The Crew, the Plan, and the Ship
Summer, 1914: Roald Amundsen had reached the South Pole three years earlier, beating Robert Scott, who froze to death on the return trip. The world was just about to enter what Shackleton called "the red horror of war." Shackleton was ready to begin what he'd call the "White Warfare of the South."
For his assault on the "last" continent, Shackleton handpicked a crew of 26
sailors and scientists - picked them not just for their experience at sea or in
polar exploration but for their spirit. He apparently simply liked the looks of
Captain Frank Worsley, and he asked another applicant to sing for him. An 18-year-old
stowaway brought the crew total to 27, putting the full complement at 28 with
Shackleton.
Alexander: This isn't Hollywood casting
going out and getting sort of 28 ready-made heroes who are all going to go in
together on a mission. These were a shy scientist straight out of Cambridge, a
young stowaway, a handful of tough sailors who, tough as they were, had never
planned to spend any time on the ice of Antarctica.
Sir Ernest also brought sixty dogs aboard, sturdy mutts bred for strength and named for the English schools that contributed to the expedition.
Shackleton: We had worked out details
of distances, courses, stores required, and so forth. The dogs gave promise, after
training, of being able to cover fifteen to twenty miles a day with loaded sledges.
The trans-continental journey, at this rate, should be completed in one-hundred-twenty
days unless some unforeseen obstacle intervened. We longed keenly for the day
when we could begin this march, the last great adventure in the history of South
Polar exploration, but a knowledge of the obstacles that lay between us and our
starting-point served as a curb on impatience.
Most of the men of the expedition boarded the Endurance in London in early
August, 1914, and headed to Buenos Aires, where Shackleton joined the ship. The
Endurance left Argentina in late October and made for what Shackleton called the
"most southerly outpost of the British Empire," the mountainous and glacier-covered
island of South Georgia. A thousand miles east of the Falklands, South Georgia
was discovered by Captain Cook in 1774. It became a southern base for sealers
and whalers, and if it wasn't the most luxurious port of call in the world, it
was the natural point of embarkation for an expedition like Shackleton's.
Shackleton's trip was different in at least one important respect. Here's
how. Take a globe and turn it so you're looking down at the South Pole. See how
Antarctica is roughly circular, and right there, south of New Zealand, there's
a giant indentation. That's the Ross Sea, which is really a giant shelf of ice.
The other major expeditions to the South Pole - including Scott's, and Shackleton's,
and Amundsen's - had been through this inlet. But take your finger and move it
to the other side of Antarctica, the side that's south of South America. There's
another wider dent there. That's the Weddell Sea. Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic
Expedition would try for Vahsel Bay on the east side of the Weddell, and then
go in to the South Pole. Nobody had done that. Shackleton was to travel through
almost totally virgin land.
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There's a great photo taken in South Georgia just before the Endurance left for
Vahsel Bay. The day looks peaceful, the men in the foreground look like Alpine
day trippers, not men about to embark on the most remarkable survival journey
in history, and the Endurance waits sleek and black in the harbor. She was built
of wood to withstand ice, which was the special problem of polar navigating. Today
we're used to steel-hulled icebreakers, but in those days the steel wasn't strong
enough and the ice crushed the metal hulls like a car tire flattens a pop can.
Up to a point, wood can take it. In his account of the Endurance expedition, Alfred
Lansing writes of the ship's construction.
Alfred Lansing, Endurance, read by Eric
Ringham: The Endurance was built in Norway by the famous polar shipbuilding
firm which for years had been constructing vessels for whaling and sealing in
the Arctic and Antarctic. However, when the builders came to the Endurance, they
realized that she might well be the last of her kind - as indeed she was - and
the ship became the yard's pet project. Her construction was meticulously supervised
by a master wood shipbuilder, who insisted on employing men who were not only
skilled shipwrights, but had been to sea themselves in whaling and sealing ships.
They took a proprietary interest in the smallest details. They selected each timber
and plank individually with great care, and fitted each to the closest tolerance.
By the time she was launched on December 17, 1912, she was the strongest wooden
ship ever built in Norway - and probably anywhere else.
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