Frank Arthur Worsley - Shackletons Boat Journey

SHACKLETONS BOAT JOURNEY

This eBook edition published in 2012 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk

This edition first published in 2000 by Birlinn Limited

First published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton 1940

Copyright The Estate of F. A. Worsley
Introduction copyright Hugh Andrew 2000

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-546-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-84158-063-0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

List of Illustrations

Entering the pack ice of the Weddell Sea

The Endurance under sail

The wake of the Endurance

New leads in the pack ice covered with iceflowers0

How the pack ice breaks up under pressure

Deck of the Endurance after a snowfall

Endeavoring to cut the ship out of the ice

Caught fast in the ice

A dog team in very rought ice conditions

A great castellated berg that menaced the ship

Photographer Hurley at work

Heavy blocks of ice rafted up and tilted by the pressure

Frank Wild with dog team leader

Clark in the biological laboratory aboard the Endurance

Midwinter, 1915

The Endurance battling blocks of pressure ice

A night photograph of the Endurance

Return of the sun after the long winter darkness

The Endurance caught in a pressure crack

Wreckage of the Endurance

Frank Hurley and Sir Ernest Shackleton at Ocean camp

Ocean camp

Young emperor penguin chicks

Death stalks the floes

A pinnacled glacier berg

Pulling up the boats below the cliffs of Elephant Island

The first meal on Elephant Island

Tending to the invalids

The rocky ramparts of Elephant Island

The James Caird being slid into the water

The men left on Elephant Island digging a shelter

Skinning seats on Elephant Island

Glacier and mountains, South Georgia

South Georgia

Hut in which members of the expedition lived

Inaccessible mountain

Members of the expedition on Elephant Island

Arrival of the rescue ship off Elephant Island

Saved!

Maps

South Georgia Island

Shackletons Boat journey

Members of the Expedition

Introduction

by Hugh Andrew

Barely three seconds afterwards the very air quivered under the thunderous crash of salvo. A light brown powder smoke blew past the ship to be carried rapidly away by the strong breeze. The fire zone was clear. The ships of the enemys line lay like so many ark shadows sharply silhouetted against the red gold evening sky.

I t was 1 November 1914. The cruiser squadron of Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock was being destroyed off the coast of South America. On 5 November Shackleton and the Endurance dropped anchor off South Georgia. Two ages had crossed in the South Atlantic.

One was an age of guns and steel, of European empires tearing themselves apart with technology they barely understood in the mud of Flanders and on the seas of the world. It was an age of despair, of mindless murder and of evil ideologies haunting the minds of men. Only with the fall of the tyrannies of Eastern Europe in 1989 could a continent dare hope again.

But the Endurance and her crew were of another age, an age of hope and confidence when mens horizons and ability to achieve seemed boundless and when the world seemed to offer limitless opportunities for the bold. It was in 1895 that the great age of Antarctic exploration had begun. It was the last unknown continent. The heroic figure of Fridtjof Nansen who every inch a brooding Scandinavian giant inspired British imitators. One of those was an obscure officer in the Merchant Marine, Ernest Shackleton, and the other a naval officer called Robert Falcon Scott. The two were to partner each other in Scotts first expedition and then become bitter rivals. Scott was always the Establishment man, and it was the Establishment that covered up his many weaknesses and idolised his futile death in the race to the Pole. Shackleton was the outsider, marginalised by the shady financial dealings of his brother, Frank, and his own perpetual impecuniousness; marginalised too by his perpetual restlessness and unsettled nature.

But these British expeditions had a quixotic feel. The lessons the Norwegians had to teach the professionalism and caution they lived by, the seriousness of their scientific purpose were overruled in a spirit of Boys Own bravado. In the grandiosely named British Antarctic Expedition, Shackleton proposed to drive across the Antarctic! He tried to use ponies! Neither he nor Scott had any idea how to use dog teams and they only practised skiing on arrival! Their boats were unsuitable and the back-up ill thought through. Yet while these were the similarities there was one crucial difference between Shackleton and Scott: Shackleton looked after his men; Scott sacrificed them in pursuit of a dream. Shackleton was loved during his lifetime; it was death that was to transform Scott.

The Norwegians too learned to respect the men who took part in these expeditions even as they shook their heads at the amateurishness involved. Roald Amundsen said: Sir Ernest Shackletons name will for evermore be engraved with letters of fire in the history of Antarctic exploration. Courage and willpower can make miracles. 1 know of no better example than what that man accomplished. High praise indeed from the conqueror of the Pole.