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Sir Ernest Shackleton

 
1874-1921

Ernest Henry Shackleton was born at Kilkee, Co. Clare, Ireland in 1874 and completed his formal education in London before he joined the British Merchant Service. Although his early career was spent in the merchant services his interest in exploration and adventure prompted him to volunteer for Scott's Antarctic Expedition in 1901. He sailed in the "Discovery" but was forced to return home in the following year due to illness.

Discovery

In 1908 Shackleton sailed from New Zealand in the "Nimrod" to lead his own expedition to the South Pole. He succeeded in reaching a point about 97 miles from the South Pole and it was on his return from this venture that he received his knighthood in recognition of his achievement and his contribution to the cause of scientific discovery.

In this, his bid to reach the Pole, Shackleton brought with him some Manchurian ponies to pull the sledges over the frozen wastes. He penetrated to 80- 23" seconds south and pioneered the route to be followed by subsequent explorers by way of Beardmore Glacier . Three years later his old comrade, Capt. Scott, was to reach the South Pole along this route only to find that the famous Norwegian explorer, Ronald Amundsen, had reached the coveted goal on 14th December, 1911, one month prior to Scott's arrival. On the following 12th November, Scott and his four companions were found dead in their tent from exposure and ex­haustion.

In 1914 Shackleton again set forth to reach the South Pole and this third expedition in the "Endurance" was undoubtedly his most famous exploit and proved one of the most heroic struggles for survival in the annals of exploration. Indeed his ship was well named.

Endurance caught in the ice

In the voyage to Antarctica the expeditionary ship "Endurance" got caught in the frozen ice pack which the vessel encountered in the Weddell Sea , the largest sea in the Antarctic region. For nine long months the ship and its crew of twenty seven men were bound helplessly in the ice. The order to abandon ship was given by Shackleton on 27th October, 1915 , and by then the party knew that the vessel was doomed. Having endured the three months of night which the polar winter brings, the hoped-for break-up of the icepack which would release the ship never came but instead larger floes of ice piled up against her side to create intolerable pressure. Although the "Endurance" was probably the strongest wooden ship ever built with her hull in places two and a half feet thick, she eventually buckled under the strain and all essential gear was taken off as well as three lifeboats and the expedition's 49 dogs. Thus the expedition's twenty seven members, under the command of Shackleton, were marooned on the frozen wasteland of the Weddell Sea , midway between the South Pole and the nearest outpost of humanity, 1200 miles away. They were 210 miles from the nearest known land, the Palmer Peninsula and this was uninhabited. With no radio transmitter and no contact with the outside world they were entirely on their own and if they were to get out they would have to get themselves out. Even if their plight was known to the outside world it is doubtful if they could have been rescued.

 
Shackleton looking over the side of the Endurance as the ice starts to crush her.

Shackleton had already decided that they would march over the frozen ocean towards Paulet Island , a tiny spot of land 346 miles to the north east, where stores of food were known to be laid up. Eventually he felt certain they would come to open water so they dragged the three lifeboats with them on sledges. The men who faced this prodigious task could hardly have been a more varied collection of individuals. They ranged from Cambridge University dons to Yorkshire fishermen and included one stowaway who had slipped aboard at Buenos Aires . But sharing the long polar night aboard the "Endurance" had welded them into a cheerful close-knit unit. Although they were now camped above 2,000 fathoms of water, on a piece of ice barely six feet thick there was a remarkable lack of discouragement. It was quite enough just then merely to be alive.

Shackleton, too, appeared cheerful and resolute for he was an explorer in the classic model — utterly self- reliant, romantic, and a little swash­buckling. He was now forty years old, a stocky, iron - jawed man who thoroughly believed the motto of his family "By endurance we conquer".

After they had spent 36 hours on the ice Shackleton called all hands to­gether and talked about the journey that lay ahead. It was imperative, he explained gravely, that all weight be reduced to the barest minimum. Each man would be allowed a minimum of clothing, a pound of tobacco and two pounds of personal gear. When he had finished speaking, he reached under his coat and took out a gold cigarette case and several gold sovereigns and threw them into the snow at his feet. Then he opened the Bible that Queen Alexandra, the Queen Mother, had given the expedition and whipped out the fly leaf containing her in­scription which read "may the Lord help you to do your duty and guide you through all dangers by land and sea." Then he laid the Bible on the snow and walked away.

It was a dramatic gesture but a calculated one and as the afternoon wore on it appeared that Shackleton's example had been effective. The amount of nonessentials dumped in the centre of the tent grew steadily. Shackleton also ordered the four puppies among the sledge dogs to be killed as there was only food for those who could pull their weight.

Next day, 30th October, they started off with Shackleton and the pioneering party leading the way to search for the most level route. The dog teams came next pulling heavily laden sledges and then under the command of Frank Worsley who had been Captain of the "Endurance", came the last and most difficult operation moving the boats. This was a killing job with the boats, drawn one at a time by fifteen men harnessed in traces, weighing over a ton each. They sank deeply into the snow and to move them the men had to strain forward in their traces until they were at times leaning almost parallel with the ground. Every few hundred yards they had to chop a miniature mountain path through pres­sure ridges and on particularly high ridges a ramp of ice and snow had to be built up one side and down the other. During the first day they covered a distance of one mile and it snowed heavily that night so that next day progress was even less. Shackleton decided that it was not worthwhile going on. They were then camped on an unusually strong floe 10 feet deep and a third of a mile in diameter and Shackleton announced to all hands that they would stay there until the drift of the ice carried them closer to land. The dog teams were dispatched to the original camp a mile and three-quarters back to bring up all the food, clothing and gear possible. A party of six men was also sent back to the ship to salvage whatever of value they could. They found her bow shoved far down into the ice, her main mast broken and her rigging so entangled that every step aboard was a danger. But by hacking a hold through the galley roof they were able to get at the stores and for several days they continued to salvage supplies and sledge them to Ocean Camp as the present bivouac was eventually called.

On 21st November the "Endurance" sank and so everything depended on the drift of the ice pack which might continue to go north-west carrying them towards their goal, Paulet Island .

They remained at Ocean Camp for almost two months crammed together in an inadequate tent with little to place between their sleeping bags and the bar ice. Eventually on 21st December Shackleton called all hands to­gether and informed them that they would start trekking across the ice in two days hence. They intended to travel mostly at night when tempera­tures would be lower and the ice surface firmer. Furthermore he said, since they would be on the trail over Christmas they would observe the holidays before leaving and all hands could now eat everything they wanted. A great deal of food would have to be left behind anyway. The Christmas feast began immediately and lasted almost all the next day as well. At five-thirty the following morning they started over the ice and many of the floes were rotten and saturated. The frozen snow-covered surface, however, appeared deceptively sturdy. At each step it would seem capable of sup­porting a man but just as he shifted his weight entirely he would burst through the crust. The men pulling the boat sledges could take only about 200 yards of such punishment at a time. After five days during which they advanced 9 miles , Shackleton decided that it was hopeless to continue. Many of the men had reached a point of complete exhaustion.

Their position if anything was worse than it had been for they had aban­doned a good quantity of food stores in moving and they were now camped on a waterlogged and unreliable floe. For three and a half months, with starvation threatening, they were doomed to stay on this bit of ice aptly named Patience Camp. As the weary vigil dragged on, Shackleton ordered the ration to be reduced to one warm beverage a day — a helping of hot powdered milk at breakfast. But provi­dence never failed them altogether. They always managed to kill enough seals to maintain a bare subsistence ration and on 19th February thousands of migrating penguins suddenly ap­peared on the floe. During the next three days the men were able to kill some six hundred of them for the camp larder.

Late in January a gale blew up from the south and carried them 84 miles in six days, towards their destination. On 9th March they felt the swell the unmistakable rise and fall of the open ocean. Everyone was satisfied that it lay at most 30 miles away. Shackleton alone seemed to sense from the presence of the swell a new and far more dangerous threat than almost any they had faced till then. The one situation from which he knew there would be no escape was for the swell to increase while the pack remained closed. The action of the sea would then crack and break the floes and ultimately grind the ice to bits on which they could not camp while the boats would be crushed instantly if launched. To make matters worse, the problem of food was becoming acute. All the dogs except two teams had now been shot. The meager amount of blubber provided by the penguins was nearly gone and on 16th March the last of their flour was used up. On the morning of 23rd March, Shackleton, who was up early, saw a black object far in the distance. It was one of the tiny Danger Islands , near the tip of Palmer Penin­sula , identifiable by its table top bluffs rising steeply out of the water. It lay exactly forty two miles away in a westerly direction. If the ice opened they could land there in a day but the pack showed no disposition to open and enable them to launch the boat. Consequently the sight of land was but another reminder of their helplessness.

The truth was that there was precious little land left that they had any chance of reaching. They had drifted to the absolute cliff of the Palmer Peninsula and the possibility of reaching land there was now hopeless. Thus, be­tween them and the open seas, the most storm-torn ocean on the globe, all that remained were two lonely, sentinel-like outposts of the Antartic Continent — Clarence and Elephant Islands, about 110 miles to the north. Beyond these there was nothing.

In the afternoon of 9th April the ice broke and they were able to launch their boats. Five days later after battling against high seas and a never-slackening gale the entire party landed on Elephant Island . For the first time in 497 days they were on land. However, the place was un­inhabited with the exception of seals and penguins which the party used for much needed food. All along the coast, hostile cliffs rose like an enormous wall thrown up against the sea. After their third day on the Island

Shackleton announced that he would take a party of five men and set sail in one of their boats, the "Caird", for South Georgia some 800 miles away to bring relief from one of the whaling stations there. On 24th April they set off leaving twenty two of their party behind and running before almost gale force winds they logged 128 miles in two days. They were in the Drake Passage . Here the waves some­times exceed 90 feet and their speed reached 30 knots but nine days out from Elephant Island the wind dropped to a breeze and they found themselves midway to South Georgia . A very real danger existed in the possibility of miscalculation for the Island was only 15 miles wide at its widest point and to miss it would mean being lost in the South Atlantic Ocean in a void of 3,000 desolate miles. However on 10th May 1916 the "Caird's" keel ground against the shore of the South Georgia Island . Unfortunately they were on the wrong side of the Island and the four whaling stations and the only inhabitants were on the opposite coast. By sea it was some 160 miles away and the "Caird" was now hardly equal to the journey. That left only one alternative — to cross the island overland. Although in distance it was only 19 miles , the interior of South Georgia has been described by one expert as "a saw-toothed trust through the tortured upheaval of mountain and glacier that falls into the northern sea". Nobody had ever cros­sed it. Shackleton told the party that he and Worsley, his navigator, and another member of the team would make the attempt. 
After nine days during which they recuperated from the boat trip the three set out on 19^th May. Thirty-six hours later they reached the other coast achieving what no man has ever been able to do again by that route though some have tried. At the whaling Station Shackleton obtained a large wooden whaler, the "Southern Sky" in which to return to Elephant Island and to rescue the twenty-two castaways there. In the meantime Worsley boarded a whaler and set out for the other side of the Island to pick up the three men they had left behind on the island. Three days out the "Southern Sky" en­countered ice and although Shackleton tried desperately to find a way through they never approached Elephant Island closer than seventy miles. Shortage of fuel forced them to return to the Falkland Island . Shackleton made two more abortive attempts, first in a small ship supplied by Uruguay , then in a vessel obtained in Chile . On 25th August he set out in the "Yelcho", an aged tug lent by the Chilean government. This time the ice was willing and on the 30th August the twenty-two men were taken on board and once more the party was com­plete. The rescued men who had been waiting four months and five days since the "Caird" set out were in surprisingly good condition. They had improvised a hut by upturning the two boats and had subsisted primarily on penguins most of their other supplies such as powdered milk, nut food and tobacco had run out. But morale had remained high. There had been no serious quarrels and the only major incident was the amputation of five toes which had been frozen on the foot of the one stowaway in the party. The men had nearly given up all hope of rescue however and were then making plans to reach civilisation on their own.

Schackleton's feat in saving every man in his expedition is the most extraordinary in the annals of polar exploration. Indeed polar historians agree that what Shackleton set out to do which was to cross the Antarctic Continent on foot was far surpassed by what he did instead.

Undaunted Shackleton set out on a further expedition in 1921 in "The Quest" but early in 1921 off South Georgia Island he died aboard ship and was buried on the Island . 

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Acknowledgements:

"Signal" magazine 

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shackleton: An Irishman in Antarctica 
Jonathan Shackleton & John MacKenna (2002).
The Lilliput Press, Dublin, Ireland.

ISBN-10: 184351009X

ISBN-13: 978-1843510093