South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
wide stretches of small loose floes and brash. Progress was good until
darkness made a stop necessary. The next morning the pack was denser.
Stenhouse shipped a preventer jury-rudder (the weighted spanker gaff),
but could not get steerage way. Broad leads were sighted to the
north-west in the afternoon, and the ship got within a quarter of a
mile of the nearest lead before being held up by heavy pack. She again
bumped severely during the night, and the watch stood by with fenders
to ease the more dangerous blows.
Early next morning Stenhouse lowered a jury-rudder, with steering
pennants to drag through the water, and moved north to north-west
through heavy pack. He made sixteen miles that day on an erratic
course, and then spent an anxious night with the ship setting back into
the pack and being pounded heavily. Attempts to work forward to an open
lead on the morning of the 13th were unsuccessful. Early in the
afternoon a little progress was made, with all hands standing by to
fend off high ice, and at 4.50 p.m. the _Aurora_ cleared the main pack.
An hour was spent shipping the jury-rudder under the counter, and then
the ship moved slowly northward. There was pack still ahead, and the
bergs and growlers were a constant menace in the hours of darkness.
Some anxious work remained to be done, since bergs and scattered ice
extended in all directions, but at 2 p.m. on March 14 the _Aurora_
cleared the last belt of pack in lat. 62° 27.5´ S., long. 157° 32´ E.
“We ‘spliced the main brace,’” says Stenhouse, “and blew three blasts
of farewell to the pack with the whistle.”
The _Aurora_ was not at the end of her troubles, but the voyage up to
New Zealand need not be described in detail. Any attempt to reach
McMurdo Sound was now out of the question. Stenhouse had a battered,
rudderless ship, with only a few tons of coal left in the bunkers, and
he struggled northward in heavy weather against persistent adverse
winds and head seas. The jury-rudder needed constant nursing, and the
shortage of coal made it impossible to get the best service from the
engines. There were times when the ship could make no progress and fell
about helplessly in a confused swell or lay hove to amid mountainous
seas. She was short-handed, and one or two of the men were creating
additional difficulties. But Stenhouse displayed throughout fine
seamanship and dogged perseverance. He accomplished successfully one of
the most difficult voyages on record, in an ocean area notoriously
stormy and treacherous. On March 23 he established wireless
communication with Bluff Station, New Zealand, and the next day was in
touch with Wellington and Hobart. The naval officer in New Zealand
waters offered assistance, and eventually it was arranged that the
Otago Harbour Board’s tug _Plucky_ should meet the _Aurora_ outside
Port Chalmers. There were still bad days to be endured. The jury-rudder
partially carried away and had to be unshipped in a heavy sea.
Stenhouse carried on, and in the early morning of April 2 the _Aurora_
picked up the tug and was taken in tow. She reached Port Chalmers the
following morning, and was welcomed with the warm hospitality that New
Zealand has always shown towards Antarctic explorers.
CHAPTER XVII
THE LAST RELIEF
When I reached New Zealand at the beginning of December 1916, I found
that the arrangements for the relief were complete. The New Zealand
Government had taken the task in hand earlier in the year, before I had
got into touch with the outside world. The British and Australian
Governments were giving financial assistance. The _Aurora_ had been
repaired and refitted at Port Chalmers during the year at considerable
cost, and had been provisioned and coaled for the voyage to McMurdo
Sound. My old friend Captain John K. Davis, who was a member of my
first Antarctic Expedition in 1907–1909, and who subsequently commanded
Dr. Mawson’s ship in the Australian Antarctic Expedition, had been
placed in command of the _Aurora_ by the Governments, and he had
engaged officers, engineers, and crew. Captain Davis came to Wellington
to see me on my arrival there, and I heard his account of the position.
I had interviews also with the Minister for Marine, the late Dr. Robert
McNab, a kindly and sympathetic Scotsman who took a deep personal
interest in the Expedition. Stenhouse also was in Wellington, and I may
say again here that his account of his voyage and drift in the _Aurora_
filled me with admiration for his pluck, seamanship, and
resourcefulness.
After discussing the situation fully with Dr. McNab, I agreed that the
arrangements already made for the relief expedition should stand. Time
was important and there were difficulties about making any change of
plans or control at the last moment. After Captain Davis had been at
work for some months the Government agreed to hand the _Aurora_ over to
me free of liability on her return to New Zealand. It was decided,
therefore, that Captain Davis should take the ship down to McMurdo
Sound, and that I should go with him to take charge of any shore
operations that might be necessary. I “signed on” at a salary of 1s. a
month, and we sailed from Port Chalmers on December 20, 1916. A week
later we sighted ice again. The _Aurora_ made a fairly quick passage
through the pack and entered the open water of the Ross Sea on January
7, 1917.
Captain Davis brought the _Aurora_ alongside the ice edge off Cape
Royds on the morning of January 10, and I went ashore with a party to
look for some record in the hut erected there by my Expedition in 1907.
I found a letter stating that the Ross Sea party was housed at Cape
Evans, and was on my way back to the ship when six men, with dogs and
sledge, were sighted coming from the direction of Cape Evans. At 1 p.m.
this party arrived on board, and we learned that of the ten members of
the Expedition left behind when the _Aurora_ broke away on May 6, 1915,
seven had survived, namely, A. Stevens, E. Joyce, H. E. Wild, J. L.
Cope, R. W. Richards, A. K. Jack, I. O. Gaze. These seven men were all
well, though they showed traces of the ordeal through which they had
passed. They told us of the deaths of Mackintosh, Spencer-Smith, and
Hayward, and of their own anxious wait for relief.
All that remained to be done was to make a final search for the bodies
of Mackintosh and Hayward. There was no possibility of either man being
alive. They had been without equipment when the blizzard broke the ice
they were crossing. It would have been impossible for them to have
survived more than a few days, and eight months had now elapsed without
news of them. Joyce had already searched south of Glacier Tongue. I
considered that further search should be made in two directions, the
area north of Glacier Tongue, and the old depot off Butler Point, and I
made a report to Captain Davis to this effect.
On January 12 the ship reached a point five and a half miles east of
Butler Point. I took a party across rubbly and waterlogged ice to
within thirty yards of the piedmont ice, but owing to high cliffs and
loose slushy ice could not make a landing. The land-ice had broken away
at the point cut by the cross-bearings of the depot, but was visible in
the form of two large bergs grounded to the north of Cape Bernacchi.
There was no sign of the depot or of any person having visited the
vicinity. We returned to the ship and proceeded across the Sound to
Cape Bernacchi.
The next day I took a party ashore with the object of searching the
area north of Glacier Tongue, including Razorback Island, for traces of
the two missing men. We reached the Cape Evans Hut at 1.30 p.m., and
Joyce and I left at 3 p.m. for the Razorbacks. We conducted a search
round both islands, returning to the hut at 7 p.m. The search had been
fruitless. On the 14th I started with Joyce to search the north side of
Glacier Tongue, but the surface drift, with wind from south-east,
decided me not to continue, as the ice was moving rapidly at the end of
Cape Evans, and the pool between the hut and Inaccessible Island was
growing larger. The wind increased in the afternoon. The next day a
south-east blizzard was blowing, with drift half up the islands. I
considered it unsafe to sledge that day, especially as the ice was
breaking away from the south side of Cape Evans into the pool. We spent
the day putting the hut in order.
We got up at 3 a.m. on the 16th. The weather was fine and calm. I
started at 4.20 with Joyce to the south at the greatest possible speed.
We reached Glacier Tongue about one and a half miles from the seaward
end. Wherever there were not precipitous cliffs there was an even
snow-slope to the top. From the top we searched with glasses; there was
nothing to be seen but blue ice, crevassed, showing no protuberances.
We came down and, half running, half walking, worked about three miles
towards the root of the glacier; but I could see there was not the
slightest chance of finding any remains owing to the enormous
snowdrifts wherever the cliffs were accessible. The base of the steep
cliffs had drifts ten to fifteen feet high. We arrived back at the hut
at 9.40, and left almost immediately for the ship. I considered that
all places likely to hold the bodies of Mackintosh and Hayward had now
been searched. There was no doubt to my mind that they met their deaths
on the breaking of the thin ice when the blizzard arose on May 8, 1916.
During my absence from the hut Wild and Jack had erected a cross to the
memory of the three men who had lost their lives in the service of the
Expedition.
Captain Davis took the ship northward on January 17. The ice conditions
were unfavourable and pack barred the way. We stood over to the western
coast towards Dunlop Island and followed it to Granite Harbour. No mark
or depot of any kind was seen. The _Aurora_ reached the main pack,
about sixty miles from Cape Adare, on January 22. The ice was closed
ahead, and Davis went south in open water to wait for better
conditions. A north-west gale on January 28 enabled the ship to pass
between the pack and the land off Cape Adare, and we crossed the
Antarctic Circle on the last day of the month. On February 4 Davis sent
a formal report to the New Zealand Government by wireless, and on
February 9 the _Aurora_ was berthed at Wellington. We were welcomed
like returned brothers by the New Zealand people.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FINAL PHASE
The foregoing chapters of this book represent the general narrative of
our Expedition. That we failed in accomplishing the object we set out
for was due, I venture to assert, not to any neglect or lack of
organization, but to the overwhelming natural obstacles, especially the
unprecedentedly severe summer conditions on the Weddell Sea side. But
though the Expedition was a failure in one respect, I think it was
successful in many others. A large amount of important scientific work
was carried out. The meteorological observations in particular have an
economic bearing. The hydrographical work in the Weddell Sea has done
much to clear up the mystery of this, the least known of all the seas.
I have appended a short scientific memorandum to this volume, but the
more detailed scientific results must wait until a more suitable time
arrives, when more stable conditions prevail. Then results will be
worked out.
To the credit side of the Expedition one can safely say that the
comradeship and resource of the members of the Expedition was worthy of