South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
more slowly and with greater difficulty than would have otherwise been
the case. The result was that in making this journey the greatest
qualities of endurance, self-sacrifice, and patience were called for,
and the call was not in vain, as you reading the following pages will
realize. It is more than regrettable that after having gone through
those many months of hardship and toil, Mackintosh and Hayward should
have been lost. Spencer-Smith during those long days, dragged by his
comrades on the sledge, suffering but never complaining, became an
example to all men. Mackintosh and Hayward owed their lives on that
journey to the unremitting care and strenuous endeavours of Joyce,
Wild, and Richards, who, also scurvy-stricken but fitter than their
comrades, dragged them through the deep snow and blizzards on the
sledges. I think that no more remarkable story of human endeavour has
been revealed than the tale of that long march which I have collated
from various diaries. Unfortunately, the diary of the leader of this
side of the Expedition was lost with him. The outstanding feature of
the Ross Sea side was the journey made by these six men. The earlier
journeys for the first year did not produce any sign of the qualities
of leadership amongst the others. Mackintosh was fortunate for the long
journey in that he had these three men with him: Ernest Wild, Richards,
and Joyce.
Before proceeding with the adventures of this party I want to make
clear in these pages how much I appreciate the assistance I received
both in Australia and New Zealand, especially in the latter dominion.
And amongst the many friends there it is not invidious on my part to
lay special stress on the name of Leonard Tripp, who has been my
mentor, counsellor, and friend for many years, and who, when the
Expedition was in precarious and difficult circumstances, devoted his
energy, thought, and gave his whole time and advice to the best
interests of our cause. I also must thank Edward Saunders, who for the
second time has greatly helped me in preparing an Expedition record for
publication.
To the Dominion Government I tender my warmest thanks. To the people of
New Zealand, and especially to those many friends—too numerous to
mention here—who helped us when our fortunes were at a low ebb, I wish
to say that their kindness is an ever-green memory to me. If ever a man
had cause to be grateful for assistance in dark days, I am he.
The _Aurora_, under the command of Captain Æneas Mackintosh, sailed
from Hobart for the Ross Sea on December 24, 1914. The ship had
refitted in Sydney, where the State and Federal Governments had given
generous assistance, and would be able, if necessary, to spend two
years in the Antarctic. My instructions to Captain Mackintosh, in
brief, were to proceed to the Ross Sea, make a base at some convenient
point in or near McMurdo Sound, land stores and equipment, and lay
depots on the Great Ice Barrier in the direction of the Beardmore
Glacier for the use of the party that I expected to bring overland from
the Weddell Sea coast. This programme would involve some heavy
sledging, but the ground to be covered was familiar, and I had not
anticipated that the work would present any great difficulties. The
_Aurora_ carried materials for a hut, equipment for landing and
sledging parties, stores and clothing of all the kinds required, and an
ample supply of sledges. There were also dog teams and one of the
motor-tractors. I had told Captain Mackintosh that it was possible the
transcontinental journey would be attempted in the 1914–15 season in
the event of the landing on the Weddell Sea coast proving unexpectedly
easy, and it would be his duty, therefore, to lay out depots to the
south immediately after his arrival at his base. I had directed him to
place a depot of food and fuel-oil at lat. 80° S. in 1914–15, with
cairns and flags as guides to a sledging party approaching from the
direction of the Pole. He would place depots farther south in the
1915–16 season.
The _Aurora_ had an uneventful voyage southwards. She anchored off the
sealing-huts at Macquarie Island on Christmas Day, December 25. The
wireless station erected by Sir Douglas Mawson’s Australian Antarctic
Expedition could be seen on a hill to the north-west with the
Expedition’s hut at the base of the hill. This hut was still occupied
by a meteorological staff, and later in the day the meteorologist, Mr.
Tulloch, came off to the ship and had dinner aboard. The _Aurora_ had
some stores for the Macquarie Island party, and these were sent ashore
during succeeding days in the boats. The landing-place was a rough,
kelp-guarded beach, where lay the remains of the New Zealand barque
_Clyde_. Macquarie Island anchorages are treacherous, and several ships
engaged in the sealing and whaling trade have left their bones on the
rocky shores, where bask great herds of seals and sea-elephants. The
_Aurora_ sailed from the island on December 31, and three days later
they sighted the first iceberg, a tabular berg rising 250 ft. above the
sea. This was in lat. 62° 44´ S., long. 169° 58´ E. The next day, in
lat. 64° 27´ 38´´ S., the _Aurora_ passed through the first belt of
pack-ice. At 9 a.m. on January 7, Mount Sabine, a mighty peak of the
Admiralty Range, South Victoria Land, was sighted seventy-five miles
distant.
It had been proposed that a party of three men should travel to Cape
Crozier from winter quarters during the winter months in order to
secure emperor penguins’ eggs. The ship was to call at Cape Crozier,
land provisions, and erect a small hut of fibro-concrete sheets for the
use of this party. The ship was off the Cape on the afternoon of
January 9, and a boat put off with Stenhouse, Cope, Joyce, Ninnis,
Mauger, and Aitken to search for a landing-place. “We steered in
towards the Barrier,” wrote Stenhouse, “and found an opening leading
into a large bight which jutted back to eastward into the Barrier. We
endeavoured without success to scale the steep ice-foot under the
cliffs, and then proceeded up the bay. Pulling along the edge of
perpendicular ice, we turned into a bay in the ice-cliff and came to a
cul-de-sac, at the head of which was a grotto. At the head of the
grotto and on a ledge of snow were perched some adelie penguins. The
beautiful green and blue tints in the ice-colouring made a picture as
unreal as a stage setting. Coming back along the edge of the bight
towards the land, we caught and killed one penguin, much to the
surprise of another, which ducked into a niche in the ice and, after
much squawking, was extracted with a boat-hook and captured. We
returned to our original landing, and were fortunate in our time, for
no sooner had we cleared the ledge where Ninnis had been hanging in his
endeavour to catch the penguin than the barrier calved and a piece
weighing hundreds of tons toppled over into the sea.
“Since we left the ship a mist had blown up from the south, and when we
arrived back at the entrance to the bay the ship could be but dimly
seen. We found a slope on the ice-foot, and Joyce and I managed, by
cutting steps, to climb up to a ledge of debris between the cliffs and
the ice, which we thought might lead to the vicinity of the emperor
penguin rookery. I sent the boat back to the ship to tell the captain
of our failure to find a spot where we could depot the hut and stores,
and then, with Joyce, set out to walk along the narrow land between the
cliffs and the ice to the southward in hopes of finding the rookery. We
walked for about a mile along the foot of the cliffs, over undulating
paths, sometimes crawling carefully down a gully and then over rocks
and debris which had fallen from the steep cliffs which towered above
us, but we saw no signs of a rookery or any place where a rookery could
be. Close to the cliffs and separated from them by the path on which we
travelled, the Barrier in its movement towards the sea had broken and
showed signs of pressure. Seeing a turn in the cliffs ahead, which we
thought might lead to better prospects, we trudged on, and were
rewarded by a sight which Joyce admitted as being the grandest he had
ever witnessed. The Barrier had come into contact with the cliffs and,
from where we viewed it, it looked as if icebergs had fallen into a
tremendous cavern and lay jumbled together in wild disorder. Looking
down into that wonderful picture one realized a little the
‘eternalness’ of things.
“We had not long to wait, and, much as we wished to go ahead, had to
turn back. I went into a small crevasse; no damage. Arriving back at
the place where we left the boat we found it had not returned, so sat
down under an overhang and smoked and enjoyed the sense of loneliness.
Soon the boat appeared out of the mist, and the crew had much news for
us. After we left the ship the captain manœuvred her in order to get
close to the Barrier, but, unfortunately, the engines were loath to be
reversed when required to go astern and the ship hit the Barrier end
on. The Barrier here is about twenty feet high, and her jib-boom took
the weight and snapped at the cap. When I returned Thompson was busy
getting the broken boom and gear aboard. Luckily the cap was not broken
and no damage was done aloft, but it was rather a bad introduction to
the Antarctic. There is no place to land the Cape Crozier hut and
stores, so we must build a hut in the winter here, which will mean so
much extra sledging from winter quarters. Bad start, good finish! Joyce
and I went aloft to the crow’s-nest, but could see no opening in the
Barrier to eastward where a ship might enter and get farther south.”
Mackintosh proceeded into McMurdo Sound. Heavy pack delayed the ship
for three days, and it was not until January 16 that she reached a
point off Cape Evans, where he landed ten tons of coal and ninety-eight
cases of oil. During succeeding days Captain Mackintosh worked the
_Aurora_ southward, and by January 24 he was within nine miles of Hut
Point. There he made the ship fast to sea-ice, then breaking up
rapidly, and proceeded to arrange sledging parties. It was his
intention to direct the laying of the depots himself and to leave his
first officer, Lieut. J. R. Stenhouse, in command of the _Aurora_, with
instructions to select a base and land a party.
The first objective was Hut Point, where stands the hut erected by the
_Discovery_ expedition in 1902. An advance party, consisting of Joyce
(in charge), Jack, and Gaze, with dogs and fully loaded sledges, left
the ship on January 24; Mackintosh, with Wild and Smith, followed the
next day; and a supporting party, consisting of Cope (in charge),
Stevens, Ninnis, Haywood, Hooke, and Richards, left the ship on January
30. The first two parties had dog teams. The third party took with it
the motor-tractor, which does not appear to have given the good service
that I had hoped to get from it. These parties had a strenuous time
during the weeks that followed. The men, fresh from shipboard, were not
in the best of training, and the same was true of the dogs. It was
unfortunate that the dogs had to be worked so early after their arrival
in the Antarctic. They were in poor condition and they had not learned
to work together as teams. The result was the loss of many of the dogs,
and this proved a serious matter in the following season. Captain
Mackintosh’s record of the sledging in the early months of 1915 is
fairly full. It will not be necessary here to follow the fortunes of
the various parties in detail, for although the men were facing
difficulties and dangers, they were on well-travelled ground, which has
been made familiar to most readers by the histories of earlier
Expeditions.
Captain Mackintosh and his party left the _Aurora_ on the evening of