The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [11]
“The carpenter is the only man I am not dead certain of,” Shackleton had written to his friend and agent, Ernest Perris, shortly before leaving South Georgia. McNish was perhaps the most mysterious member of the expedition. He claimed, untruthfully, to have sailed south with William Bruce's Scottish expedition in 1902, but he was in any case much travelled. For reasons that remain obscure, Shackleton and his shipmates believed him to be in his fifties, although his actual age was forty. Though not particularly liked, he was universally respected, not only as a brilliant shipwright but also as an experienced sailor in the Royal Naval Reserve.
The deck of the Endurance on the outward journey
“Upon getting along side, I saw the name on her stern, Endurance, London. Upon closer view she did not look so neat and trim, as the deck was littered up with boxes and crates of all shapes and sizes and at least a thousand dogs.” (Bakewell, autobiography)
“Chips was neither sweet-tempered nor tolerant,” a shipmate from another expedition recalled. “And his Scots voice could rasp like frayed wire cable.” McNish had brought along his cat, the irrepressible Mrs. Chippy, a tabby described as “full of character” by several members of the expedition, and whose chief delight was taking teasing shortcuts across the kennel roofs of the half-wild sledging dogs, whom he (for Mrs. Chippy was belatedly discovered to be a male) cannily perceived to be securely chained to their kennels.
Twenty-seven in all, not including Shackle-ton, the men formed a relatively small team to wage the battle south through the thousand miles of ice-strewn ocean that lay between them and their planned destination. Each must have carefully scrutinized his fellows' experience and character. Nor was Shackleton himself exempt from such assessment.
“[A] queer bird, a man of moods, & I dont know whether I like him or not,” First Officer Greenstreet wrote to his father. Shackleton had arrived in Buenos Aires somewhat under the weather and does not seem to have been in top form while in South Georgia. Accompanying him on a short hike, Wordie observed that he “was troubled by a bad cough, and seemed pretty tired with the walk.” Shackleton still had much to worry about: The worst ice conditions in living memory showed no sign of improving and some of the whalers suggested that he should defer setting out until the next season. But for Shackleton postponement of the expedition would be tantamount to relinquishing it forever. Behind him lay the war and many financial loose ends.
Clark in the biological lab
His shipmates played a practical joke on him by putting spaghetti in one of his specimen jars.
The Endurance steamed out of Grytviken's Cumberland Bay on the morning of December 5, 1914. She was freshly provisioned—her cargo now included two live pigs for food—and her crew was rested and eager for the next stage of the journey. The mountains of South Georgia remained in sight until the evening, as the Endurance headed south by southeast. As early as the next day the ship passed numerous icebergs, and by December 7 she had encountered the outskirts of pack ice.
The Weddell Sea is uniquely configured for maximum hazard to ships. It is contained within three belts of land—the string of South Sandwich Islands to the east, the Antarctic continent proper, and the long finger of the Palmer Peninsula to the west. A prevailing current drives the roughly circular sea in a slow clockwise motion. Sea ice, which can form here during any season, is thus never dispersed into the warmer northern waters, but churned in an interminable semicircle, eventually packed by the westward drift against the Palmer Peninsula.
For the next six weeks the Endurance worked its way cautiously south, dodging and weaving around loose floes and pack and sometimes smashing her way through them. Shackleton hoped that by keeping outside the pack's eastern edge, he could obliquely work his way down towards Vahsel Bay. The tactic only worked for so long, and soon he had