South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
During all this time the supply of seals and penguins, if not
inexhaustible, was always sufficient for our needs.
Seal- and penguin-hunting was our daily occupation, and parties were
sent out in different directions to search among the hummocks and the
pressure-ridges for them. When one was found a signal was hoisted,
usually in the form of a scarf or a sock on a pole, and an answering
signal was hoisted at the camp.
Then Wild went out with a dog team to shoot and bring in the game. To
feed ourselves and the dogs, at least one seal a day was required. The
seals were mostly crab-eaters, and emperor penguins were the general
rule. On November 5, however, an adelie was caught, and this was the
cause of much discussion, as the following extract shows: “The man on
watch from 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. caught an adelie penguin. This is the first
of its kind that we have seen since January last, and it may mean a
lot. It may signify that there is land somewhere near us, or else that
great leads are opening up, but it is impossible to form more than a
mere conjecture at present.”
No skuas, Antarctic petrels, or sea-leopards were seen during our two
months’ stay at Ocean Camp.
In addition to the daily hunt for food, our time was passed in reading
the few books that we had managed to save from the ship. The greatest
treasure in the library was a portion of the “Encyclopædia
Britannica.” This was being continually used to settle the inevitable
arguments that would arise. The sailors were discovered one day engaged
in a very heated discussion on the subject of _Money and Exchange_.
They finally came to the conclusion that the Encyclopædia, since it
did not coincide with their views, must be wrong.
“For descriptions of every American town that ever has been, is, or
ever will be, and for full and complete biographies of every American
statesman since the time of George Washington and long before, the
Encyclopædia would be hard to beat. Owing to our shortage of matches
we have been driven to use it for purposes other than the purely
literary ones though; and one genius having discovered that the paper,
used for its pages had been impregnated with saltpetre, we can now
thoroughly recommend it as a very efficient pipe-lighter.”
We also possessed a few books on Antarctic exploration, a copy of
Browning and one of “The Ancient Mariner.” On reading the latter, we
sympathized with him and wondered what he had done with the albatross;
it would have made a very welcome addition to our larder.
The two subjects of most interest to us were our rate of drift and the
weather. Worsley took observations of the sun whenever possible, and
his results showed conclusively that the drift of our floe was almost
entirely dependent upon the winds and not much affected by currents.
Our hope, of course, was to drift northwards to the edge of the pack
and then, when the ice was loose enough, to take to the boats and row
to the nearest land. We started off in fine style, drifting north about
twenty miles in two or three days in a howling south-westerly blizzard.
Gradually, however, we slowed up, as successive observations showed,
until we began to drift back to the south. An increasing north-easterly
wind, which commenced on November 7 and lasted for twelve days, damped
our spirits for a time, until we found that we had only drifted back to
the south three miles, so that we were now seventeen miles to the good.
This tended to reassure us in our theories that the ice of the Weddell
Sea was drifting round in a clockwise direction, and that if we could
stay on our piece long enough we must eventually be taken up to the
north, where lay the open sea and the path to comparative safety.
The ice was not moving fast enough to be noticeable. In fact, the only
way in which we could prove that we were moving at all was by noting
the change of relative positions of the bergs around us, and, more
definitely, by fixing our absolute latitude and longitude by
observations of the sun. Otherwise, as far as actual visible drift was
concerned, we might have been on dry land.
For the next few days we made good progress, drifting seven miles to
the north on November 24 and another seven miles in the next
forty-eight hours. We were all very pleased to know that although the
wind was mainly south-west all this time, yet we had made very little
easting. The land lay to the west, so had we drifted to the east we
should have been taken right away to the centre of the entrance to the
Weddell Sea, and our chances of finally reaching land would have been
considerably lessened.
Our average rate of drift was slow, and many and varied were the
calculations as to when we should reach the pack-edge. On December 12,
1915, one man wrote: “Once across the Antarctic Circle, it will seem as
if we are practically halfway home again; and it is just possible that
with favourable winds we may cross the circle before the New Year. A
drift of only three miles a day would do it, and we have often done
that and more for periods of three or four weeks.
“We are now only 250 miles from Paulet Island, but too much to the east
of it. We are approaching the latitudes in which we were at this time
last year, on our way down. The ship left South Georgia just a year and
a week ago, and reached this latitude four or five miles to the
eastward of our present position on January 3, 1915, crossing the
circle on New Year’s Eve.”
Thus, after a year’s incessant battle with the ice, we had returned, by
many strange turns of fortune’s wheel, to almost identically the same
latitude that 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. However, in spite of occasional setbacks due to
unfavourable winds, our drift was in the main very satisfactory, and
this went a long way towards keeping the men cheerful.
As the drift was mostly affected by the winds, the weather was closely
watched by all, and Hussey, the meteorologist, was called upon to make
forecasts every four hours, and some times more frequently than that. A
meteorological screen, containing thermometers and a barograph, had
been erected on a post frozen into the ice, and observations were taken
every four hours. When we first left the ship the weather was cold and
miserable, and altogether as unpropitious as it could possibly have
been for our attempted march. Our first few days at Ocean Camp were
passed under much the same conditions. At nights the temperature
dropped to zero, with blinding snow and drift. One-hour watches were
instituted, all hands taking their turn, and in such weather this job
was no sinecure. The watchman had to be continually on the alert for
cracks in the ice, or any sudden changes in the ice conditions, and
also had to keep his eye on the dogs, who often became restless,
fretful, and quarrelsome in the early hours of the morning. At the end
of his hour he was very glad to crawl back into the comparative warmth
of his frozen sleeping-bag.
On November 6 a dull, overcast day developed into a howling blizzard
from the south-west, with snow and low drift. Only those who were
compelled left the shelter of their tent. Deep drifts formed
everywhere, burying sledges and provisions to a depth of two feet, and
the snow piling up round the tents threatened to burst the thin fabric.
The fine drift found its way in through the ventilator of the tent,
which was accordingly plugged up with a spare sock.
This lasted for two days, when one man wrote: “The blizzard continued
through the morning, but cleared towards noon, and it was a beautiful
evening; but we would far rather have the screeching blizzard with its
searching drift and cold damp wind, for we drifted about eleven miles
to the north during the night.”
For four days the fine weather continued, with gloriously warm, bright
sun, but cold when standing still or in the shade. The temperature
usually dropped below zero, but every opportunity was taken during
these fine, sunny days to partially dry our sleeping-bags and other
gear, which had become sodden through our body-heat having thawed the
snow which had drifted in on to them during the blizzard. The bright
sun seemed to put new heart into all.
The next day brought a north-easterly wind with the very high
temperature of 27° Fahr.—only 5° below freezing. “These high
temperatures do not always represent the warmth which might be assumed
from the thermometrical readings. They usually bring dull, overcast
skies, with a raw, muggy, moisture-laden wind. The winds from the
south, though colder, are nearly always coincident with sunny days and
clear blue skies.”
The temperature still continued to rise, reaching 33° Fahr. on November
14. The thaw consequent upon these high temperatures was having a
disastrous effect upon the surface of our camp. “The surface is
awful!—not slushy, but elusive. You step out gingerly. All is well for
a few paces, then your foot suddenly sinks a couple of feet until it
comes to a hard layer. You wade along in this way step by step, like a
mudlark at Portsmouth Hard, hoping gradually to regain the surface.
Soon you do, only to repeat the exasperating performance _ad lib_., to
the accompaniment of all the expletives that you can bring to bear on
the subject. What actually happens is that the warm air melts the
surface sufficiently to cause drops of water to trickle down slightly,
where, on meeting colder layers of snow, they freeze again, forming a
honeycomb of icy nodules instead of the soft, powdery, granular snow
that we are accustomed to.”
These high temperatures persisted for some days, and when, as
occasionally happened, the sky was clear and the sun was shining it was
unbearably hot. Five men who were sent to fetch some gear from the
vicinity of the ship with a sledge marched in nothing but trousers and
singlet, and even then were very hot; in fact they were afraid of
getting sunstroke, so let down flaps from their caps to cover their
necks. Their sleeves were rolled up over their elbows, and their arms
were red and sunburnt in consequence. The temperature on this occasion
was 26° Fahr., or 6° below freezing. For five or six days more the sun
continued, and most of our clothes and sleeping-bags were now
comparatively dry. A wretched day with rainy sleet set in on November
21, but one could put up with this discomfort as the wind was now from
the south.
The wind veered later to the west, and the sun came out at 9 p.m. For
at this time, near the end of November, we had the midnight sun. “A
thrice-blessed southerly wind” soon arrived to cheer us all,
occasioning the following remarks in one of the diaries:
“To-day is the most beautiful day we have had in the Antarctic—a clear
sky, a gentle, warm breeze from the south, and the most brilliant
sunshine. We all took advantage of it to strike tents, clean out, and
generally dry and air ground-sheets and sleeping-bags.”
I was up early—4 a.m.—to keep watch, and the sight was indeed
magnificent. Spread out before one was an extensive panorama of
ice-fields, intersected here and there by small broken leads, and
dotted with numerous noble bergs, partly bathed in sunshine and partly
tinged with the grey shadows of an overcast sky.
As one watched one observed a distinct line of demarcation between the
sunshine and the shade, and this line gradually approached nearer and
nearer, lighting up the hummocky relief of the ice-field bit by bit,
until at last it reached us, and threw the whole camp into a blaze of
glorious sunshine which lasted nearly all day.
“This afternoon we were treated to one or two showers of hail-like