy swells through the dangerous
networks of channels and leads in the ice. When they finally broke through to
open waters, the high seas were too rough for the boats and so Shackleton,
knowing his men needed a rest, ordered them back into the relative safety of
the pack. Hurley wrote that night: ‘No sleep for 48 hours, all wet, cold &
miserable with N.E. blizzard raging’.[5] Another night was spent
trying to sleep on a small floe. McKernan imagined the impending fear that
grasped Perce on that night:
‘Perce?’
Billy whispered. ‘Are you awake?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are
you okay?’ Perce pressed his face harder into the sleeping bag, afraid to
speak. Billy threw an arm around him.
‘I—I
don’t think I can do this.’
‘Don’t
think then.’ Perce felt Billy’s arm tighten around him. Billy was shaking too. ‘Don’t
think, just do.’[6]
The
James Caird and the Dudley Docker had been built up and
repaired by McNish while at Patience Camp. There was not enough wood to do the
same for Perce’s boat, the Stancomb-Wills.
The smallest of the boats, it did not have its gunwales raised so the waves poured
in and over, constantly covering its men and supplies. It was equipped with a
small mainsail and jib, poorly endowed and inadequate for the task at hand. It
was a constant cause of worry for Shackleton as it failed to keep abreast with
its two companion boats.[7]
The
next night, after hours of hard rowing still amid the pack, was spent in the
boats as no suitable floe could be found and Shackleton was not going to risk
camping on unstable ice. The men huddled together to keep as warm as possible
and tried to get a few hours rest. The ominous sound of nearby, boat-destroying
whales terrified them and the experience truly started to test their individual
and collective will.[8]
After
a terribly disappointing location reading by Worsley on the morning of 12
April—they were no nearer land than when they had begun—despair added to their
fatigue.[9] That night saw worse
conditions as the boats and men had less protection for the snow, rain and the
swells. They awoke with their clothes, the boats and their canvases all covered
in fresh layers of sparkling ice. Some of the men had suffered from seasickness
early on and this was compounded by cases of dysentery. A significant problem
was the lack of ice water for drinking. Some were so thirsty that they couldn’t
eat—their parched mouths and swollen tongues made even speaking difficult. They
chewed raw seal meat solely for the relief of its blood. During the following
day, Shackleton’s presence was, now more than ever, the symbol of defiance and
persistence. Nobody knew when last he slept; he stood firmly facing the rolling
waters from the James Caird, a
visible embodiment of encouragement to the men reaching the edges of their
strength.[10]
Shackleton later told Begbie that ‘you may know that the facts are dead against
you, but you mustn’t say so… The loyalty of your men is the most sacred trust
you carry. It is something which must never be betrayed, something you must
live up to.’[11]
At
dawn of 14 April, Wild recalled that at least half the party was ‘simply
hopeless and helpless’.[12] The crew of the Stancomb-Wills were in particularly bad
shape. Hudson had collapsed after seventy-two hours at the helm and Blackborow,
seen limping a few days before, had begun to suffer badly from severe frostbite
in his feet. The boat was always knee-deep in freezing water and, although
everyone was somewhat frostbitten—in their extremities, ears, noses etc.—Perce was
the worst case by far. His leather boots were no use at keeping the water away
from his feet, while some of the other men still had finneskos—large soft boots
make of reindeer skin, stuffed with Norwegian sennegrass for insulation.[13]
By
that afternoon they were ten miles from Elephant Island. Despite their fierce
rowing and exertions, currents kept them back from the possibility of landing.
In the Stancomb-Wills, four of the
eight crew members were incapacitated. The remaining able bodies, McIlroy, How
and Bakewell, bailed for their lives while Crean held the tiller. Their boat’s
survival depended on its tie to the James
Caird and Shackleton stayed awake at the painter all night to ensure the
maintenance of the link with the Stancomb-Wills
in tow.[14]
As
dawn broke on 15 April and the mists subsided, Shackleton found himself under
the cliffs of Elephant Island. The Stancomb-Wills
was still in sight but the Dudley Docker,
under Worsley’s charge, could not be seen and Shackleton feared the worst. His
priority was to land as quickly as possible as the lives of those around him
were in the balance. Having scouted around the north-west side of the island
for hours, Shackleton decided to ‘face the hazards of this unattractive landing
space’—a narrow dangerous beach. As the Stancomb-Wills
was the smallest and lightest boat, it was chosen to be the first to land.
Wordie recorded that ‘the Boss [Shackleton], the Skipper [Crean], the cook
[Green] and Hurley went aboard the Wills
and helped the crew to take her up a small creek in the rocks’. Crean
positioned the boat in line and let it ride the waves’ swell until the hull
scrapped the bottom of the rocky beach.[15] Just as the Stancomb-Wills had landed, the Dudley Docker came into view. Worsley
found it hard to describe his overjoyed emotions at seeing the other boats at
Elephant Island.[16]
When
Shackleton had first learned of Perce’s badly frostbitten feet, in a
Shackletonian effort to keep spirits up, he promised to let Perce be the first
man to land. McKernan explored the possible mixed feelings of such an offer:
Perce
knew he should feel honoured, but instead he felt strangely annoyed, even
angry. Damn him! He thought. That means I’ll have to stay alive all night.
He wanted to go to sleep and not have to wake. But Shackleton ordered it, so
Perce would have to try to stay alive one more night. I can’t let him down now, I can’t let him down. Perce said it over
and over to himself through the endless bitter night.[17]
It
is impossible to know, but perhaps the lines of Robert W. Service’s poem, ‘The
Quitter,’ would have been of solace, particularly if uttered by the Boss, to
Perce at these moments:
“You’ve
had a raw deal!” I know -- but don’t squeal,
Buck
up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It’s
the plugging away that will win you the day,
So
don’t be a piker, old pard!
Just
draw on your grit; it’s so easy to quit:
It’s
the keeping-your-chin-up that’s hard.[18]
Keen
to keep his promise to the young lad, Shackleton lifted Perce out of the boat as
it lay uneasily on the beach although ‘he seemed to be in a state of near coma’.
Almost thrown out of his boat, Blackborow promptly sat down on the turf and did
not move. Shackleton had momentarily forgotten about the pain of Perce’s feet.
Admitting that it was ‘a rough experience’ for the young Welshman, Shackleton
thought Perce would be comforted by the fact that he was the first man ever to land
and sit on Elephant Island.[19] Perce later said that ‘Sir
Ernest Shackleton gave me the honour of being the first man to land. It was the
first landing ever made on Elephant Island.’[20]
Elephant
Island was, as Worsley stated, ‘a gigantic mass of rock, carrying on its back a
vast sheet of ice’.[21] However, it was the first
time in 497 days that the men had land under their feet. Blackborow later
remembered that although they had ‘landed on a most inhospitable ice land, it
was a glorious sensation to have the feel of solid earth under us’.[22]
[1] Alexander, Endurance, p. 119.
[2] Alexander, Endurance, p. 121.
[3] Smith, Shackleton, pp. 315-316; Worsley, Shackleton’s Boat Journey, pp. 7-8.
[4] Worsley, Epic of Polar Adventure, p. 67.
[5] Alexander, Endurance, p. 121.
[6] McKernan, Shackleton’s Stowaway, p. 175.
[7] Smith, Shackleton, pp. 317-318; Alexander, Endurance, p. 122.
[8] Smith, Shackleton, p. 318.
[9] Alexander, Endurance, p. 123.
[10] Smith, Shackleton, pp. 319-320; Worsley, Epic of Polar Adventure, pp. 72-74.
[11] Begbie, Shackleton, p. 48.
[12] Smith, Shackleton, p. 320.
[13] Alexander, Endurance, pp. 124-125; M. Smith, An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean—Antarctic Survivor (Cork, 2000),
p. 234; McKernan, Shackleton’s Stowaway, p. 93.
[14] Alexander, Endurance, pp. 125-126.
[15] Alexander, Endurance, p. 120; Smith, Unsung
Hero, pp. 238-239.
[16] Worsley, Epic of Polar Adventure, p. 78.
[17] McKernan, Shacketon’s Stowaway, p. 185.
[18] Mayer, A Life in Poetry, p. 108;
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-quitter/.
[19] Shackleton, South, p. 157.
[20] ‘A lecture given by Perce Blackborow’, The James Caird Society Journal Vol. 6 (2012), p. 10.
[21] Worsley, Epic of Polar Adventure, p. 78.
[22] ‘A lecture given by Perce Blackborow’, The James Caird Society Journal Vol. 6 (2012), p. 10.