Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: List 4

Without doubt, Shackleton’s men were well versed in stories about the Franklin voyage and well aware of the dangers that faced them as they manhauled two of the boats over the rotting ice toward a very uncertain goal.

But Worsley knew that cramming the whole crew into the James Caird and the Dudley Docker once they reached the open ocean would be difficult, if not impossible: the two boats would ride low and heavy in the water, and maneuvering them would take all their skill.

Worsley, angry and exasperated, was in a standoff with a mulish, silent McNeish.

And some of the university men, who were unused to such a hard life, were so demoralized by the events of the last months that they seemed ready to break down.

As the sailors’ discontent subsided, Shackleton took McNeish aside and exchanged a few quiet words with him, perhaps reminding him that execution was a legal punishment for mutiny.

On December 31, 1915, Shackleton wrote in his diary: “The last day of the old year: May the new one bring us good fortune, a safe deliverance from this anxious time, and all good things to those we love so far away.”

They had fewer provisions and less equipment with them.

According to Hurley, “Ocean Camp presented a forlorn appearance, resembling a deserted Alaskan mining village that had been ransacked by bandits.”

The monotony was punctuated by meals; between meals, they waited for the next.

The Boss knew how dire their plight was. Almost every night, he shouted himself awake from nightmares in which he pictured one disaster or emergency after another.

Would he himself be incapacitated?

In spite of his anxiety, he tried to keep up the appearance of calm in order to maintain morale. Although tortured by worry, he remained outwardly unperturbed.

“He was always cheerful, and gave everyone confidence that we would get out,” said Bakewell, oblivious of the Boss’s unease.

By the end of ten weeks, he had won imaginary tickets to all the London theaters, boxes of linen handkerchiefs, silk umbrellas, a mirror, and a coveted collector’s copy of Paradise Regained from Hurley, while Hurley had won from Shackleton a shaving mirror, several top hats, enough walking sticks to equip a regiment, several sets of cuff links, and a library of books, as well as dinner at Claridge’s Hotel in London and a box at the opera.

The scent of burning wood reminded everyone of land so far away, and sunk many of the men into nostalgia and fresh pangs of homesickness.

For centuries, mapmakers, astronomers, and navigators have marked the globe with imaginary lines of latitude, which are parallel to the equator (and are often called parallels), and lines of longitude (also called meridians), great circles that all run through the North and South poles. The meridians are perpendicular to the parallels on the surface of the globe; that is, they meet at right angles, or ninety degrees.

As long as he continues to wind the second clock, and as long as it is accurate, he will know the time difference between his present position and his starting point. He can then convert the difference in time to a distance in degrees. This makes accurate clocks indispensable on ocean voyages, but it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that accurate clocks became a reality.

The mechanism of Harrison's chronometer could withstand the turbulent motion of a ship at sea, defy changes of temperature, and resist the corrosion of salt water and air.

On March 23, they spied land to the west, probably one of the Danger Islands at the entrance to Erebus and Terror Gulf—a scant fifty-seven miles away.

“If the ice opens we could land in a day,” Hurley lamented in his diary.

As March continued, the weather turned to rain and then to snow, and the men crawled into their damp sleeping bags in complete, wretched misery.

And yet, in spite of the new bounty of food, it was time for the last dogs to go.

Later, as the men feasted on the dogs, Worsley commented that the piece he was eating had a better flavor than the leopard seal, and Hurley found it “exquisitely tender and flavorous.”

As Hurley later wrote, “A casual observer might think the Explorer a frozen-hearted individual, especially if he noticed the mouths watering when tears ought to be expected. Hunger brings us all to the level of other species, and our saying that ‘sledge dogs are born for work & bred for food’ is but the rationale of experience.”

Skuas kept up a screeching clamor, and penguins on the move honked and brayed from the ice for miles around.

Those who weren’t rowing ducked their heads down against the spray and the bird droppings, and kept a wary eye out for killer whales.

The riptide was roaring after them, threatening to engulf the three puny boats with a deluge of ice and slush.

“An intangible feeling of uneasiness made me leave my tent about 11 P.M.,” Shackleton wrote.

The Boss leaned over to grab the sodden bag and heaved it—and Holness—out of the freezing water and onto the ice, just as the two edges of the floe crashed back together.

They can reach 100 feet in height from the bottom of the trough to the crest, and the distance from one wave to the next can measure a mile.

When Sir Francis Drake first navigated through this perilous strait in 1578, it took him sixteen days and cost him four of his ships.

Giant “rogue waves” can overtake and reinforce each other, and often come in groups of three.

The tiny outcroppings of rocks and lonesome islets in the extreme south are littered with the wreckage of dead ships.

Shackleton, Wild, and Worsley kept a lookout from the highest point on their berg, a twenty-foot-tall knoll.

He checked his figures, frowning, and checked them again. He looked up, crestfallen.

Shackleton suggested that all hands eat as much as they could in compensation, but few of them could manage to choke down uncooked seal meat or dry sugar cubes, and some were too seasick even to try.

Of the three boats, the Stancomb Wills was in the worst fix. It was the smallest, and the least seaworthy. Hudson, who had the tiller, was on the point of breaking.

The temperature dropped and the wind kept up, sluicing water over their bows.

The men took turns hacking ice off the thwarts and bows, and bailing to keep the small boats from foundering.

Shingle scraped beneath the bow as the boat ground up onto the shore.