The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [14]
“The bay…would have made an excellent landing-place,” Shackleton wrote, noting its “natural quay” of flat ice and its unusual configuration, which sheltered it from all but northerly winds. “I named the place Glacier Bay,” he continued, “and had reason later to remember it with regret.”
The Endurance steamed along the glacier front through the night, and by early morning had arrived at another glacial overflow, deeply crevassed, its frozen torrent spilling over a cliff face that rose as high as 350 feet. At 8:30 a.m., the ship's splendid run of 124 miles was brought to a halt by dense pack ice, partly held in place, as Shackleton surmised, by the strikingly large bergs in the vicinity. The ship drew up close to a small berg distinguished by well-defined bands of embedded matter, which expedition geologist James Wordie identified as “biotite granite.” Later in the day, an easterly wind blew up, eventually increasing to gale force. While the leeward pack began to break and disperse under its pressure, the Endurance lay to behind a convenient berg. It was tedious to be held up after such a satisfying run. Lees, for one, whiled away the time with a characteristic tidying up of stores in the hold.
The gale continued throughout the following day. The Endurance, unanchored, pitched about in the rough sea, steaming around and around in small circles all the while. A few seals rode the waves past her, their heads high above the water. From his bunk, Hurley looked up from his book to glance at the huge white bergs and lowering clouds through a porthole window.
On January 18, the gale had abated sufficiently to allow the Endurance to raise sail in the morning and take advantage of a long lead that had opened at the foot of the glacier front. Pack ice was encountered, however, in the afternoon. Cautiously, the Endurance was nosed through the thick brash into open water, where she enjoyed a twenty-four-mile run before heading into more heavy brash and large, loose floes.
“The character of the pack has again changed,” Worsley noted. “The floes are very thick but are composed of a greater proportion of snow; tho' they are broken up slightly into large floes the brash between is so thick & heavy that we cannot South push thro' except with a very great expenditure of power.… We therefore prefer to lie to for a while to see if the pack opens up at all when this NE wind clears.”
Fighting seasickness brought on by the rough sea, Lees had endured his turn at the wheel, where it was “snowing and blowing and generally horrid.” In the afternoon he spent his spare time readying the stores for landing, sorting them into “ship” and “shore” piles. Less industrious members of the expedition were bored by the delay.
“It is gratifying to feel we are only 80 miles from our intended base, Vahsel Bucht,” Hurley wrote, referring to it by its German name. “We are all keen to reach it as the monotony is telling on some of us.”
The weather on the following morning was good, but the ice conditions had worsened, the pack having closed in around the ship during the night. The scientists dutifully took specimens, but everyone's attention was on the ice. The gale had packed it so tightly against the continental shelf that no water at all could now be sighted from the crow's nest. Still, the ship's company turned in that night hoping that a change in the wind would open the pack and allow them to continue on their way. The Endurance was