South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
All hands were very cheerful. The prospect of a relief from the
monotony of life on the floe raised all our spirits. One man wrote in
his diary: “It’s a hard, rough, jolly life, this marching and camping;
no washing of self or dishes, no undressing, no changing of clothes. We
have our food anyhow, and always impregnated with blubber-smoke;
sleeping almost on the bare snow and working as hard as the human
physique is capable of doing on a minimum of food.”
We marched on, with one halt at 6 a.m., till half-past eleven. After a
supper of seal steaks and tea we turned in. The surface now was pretty
bad. High temperatures during the day made the upper layers of snow
very soft, and the thin crust which formed at night was not sufficient
to support a man. Consequently, at each step we went in over our knees
in the soft wet snow. Sometimes a man would step into a hole in the ice
which was hidden by the covering of snow, and be pulled up with a jerk
by his harness. The sun was very hot and many were suffering from
cracked lips.
Two seals were killed to-day. Wild and McIlroy, who went out to secure
them, had rather an exciting time on some very loose, rotten ice, three
killer-whales in a lead a few yards away poking up their ugly heads as
if in anticipation of a feast.
Next day, December 26, we started off again at 1 a.m. “The surface was
much better than it has been for the last few days, and this is the
principal thing that matters. The route, however, lay over very
hummocky floes, and required much work with pick and shovel to make it
passable for the boat-sledges. These are handled in relays by eighteen
men under Worsley. It is killing work on soft surfaces.”
At 5 a.m. we were brought up by a wide open lead after an
unsatisfactorily short march. While we waited, a meal of tea and two
small bannocks was served, but as 10 a.m. came and there were no signs
of the lead closing we all turned in.
It snowed a little during the day and those who were sleeping outside
got their sleeping-bags pretty wet.
At 9.30 p.m. that night we were off again. I was, as usual, pioneering
in front, followed by the cook and his mate pulling a small sledge with
the stove and all the cooking gear on. These two, black as two Mohawk
Minstrels with the blubber-soot, were dubbed “Potash and Perlmutter.”
Next come the dog teams, who soon overtake the cook, and the two boats
bring up the rear. Were it not for these cumbrous boats we should get
along at a great rate, but we dare not abandon them on any account. As
it is we left one boat, the _Stancomb Wills_, behind at Ocean Camp, and
the remaining two will barely accommodate the whole party when we leave
the floe.
We did a good march of one and a half miles that night before we halted
for “lunch” at 1 a.m., and then on for another mile, when at 5 a.m. we
camped by a little sloping berg.
Blackie, one of Wild’s dogs, fell lame and could neither pull nor keep
up with the party even when relieved of his harness, so had to be shot.
Nine p.m. that night, the 27th, saw us on the march again. The first
200 yds. took us about five hours to cross, owing to the amount of
breaking down of pressure-ridges and filling in of leads that was
required. The surface, too, was now very soft, so our progress was slow
and tiring. We managed to get another three-quarters of a mile before
lunch, and a further mile due west over a very hummocky floe before we
camped at 5.30 a.m. Greenstreet and Macklin killed and brought in a
huge Weddell seal weighing about 800 lbs., and two emperor penguins
made a welcome addition to our larder.
I climbed a small tilted berg nearby. The country immediately ahead was
much broken up. Great open leads intersected the floes at all angles,
and it all looked very unpromising. Wild and I went out prospecting as
usual, but it seemed too broken to travel over.
“_December_ 29.—After a further reconnaissance the ice ahead proved
quite un-negotiable, so at 8.30 p.m. last night, to the intense
disappointment of all, instead of forging ahead, we had to retire half
a mile so as to get on a stronger floe, and by 10 p.m. we had camped
and all hands turned in again. The extra sleep was much needed, however
disheartening the check may be.”
During the night a crack formed right across the floe, so we hurriedly
shifted to a strong old floe about a mile and a half to the east of our
present position. The ice all around was now too broken and soft to
sledge over, and yet there was not sufficient open water to allow us to
launch the boats with any degree of safety. We had been on the march
for seven days; rations were short and the men were weak. They were
worn out with the hard pulling over soft surfaces, and our stock of
sledging food was very small. We had marched seven and a half miles in
a direct line and at this rate it would take us over three hundred days
to reach the land away to the west. As we only had food for forty-two
days there was no alternative, therefore, but to camp once more on the
floe and to possess our souls with what patience we could till
conditions should appear more favourable for a renewal of the attempt
to escape. To this end, we stacked our surplus provisions, the reserve
sledging rations being kept lashed on the sledges, and brought what
gear we could from our but lately deserted Ocean Camp.
Our new home, which we were to occupy for nearly three and a half
months, we called “Patience Camp.”
CHAPTER VII
PATIENCE CAMP
The apathy which seemed to take possession of some of the men at the
frustration of their hopes was soon dispelled. Parties were sent out
daily in different directions to look for seals and penguins. We had
left, other than reserve sledging rations, about 110 lbs. of pemmican,
including the dog-pemmican, and 300 lbs. of flour. In addition there
was a little tea, sugar, dried vegetables, and suet. I sent Hurley and
Macklin to Ocean Camp to bring back the food that we had had to leave
there. They returned with quite a good load, including 130 lbs. of dry
milk, about 50 lbs. each of dog-pemmican and jam, and a few tins of
potted meats. When they were about a mile and a half away their voices
were quite audible to us at Ocean Camp, so still was the air.
We were, of course, very short of the farinaceous element in our diet.
The flour would last ten weeks. After that our sledging rations would
last us less than three months. Our meals had to consist mainly of seal
and penguin; and though this was valuable as an anti-scorbutic, so much
so that not a single case of scurvy occurred amongst the party, yet it
was a badly adjusted diet, and we felt rather weak and enervated in
consequence.
“The cook deserves much praise for the way he has stuck to his job
through all this severe blizzard. His galley consists of nothing but a
few boxes arranged as a table, with a canvas screen erected around them
on four oars and the two blubber-stoves within. The protection afforded
by the screen is only partial, and the eddies drive the pungent
blubber-smoke in all directions.”
After a few days we were able to build him an igloo of ice-blocks, with
a tarpaulin over the top as a roof.
“Our rations are just sufficient to keep us alive, but we all feel that
we could eat twice as much as we get. An average day’s food at present
consists of ½ lb. of seal with ¾ pint of tea for breakfast, a 4-oz.
bannock with milk for lunch, and ¾ pint of seal stew for supper. That
is barely enough, even doing very little work as we are, for of course
we are completely destitute of bread or potatoes or anything of that
sort. Some seem to feel it more than others and are continually talking
of food; but most of us find that the continual conversation about food
only whets an appetite that cannot be satisfied. Our craving for bread
and butter is very real, not because we cannot get it, but because the
system feels the need of it.”
Owing to this shortage of food and the fact that we needed all that we
could get for ourselves, I had to order all the dogs except two teams
to be shot. It was the worst job that we had had throughout the
Expedition, and we felt their loss keenly.
I had to be continually rearranging the weekly menu. The possible
number of permutations of seal meat were decidedly limited. The fact
that the men did not know what was coming gave them a sort of mental
speculation, and the slightest variation was of great value.
“We caught an adelie to-day (January 26) and another whale was seen at
close quarters, but no seals.
“We are now very short of blubber, and in consequence one stove has to
be shut down. We only get one hot beverage a day, the tea at breakfast.
For the rest we have iced water. Sometimes we are short even of this,
so we take a few chips of ice in a tobacco-tin to bed with us. In the
morning there is about a spoonful of water in the tin, and one has to
lie very still all night so as not to spill it.”
To provide some variety in the food, I commenced to use the sledging
ration at half strength twice a week.
The ice between us and Ocean Camp, now only about five miles away and
actually to the south-west of us, was very broken, but I decided to
send Macklin and Hurley back with their dogs to see if there was any
more food that could be added to our scanty stock. I gave them written
instructions to take no undue risk or cross any wide-open leads, and
said that they were to return by midday the next day. Although they
both fell through the thin ice up to their waists more than once, they
managed to reach the camp. They found the surface soft and sunk about
two feet. Ocean Camp, they said, “looked like a village that had been
razed to the ground and deserted by its inhabitants.” The floor-boards
forming the old tent-bottoms had prevented the sun from thawing the
snow directly underneath them, and were in consequence raised about two
feet above the level of the surrounding floe.
The storehouse next the galley had taken on a list of several degrees
to starboard, and pools of water had formed everywhere. They collected
what food they could find and packed a few books in a venesta
sledging-case, returning to Patience Camp by about 8 p.m. I was pleased
at their quick return, and as their report seemed to show that the road
was favourable, on February 2 I sent back eighteen men under Wild to
bring all the remainder of the food and the third boat, the _Stancomb
Wills_. They started off at 1 a.m., towing the empty boat-sledge on
which the _James Caird_ had rested, and reached Ocean Camp about 3.30
a.m.
“We stayed about three hours at the Camp, mounting the boat on the
sledge, collecting eatables, clothing, and books. We left at 6 a.m.,
arriving back at Patience Camp with the boat at 12.30 p.m., taking
exactly three times as long to return with the boat as it did to pull
in the empty sledge to fetch it. On the return journey we had numerous
halts while the pioneer party of four were busy breaking down
pressure-ridges and filling in open cracks with ice-blocks, as the
leads were opening up. The sun had softened the surface a good deal,
and in places it was terribly hard pulling. Every one was a bit
exhausted by the time we got back, as we are not now in good training
and are on short rations. Every now and then the heavy sledge broke
through the ice altogether and was practically afloat. We had an awful
job to extricate it, exhausted as we were. The longest distance which
we managed to make without stopping for leads or pressure-ridges was
about three quarters of a mile.