The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [29]
“There were times when we thought it was not possible the ship would stand it,” wrote McNish. He had watched the three-foot-square iron plates bulge up one and a half inches. But the pressure passed, and a week later McNish was busy building a wheelhouse that would protect the steersman from the elements, once they were under way again. Meanwhile, Shackleton had privately calculated that they were 250 miles away from the nearest known land, and more than 500 from the nearest outpost of civilization.
The floe cracking up, 29
“My Birthday & I sincerely hope to spend my next one at Home there is a fine breeze a Southerly wind at present & there is a crack in the floe about 10 yards ahead of the ship if the wind holds in this direction for a while it will open the ice up.” (McNish, diary)
September unfolded without further crises, although the roar of distant pressure was seldom absent, and the floes around the ship were in constant movement. The men played football on the shifting floes, exercised the dogs, and hunted for seals, which were returning with the promise of spring. A light snowfall one night left the ship shimmering as if tinselled, and the ice sparkling as though covered with diamonds.
On the afternoon of September 20, the most severe bout of pressure encountered so far shook the Endurance from mast to keel, so that it seemed her sides would have to collapse. But an hour later, the pressure subsided.
It was October 1915. On the third day of the month, heavy pressure broke ten yards from the ship. The Endurance was by now as frozen onto the blocks of ice beneath her, in Lees's words, “as any rock in a glacier.” During a brief opening of the ice around the ship, the men had gazed down into the open water by her side and seen, spotlit by the penetrating sun, great azure-blue conglomerates of ice lying as much as forty feet below the surface. Frost smoke rose from out of the open leads, red tinged at sunrise so that the ice seemed at times to be aflame.
High temperatures—up to 29°— on the 10th produced a general, mushy thaw. The men started packing up the Ritz, and on the 13th returned to their original quarters. The following night, the floe on which the Endurance was lodged suddenly split; the ice slithered out from under the ship, and she floated on an even keel, in clear water for the first time in nine months. Impelled by the gale that had arisen, she swung in the narrow lead, and actually drove 100 yards ahead. Then the ice closed on her, and she was fast again.
An hour later
Over the following days, while the pack was still loose, Shackleton had the sails set, and an effort was made to force the ship ahead, but with no success. Shortly after tea on the 16th, after several loud bumps against her sides, the Endurance began to rise above the ice, squeezed up between the floes—then was abruptly thrown on her port side, listing some 30 degrees. Kennels, dogs, sledges, stores were all thrown across the deck into a tangled, howling heap. Then, around nine in the evening, the pressure subsided, and the ship returned to an even keel.
On the 19th, Shackleton had the boilers filled and fires banked in readiness, and ice debris was cleared from around the rudder and the ship. McNish was commissioned to build a small punt, with a view to navigating the leads and channels. Light snow fell off and on throughout the day, and in the evening a killer whale appeared in the tiny pool around the ship, his huge body seen plainly through the calm, clear water as he cruised, leisurely, up and down beside the stricken ship.
In the following days, the roar of pressure was continually in the men's ears, likened, by James, to the sound of London traffic when one is sitting quietly in a park. Sea watches were resumed, while the ice floes ground around the ship. The Endurance was now shaken and beaten constantly, but the men had become so accustomed to the disruptions that they were indifferent to all but the most violent upheavals.
“Personally,” wrote Worsley, “I've got tired of alarm against which