The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [30]
“The ice is opening up a bit, thank goodness,” Lees wrote on the 23rd. “Things look a little more hopeful.” After a dinner of salt beef, carrots, mashed potatoes, and Banbury tarts, the traditional Saturday night toast was drunk to “Sweethearts and Wives.” There was now as much as twenty-two hours of daylight each day.
On Sunday, October 24, the men watched the pressure move across the ice throughout the otherwise uneventful day. In the evening after dinner, Lees had just put “The Wearing of the Green” on the gramophone when a terrific crash shook the ship like an earthquake, causing her to shiver and list over about 8 degrees to starboard. The men finished listening to the tune, then went up on deck, according to Lees, “to see if anything unusual had occurred.” They found Shackleton on the ice with a grave face, examining the ship's sternpost. Caught between three separate pressure ridges across her bow and both sides, the Endurance had been twisted and bent by their onslaught. The sternpost had been almost wrenched out and was leaking dangerously.
“Early yesterday afternoon a crack formed along the snow filled trench, 2ft. broad, whose formation first started on Aug. 27th… This new crack was 8 ins. wide at 6.0 p.m.: at 9.0 it suddenly broadened another 2 ft…A big change however took place in the afternoon. Between half past two and half past three the innocent crack became a lead 10yds. broad.” ( Wordie, diary)
Immediately, Shackleton gave the order to raise steam for the engine room pumps. With water rising rapidly, the engineers, Rickinson and Kerr, desperately piled on fuel—coal, blubber, wood—racing to raise steam before the rising water could put the fires out. Within two hours they had the pump working, but they soon saw that it could not cope with the inrush of water. Hudson, Greenstreet, and Worsley disappeared into the bunkers, where the coal was stored, to clear the bilge pump, which had been jammed with ice all winter. Digging through the coal in the darkness, now underneath icy black water, they succeeded by early morning in clearing the pump with a blowtorch, and it was worked in shifts throughout the night.
The Endurance keeling over
“Suddenly the floe on the port side cracked and huge pieces of ice shot up from under the port bilge. Within a few seconds the ship heeled over until she had a list of thirty degrees to port.” ( Shackleton, South)
Port list
“At 4.45 p.m. slowly but surely the ship heeled right over to port: all sorts of weird noises came up from the engine room, and then with a rush all the unsecured dog kennels slid down to leeward.… She took a list of fully 30° in 5 seconds. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good—Hurley was immediately out on the floe photographing the ship from every possible position.” ( Wordie, diary)
On the floes, the men took turns away from the pumps to dig desperate, ineffectual trenches around their dying ship. Inside, the sound of running water and the clickety-clack of the pumps rose above the creaking of the ship's tortured timbers. Down in the engine room, Chippy McNish was working with fierce concentration, building a cofferdam across the stern to contain the leak. Crouched in the water that rose at times to his waist, he toiled unremittingly through the night. Meanwhile, all other hands were feverishly gathering together stores, clothing, sledging gear, and dog food in preparation for disembarking onto the ice. Worsley went through the ship's library, tearing maps, charts, even photographs of possible landfalls out of the books they would have to leave behind. Marston, Lees, and James worked in the after hold removing supplies while the sound of rushing water resounded beneath them and the ship's beams cracked and exploded like pistol shots overhead. On the following morning, Hurley visited McNish, who had labored without rest on the cofferdam, and found that the leak had been checked.
The port side of