South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
moment. Winter was advancing, and I was fully conscious that the lives
of some of my comrades might be the price of unnecessary delay. A
proposal had been made to send a relief ship from England, but she
could not reach the southern seas for many weeks. In the meantime I got
into communication with the Governments of the South American Republics
by wireless and cable and asked if they had any suitable ship I could
use for a rescue. I wanted a wooden ship capable of pushing into loose
ice, with fair speed and a reasonable coal capacity. Messages of
congratulation and goodwill were reaching me from all parts of the
world, and the kindness of hundreds of friends in many lands was a very
real comfort in a time of anxiety and stress.
The British Admiralty informed me that no suitable vessel was available
in England and that no relief could be expected before October. I
replied that October would be too late. Then the British Minister in
Montevideo telegraphed me regarding a trawler named _Instituto de Pesca
No. 1_, belonging to the Uruguayan Government. She was a stout little
vessel, and the Government had generously offered to equip her with
coal, provisions, clothing, etc., and send her across to the Falkland
Islands for me to take down to Elephant Island. I accepted this offer
gladly, and the trawler was in Port Stanley on June 10. We started
south at once.
The weather was bad but the trawler made good progress, steaming
steadily at about six knots, and in the bright, clear dawn of the third
day we sighted the peaks of Elephant Island. Hope ran high; but our
ancient enemy the pack was lying in wait, and within twenty miles of
the island the trawler was stopped by an impenetrable barrier of ice.
The pack lay in the form of a crescent, with a horn to the west of the
ship stretching north. Steaming north-east, we reached another horn and
saw that the pack, heavy and dense, then trended away to the east. We
made an attempt to push into the ice, but it was so heavy that the
trawler was held up at once and began to grind in the small thick
floes, so we cautiously backed out. The propeller, going slowly, was
not damaged, though any moment I feared we might strip the blades. The
island lay on our starboard quarter, but there was no possibility of
approaching it. The Uruguayan engineer reported to me that he had three
days’ coal left, and I had to give the order to turn back. A screen of
fog hid the lower slopes of the island, and the men watching from the
camp on the beach could not have seen the ship. Northward we steamed
again, with the engines knocking badly, and after encountering a new
gale, made Port Stanley with the bunkers nearly empty and the engines
almost broken down. H.M.S. _Glasgow_ was in the port, and the British
sailors gave us a hearty welcome as we steamed in.
The Uruguayan Government offered to send the trawler to Punta Arenas
and have her dry-docked there and made ready for another effort. One of
the troubles on the voyage was that according to estimate the trawler
could do ten knots on six tons of coal a day, which would have given us
a good margin to allow for lying off the ice; but in reality, owing to
the fact that she had not been in dock for a year, she only developed a
speed of six knots on a consumption of ten tons a day. Time was
precious and these preparations would have taken too long. I thanked
the Government then for its very generous offer, and I want to say now
that the kindness of the Uruguayans at this time earned my warmest
gratitude. I ought to mention also the assistance given me by Lieut.
Ryan, a Naval Reserve officer who navigated the trawler to the
Falklands and came south on the attempt at relief. The _Instituto de
Pesca_ went off to Montevideo and I looked around for another ship.
A British mail-boat, the _Orita_ called at Port Stanley opportunely,
and I boarded her with Worsley and Crean and crossed to Punta Arenas in
the Magellan Straits. The reception we received there was heartening.
The members of the British Association of Magellanes took us to their
hearts. Mr. Allan McDonald was especially prominent in his untiring
efforts to assist in the rescue of our twenty-two companions on
Elephant Island. He worked day and night, and it was mainly due to him
that within three days they had raised a sum of £1500 amongst
themselves, chartered the schooner _Emma_ and equipped her for our use.
She was a forty-year-old oak schooner, strong and seaworthy, with an
auxiliary oil-engine.
Out of the complement of ten men all told who were manning the ship,
there were eight different nationalities; but they were all good
fellows and understood perfectly what was wanted. The Chilian
Government lent us a small steamer, the _Yelcho_, to tow us part of the
way. She could not touch ice, though, as she was built of steel.
However, on July 12 we passed her our tow-rope and proceeded on our
way. In bad weather we anchored next day, and although the wind
increased to a gale I could delay no longer, so we hove up anchor in
the early morning of the 14th. The strain on the tow-rope was too
great. With the crack of a gun the rope broke. Next day the gale
continued, and I will quote from the log of the _Emma_, which Worsley
kept as navigating officer.
“9 a.m.—Fresh, increasing gale; very rough, lumpy sea. 10 a.m.—Tow-rope
parted. 12 noon. Similar weather. 1 p.m.—Tow-rope parted again. Set
foresail and forestay-sail and steered south-east by south. 3
p.m.—_Yelcho_ hailed us and said that the ship’s bilges were full of
water (so were our decks) and they were short of coal. Sir Ernest told
them that they could return to harbour. After this the _Yelcho_ steamed
into San Sebastian Bay.”
After three days of continuous bad weather we were left alone to
attempt once more to rescue the twenty-two men on Elephant Island, for
whom by this time I entertained very grave fears.
At dawn of Friday, July 21, we were within a hundred miles of the
island, and we encountered the ice in the half-light. I waited for the
full day and then tried to push through. The little craft was tossing
in the heavy swell, and before she had been in the pack for ten minutes
she came down on a cake of ice and broke the bobstay. Then the
water-inlet of the motor choked with ice. The schooner was tossing like
a cork in the swell, and I saw after a few bumps that she was actually
lighter than the fragments of ice around her. Progress under such
conditions was out of the question. I worked the schooner out of the
pack and stood to the east. I ran her through a line of pack towards
the south that night, but was forced to turn to the north-east, for the
ice trended in that direction as far as I could see. We hove to for the
night, which was now sixteen hours long. The winter was well advanced
and the weather conditions were thoroughly bad. The ice to the
southward was moving north rapidly. The motor-engine had broken down
and we were entirely dependent on the sails. We managed to make a
little southing during the next day, but noon found us 108 miles from
the island. That night we lay off the ice in a gale, hove to, and
morning found the schooner iced up. The ropes, cased in frozen spray,
were as thick as a man’s arm, and if the wind had increased much we
would have had to cut away the sails, since there was no possibility of
lowering them. Some members of the scratch crew were played out by the
cold and the violent tossing. The schooner was about seventy feet long,
and she responded to the motions of the storm-racked sea in a manner
that might have disconcerted the most seasoned sailors.
I took the schooner south at every chance, but always the line of ice
blocked the way. The engineer, who happened to be an American, did
things to the engines occasionally, but he could not keep them running,
and, the persistent south winds were dead ahead. It was hard to turn
back a third time, but I realized we could not reach the island under
those conditions, and we must turn north in order to clear the ship of
heavy masses of ice. So we set a northerly course, and after a
tempestuous passage reached Port Stanley once more. This was the third
reverse, but I did not abandon my belief that the ice would not remain
fast around Elephant Island during the winter, whatever the arm-chair
experts at home might say. We reached Port Stanley in the schooner on
August 8, and I learned there that the ship _Discovery_ was to leave
England at once and would be at the Falkland Islands about the middle
of September. My good friend the Governor said I could settle down at
Port Stanley and take things quietly for a few weeks. The street of
that port is about a mile and a half long. It has the slaughter-house
at one end and the graveyard at the other. The chief distraction is to
walk from the slaughter-house to the graveyard. For a change one may
walk from the graveyard to the slaughter-house. Ellaline Terriss was
born at Port Stanley—a fact not forgotten by the residents, but she has
not lived there much since. I could not content myself to wait for six
or seven weeks, knowing that six hundred miles away my comrades were in
dire need. I asked the Chilian Government to send the _Yelcho_, the
steamer that had towed us before, to take the schooner across to Punta
Arenas, and they consented promptly, as they had done to every other
request of mine. So in a north-west gale we went across, narrowly
escaping disaster on the way, and reached Punta Arenas on August 14.
There was no suitable ship to be obtained. The weather was showing some
signs of improvement, and I begged the Chilian Government to let me
have the _Yelcho_ for a last attempt to reach the island. She was a
small steel-built steamer, quite unsuitable for work in the pack, but I
promised that I would not touch the ice. The Government was willing to
give me another chance, and on August 25 I started south on the fourth
attempt at relief. This time Providence favoured us. The little steamer
made a quick run down in comparatively fine weather, and I found as we
neared Elephant Island that the ice was open. A southerly gale had sent
it northward temporarily, and the _Yelcho_ had her chance to slip
through. We approached the island in a thick fog. I did not dare to
wait for this to clear, and at 10 a.m. on August 30 we passed some
stranded bergs. Then we saw the sea breaking on a reef, and I knew that
we were just outside the island. It was an anxious moment, for we had
still to locate the camp and the pack could not be trusted to allow
time for a prolonged search in thick weather; but presently the fog
lifted and revealed the cliffs and glaciers of Elephant Island. I
proceeded to the east, and at 11.40 a.m. Worsley’s keen eyes detected
the camp, almost invisible under its covering of snow. The men ashore
saw us at the same time, and we saw tiny black figures hurry to the
beach and wave signals to us. We were about a mile and a half away from
the camp. I turned the _Yelcho_ in, and within half an hour reached the
beach with Crean and some of the Chilian sailors. I saw a little figure
on a surf-beaten rock and recognized Wild. As I came nearer I called
out, “Are you all well?” and he answered, “We are all well, boss,” and
then I heard three cheers. As I drew close to the rock I flung packets
of cigarettes ashore; they fell on them like hungry tigers, for well I
knew that for months tobacco was dreamed of and talked of. Some of the
hands were in a rather bad way, but Wild had held the party together
and kept hope alive in their hearts. There was no time then to exchange
news or congratulations. I did not even go up the beach to see the
camp, which Wild assured me had been much improved. A heavy sea was
running and a change of wind might bring the ice back at any time. I