Heroism

"MEN WANTED: FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.

- SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON"

Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) is one of the most well known of the Antarctic explorers who in the early 20th century went on three separate explorations to the very unknown and new part of the world called Antarctica. It was at a time where exploration was hugely popular, as camera technology and photography allowed for the public to see, for the first time, large alien parts of the world that had never been seen by the human eye before – or at least by their own eye. It was also at a time where colonisation was almost at its end – it wasn't acceptable any more to simply invade an unknown land and plant a flag there to claim at as part of the motherland. Besides, the map of the world was largely well known by this stage, so there were only a few areas which still hadn't been explored properly yet. Antarctica was one of them – a hostile and terrifying landscape cut from ice and cold, and yet hospitable to various forms of life. It was the early 1900's at the time of the 'Heroic age of Antarctic Exploration' – and the race was on for which nation to reach the pole. That went to the Admundsen and his Norwegian team who in fact got to the pole roughly a month earlier than Robert Falcon Scott; whose pole team (including himself) then perished on the way back due to lack of provisions and extreme sub-zero temperatures.

What I want to talk about is Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-17). Probably one of the most extraordinary feats of survival and bravery ever achieved on an expedition. And what's more extraordinary is that all of the crew survived despite immense adversity and hardship – predominantly due to the bravery of themselves and the exceptional individuals of the crew.

By this time, Shackleton was no stranger to the ice of the Antarctic – he had been alongside Scott in an earlier expedition. The purpose of this expedition, different to what had been done in the past was to cross the continent via the pole from coast to coast (1800 miles), though, due to circumstances at the beginning of the expedition, they never in fact set foot on continental Antarctica.

At the birthing of the expedition, when preparations had been made and mad men obtained to go ahead on this perilous journey there were other things afoot. The dark clouds of World War 1 were beginning to gather.. The Endurance was anchored off Southend on August 4th 1914 when Shackleton read in a daily newspaper the order for general mobilization of troops and supplies along with calls for volunteer soldiers. He immediately returned to the ship, gathered all hands, and told them that he would send a to telegram the Admiralty offering the ships, stores and services to the country in the event of war breaking out. Within an hour after sending the telegram, Shackleton received a reply from the Admiralty with the single word "Proceed". Within two hours, another arrived from Winston Churchill in which he thanked them for their offer but desired that the expedition go on. That night, at midnight, war broke out. This goes to attest to the importance of the mission, not only for individual fame but for the prosperity of the nation, a nation at the time, at the forefront of the world in power. It was about propaganda, pride and for the coalition of a nation behind a singular cause – a display of bravery and pride to the collective members of the nation. Not only that, but was an example to others that this was a nation of people of great grit and determination – do not mess.

Shackleton and his 27 men aboard Endurance set off via Buenos Aires and southward towards a sub-antarctic whaling station of South Georgia. When they left they figured the war would only last 6 months, so left without regret. On arrival at South Georgia on the 5th of November 1914, they were told that the ice was cold. Not only that, but they were told that it was rather thick and voluminous at the moment. So the few day wait became a month as the crew waited for some of the sheets of ice to break up and melt. It was at this time that the crew of the endurance made the friends needed for their later encounter.

The Weddell sea was known to be heavily ice bound at the best of times, but it was the start of the route the men had decided upon when considering the distances involved in the trek. Hence, why the Endurance stockpiled enough supplies to hold out in the event that they became trapped in ice, and extra coal for the engines to push the boat through the ice sheets ahead. They left South Georgia on the 5th of December 1914, exactly one month after arriving there. For over a month the ship and its crew battled through the ice – 1000 miles of it, until, one day, on the 18th of January 1915, the ice closed in around her and the ship became like 'an almond in a piece of toffee' – stuck! They were only a hundred miles from their destination.

The ship then was caught drifting, drifting south-west with the ice, and no amount of ice chiseling, boat steering, engine revving nor lung screaming had any affect on the ice. By the end of February, the ship was fairly well stuck in the ice, jammed between two love-struck ice sheets wanting to embrace, and would be so for the winter. This eventuality hadn't been planned, and the men became frustrated and Shackleton was at a loss of what to do, other than wait for the temperatures to rise and for the ice to break up. The winter wasn't kind to them, with bellowing gales of frozen air, and regular blizzards – they passed the time how they could – with football and ice hockey games, until light evaded them completely.

Everyone knew that one of two things would happen, either the pack ice would thaw, break up and disperse in the spring, so freeing the ship, or it would consolidate and driven by the effects of wind and tide over hundreds of miles of sea would take hold of and crush the ship - like a toy in a vice.

"The ice is rafting up to a height of 10 or 15 ft. in places, the opposing floes are moving against one another at the rate of about 200 yds. per hour. The noise resembles the roar of heavy, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice one can imagine it is disturbed by the breathing and tossing of a mighty giant below" Shackleton

The latter begin to happen; where at first the stern became twisted and sprung a leak – which was at first kept in check, but with the compression of the ice, the ship became more and more compressed. So much so, that on the 27th of October, they had to abandon the Endurance – 'crushed beyond all hope of ever being righted'. Since first becoming trapped in ice, the Endurance had drifted some 1186 miles in the ice (281 days previously). The only option then was for the team to travel to Paulet Island, 346 miles away for any chance of finding food and shelter. Endurance finally sank on November 21st 1915 – almost one year after setting off from South Georgia. It wasn't until the 20th December that Shackleton decided the time was right to abandon their 'ocean camp' and march westward towards where they thought the nearest land was – Paulet island.

"Thus, after a year's incessant battle with the ice, we had returned... to almost the same latitude we had left with such high hopes and aspirations twelve months previously; but under what different conditions now! Our ship crushed and lost and we ourselves drifting on a piece of ice at the mercy of the winds" Shackleton, On New Year's Eve 1915

With three life boats – one they had to retrace their steps to where Endurance had sunk, they trekked westward, until in April 1916, they had to get onto their rafts as the sea ice begun to break up beneath their feet.

It should be known, that by this time, Shackleton and his men had been marooned on the ice for over a year (14 months) since Endurance became trapped. How they battled not only hunger, boredom and morale, they battled the relentless cold, a cold which never stopped its barrage on the men, and chilled the men to their cores as they fought through the hardships of their misfortune. They had killed the dogs, eaten the ponies, consumed virtually all of the provisions. The only thing keeping them alive was the occasional seal hunt and few pieces left from the dwindling stores of what they extracted from the ship. In making ground to Paulet island, they discovered that they had in fact travelled 30 miles east instead of the westwards they had been trying. This was because of the drifting ice beneath their feet – any ground gained was in fact negligible to the ground lost by the moving sheets. Instead, they picked out a new destination – elephant island – and boated their way towards it in icy cold and treacherous waters, landing there 497 days after having last stood on land.

For the first time they felt safe, land beneath them was after all land, and they warmed themselves around a blubber stove as they rejoiced in getting this far. However, they were still without aid, and in order to survive, needed to get in contact with those able to assist them. The ground may not be shaky in the literal sense, but in sense of their lives, they were still quite a bit off from being saved. The outside world was after all, not going to come to elephant island, and with no way of contacting anyone, Shackleton came up with a plan. He was to take a few men with him and the rest were to stay here on Elephant island, where he would take one of the boats to South Georgia in search of help. He knew there was a whaling station there as that was where they had passed through on their way down in the first place. The rest of the crew staying behind were to hold out with their limited provisions until spring, in the hope that they are to be rescued, and if not, should make their way to 'Deception island' – a place where whalers pass through from time-to time, and a place with a questionable name.

Shackleton and 5 other men left Elephant island on the 24th April 2016, the day before the sea ice was to close again around the island and lock them in. They had tried to kit out the boat as best they could and made a canopy so that they could protect themselves against the constant onslaught of the weather. Shackleton expected the journey to take around a month, and it would be one of the most remarkable journey's by boat ever taken. Travelling in excess of 60 miles a day, the crew of 6 rowed and sailed their way, using compass directions in turbulent icy daily. The water came on-board, soaking everything and the swell and sway caused all kinds of objects to move about within the boat and damage everything else. Ice began to form around the interior and exterior of the boat, and constant chipping away at it did little to do anything about it. They had to throw out various things as the ice weight begun to weigh them down and caused increasingly dangerous amounts of water to wash over the side into the boat. Another problem they had was that frequently the sky was overcast, which meant that they couldn't use stars as a navigation method and had to wait for pockets of clear skies to re-establish their bearings.

A particularly large wave came one day, and it came close to tragedy:

"It was a mighty upheaval of the ocean, a thing quite apart from the big white-capped seas that had been our tireless enemies for many days. I shouted 'For God's sake, hold on! It's got us.' Then came a moment of suspense that seemed drawn out into hours. White surged the foam of the breaking sea around us. We felt our boat lifted and flung forward like a cork in breaking surf. We were in a seething chaos of tortured water; but somehow the boat lived through it, half full of water, sagging to the dead weight and shuddering under the blow. We baled with the energy of men fighting for life, flinging the water over the sides with every receptacle that came to our hands, and after ten minutes of uncertainty we felt the boat renew her life beneath us"

Shackleton, 5th May 1916.

Remarkably, the crew of 6 caught sight of South Georgia two weeks after leaving Elephant Island (half the time they were expecting) and approached it – seeing kelp and sea birds, the sight must have brought tears to their eyes. Though landing was to prove to be difficult – the coast was rocky with sharp reefs and deep plunge pools, they had to wait the night of the 8th of May, for the seas to calm so they could manage the approach without destroying themselves on the rocks. For the next two days the crew were blown around, waves lapped at their boat, and lost sight of the island twice as the swell swirled them around. They were seriously sleep and food deprived by now, but still couldn't rush to the shore as there was too much wind and waves. It was only mid-way through the night of the 10th that they managed to get close enough to eye out a small bay, where they finally reached a place called Haakon Bay of the island.

Shackleton's leadership and Frank Worsley's navigation skills had successfully enabled the men to reach this small island. Worsley only managed to take sightings of the sun four times in their journey as the sky was overcast the rest of the time – astonishing as to miss the compass bearing by a fraction would have mean the team would have missed the island altogether and be adrift in the Atlantic without rescue and to certain death. The crew remaining on Elephant island would be without a rescue too and likely die as a result, for to sail to Deception Island in their condition would essentially be suicide.

They were not out of the woods yet – in fact they weren't even in them as the landscape was rather abhorrently devoid of trees entirely. The problem was that they were 22 miles away from the whaling station as the crow flies – 22 miles of treacherous, sharp, gnarled rock faces and mountains that were so awful that no-one had attempted it before and the map showed a large area in the middle of the island as blank. This was the 22 miles that they were going to have to navigate and complete before any rescue could be found. Three men went and three stayed behind, as some were too weak to make the journey.

On the 15th May, Shakleton set out with Crean and Worsley, to begin their journey across the backbone of South Georgia. Barely sleeping, and often in darkness, the three men trudged their way through the unknown geography of the island. Harsh winds and extreme cold tugged and slashed at them, and yet they kept going. They moved on, as if their lives depended on it, and it did, as well as others, and so, they pushed through the discomfort and pain minute by minute, hour by hour towards where they knew a whaling station was. The first indication of human presence came on the 20th May, where the 7am steam whistle was heard, a whistle which indicated the beginning of the work day for the whalers. The men then navigated sheer ice cliffs, rivers, waterfalls and rocky ground, as the cold bore down on them, increasing their distance by the moment. By the late afternoon of the 20th May, the three made it to the outskirts of Stromness looking tired, beaten, unshaven and ragged, as death had been close to their doors.

In the typical fashion of the age of chivalry and gentlemen, the exchange was rather understated:

Mr. Sørlle came out to the door and said, "Well?" "Don't you know me?" I said. "I know your voice," he replied doubtfully. "You're the mate of the Daisy." (the Daisy was the last of the American open boat whalers, it had visited South Georgia in 1913) "My name is Shackleton," I said. Immediately he put out his hand and said, "Come in. Come in."

Worsley almost immediately after washing and eating left on a whaling ship to rescue the crew left at Haakon bay, whereas Shackleton and Crean stayed to make plans on rescuing the men on still stranded on Elephant Island. Later, Shackleton was to write in a letter to a friend, "When we got to the whaling station, it was the thought of all those comrades that made us so mad with joy... We didn't so much feel safe as that they would be saved."

It would be four attempts to get to Elephant island before the 22 men were to be saved. The first expedition begun days after reaching Stromness but they were forced away by ice, so they had to retreat to the falkland islands, next they tried again on another boat, and yet more ice forced them away. From Chile next, the crew were loaned yet another vessel, but the auxillary engine broke down only 100 miles from the island. The successful attempt came when using the loaned steam tug called 'Yelcho' from the Chilean government. 128 days since Shackleton and the other 5 men left for South Georgia, they arrived at Elephant Island, much to the joy of the men there. Again, in typical understated fashion this was their exchange as the boat soon approached close enough for Shackleton, who was standing on the bow, to shout to Wild:

"Are you all well?". Wild replied, "All safe, all well!" and the Boss replied, "Thank God!"

What's astonishing is that in these two years, not a single man was lost! Their heroism and their resolve enabled the entire crew of 28 to eventually get home. Though not so much for everything else - the boat (James Caird) that Shackleton and the other 5 men used to sail to South Georgia is one of the only relics of the survive, and sits in a museum in London. It really goes to show what gut determination can accomplish despite all odds, and is a testament to keeping a level head, where all around you is swirling with immense danger and hopelessness. This is one of the most stunning stories of survival and determination that I have ever heard. This is something you can only be inspired by.

'Endurance' - a part of their boat that carried them through.