Maurice Cutler was one of the first to post to the Shackleton message board soon after this site was started. He told us how he had visited Antarctica in the 1950's and visited Shackleton's and Scott's huts as a United Press reporter. He mentioned he was working on an article about Shackleton, which I told him I would love to see. Well he came through, and it was published in abridged form in the Ottawa Citizen and will be published in other Canadian newspapers.

This article is copyright of Maurice Cutler, and is published here with his permission. It may not be published without his permission. You can email him at: mwcutler@bigpond.com

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TO STRIVE, TO SEEK, TO FIND
AND NOT TO YIELD

Shackleton's Magnificent Failure

By Maurice Cutler

The three men had long scraggly beards, blackened faces, and their matted hair hung down over their shoulders. They were emaciated and dressed in tattered and stained clothes that could hardly keep out the chill of the sub-Antarctic winter. As they shuffled down the hill, towards the whaling station, they came across two small boys. They asked the boys the way to the manager's house, but the lads ran away in horror at what they had seen. A man they encountered a few minutes later, also turned away. Finally they found someone who took them to the manager's house in the world's most southerly settlement.

When he came to the door, Thoralf Sorlle looked at them incredulously and asked: "Who the hell are you?"

One of the men stepped forward and replied: "My Name is Shackleton."

Thoraf Sorlle, it is said, turned away and wept. It had been 530 days since he had entertained and then farewelled Sir Ernest Shackleton and his Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition. They had sailed off in December 1914 aboard their ship Endurance from the tiny island of South Georgia at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, on the doorstep of Antarctica.

It was now mid-1916, the world was at war and everyone had thought that Shackleton and his 27 companions had perished in the frozen wastes of Antarctica.

Sorlle was about to hear the incredible story of history's most extraordinary survival story, an epic of human victory over insurmountable odds in the harshest environment on the planet.

The story has remained essentially untold and Shackleton's amazing exploits have been lost in the mist of time. But that is all about to change and we may be in for a wave of Shackleton-mania.

For much of this century, the Antarctic explorer has been relegated to obscurity, compared with his more famous and ill-fated contemporary Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Shackleton's recognition problem was that Scott, his exploring nemesis, died too well. The manner of Scott's tragic end, and the way Britain and the world reacted to it, overshadowed the more substantial contributions, leadership and courage of his one-time junior officer.

Now, nearly 80 years after Shackleton's death, a new book about the expedition, exhibitions, a movie and even a cult of leadership may help right that wrong.

In addition to the film, to be directed by Wolfgang Peterson (Das Boot and In The Line of Fire) and shot in northern Canada, there will be a six-month show of photographs from the expedition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York beginning next April. Shackleton even has his own web sites. At last count there were three sites commemorating him on the Internet.

This renewed interest in the life of the enigmatic Anglo-Irishman also goes beyond a mere re-telling of his achievements and his heroic failure. The leadership qualities that enabled his Endurance party to survive against the longest odds any group of people has ever faced, has sparked "a Shackleton approach" to dealing with life and its challenges.

The story of how Shackleton led his expedition to escape and survive nearly two years locked in Antarctic ice, has become a 21st century model for leadership and inspiration, according to editor and publisher Edward Burlingame.

"The public is hungry, not so much for the political values that separate people," Burlingame says, "but for the core values that unite people: leadership, perseverance, moral or physical courage."

Few explorers fit those attributes more than Ernest Shackleton did.

In the first decade of the century, it seemed that "Scott of the Antarctic" as he became known, and his former lieutenant Shackleton, were locked in combat over their exploring ambitions. And for most of his career and long afterwards, Shackleton lived in Scott's shadow.

The ultimate goal they both sought, was the glory of conquering exploration's last great prize on earth, being the first at the South Pole

Neither was to succeed. First Shackleton in 1909 had to turn back just 97 miles from the bottom of the earth after 700 miles of climbing up glaciers to the Polar Plateau. Then in 1912, Scott was beaten by just three weeks by the

Norwegian Roald Amundsen. He died with his four companions on the return journey. Scott had over-estimated his own abilities and under-estimated the brutal power of the Antarctic environment.

Shackleton's relative obscurity resulted in part from the dramatic way Scott failed and died while attempting to return from the South Pole. The heroic legend created by Scott's diaries and the British press overlooked the poor leadership which ultimately cost five lives. Most of the heroism recorded poignantly in the diaries found with his body, could be interpreted as a self-serving invention to cover up one of the greatest exploring disasters on record.

By contrast, four years later, no one died when Shackleton and his 27 men were marooned after their ship was caught in the Antarctic icepack below Cape Horn and ultimately crushed. They survived almost two years of living on drifting ice floes and overturned lifeboats on an uninhabited, barren sub-Antarctic island. Shackleton and five others then made one of the greatest open boat voyages in history to reach help on the mountainous, glacier-covered island of South Georgia. After four attempts, he managed to penetrate the Antarctic ice pack to rescue the rest of his men. He then went to the relief of the other half of the expedition on the other side of the frozen continent.

That this story is little remembered is also because it all took place during World War I. The problems of Shackleton's expedition were of little interest to a world in upheaval with thousands of soldiers dying in the trenches.

Both Scott and Shackleton were products of the heroic age of exploration in the 19th century, especially as it was part of British imperial expansion. And in the tenor of those days at the height of the British Empire, both men were far from being shrinking violets in terms of self-promotion and egoism

By the turn of the century, the last exploration prizes left were the two poles. The bottom of the earth because of its greater inaccessibility was considered the major goal.

Shackleton and members of his 1907-09 Nimrod expedition almost made it to the Pole. They walked and pulled sledges for more than 700 miles before being forced to turn back almost in sight of their goal. Shackleton decided, wisely, that to push ahead would mean they might not be able to get back to their base camp at McMurdo Sound. After two months of struggle, it was an excruciating decision but a sound one.

Scott had a similar choice to make four years later but his ego would not permit him to admit defeat. His diary is full of excuses, but the bottom line is that he was obsessed with the Pole and lacked the leadership to recognize the risk. His decision to get to the Pole at all costs, ultimately cost him and his party their lives

EXERPTS FROM SCOTT'S DIARIES

Death of Titus Oates: "He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning--yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said "I am just going outside and may be some time." He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since. We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman. We all hope to meet the end with a similar spirit and assuredly the end is not far."

"We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last. But if we have been willing to

give our lives to this enterprise, which is for the honour of our country, I appeal to our countrymen to see that those who depend on us are properly cared for. Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions, which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for."

" Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R. Scott. For God's sake, look after our people."

After the tragedy of Scott's last expedition two years earlier, there were fewer worlds to conquer for an old explorer like the 40-year-old Shackleton. Now that the Pole had been reached, he decided that there was one last polar feat remaining, the crossing of the Antarctic continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea below New Zealand.

As one commentator put it, Shackleton's expedition of 1914-17 was "as foolish in conception as it was heroic in its outcome."

But it was to be Shackleton's finest hour. Early in 1915, his British Imperial TransAntarctic Expedition aboard the 144-foot Endurance was trapped in the ice of the Weddell Sea below South America. No one knew where they were and they had no means of letting the world know their plight. In any case, by this time the world was at war.

The ship drifted, locked in the ice for 10 months before being crushed

to pieces some 210 miles from the uninhabited Antarctic landmass and 1,200 miles from the fringes of civilization. The 28 men were forced onto the ice floes, where they lived for five more months. Ultimately, when the ice began to break up, they had to take to their small lifeboats. It was another week in storm-lashed seas without fresh water and burning with thirst, before they sighted land. It was tiny, remote, barren, extremely mountainous and uninhabited Elephant Island, just above the Antarctic Circle. They had been at sea or locked in the ice for almost 500 days.

Knowing that the only way they were going to get out was to get themselves out, Shackleton and five companions set out shortly afterward in a small boat. For 14 days they sailed the 22-foot glorified rowboat across 870 miles of stormy Antarctic seas to the West Coast of South Georgia. It ranks with Captain Bligh's epic post-mutiny journey as one of the greatest open-boat voyages in history. They then had to cross 29 miles of mountains and glaciers to reach the whaling station at Stromness Bay, the world's southernmost outpost.

It took another three months and four attempts until Shackleton was able to rescue the 22 members of his expedition left on Elephant Island four months before. The adventure had taken almost two years and Shackleton proudly wrote to his wife "Not a life lost, and we have been through hell."

Then realizing that his Ross Sea party on the other side of Antarctica had to be rescued, he sailed to New Zealand and joined a relief ship to McMurdo Sound to pick up the rest of his men. Tragically, three of that party was lost during the heroic, but futile work of laying depots for Shackleton's crossing team.

Later he was write:"The struggles, the disappointments, and the endurance of this small party of Britishers, hidden away for nearly two years in the fastnesses of the Polar ice, striving to carry out the ordained task and ignorant of the crises through which the world was passing, make a story

which is unique in the history of Antarctic exploration."

His biographers Margery and James Fisher identified the secrets of his success: "emergency after emergency was to arise in which he must act promptly and decisively, always keeping a jump ahead of danger. He was not once found wanting. Confident of success, he yet prepared for failure, and in this lay his strength. He was, above all, an intelligent explorer."

Shackleton's beginnings were modest. The son of an Irish doctor, he began a career in the merchant marine as a 17-year-old apprentice in 1891. Ten years later, as an merchant marine officer, he impressed Scott who was organizing his first Antarctic expedition. Shackleton's competence was such that he was chosen to accompany Scott and the expedition's scientific leader Edward Wilson on an epic southern journey towards the Pole. However, the seeds of dissension between the two men began when Shackleton contracted scurvy and was invalided home against his wishes. It appeared at the time that Scott derided Shackleton's ability to withstand the rigours of Antarctic exploration.

After returning to England, Shackleton was determined to prove himself against the innuendoes that he "wasn't up to it." But for the next four years he drifted, working as a journalist, a secretary of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and even ran, unsuccessfully for Parliament. Despite failing in business, Shackleton was able to persuade some prominent English men to back his 1907-09 expedition. It was the first expedition whose central objective was to plant the Union Jack at the bottom of the earth.

The already frosty relations between Shackleton and Scott became even colder when Shackleton decided to locate his base camp in the McMurdo Sound area where he and Scott had lived five years before. Scott was angry because he had he thought he had a gentleman's agreement that McMurdo was reserved for his use. He felt it was "unsporting" of Shackleton to go back on his word to locate elsewhere.

In many ways, Shackleton's Nimrod expedition was one of the most productive ever to go to the Antarctic. His team included many prominent scientists and geographers including Australians Douglas Mawson and geologist Edgeworth David who located the South Magnetic Pole. In the event, Shackleton failed to reach the Pole itself, and two years later could only stand and watch as Scott mounted another expedition, raced Amundsen to the Pole and lost both that honor and the lives of his party on the return journey.

Between expeditions, Shackleton was something of a misfit. He spent much of the time on lecture tours to help pay expedition debts and in various financial ventures that usually amounted to little. In June of 1912, he was a prominent witness at the inquiry into the loss of the Titanic. In his controversial testimony, Shackleton used his experience in icy seas to suggest that the big ship was going too fast and that perhaps this reflected the desire of the owners for speed over safety.

But by 1913 he was actively pursuing the idea of another Antarctic venture.

With the Pole conquered, Shackleton developed the idea of making a crossing of the Antarctic continent. And despite the looming clouds of war, Shackleton was able to get the expedition off the ground financially in 1914. He purchased a Norwegian-built barquentine which he named Endurance. This reflected his family motto: "By endurance, we conquer." It was to be a fitting name. For the Ross Sea party of the expedition, Australian Sir Douglas Mawson's 1912 expedition ship Aurora was purchased. Sledge-dogs were acquired from northern Canada. Some 5,000 applications poured in from men who wanted to be among the 56 chosen to serve with Shackleton.

The Endurance expedition was locked in drama almost from the day the ship sailed from London, August 1, 1914. King George V was to have inspected the ship and the expedition and wish it bon voyage. But it was the weekend that saw the opening of World War I. When Shackleton read of the general mobilization for war, he immediately sent a telegram to the Admiralty offering the ship, its stores and crew for the war effort.

"There were enough trained and experienced men amongst us to man a destroyer," Shackleton wrote. However, "within an hour, I received a laconic wire from the Admiralty saying 'Proceed.' Within two hours a longer wire came from Mr. Winston Churchill (first Lord of the Admiralty), in which we were thanked for our offer, and saying that the authorities desired the Expedition...should go on."

The following day, the King sent for Shackleton and handed him the Union Jack to carry on the expedition. That night, at midnight, war broke out. A few days later, a troubled Shackleton and his ship sailed for the Antarctic. (Ironically, members of the expedition did get the chance to fight for their country after surviving the rigors of two years as Antarctic castaways, and suffered a high percentage killed in action or wounded.)

The plan for the Antarctic crossing was relatively simple. But given the primitive resources available and the extreme environment, it was a very risky proposition. Shackleton and six from his Weddell Sea party on the Endurance, were to land on the Antarctic coast below South America and trek 1,800 miles across the continent, through the Pole and then to McMurdo, retracing his steps from the 1907 expedition. The second half of the expedition would sail south from New Zealand in the Aurora to McMurdo and then lay depots of supplies out towards the Pole for use by the crossing party. This would enable Shackleton's group to travel lighter. But they were crucially dependent upon finding those supplies.

A landing on the eastern Antarctic coast was a huge problem because the Weddell Sea is the most ice-choked of the waters surrounding the seventh continent. And the 900 miles to the Pole were terra incognito. No one had any idea what lay between the Weddell coast and the Pole.

The Endurance sailed from South Georgia December 5, 1914 and steamed south towards the inevitable pack ice. Three days out, the ice-strengthened ship began six weeks of dodging between gigantic floes and icebergs through ever-narrowing "leads" in the ice.

Frustration began to set in after 35 days when they had still not broken through to the coast of Queen Maud Land. And it soon became obvious that, within 25 miles of their goal, they were locked in the ice and were going to have to spend the winter on the ship.

This was not a complete disappointment because they had planned to spend the long winter night ashore before beginning the cross-continent trek. The dog teams which were to be used to pull the sleds of the crossing party, were taken off the ship and housed in "dogloos" on the ice alongside the ice-locked ship.

But Shackleton must have realized early in 1915 as the ice carried the Endurance inexorably away from their proposed landing site, that hopes of completing the crossing had been dashed. He still believed that once the ship escaped, it could return to South Georgia, refit and then try once again in the 1915-16 summer.

The sun disappeared at the beginning of May, not to be seen for another 70 days. Later that month, on the 24th they celebrated Empire Day by singing patriotic songs and predicting that the collective might of the British Empire would prevail against Germany in short order.

Everyone hoped that when the sun returned, the ice would begin to break up and free Endurance from its icy prison. They also knew and dreaded the fact that this might also be accompanied by massive movement in the ice that could crush the ship.

By October 24, Endurance had been locked in the ice for 281 days and was now 570 miles northwest of where it had become entrapped. However the ship's actual zig-zag drift in the ice was estimated at 1,500 miles.

Here in Shackleton's own words is how the party first recognized they were in mortal danger:

"We could hear the grinding and crashing of the working floes to the southwest...the ice is rafting up to a height of 10 or 15 feet in places, the opposing floes are moving against one another at the rate of about 200 yards per hour. The noise resembles the roar of heaving, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice, one can imagine it is disturbed by the breathing and tossing of a mighty giant below...huge blocks of ice were piled up in wild and threatening confusion. The pressure at that point was enormous. Blocks weighing many tons were raised 15 feet above the level of the floe."

"The effects of the pressure around us were awe-inspiring. Mighty blocks of ice, gripped between meeting floes, rose slowly till they jumped like cherry-stones squeezed between thumb and finger. The pressure of millions of tons of moving ice was crushing and smashing inexorably. If the ship was once gripped firmly, her fate would be sealed.

"Almost like a living creature, she resisted the forces that would crush her; but it was a one-sided battle. Millions of tons of ice pressed inexorably upon the little ship that had dared the challenge of the Antarctic," Shackleton wrote.

However the inevitable happened on October 27 after more than 300 days in their icy prison.

"After long months of ceaseless anxiety and strain, after times when hope beat high and times when the outlook was black indeed, the end of the Endurance has come. But though we have been compelled to abandon the ship, which is crushed beyond all hope of ever being righted, we are alive and well, and we have stores and equipment for the task that lies before us. The task is to reach land with all the members of the Expedition.

"It is hard to write what I feel. To a sailor, his ship is more than a floating home, and in the Endurance I had centered ambitions, hopes and desires. Now straining and groaning, her timbers cracking and her wounds gaping, she is slowly giving up her sentient life at the very outset of her career. She is crushed and abandoned after drifting more than 570 miles in a northwesterly direction during the 281 days since she became locked in the ice.

"It was a sickening sensation to feel the decks breaking up under one's feet, the great beams bending and then snapping with a noise live heavy gun-fire.

...The floes, with the force of millions of tons of moving ice behind them, were simply annihilating the ship."

But the most immediate task now was to organized the men and lead them to safety. If the events of the previous year were remarkable, there is no way to describe what was to come.

"Overnight the temperature has dropped to - 16° Fahr. and most of the men are cold and uncomfortable. After the tents had been pitched I mustered all hands and explained the position to them briefly and, I hope, clearly. I have told them the distance to the Barrier and the distance to Paulet Island, and have stated that I propose to try to march with equipment across the ice in the direction of Paulet Island. I thanked the men for the steadiness and good morale they have shown in these trying circumstances, and told them I had no doubt that, provided they continued to work their utmost and to trust me, we will all reach safety in the end. Then we had supper, which the cook had prepared at the big blubber stove, after a watch had been set all hands except the watch turned in."

" For myself, I could not sleep. The destruction and abandonment of the ship was no sudden shock. The disaster had been looming ahead for many months, and I had studied my plans for all contingencies a hundred times. But the thoughts that came to me as I walked up and down in the darkness were not particularly cheerful. The task now was to secure the safety of the party, and to that I must bend my energies and mental power and apply every bit of knowledge that experience of the Antarctic had given me. The task was likely to be long and strenuous, and an ordered mind and a clear program were essential if we were to come through without loss of life. A man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground. "

But almost immediately the scope of their predicament became evident.

"At midnight I was pacing the ice, listening to the grinding floe and to the groans and crashes that told of the death agony of the Endurance, when I noticed suddenly a crack running across our floe right through the camp. The alarm-whistle brought all hands tumbling out, and we moved the tents and stores lying on what was now the smaller portion of the floe to the larger portion. Nothing more could be done that moment and the men turned in again; but there was little sleep. Each time I came to the end of my beat on the floe I could just; see in the darkness the uprearing piles of pressure-ice, which toppled over and narrowed still further the little floating island we occupied. I did not notice at the time that my tent, which had been on the wrong side of the crack, had not been erected again."

For leadership, it's often the little things that count. For example, in the chaos following the crushing of the ship, Shackleton organized a distribution of the remaining supplies including sleeping bags. There was a lottery to distribute the warmer fur sleeping bags, but he and the other senior men stayed out of the draw.

The morning after the ship was abandoned, Shackleton and two others went back to the wreck to get some fuel to use to boil up milk for the rest of the team. A little later when he personally served tea to the men, Shackleton was bemused by the fact that the men still were ordering their beverage weak or strong. "Here were men, their home crushed, the camp pitched on the unstable floes, and their chance of reaching safety apparently remote, calmly attending to the details of existence and giving their attention to such trifles as the strength of a brew of tea."

Unlike Scott, who generally remained aloof from the lower ranks and even from some of the officers, Shackleton was gregarious and determined that all of the party should become involved in the expedition planning.

In their perceptive analysis of Shackleton's leadership, biographers James and Margery Fisher remarked on his approachability.

"All hands could go to him with suggestions and all hands were made to feel that they were important in the general scheme. The fact that no changes or dangers were hidden from them, and that Shackleton never gave anyone false hope, was of incalculable importance. Not only this, but it meant that Shackleton was liked by his men, because he took the trouble to keep a living human relationship with each one of them. William Bakewell, who went as an A.B. (ordinary seaman) recalls how, when he returned books to the 'Library' which Shackleton looked after, they would discuss the books; he recalls conversations in which Shackleton talked to him about Canada and the opportunities there, and how on one occasion he explained the different devices on his coat of arms."

He set the scene for the survival of the expedition when they were forced from the disintegrating ship onto the ice, the Fishers observed.

"When the tents had been pitched for the second time, Shackleton called the men round him and explained the position simply and openly...Thanking them for their steadiness in a crisis, he said that he was sure that if they would all work hard and trust him, they could reach safety. All the men now living (1957) ...remember his words as impressive above all because of their simplicity...The situation now was as bad as it could be, and heroics would be out of place. The calm and confident way he spoke, the complete openness with which he discussed their plight, set a tone which was reassuring as well as bracing."
 

THE ROSS SEA PARTY

Unlike the enforced wintering of the Endurance, on the other side of the continent, it was planned that the Aurora would spend the winter night tied up alongside the Cape Evans hut at McMurdo Sound. This was the hut that Scott and his men were trying to reach on their fatal return journey from the Pole.

While Shackleton's party was iced on their ship, 2,000 miles away, the 28-man Ross Sea group had spent the summer ashore as scheduled. They began to lay depots of supplies that would be used by the crossing party. But in the process, they lost all but four of the 18 dogs they used for hauling supplies on sledges. The members of depot-laying party were severely frost-bitten as they manhauled the sledges, enduring blizzards and "summer" temperatures dropping to more than 40 degrees below zero.

More hardship was to come when six of the sledging party found themselves marooned in Scott's 1902 emergency hut, about 30 miles from their base and the ship at Cape Evans. The sea ice which normally covers McMurdo Sound had gone out, making it impossible for them to walk to the comfort of the ship and main hut.

With the winter darkness setting in, their condition in the barn-like hut for the next two months was difficult, to say the least. There were only three sleeping bags for the six men, little food and only candles. They had to kill scarce seals to get blubber for cooking, heating and the lamps.

They finally broke out when the ice had formed on the Sound but when they got back to Cape Evans they made a horrifying discovery. The ship had been ripped out of its anchorage by a blizzard. Much of the stores and supplies necessary for the following spring depot laying operation had not yet been unloaded.

Although it had been firmly secured by hawsers and anchors embedded on the shore in front of the hut, the ship was carried away when the ice which surrounded it was torn from the shore and blown out into McMurdo Sound. Very quickly, ice became packed around the ship to the level of the rails. What made the situation desperate was the fact that the engines had been partially dismantled for the winter mooring and the boilers emptied.

And four men were stranded in the hut in addition to the six who were marooned up the Sound in the other hut. The men left at Cape Evans of course, could only speculate as to what was happening to the ship out there in the jumble of blizzard-driven ice of McMurdo Sound. Over the next three days the winds average 90 miles an hour with gusts recorded at 120 m.p.h.

The stranded men now had a predicament. Most believed that the ship had been lost with all hands. And if the ship were lost, no one would become aware of their plight until the late summer of 1916 when it would become apparent to their agents in New Zealand that it had not returned. This meant they might be marooned there for two years. And that is exactly what happened.

When the ship failed to return within a couple of weeks, the men at Cape Evans resigned themselves to a winter in the hut Scott's survivors had lived in, just two years before. They had little fuel which was essential for melting snow for drinking water as well as for cooking and light. With only four hours of daylight and a shrinking seal population, a great deal of effort was needed to catch enough seals for their meat and their blubber fat for fuel. Fortunately there were good supplies of other food, much of which was destined to be laid in the depots for Shackleton's crossing party. Their only hope, a faint one, was that the ship somehow survived and that that relief would come in six months when the sun returned and McMurdo Sound became navigable again.

Because their only fuel was seal blubber, the smoke from the fires permeated every nook and cranny of the hut. There was no soap so the men gradually became coated with a greasy black layer. The 10 men had only the clothing they were wearing and it soon also became tattered, blackened and greasy.

They also faced the prospects of a depot-laying program without the full inventory of supplies they needed. They could not know of Shackleton's plight and the fading chances that he would be able to start the crossing. They assumed that they had to finish their vital job and lay down supplies for the crossing party whose survival depended on it.

During moonlight nights they trekked across the ice to Shackleton's 1907 hut at Cape Royds which contained a great deal of supplies left behind from that expedition.

When the sun came up in October, the group began aggressively to take food and supplies out to depots over a 300-mile distance from their base. This was an heroic achievement in very difficult circumstances, with primitive equipment and inadequate clothing.

But scurvy, snowblindedness and frostbite had begun to take their toll as the weather turned ugly. Spencer-Smith came down with scurvy on the trail and could not walk and Hayward and Mackintosh, captain of the Aurora and leader of the group, began to recognize the same symptoms.

With bad weather stalling their attempts to get back to the base, the men were now in a situation remarkably similar to that which faced Scott's party in almost the same place a couple of years earlier. Thinking about that disaster probably impelled them to push on despite their desperate physical condition.

Mackintosh was tied to a sledge but at one point he fell down. Joyce gives this account:

"We halted, poor chap, he was in a bad state, his legs were badly swollen and black, his gums were protruding and black. He said: 'Joyce, wrap me in a snow-cloth and leave me in the snow.'"

Wild was left to tend to Spencer-Smith and Mackintosh while Joyce, Richards and Hayward, their clothing tattered, fought their way though the blizzard to the next depot, often up to their waists in snow. They not only found the speck in the white desert that contained their precious supplies, but were able to do the same thing when they returned to their comrades back on the trail.

However six days later, within sight of the familiar McMurdo landmarks of Mount Erebus, Mount Discovery and Observation Hill, Spencer-Smith died, the first fatality of the expedition. He had lain on his sledge for 40 days while his friends tried to get him back to the comparative safety of the Discovery hut at Hut Point, 15 miles from their ultimate objective. Cape Evans.

For the five survivors, the only way to get there was across the sea ice and it was obstinately refusing to harden. With their second winter coming on, the men did not relish the thought of spending it in the primitive Discovery hut. Hayward and Mackintosh, now restored to a semblance of health were impatient to get over to Cape Evans and despite arguments from the others decided to start out.

Three days later their comrades followed their tracks to a hole in the ice and it was clear that Mackintosh and Hayward had become the second and third casualties of the expedition. It was another two months before it was safe for the surviving three men to make it to Cape Evans, joining the four men who had not participated in the depot-laying. There was still no word on the fate of their ship.

The sledging party had been away from their "home" for 10 months. They were appallingly ill-equipped for the work they had to perform. They had been sledging for nearly six months, much it of manhauling. They were suffering from scurvy and had been months without fresh food.

But against insuperable odds, they had accomplished what Shackleton expected of them. The only problem was that given the Boss's situation, it was all in vain. If they had had radio contact with Shackleton, they would have been spared the effort and the loss of life.

But this was the last expedition of the "heroic" era of exploration. After this, there would be aircraft, radio and motorized sledges. Never again would explorers enter the polar regions without some contact with the outside world.

The Aurora party had left Australia in late 1914 and it was now late 1916. They now were hoping that relief would come in the summer; otherwise they faced the grim prospect of a third winter in the Antarctic. They now set about killing as many seals as they could to get through the rest of the winter night, hiking as far as 30 miles from the hut.

And what of the Aurora?

You will remember that on the night of 6 May 1915, the ship and the ice, which encased it, were ripped from the shore in front of the Cape Evans hut and swept out into McMurdo Sound. It was immediately apparent to those on board that the icy vise that contained them would not enable Aurora to sail back to the men stranded on shore. It was being carried inexorably northwest down the Sound towards the Ross Sea in much the same way as the Endurance over in the Weddell Sea. At one point, it seemed that Aurora had stopped and plans were made to send a party 50 miles back across the Sound to the hut. But a month later, it had drifted in the ice another 100 miles north.

Like the men ashore, the men on the ship had to deal with the winter night's cruel temperatures and winds. And like their Boss on the other side of the continent, they faced the prospect of having the life of the ship crushed out beneath them. It was now moving six or seven miles a day and the ice had already crushed the rudder; two tons of solid oak and iron "went like matchwood."

Preparations had been made to abandon ship, but the situation improved when the ice pressure eased and water lanes opened. The rate of drift also increased, and in late August, after four months drifting, as the sun began to rise, the Aurora was 700 miles from Cape Evans. As they drifted, the ship's carpenter was working on building a new rudder, which would be attached as soon as the ship broke free of the ice.

The ship's captain Stenhouse was extremely anxious as he realized that according to the plan of the expedition, Shackleton would be starting out from the other side and the fate of his party depended on the depot-laying operation. He could not know of the Herculean efforts of the shore party which had accomplished this task, albeit at the cost of three lives. The ship was also running out of food and seal and penguin meat became a daily staple.

It was not until March 13, some nine months after the drift began that the Aurora broke free. But without the engines and without a rudder. When the ship seemed to be threatened by a line of icebergs, Stenhouse decided to fire up the boilers and see if they could get steam up. They just managed to crawl out of the path of icy monsters on reduced power

Now, after installing the jury rudder, it was a race, at three-quarter power to New Zealand. In early April, almost a year after they were involuntarily parted at Cape Evans, with only 35 tons of coal left, the ship was met by a tug as it approached the South Island. Aurora managed to limp into port under its own steam.

Despite the continuing war, the return of the Aurora finally alerted the world that something had gone terribly wrong with the Shackleton expedition. It was apparent that the Endurance should have shown up by now. By the end of May 1916 efforts were being made in England for a Weddell Sea search.
 

LOCKED IN THE ICE

No one could have imagined just what the Shackleton expedition was enduring after their ship was trapped in the ice in January 1915 and crushed and sunk in the ice-choked Weddell Sea in October of that year, forcing the 28 men onto the ice floes.

In late 1915, as the Antarctic spring was approaching and the temperature began to rise, Shackleton became apprehensive about the stability of the ice floes they now called home. They were exposed to such new perils as killer whales which swim under the ice, sense potential prey above and then smash their way through to take it.

On Oct. 30, Shackleton wrote that "the killers were blowing all night, and a crack appeared about 20 feet from the camp at 2 a.m. the ice below us was quite thin enough for the killers to break through if they took a fancy to do so, but there was no other camping-ground within our reach and we had to take the risk."

"We passed over two opening cracks, though which killers were pushing their ugly snouts...the condition of the ice ahead was chaotic, for since the morning, increased pressure had developed and the pack was moving and crushing in all directions."

Their home for the next two months was a "floating lump of ice, about a mile square at first, but later splitting into smaller and smaller fragments." They called it "Ocean Camp" and now were mainly at the mercy of the winds as far as direction and distance were concerned.

From now on they were to subsist almost entirely on seals and penguins whose blubber and skins provided fuel for cooking and melting snow for drinking water. They also had to eat dog food, feeding the dogs on seal meat.

After two months at Ocean Camp, Shackleton decided that the party and its three boats, remaining dog teams and tons of provisions taken from the wrecked ship should begin a march across the drifting ice floes towards the Antarctic mainland. The heavy, cumbersome boats were a problem, but he realized that they were the principal instruments of their escape.

They hoped to reach Paulet Island about 100 miles to the west. There was a hut there with supplies taken down by a ship which went to the rescue of Nordenskjolds 1904 expedition for which Shackleton acted as an advisor on provisioning. He was struck by the irony that those supplies he chose might well have to save his party.

In one of those symbolic but important gestures which characterized his leadership, he took out his precious gold watch, a gold cigarette case and all his golf sovereigns and threw them away. He was demonstrating that they should have no unnecessary weight and the other members of the party followed suit.

Photographer Frank Hurley had an especially difficult job in selecting a small fraction of his dramatic photographs which were on heavy glass plates. As he rejected a plate, he smashed each one so that he wouldn't be able to change his mind.

However, after only making seven and a half miles dragging their boats and supplies across the broken sea-ice the first week, Shackleton was reluctantly forced to camp once again on the floes. He was hoping the winds would blow them north to open water and freedom. But it was a harsh trade-off. The winds they needed brought with them colder temperatures.

For the next three and a half months they waited at "Patience Camp" They were now running out of flour and their diet consisted mainly of seal and penguin meat. While an excellent means of avoiding scurvy, it left the men weak and enervated. Most of the dogs were shot as a means of conserving food and by the end of January 1916 the once abundant supply of seals was dwindling.

And more ominous was the fact that another winter was approaching. Unlike the previous year, however, when they were on the entrapped but cozy ship, they were now living in tents on ice floes on the ocean with very limited protection from the elements. They would have to gather enough food to get them through the 24-hour darkness of the Antarctic winter.

The remarkable fact is that with the odd exception, there is almost no evidence of disputes or acrimony among the men. This reflects Shackleton's innate judgement in selecting the men for the expedition. His experience in the first Scott party, and his own Nimrod expedition helped him choose men with personalities that would be compatible and the strength to deal with extreme hardship.

Scott was not nearly as good a judge of men and some of those he felt would be towers of strength turned out to be liabilities. His aloofness and martinet approach did nothing to help when things went wrong.

At the end of March 1916, some 13 months after they had become beset, Shackleton's little band sighted land, ice-locked Joinville Island about 50 miles to the west. However they decided to continue drifting when they contemplated the difficulty and danger of dragging their boats there. In early April they sighted land again, Clarence Island and its neighbour to the west Elephant Island, both uninhabited and rarely visited by mariners or whaling fleets.

"The land was still more than 60 miles away, but it had to our eyes something of the appearance of home, since we expected to find there our first solid footing after all the long months of drifting on the unstable ice," Shackleton said. "We were dependent upon the caprice of wind and current; we went whither those irresponsible forces listed. The longing to feel solid earth under our feet filled our hearts."

They had now drifted on the ice several hundred miles for more than five months and their landfall could not have come at a better moment. The floes were beginning to break up, sometimes splitting right under the camp. They had to get off the ice.

"We had made preparations for quick action if anything of the kind occurred. Our case would be desperate if the ice broke into small pieces not large enough to support our party and not loose enough to permit the use of the boats."

Now began one of the most perilous parts of the whole epic. They had only three small 20-foot lifeboats crowded with 28 men and whatever supplies they managed to pack. They had 50 miles to cross, dodging ice floes, icebergs and at the mercy of the winds and tides. On several occasions they had to retreat from the stormy open ocean and seek the shelter of icebergs, pulling the boats up on the bergs. But they soon found that icebergs are also subject to disintegration.

They were in the water for more than five days and nights, dodging icebergs, being swamped by waves and tossed by wind and tide away from their objective. They feared that if they missed a landfall on one of the two islands, they might be swept out into the open ocean. The location where they launched the boats was notorious for a condition called "cross sea" when the wind blows in one direction, the tide and currents move in another.

"One of the anxieties in my mind" Shackleton wrote later "was the possibility that we would be driven by the current through the 80-mile gap between Clarence Island and Prince George Island into the open Atlantic."

Killer whales were especially worrisome.

"All around we could hear the killers blowing, their short, sharp hisses sounding like sudden escapes of steam. The killers were a source of anxiety, for a boat could easily have been capsized by one of them coming to blow. They would throw aside in a nonchalant fashion pieces of ice much bigger than our boats when they rose to the surface, and we had an uneasy feeling that the white bottoms of the boats would look like ice from below. Shipwrecked mariners drifting in the Antarctic seas would be things not dreamed of in the killers' philosophy and might appear on closer examination to be tasty substitutes for seal and penguin. We certainly regarded the killers with misgivings.

As night fell on that first day in the boats, Shackleton decided to have the party camp on an ice floe about 200 yards across. After a dinner of dogfood and biscuits the weary sailors tried to sleep. But their rest was shortlived a couple of hours later when the floe split directly under Shackleton's feet and a tent fell into the gap between the two sides of the floe. When the leader looked down into the darkness he saw a man in a sleeping bag. With one superhuman movement, Shackleton reached down into the abyss and "with a heave, lifted man and bag on to the floe. A few seconds later the ice-edges came together again with tremendous force."

Then, in the darkness, Shackleton found himself alone on one side of the split floe holding the painter of one of the boats.

"Finally, I was left alone. The night had swallowed all the others and the rapid movement of the ice forced me to let go the painter. For a moment, I felt that my piece of rocking floe was the loneliest place in the world. Peering into the darkness, I could just see the dark figures on the other floe."

Fortunately the others became aware of the leader's absence and launched a boat quickly to pick him up.

"We were now on a piece of flat ice about 200 feet long and 100 feet wide. There was no more sleep for any of us that night. The killers were blowing in the lanes around and we waited for daylight and watched for signs of another crack in the ice."

Despite this kind of disturbing event, Shackleton was able to focus on the positive aspects of their release from the ice.

"We were on the move at last, and if dangers and difficulties loomed ahead, we could meet and overcome them. No longer were we drifting helpless at the mercy of wind and current."

The next morning they were back in the boats and as they entered the open sea they got a taste of what they would have to endure before making a landfall.

"Immediately, our deeply laden boats began to make heavy weather. They shipped sprays which, freezing as they fell, covered men and gear with ice."

Several of the men began to suffer from seasickness, their lips cracked and their eyes and eyelids showing red in their salt-encrusted faces.

They were forced to return to the safety of the ice floes and spent the night on an iceberg. But in the morning, they discovered the berg surrounded by pack ice, making it impossible to launch the boats.

"We could see no sign of the water. Numerous whales and killers were blowing between the floes, and Cape pigeons, petrels and fulmars were circling around our berg. The scene from our camp as the daylight brightened was magnificent beyond description, though I must admit that we viewed it with anxiety. Heaving hills of pack and floe were sweeping towards us in long undulations. As each swell lifted around our rapidly dissolving berg, it drove floe-ice on to the ice-foot, shearing off more of the top snow-covering and reducing the size of our camp."

But the party was in for a disappointment when they took a sun shot to find their position. It turned out that they were 30 miles southeast of where they expected to be and drifting steadily away from their goal. That night they were not able to camp on the ice and had to spend the hours in their boats in the open sea.

What a night!

"All night long we lay in the open, freezing sea.attached to one another by their painters...4 degrees 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 movements 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."

Their condition was becoming more desperate by the hour and Shackleton decided to make a run for Elephant Island, about 100 miles to the northwest

But in their haste to launch the boats, they forget to load some ice or snow to provide drinking water.

With men in the bow poling off large blocks of ice that floated at them incessantly, the three boats soon moved out again into the open sea, seemingly free of the imprisoning pack ice. When they decided to heave to for the night, the seas rose, crashing over the frail boats and freezing. The men had to constantly chip away at the heavy ice which threatened to sink them. The ice also covered the front of the boats where their sleeping bags were stowed. Overnight, the oars had grown to the size of telegraph poles as the ice coated them.

Their lack of water began to tell as the saltwater spray made them extremely thirsty. Only one boat had a small block of ice for the men to suck on.

"But at the same time we reduced our bodily heat. The condition of most of the men was pitiable. All of us had swollen mouths and we could hardly touch the food. I longed intensely for the dawn. I called out to the other boats at intervals during the night, asking how things were with them. The men always managed to reply cheerfully. One of the people on the Stancomb- Wills shouted, "We are doing all right, but I would like some dry mitts." The jest brought a smile to cracked lips. He might as well have asked for the moon. The only dry things aboard the boats were swollen mouths and burning tongues."

The lack of water made it difficult if not impossible to swallow whatever unpalatable food they could prepare in the stormy waters. Ironically, after months and months in ice and snow they now were at sea and there was none to be found. Shackleton who had been husbanding supplies of meat broke down and permitted the thirsty men to suck on the meat to extract blood to slake their thirst "when thirst seemed to threaten the reason of any particular individual."

But off to the northwest they could see the mountains of Elephant Island

tantalizingly close, but they could make little progress towards their goal in the heavy seas as night set in again. And to complicate matters, one of the boats became parted from the group in the darkness.

The weather had turned worse in the morning as they coasted alongside the rocky cliffs and sheer glacier faces of Elephant Island which offered little chance of a landing. Ultimately they found a beach and were delighted to see the missing boat also heading toward it. Two seals on the beach were quickly killed to provide fresh meat for men who had not had any hot food or water for several days.

It had been 16 months since they had stood on land and much of that time they were in the grip of the icepack.

That first day on land, "there was no rest for the cook. The blubber-stove flared and sputtered fiercely as he cooked not one meal, but many meals, which merged into a daylong bout of eating. We drank water and ate seal meat until every man had reached the limit of his capacity."

A quick survey of their landing place revealed that it was anything but a Garden of Eden. The beach was exposed to the winds and tides and the overhanging rocky cliffs looked unstable. The interior of the island was quite inaccessible. The decision to move to another point in the island almost led to disaster when the three boats were caught in huge seas and winds as they traveled along the mountainous coastline. In the terrible weather of that day they lost a tent and two bags of clothing and were forced to move their camp up from the beach to escape the rising tide. Their food supply dwindled quickly when a colony of penguins decided to migrate just as they arrived.

As it turned out the limited choices to pitch a camp came down to the home of the recently departed penguins. This meant camping on top of penguin guano but they had no alternative. For most of the men, it was to be their home for six months.

There are many instances of Shackleton's quirky but effective leadership and inspiration to a band of men who had little to look forward to.

When the hard-working cook suddenly collapsed after their arrival on the island, the "Boss" ordered him to his tent until the doctor decided he was well enough to return to his duties.

"Then I took out to replace the cook with one of the men who had expressed a desire to lie down and die," he wrote later. "The task of keeping the galley fire alight was both difficult and strenuous and it took his thoughts away from the chances of immediate dissolution. In fact, I found him a little later gravely concerned over the drying of a naturally not over-clean pair of socks which were hung up in close proximity to our evening milk. Occupation had brought his thoughts back to the ordinary cares of life."

Although the men were in a weakened state and there were several heart scares, there was only one major medical emergency. The youngest member of the party 20-year-old Percy Blackborrow, who had stowed away on Endurance when it visited Buenos Aires, had suffered severely frostbitten feet and it was decided to amputate the toes of his left foot. Fortunately they had been able to save some chloroform for surgery under the most unimaginable circumstances.

Shackleton's mental strength was matched by his physical condition. Most of the party remembers him as one of the healthiest members of the group.

The first week on Elephant Island was marked by unceasing gales and snowstorms, presaging the arrival of winter. Thoughts turned to how they would extricate themselves from this inhospitable island. There was no chance that any shipping would pass by, or that any search party would think of looking there. If they were to get out, they would have to get themselves out.

The party had enough supplies to last only about three months and the animal life was expected to leave them as winter arrived.

Shackleton examined the options for a journey in a 22-foot boat. Port Stanley in the Falklands was 540 miles away but involved beating against the prevailing northwesterlies. South Georgia which they had left 18 months earlier was 870 miles to the east.

As Shackleton well knew, the ocean south of Cape Horn in the middle of May is known to be "the most tempestuous storm-swept area of water in the world...and the gales are almost unceasing."

Here is how he decided that was required was perhaps the most extraordinary open boat voyage in history:

"A boat party might make the voyage and be back with relief within a month, provided that the sea was clear of ice and the boat survive the great seas. It was not difficult to decide that South Georgia must be the objective and I proceeded to plan ways and means.

"The hazards of a boat journey across 800 miles of stormy sub-Antarctic ocean were obvious, but I calculated that at worst the venture would add nothing to the risk of the men left on the island. There were would be fewer mouths to feed during the winter and the boat would not require to take more than one moth's provisions for six men, for if we did not make South Georgia in that time we were sure to go under."

The boat, the James Caird, was loaded with supplies to last six men for one month. It was launched with some difficulty. When it almost capsized, half of their water supplies were contaminated by salt water. Two of the men for the boat trip were knocked into the water, leaving them little chance of drying out before departure.

Shackleton also saw some humor in the situation when he observed that Frank Hurley was taking pictures of the event:

"Hurley, who had the eye of the professional photographer for 'incidents,' secured a picture of the upset, and I firmly believe that he would have liked the two unfortunate men to remain in the water until he could get a 'snap' at close quarters; but we hauled them out immediately, regardless of his feelings."

As it turned out, the two men exchanged some clothes with two of their remaining colleagues. Shackleton said he heard afterwards that "it was a full fortnight before the soaked garments were finally dried."

Shackleton then said goodbye to his men who were remaining on Elephant Island. He told his second in command Frank Wild that if they did not return, the party should take their boats and make for Deception Island to the west where there was a chance they might be picked up by whalers.

Then it was back out into the sea and the ice on an unbelievable 16-day journey which Shackleton, with some understatement described as a "tale...of supreme strife amid heaving waters." There has been no small boat voyage like it in history.

"We took two-hourly spells at the tiller. The men who were not on watch crawled into the sodden sleeping bags and tried to forget their troubles for a period; but there was no comfort in the boat...cramped in our narrow quarters and continually wet by the spray, we suffered severely from cold...we fought the seas and the winds and at the same time had a daily struggle to keep ourselves alive. At times we were in dire peril.

"Deep seemed the valleys when we lay between the reeling seas. High were the hills when we perched momentarily on the tops of giant combers. Nearly always there were gales. So small was our boat and so great were the seas that often our sail flapped idly in the calm between the crests of two waves. Then we would climb the next slope and catch the full fury of the gale where the wool-like whiteness of the breaking water surged around us."

Those who were not at the tiller or baling the incessant flood of sea spray, huddled under a canvas decking, moving on their hands and knees in darkness. They had been wearing the same clothes for seven months, most of the time saturated with seawater. Frostbite became a serious problem and the men developed large blisters on fingers and hands which became inflamed after the skin had burst.

Despite the continuing gales and storms, they were making about 70 miles a day and at one time sighted bits of ship wreckage "the remains probably of some unfortunate vessel that had failed to weather the strong gales south of Cape Horn."

"A thousand times it appeared as though the James Caird must be engulfed; but the boat lived," Shackleton said. "The sprays froze upon the boat and gave bows, sides and decking a heavy coat of mail...and in turns we crawled about the decking forward, chipping and picking at it with the available tools."

"Our thoughts did not embrace much more than the necessities of the hour. Every surge of the sea was an enemy to be watched and circumvented. We ate our scanty meals, treated our frostbites and hope for the improved conditions that the morrow might bring.

After six days the weather moderated and the crew were able to bask in unaccustomed sunshine which helped melt the ice and dry out their drenched clothing and gear. It also allowed the navigator to take sun sight and report that they were halfway to their goal.

On the eleventh day bad weather returned with a vengeance and the small boat was hit with a giant wave at midnight that Shackleton in all of his years at sea had not seen the like. "I shouted 'For God's sake, hold on! It's got us!'" Shackleton remembered later.

"Then came a moment of suspense that seemed drawn out into hours. White surged the foam of the breaking sea around us. We felt our boat lifted and flung forward like a cork in breaking surf. We were in a seething chaos of tortured water; but somehow the boat lived through it, half-full of water, sagging to the dead weight and shuddering under the blow. We baled with the energy of men fighting for life, flinging the water over the sides with every receptacle that came to your hands, and after ten minutes of uncertainty, we felt the boat renew her life beneath us."

Everything in the boat was drenched by the deluge and it took a great deal of baling before stability was restored.

But time was running out along with the water supply and the daily water allowance had to be cut to half a pint per man. The terror of intense thirst that occurred in the previous boat journey returned and made the next two days a nightmare.

"The salt spray that lashed our faces made our thirst grow quickly to a burning pain. I had to be very firm in refusing to allow any one to anticipate the morrow's allowance, which I was sometimes begged to do.... Our mouths were dry and our tongues were swollen...any thought of our peril from the waves was buried beneath the consciousness of our raging thirst."

Finally, on May 6, though a rift in the clouds they caught a glimpse of the black cliffs of the west coast of South Georgia, 14 days after leaving Elephant Island. It looked equally bleak, inhospitable and offered few places to land, with the mountains seeming to drop straight down into sea.

"It was a glad moment. Thirst-ridden, chilled and weak as we were, happiness irradiated us. The job was nearly done."

But the shoreline, with reefs and hidden rocks presented no easy landing place. The weary explorers were forced to spend the night back out at sea waiting for the seas to abate and permit them a safe landing.

"The hours passed slowly as we waited the dawn...our thirst was a torment and we could scarcely touch our food; the cold seemed to strike right through our weakened bodies."

Just when you think the men had experienced the most harrowing events there was more to come.

"At 5 a.m., the wind shifted to the northwest and quickly increased to one of the worst hurricanes any of us had ever experienced. A great cross-sea was running and the wind simply shrieked as it tore the tops off the waves and converted the whole seascape into a haze of driving spray. Down in the alleys, up to tossing heights, straining until her seams opened, swung our little boat, brave still but labouring heavily. We knew that the wind and set of the sea was driving us ashore, but we could do nothing."

Frank Worsley, the Captain of the Endurance who was serving as navigator, knew that they were being propelled towards the shore. "We peered constantly down wind through the murk of the storm, fearing that each hour would bring us nearer to the cliffs, and meanwhile we bailed or pumped continuously."

This went on for 10 hours and when they saw a towering black crag looming up against them they decide to retreat out to sea. It took them an hour to change their small sail and they then were struck by waves so hard that it opened up the bow planks, and water poured in through the leaks. The boat was filling up fast and only through superhuman bailing were they able to prevent a sinking.
"Soon we could see the coast distinctly, and our position had grown so bad that it seemed inevitable that we should be wrecked. With alarming rapidity we were being forced nearer and nearer the great cliffs and glacier fronts against which a dreadful sea was battering.

"I remember my thoughts at this time clearly. I said to myself: "What a pity. We have made this great boat journey and nobody will ever know. We might just as well have foundered immediately after leaving Elephant Island.'"

A sudden wind shift then helped them avoid being dashed on a small offshore island and then incredibly the gale moderated, permitting them to spend another night afloat in relative comfort before landing in King Haakon Sound in gathering darkness of the following day. They sought shelter in a small cave in the rocks.

Their struggle was not yet over.

They were still 150 miles from civilization around the rugged coast at the whaling station at Husvik and they realized that their small boat was not up to the task after the beating it had taken. In pulling it up through the surf to a rocky beach in the darkness, the rudder was lost. In addition a couple of the men were in a bad state and all were suffering from the effects of thirst and lack of hot food. For the previous 24 hours none of them were able to swallow food because of their thirst.

Perhaps no one other than Shackleton would have come up with an answer.

South Georgia was unmapped and had never been crossed. The overland route to the whaling station was 30 miles across a 10,000-foot mountain range, with glaciers, and precipitous cliffs. It was the middle of winter. The men had no mountaineering equipment. They were in a weakened physical state. And they knew that if they failed, it meant the death of all of their companions at King Haakon Sound and on Elephant Island.

Shackleton calculated that it was their only real chance. Nine days after their arrival, Shackleton, Worsley and Crean started out, at 3 a.m., with the moon shining brilliantly. They left the ailing carpenter McNeish and Vincent under the care of McCarty.

Even today, people familiar with the island can not believe that the three men crossed in 36 hours, most of it at night. At many stages in their journey they were near disaster, but fate seemed to be protecting them. For two nights and a day they hiked across glaciers, around mountains, down precipitous slopes and even through a waterfall.

In the most desperate gamble of their journey, the three men joined their bodies as a human bobsled and slid more than 2,000 feet down a mountain in the dark. It seemed their only way of avoiding freezing to death as the temperature began to drop. But it worked and they were uninjured.

The most poignant moment came on the second morning when at 6.30 a.m., they heard in the distance the steam-whistle at the whaling station, their first contact with the outside world in 530 days. From a height overlooking Stromness Bay they saw the ships of the whaling fleet and realized that their struggle was almost over.

The Shackleton party had rejoined civilization, albeit in its most southerly presence. More importantly, the rescue of the remaining explorers could be launched.

Worsley immediately took a whaleboat around the coast to King Haakon Sound and rescued the three men who had been left there. In a reversal of the Stromness meeting, the men there did not recognize their former comrade who was now clean-shaven and dressed in clean clothes.

Shackleton set to work to rescue the party on Elephant Island and then his Ross Sea party at McMurdo Sound, about whom there had been no word.

But getting back to Elephant Island was no easy matter. By this time the Weddell Sea was beginning to freeze over again and the winter night had set in. So less than 72 hours after arriving at the whaling station, Shackleton and his two companions had set out to Elephant Island.

It was to take four attempts and another three months because the pack ice had surrounded the island, preventing any ships from approaching.

The first try was in the whaler Southern Sky which ran into ice three days out of port and less than a week later, after getting to within 70 miles, had to return to South Georgia. Shortly afterward, Shackleton obtained a ship from the Chilean government but it suffered a similar fate and after a week was forced to return to port. He tried a third vessel, the schooner Emma, but after a month in heavy seas, couldn't get any closer than 100 miles.

It was now more than three months since Shackleton had left Elephant Island on the James Caird. Word that the British government was sending the old Scott expedition ship Discovery didn't cheer him up because that would mean another several weeks of waiting.

Each day was bringing his men closer to starvation and they might not last until the summer seas were clear of ice. He was forced to continue trying, despite storms and ice and the 17 hours of daily darkness.

Finally the Chilean government came through with another vessel, the tiny sea-going tug Yelcho and it sailed from Punta Arenas on August 25.

Remarkably on August 30, the 137th day of their maroonment on the island, the 22 castaways were still alive. The 22 men had been living for four months in a hut made out of an overturned boat only five feet high and 10 feet by 18 feet in length. As they had become accustomed, several of them climbed every day to a high point to look out over the sea. Most of them believed, however that the James Caird had not made it and they should start thinking of the fallback plan to sail their two remaining boats westward to Deception Island.

Around lunchtime one of the men noticed a small ship about a mile offshore. When he told the others who were inside under one of the lifeboats, there was a frenzied rush to signal the ship before it passed by. Fortunately, it wasn't a passing ship, it was the Yelcho.

They lit a beacon using sealskins and blubber but it was obvious that the vessel was coming into shore.

Photographer Frank Hurley had three exposures left and caught the dramatic scene.

As a boat was dropped for the shore, ringing cheers greeted its approach.

"Cheer followed cheer, the mountains cheered back," Hurley said later. "It was not only the sight of relief that warmed our hearts, for as the little boat drew near, we recognized our long-lost and heroic comrades, Shackleton, Crean and Worsley!"

"The leader stood up and hailed Frank Wild, 'Are you all well?'

'We are all well, Boss,' Wild called back. 'Thank God," replied the 'Boss.'

There now was a rush to get off the island because a blizzard was approaching.

"As we stood on deck watching the gathering mists veil familiar peaks, there was not a man amongst us who did not feel, mingled with his gratitude a touch of sadness," Hurley reflected. "We were gazing for the last time upon the land which, though bleak and inhospitable, had taken us to its bosom and been the means of our salvation."

Shackleton's work was no yet done. He had the welfare of his Ross Sea party to deal with. He took a ship to Valparaiso, thence to New Orleans and San Francisco and was not able to reach New Zealand until the beginning of December 1916. But on his arrival he found that relief arrangements for McMurdo Sound were well in hand. He also discovered that the Australian-British-New Zealand relief committee did not want him to go down to McMurdo.

There was a lengthy argument between Shackleton and those organizing the relief over the fact that the committee had ignored Aurora's captain Stenhouse and appointed an Australian captain. The Boss was eventually allowed to join, signing on as "Fourth Officer for a shilling a day."

The Aurora had been repaired and refitted and left on Dec. 20 for the Antarctic. They arrived in the Ross Sea Jan. 7, 1917. The ship stopped first at Cape Royds where Shackleton looked in his 1907 Nimrod expedition hut to see if there was any sign or word of his men.

Meanwhile along the coast at Cape Evans, Richards went out of the hut and then rushed back in and whispered to Joyce: "Joycy, the bloody ship!" The seven men hurriedly harnessed the remaining dogs, packed the sledge and moved off over the ice to the ship.

In his diary, Keith Jack wrote: "I am not ashamed to say that tears of joy forced their way into my eyes in spite of myself. To think that our long waiting was over at last and that relief had come--no more hunting for seals, no more racking blubber fumes, no more sledging, no more blizzards and frost-seared faces and hands. It was too good to be true."
However after a search was made around McMurdo Sound for Hayward and Mackintosh, the expedition left hurriedly. Left behind was two of the surviving dogs, still tied up behind the hut. Their remarkably well preserved remains were still there when this writer visited Cape Evans 40 years later.

Five years later Shackleton was heading back into the Antarctic on another expedition aboard the Quest. He had complained of feeling unwell around New Year's eve 1921 as the ship approached Husvik in South Georgia, which held bittersweet memories for him.

On Jan. 4, 1922, as Quest sailed down the coast of the island, Shackleton spent most of a day on the bridge of Quest with his Endurance companions Wild and Worsley, looking through binoculars at familiar landmarks from the island crossing. He was surrounded by crewmembers who listened to his tale of the boat journey from Elephant Island and the "hike" across South Georgia.

That night he wrote in his diary:

"At last after 16 days of turmoil and anxiety: on a peaceful, sunshiny day, we came to an anchor in Grytviken. How familiar the coast seemed as we passed down; we saw with full interest the places we struggled over after the boat journey. Now we must speed all we can, but the prospect is not too bright for labour is scarce. The old smell of dead whale permeates everything. It is a strange and curious place...A wonderful evening. In the darkening twilight, I saw a lone star hover, gem-like above the bay."

Two hours later, early in the morning of Jan. 5, he was dead, stricken with a heart attack in his cabin. He was one month short of his 48th birthday. At his widow's request, he was laid to rest on South Georgia on a slope with a spectacular view overlooking Grytviken harbour.

His men erected a plain wooden cross over the grave. Ten years later a more solid headstone was installed, with a short epitaph from Shackleton's favorite poet Browning:

"I hold that man should strive to the uttermost for his life's set prize."

Other words of Browning, which Shackleton chose as a memorial to the three fallen men of the Ross Sea party five years earlier, could equally have been chosen for his own memorial:

"Things done for gain are naught
But great things done endure
I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,
And made me creep past.
No! Let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold."

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