Elephant Island, Antarctica

Elephant Island, Antarctica

S 61 5.600  W 55 5.00

...continued from February 14th post

Shackleton and his party abandoned their ship, Endurance, on October 27^th, 1915.  It was slowly being crushed by the ice in which it was imprisoned.  The crew suddenly found themselves living in overcrowded tents on the wet, freezing ice.  They had three small boats with them: the James Caird, the Dudley Docker, and the Stancombs Wills.  Shackleton knew that their best chance of survival lay in reaching Paulet Island, 346 miles to the northwest.  Supplies had been left on the island in 1903 after the ship Antarctic had been crushed in the ice.  The pack they found themselves on was moving north and slightly east.  Therefore, the plan was to drag the ships westward over the ice pack in hopes of reaching open sea and then sail to Paulet Island.  Fifteen men were harnessed to each boat.  They dragged the boats across the slushy, cracked ice at a bitterly slow rate.  After two days, the ice got so bad that they could go no further.  They had only gone two miles.  Shackleton decided to set up camp, known as “Ocean Camp”, on a flat, thick floe and wait for the pack to carry them north.  McNeish the carpenter raised the sides of the boats to make them ocean-ready. Small teams returned to the Endurance to recover what supplies and equipment they could.  On one of these trips, Hurley’s photographic plates were rescued. 

Photography by F. Hurley

The months passed, gales pushed them north, and food became critical.  They were headed due north and risked missing Paulet Island altogether.  They broke camp and once again dragged the boats across the broken floe until their progress was stopped again on New Year’s Eve, with wet, unstable ice in all directions.  “Mark Time Camp” was particularly miserable as food supplies ran lean.  Shackleton ordered killing the dogs to reduce the drain on the meager food supply.  The crew became sullen as they waited another ten days.  When their floe suddenly became dangerously unstable, the crew relocated to a nearby floe dubbed “Patience Camp”.  On March 23^rd, land was sighted – tiny Danger Islet only 42 miles away with Paulet Island 20 miles behind it.  With the intervening ice was impassable, Shackleton knew they had passed their goal and were now headed toward the vast open seas of the Drake Passage.  Only two tiny islands stood in the way: Clarence and Elephant Island.  In early April, the floe began to crack and sink.  The large floe that had once been Patience Camp was now only 50 yards across.  On April 9^th, the ice opened and the boats were launched. 

For over a week, the crew rowed and sailed their tiny boats through the rolling waves, dodging dangerous bergs.  Some nights were spent on small floes, but when a crack almost swallowed a man in his sleeping bag, the remaining nights were spent in the boats.  They rowed west with frost-bitten feet and frozen clothes.  In time, the towering peaks of Elephant Island loomed before them.  Little was known about this remote place and, to Shackleton’s knowledge, no one had ever set foot on it.  Suddenly, the Dudley Docker was torn away from the other two boats by a fierce riptide and disappeared into the night.  At sunrise, the Cairn and the Wills searched for a place to land on the forbidding cliffs of the Island.  Finally, a tiny beach was sighted and the two boats entered the breakers through a small gap in the rocks.   Just then, they heard a cry. The Docker was bearing down on them!  It had travelled down 14 miles of coastline looking for a landing and, as luck would have it, found the others just as they were attempting their landing.  The crew dragged the three boats onto the small, wind-swept beach.  After 497 days on the ice - land at last!

Photograph by R. Hurley

Within days of landing on Elephant Island, Shackleton officially announced his intention to sail the 22-foot James Caird to South Georgia Island, 800 miles to the northeast, to get help.  A deck was built on the Caird, the deck covered in canvas, and provisions for six weeks stored aboard.  Shackleton chose Worsley, a skilled navigator, Crean, McNeish, Vincent, and McCarthy for the journey.   Shackleton and Worsley climbed to a high lookout to observe the band of ice 6 miles out.  They found a small opening in the ice that the Caird could probably get through.  On April 24^th, the James Caird shoved through the shore breakers and swung her bow to the north.  The men left behind on the beach watched until the tiny boat was out of sight. 

With nothing to do but wait, the twenty-two  men on the island set about improving their situation.  Although quite weak from their days in the boats, they hauled rocks up the beach and constructed a 4-foot high foundation.  They placed their two overturned boats on the top of the wall to make a decent shelter.  The cold wind blew in the cracks at night.  They patched the holes until the hut was fairly livable.  A chimney was installed through the roof to exhaust the stove smoke.     A period of sunny days allowed the men to dry their soggy sleeping bags.  Game was readily available on the island and fresh glacier water ran in a nearby stream.  Thoughts were never far from the men on the James Caird on whose shoulders their fate rested.

To be continued...

Lansing, Alfred. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. Carroll & Graf, 1959.


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