South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
_Endurance_ involved in such a battle of giants. During the 3rd the
seal meat and blubber was re-stowed on hummocks around the ship. The
frozen masses had been sinking into the floe. Ice, though hard and
solid to the touch, is never firm against heavy weights. An article
left on the floe for any length of time is likely to sink into the
surface-ice. Then the salt water will percolate through and the article
will become frozen into the body of the floe.
Clear weather followed the gale, and we had a series of mock suns and
parhelia. Minus temperatures were the rule, 21° below zero Fahr. being
recorded on the 6th. We made mattresses for the dogs by stuffing sacks
with straw and rubbish, and most of the animals were glad to receive
this furnishing in their kennels. Some of them had suffered through the
snow melting with the heat of their bodies and then freezing solid. The
scientific members of the expedition were all busy by this time. The
meteorologist had got his recording station, containing anemometer,
barograph, and thermograph, rigged over the stern. The geologist was
making the best of what to him was an unhappy situation; but was not
altogether without material. The pebbles found in the penguins were
often of considerable interest, and some fragments of rock were brought
up from the sea floor with the sounding-lead and the drag-net. On the
7th Wordie and Worsley found some small pebbles, a piece of moss, a
perfect bivalve shell, and some dust on a berg fragment, and brought
their treasure-trove proudly to the ship. Clark was using the drag-net
frequently in the leads and secured good hauls of _plankton_, with
occasional specimens of greater scientific interest. Seals were not
plentiful, but our store of meat and blubber grew gradually. All hands
ate seal meat with relish and would not have cared to become dependent
on the ship’s tinned meat. We preferred the crab-eater to the Weddell,
which is a very sluggish beast. The crab-eater seemed cleaner and
healthier. The killer-whales were still with us. On the 8th we examined
a spot where the floe-ice had been smashed up by a blow from beneath,
delivered presumably by a large whale in search of a breathing-place.
The force that had been exercised was astonishing. Slabs of ice 3 ft.
thick, and weighing tons, had been tented upwards over a circular area
with a diameter of about 25 ft., and cracks radiated outwards for more
than 20 ft.
The quarters in the ’tween decks were completed by the 10th, and the
men took possession of the cubicles that had been built. The largest
cubicle contained Macklin, McIlroy, Hurley, and Hussey and it was named
“The Billabong.” Clark and Wordie lived opposite in a room called “Auld
Reekie.” Next came the abode of “The Nuts” or engineers, followed by
“The Sailors’ Rest,” inhabited by Cheetham and McNeish. “The Anchorage”
and “The Fumarole” were on the other side. The new quarters became
known as “The Ritz,” and meals were served there instead of in the ward
room. Breakfast was at 9 a.m., lunch at 1 p.m., tea at 4 p.m., and
dinner at 6 p.m. Wild, Marston, Crean, and Worsley established
themselves in cubicles in the wardroom, and by the middle of the month
all hands had settled down to the winter routine. I lived alone aft.
Worsley, Hurley, and Wordie made a journey to a big berg, called by us
the Rampart Berg, on the 11th. The distance out was 7½ miles, and the
party covered a total distance of about 17 miles. Hurley took some
photographs and Wordie came back rejoicing with a little dust and some
moss.
“Within a radius of one mile round the berg there is thin young ice,
strong enough to march over with care,” wrote Worsley. “The area of
dangerous pressure, as regards a ship, does not seem to extend for more
than a quarter of a mile from the berg. Here there are cracks and
constant slight movement, which becomes exciting to the traveller when
he feels a piece of ice gradually upending beneath his feet. Close to
the berg the pressure makes all sorts of quaint noises. We heard
tapping as from a hammer, grunts, groans and squeaks, electric trams
running, birds singing, kettles boiling noisily, and an occasional
swish as a large piece of ice, released from pressure, suddenly jumped
or turned over. We noticed all sorts of quaint effects, such as huge
bubbles or domes of ice, 40 ft. across and 4 or 5 ft. high. Large
sinuous pancake-sheets were spread over the floe in places, and in one
spot we counted five such sheets, each about 2½ in. thick, imbricated
under one another. They look as though made of barley-sugar and are
very slippery.”
The noon position on the 14th was lat. 76° 54´ S., long. 36° 10´ W. The
land was visible faintly to the south-east, distant about 36 miles. A
few small leads could be seen from the ship, but the ice was firm in
our neighbourhood. The drift of the _Endurance_ was still towards the
north-west.
I had the boilers blown down on the 15th, and the consumption of 2 cwt.
of coal per day to keep the boilers from freezing then ceased. The
bunkers still contained 52 tons of coal, and the daily consumption in
the stoves was about 2½ cwt. There would not be much coal left for
steaming purposes in the spring, but I anticipated eking out the supply
with blubber. A moderate gale from the north-east on the 17th brought
fine, penetrating snow. The weather cleared in the evening, and a
beautiful crimson sunset held our eyes. At the same time the ice-cliffs
of the land were thrown up in the sky by mirage, with an apparent
reflection in open water, though the land itself could not be seen
definitely. The effect was repeated in an exaggerated form on the
following day, when the ice-cliffs were thrown up above the horizon in
double and treble parallel lines, some inverted. The mirage was due
probably to lanes of open water near the land. The water would be about
30° warmer than the air and would cause warmed strata to ascend. A
sounding gave 606 fathoms, with a bottom of glacial mud. Six days
later, on the 24th, the depth was 419 fathoms. We were drifting
steadily, and the constant movement, coupled with the appearance of
lanes near the land, convinced me that we must stay by the ship till
she got clear. I had considered the possibility of making a landing
across the ice in the spring, but the hazards of such an undertaking
would be too great.
The training of the dogs in sledge teams was making progress. The
orders used by the drivers were “Mush” (Go on), “Gee” (Right), “Haw”
(Left), and “Whoa” (Stop). These are the words that the Canadian
drivers long ago adopted, borrowing them originally from England. There
were many fights at first, until the dogs learned their positions and
their duties, but as days passed drivers and teams became efficient.
Each team had its leader, and efficiency depended largely on the
willingness and ability of this dog to punish skulking and
disobedience. We learned not to interfere unless the disciplinary
measures threatened to have a fatal termination. The drivers could sit
on the sledge and jog along at ease if they chose. But the prevailing
minus temperatures made riding unpopular, and the men preferred usually
to run or walk alongside the teams. We were still losing dogs through
sickness, due to stomach and intestinal worms.
Dredging for specimens at various depths was one of the duties during
these days. The dredge and several hundred fathoms of wire line made a
heavy load, far beyond the unaided strength of the scientists. On the
23rd, for example, we put down a 2 ft. dredge and 650 fathoms of wire.
The dredge was hove in four hours later and brought much glacial mud,
several pebbles and rock fragments, three sponges, some worms,
_brachiapods_, and _foraminiferæ_. The mud was troublesome. It was
heavy to lift, and as it froze rapidly when brought to the surface, the
recovery of the specimens embedded in it was difficult. A haul made on
the 26th brought a prize for the geologist in the form of a lump of
sandstone weighing 75 lbs., a piece of fossiliferous limestone, a
fragment of striated shale, sandstone-grit, and some pebbles. Hauling
in the dredge by hand was severe work, and on the 24th we used the
Girling tractor-motor, which brought in 500 fathoms of line in thirty
minutes, including stops. One stop was due to water having run over the
friction gear and frozen. It was a day or two later that we heard a
great yell from the floe and found Clark dancing about and shouting
Scottish war-cries. He had secured his first complete specimen of an
Antarctic fish, apparently a new species.
Mirages were frequent. Barrier-cliffs appeared all around us on the
29th, even in places where we knew there was deep water.
“Bergs and pack are thrown up in the sky and distorted into the most
fantastic shapes. They climb, trembling, upwards, spreading out into
long lines at different levels, then contract and fall down, leaving
nothing but an uncertain, wavering smudge which comes and goes.
Presently the smudge swells and grows, taking shape until it presents
the perfect inverted reflection of a berg on the horizon, the shadow
hovering over the substance. More smudges appear at different points on
the horizon. These spread out into long lines till they meet, and we
are girdled by lines of shining snow-cliffs, laved at their bases by
waters of illusion in which they appear to be faithfully reflected. So
the shadows come and go silently, melting away finally as the sun
declines to the west. We seem to be drifting helplessly in a strange
world of unreality. It is reassuring to feel the ship beneath one’s
feet and to look down at the familiar line of kennels and igloos on the
solid floe.”
The floe was not so solid as it appeared. We had reminders occasionally
that the greedy sea was very close, and that the floe was but a
treacherous friend, which might open suddenly beneath us. Towards the
end of the month I had our store of seal meat and blubber brought
aboard. The depth as recorded by a sounding on the last day of March
was 256 fathoms. The continuous shoaling from 606 fathoms in a drift of
39 miles N. 26° W. in thirty days was interesting. The sea shoaled as
we went north, either to east or to west, and the fact suggested that
the contour-lines ran east and west, roughly. Our total drift between
January 19, when the ship was frozen in, and March 31, a period of
seventy-one days, had been 95 miles in a N. 80° W. direction. The
icebergs around us had not changed their relative positions.
The sun sank lower in the sky, the temperatures became lower, and the
_Endurance_ felt the grip of the icy hand of winter. Two north-easterly
gales in the early part of April assisted to consolidate the pack. The
young ice was thickening rapidly, and though leads were visible
occasionally from the ship, no opening of a considerable size appeared
in our neighbourhood. In the early morning of April 1 we listened again
for the wireless signals from Port Stanley. The crew had lashed three
20-ft. rickers to the mast-heads in order to increase the spread of our
aerials, but still we failed to hear anything. The rickers had to come
down subsequently, since we found that the gear could not carry the
accumulating weight of rime. Soundings proved that the sea continued to
shoal as the _Endurance_ drifted to the north-west. The depth on April
2 was 262 fathoms, with a bottom of glacial mud. Four weeks later a
sounding gave 172 fathoms. The presence of grit in the bottom samples
towards the end of the month suggested that we were approaching land
again.
The month was not uneventful. During the night of the 3rd we heard the
ice grinding to the eastward, and in the morning we saw that young ice