Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance Expedition -- Blog 3

     Early morning, Monday 21 July 1958 we picked up Cape Horn on our radar scopes.  By 0930 we could discern the Horn itself in a dark lowering sky.  It was late winter in the infamous Drake Passage, but the sea was calm.  There was no sign of the notorious hundred and ten foot Cape Horn Rollers which we expected as we sailed into the teeth of the roughest body of water in the world.  Here the tips of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula constricted the gigantic whorl of water around the bottom of the world, called the West Wind Drift.  This venturi forced the water to speed up.  We carried special gear to measure hull stress on the USS Ranger, CVA61, then the newest and largest aircraft carrier in the world.  We sailed around for a couple of days looking for a storm, but schedules were tight and we moved on into the Pacific Ocean, following the Humboldt Current northward along the coast of South America.

                             High Latitude, Open Oceans of the Southern
                             Hemisphere Contribute to the Extreme Cold
                             and Rough Waters of the Antarctic

     Over forty years later, but in the Antarctic summer, I sailed across Drake's Passage again.  This time it was Drake's Shake rather than Drake's Lake.  The expedition cruise to the Antarctic was exhilarating.  I was increasingly a fan of Sir Ernest Shackleton.  I applied to Marine Expeditions of Toronto for a lecturer/staff position on future expeditions.  Six months later I was offered a position not in a two week Antarctic Run, but a seven week repositioning cruise through the "Remote Islands of the South Atlantic."  I scurried to fill some of the gaps in my knowledge of this area. 
     We picked up our leased Russian ship and crew at Gibraltar, along with fifty adventurers.  We sailed to places which I had previously only dreamed of -- Madeira, Tenerife, Ascension Island, St. Helena, Cape Verde Republic, Tristan de Cuhna, South Georgia and the Falklands before putting-in at Ushaia at the tip of South America.  South Georgia was the crowning point of my trip.

               King Penguins at the Grytviken Ghost Town, South Georgia

     At the height of British exploration of the Antarctic it was the major staging area for Polar expeditions.  It was also leased to Norwegian whaling operations.  Meanwhile, on December 14, 1911 the Norwegian expedition of Roald Amundsen became the first humans to set foot at the South Pole.  The ill-fated British Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott got there January 17, 1912 only to find Amundsen's tent with the Norwegian flag flying from its peak.  Even worse, not one of Scott's team managed to survive the homeward trip to McMurdo.  Shackleton's dreams of Polar glory seem to shatter with the strange combination of events.
     In apparent desperation he launched an expedition to attempt the first Trans-
Antarctica crossing.  He sent one team to lay supply depots from McMurdo on the Ross Sea to the Pole.  He planned to lead the main group which would attempt to penetrate the Weddell Sea Ice Pack to Vahsel Bay at the west end of the Filchner Ice Shelf, then cross more than 800 miles (as a crow flies) of totally unknown territory to the Pole.  At least half of this distance would be on the harsh Antarctic Plateau where elevations in the 9,000 foot plus range would exacerbate the extremes of cold and wind.
     On December 7, 1914, the good ship "Endurance" which carried Shackleton's expedition of 27 men, 60 dogs and 2 pigs entered the ice pack.  The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition had been warned by the Norwegian whalers at South Georgia that the Weddell Sea ice was much heavier than usual, but Shackleton persevered.  By January 25, 1915 the Endurance was trapped in the ice more than 100 miles from Vahsel Bay.  The drift of the pack was carrying them further and further away.  They were in total darkness from May 8 until July 26.  On October 18 the Endurance keeled over, listing 30 degrees to port.  Six days later she sprung a leak.  The following day, after 281 days incommunicado in the ice, the order to "abandon ship" was given.  She sank on November 21 after drifting 513 miles.  There would be no sight of land for 497 days.  They man-hauled three whale boats over the jagged ice to the north end of the pack, then rowed them over open seas reaching Elephant Island April 15, 1916, their first time on land since December 14, 1914.

                          Shackleton's Endurance Expedition,  1914-1916

     Unfortunately Elephant Island was nowhere.  Drifting ice made it dangerous to ships.  The better whaling grounds lay on the other side of the Antarctic Peninsula.  The chance of a passing ship was next to nil.  (to be continued in the next blog)