South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
considered exactly suited to our purpose. The temperature was about 10°
Fahr., and the Burberry suits of the rowers crackled as the men bent to
the oars. I noticed little fragments of ice and frost falling from arms
and bodies. At eight o’clock a decent floe appeared ahead and we pulled
up to it. The galley was landed, and soon the welcome steam rose from
the cooking food as the blubber-stove flared and smoked. Never did a
cook work under more anxious scrutiny. Worsley, Crean, and I stayed in
our respective boats to keep them steady and prevent collisions with
the floe, since the swell was still running strong, but the other men
were able to stretch their cramped limbs and run to and fro “in the
kitchen,” as somebody put it. The sun was now rising gloriously. The
Burberry suits were drying and the ice was melting off our beards. The
steaming food gave us new vigour, and within three-quarters of an hour
we were off again to the west with all sails set. We had given an
additional sail to the _Stancomb Wills_ and she was able to keep up
pretty well. We could see that we were on the true pack-edge, with the
blue, rolling sea just outside the fringe of ice to the north.
White-capped waves vied with the glittering floes in the setting of
blue water, and countless seals basked and rolled on every piece of ice
big enough to form a raft.
We had been making westward with oars and sails since April 9, and fair
easterly winds had prevailed. Hopes were running high as to the noon
observation for position. The optimists thought that we had done sixty
miles towards our goal, and the most cautious guess gave us at least
thirty miles. The bright sunshine and the brilliant scene around us may
have influenced our anticipations. As noon approached I saw Worsley, as
navigating officer, balancing himself on the gunwale of the _Dudley
Docker_ with his arm around the mast, ready to snap the sun. He got his
observation and we waited eagerly while he worked out the sight. Then
the _Dudley Docker_ ranged up alongside the _James Caird_ and I jumped
into Worsley’s boat in order to see the result. It was a grievous
disappointment. Instead of making a good run to the westward we had
made a big drift to the south-east. We were actually thirty miles to
the east of the position we had occupied when we left the floe on the
9th. It has been noted by sealers operating in this area that there are
often heavy sets to the east in the Belgica Straits, and no doubt it
was one of these sets that we had experienced. The originating cause
would be a north-westerly gale off Cape Horn, producing the swell that
had already caused us so much trouble. After a whispered consultation
with Worsley and Wild, I announced that we had not made as much
progress as we expected, but I did not inform the hands of our
retrograde movement.
The question of our course now demanded further consideration.
Deception Island seemed to be beyond our reach. The wind was foul for
Elephant Island, and as the sea was clear to the south-west; I
discussed with Worsley and Wild the advisability of proceeding to Hope
Bay on the mainland of the Antarctic Continent, now only eighty miles
distant. Elephant Island was the nearest land, but it lay outside the
main body of pack, and even if the wind had been fair we would have
hesitated at that particular time to face the high sea that was running
in the open. We laid a course roughly for Hope Bay, and the boats moved
on again. I gave Worsley a line for a berg ahead and told him, if
possible, to make fast before darkness set in. This was about three
o’clock in the afternoon. We had set sail, and as the _Stancomb Wills_
could not keep up with the other two boats I took her in tow, not being
anxious to repeat the experience of the day we left the reeling berg.
The _Dudley Docker_ went ahead, but came beating down towards us at
dusk. Worsley had been close to the berg, and he reported that it was
unapproachable. It was rolling in the swell and displaying an ugly
ice-foot. The news was bad. In the failing light we turned towards a
line of pack, and found it so tossed and churned by the sea that no
fragment remained big enough to give us an anchorage and shelter. Two
miles away we could see a larger piece of ice, and to it we managed,
after some trouble, to secure the boats. I brought my boat bow on to
the floe, whilst Howe, with the painter in his hand, stood ready to
jump. Standing up to watch our chance, while the oars were held ready
to back the moment Howe had made his leap, I could see that there would
be no possibility of getting the galley ashore that night. Howe just
managed to get a footing on the edge of the floe, and then made the
painter fast to a hummock. The other two boats were fastened alongside
the _James Caird_. They could not lie astern of us in a line, since
cakes of ice came drifting round the floe and gathering under its lee.
As it was we spent the next two hours poling off the drifting ice that
surged towards us. The blubber-stove could not be used, so we started
the Primus lamps. There was a rough, choppy sea, and the _Dudley
Docker_ could not get her Primus under way, something being adrift. The
men in that boat had to wait until the cook on the _James Caird_ had
boiled up the first pot of milk.
The boats were bumping so heavily that I had to slack away the painter
of the _Stancomb Wills_ and put her astern. Much ice was coming round
the floe and had to be poled off. Then the _Dudley Docker_, being the
heavier boat, began to damage the _James Caird_, and I slacked the
_Dudley Docker_ away. The _James Caird_ remained moored to the ice,
with the _Dudley Docker_ and the _Stancomb Wills_ in line behind her.
The darkness had become complete, and we strained our eye to see the
fragments of ice that threatened us. Presently we thought we saw a
great berg bearing down upon us, its form outlined against the sky, but
this startling spectacle resolved itself into a low-lying cloud in
front of the rising moon. The moon appeared in a clear sky. The wind
shifted to the south-east as the light improved and drove the boats
broadside on towards the jagged edge of the floe. We had to cut the
painter of the _James Caird_ and pole her off, thus losing much
valuable rope. There was no time to cast off. Then we pushed away from
the floe, and all night long we lay in the open, freezing sea, the
_Dudley Docker_ now ahead, the _James Caird_ astern of her, and the
_Stancomb Wills_ third in the line. The boats were attached to one
another by their painters. Most of the time the _Dudley Docker_ kept
the _James Caird_ and the _Stancomb Wills_ up to the swell, and the men
who were rowing were in better pass than those in the other boats,
waiting inactive for the dawn. The temperature was down to 4° below
zero, and a film of ice formed on the surface of the sea. When we were
not on watch we lay in each other’s arms for warmth. Our frozen suits
thawed where our bodies met, and as the slightest movement exposed
these comparatively warm spots to the biting air, we clung motionless,
whispering each to his companion our hopes and thoughts. Occasionally
from an almost clear sky came snow-showers, falling silently on the sea
and laying a thin shroud of white over our bodies and our boats.
The dawn of April 13 came clear and bright, with occasional passing
clouds. Most of the men were now looking seriously worn and strained.
Their lips were cracked and their eyes and eyelids showed red in their
salt-encrusted faces. The beards even of the younger men might have
been those of patriarchs, for the frost and the salt spray had made
them white. I called the _Dudley Docker_ alongside and found the
condition of the people there was no better than in the _James Caird_.
Obviously we must make land quickly, and I decided to run for Elephant
Island. The wind had shifted fair for that rocky isle, then about one
hundred miles away, and the pack that separated us from Hope Bay had
closed up during the night from the south. At 6 p.m. we made a
distribution of stores among the three boats, in view of the
possibility of their being separated. The preparation of a hot
breakfast was out of the question. The breeze was strong and the sea
was running high in the loose pack around us. We had a cold meal, and I
gave orders that all hands might eat as much as they pleased, this
concession being due partly to a realization that we would have to
jettison some of our stores when we reached open sea in order to
lighten the boats. I hoped, moreover, that a full meal of cold rations
would compensate to some extent for the lack of warm food and shelter.
Unfortunately, some of the men were unable to take advantage of the
extra food owing to seasickness. Poor fellows, it was bad enough to be
huddled in the deeply laden, spray-swept boats, frost-bitten and
half-frozen, without having the pangs of seasickness added to the list
of their woes. But some smiles were caused even then by the plight of
one man, who had a habit of accumulating bits of food against the day
of starvation that he seemed always to think was at hand, and who was
condemned now to watch impotently while hungry comrades with
undisturbed stomachs made biscuits, rations, and sugar disappear with
extraordinary rapidity.
We ran before the wind through the loose pack, a man in the bow of each
boat trying to pole off with a broken oar the lumps of ice that could
not be avoided. I regarded speed as essential. Sometimes collisions
were not averted. The _James Caird_ was in the lead, where she bore the
brunt of the encounter with lurking fragments, and she was holed above
the water-line by a sharp spur of ice, but this mishap did not stay us.
Later the wind became stronger and we had to reef sails, so as not to
strike the ice too heavily. The _Dudley Docker_ came next to the _James
Caird_ and the _Stancomb Wills_ followed. I had given order that the
boats should keep 30 or 40 yds. apart, so as to reduce the danger of a
collision if one boat was checked by the ice. The pack was thinning,
and we came to occasional open areas where thin ice had formed during
the night. When we encountered this new ice we had to shake the reef
out of the sails in order to force a way through. Outside of the pack
the wind must have been of hurricane force. Thousands of small dead
fish were to be seen, killed probably by a cold current and the heavy
weather. They floated in the water and lay on the ice, where they had
been cast by the waves. The petrels and skua-gulls were swooping down
and picking them up like sardines off toast.
We made our way through the lanes till at noon we were suddenly spewed
out of the pack into the open ocean. Dark blue and sapphire green ran
the seas. Our sails were soon up, and with a fair wind we moved over
the waves like three Viking ships on the quest of a lost Atlantis. With
the sheet well out and the sun shining bright above, we enjoyed for a
few hours a sense of the freedom and magic of the sea, compensating us
for pain and trouble in the days that had passed. At last we were free
from the ice, in water that our boats could navigate. Thoughts of home,
stifled by the deadening weight of anxious days and nights, came to
birth once more, and the difficulties that had still to be overcome
dwindled in fancy almost to nothing.
During the afternoon we had to take a second reef in the sails, for the
wind freshened and the deeply laden boats were shipping much water and
steering badly in the rising sea. I had laid the course for Elephant
Island and we were making good progress. The _Dudley Docker_ ran down
to me at dusk and Worsley suggested that we should stand on all night;
but already the _Stancomb Wills_ was barely discernible among the