The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [37]
“A human being's normal diet should contain the three main constituents of food, protein, fat and carbo-hydrates in the proportion of 1–1–21?2 respectively whatever the actual weights,” Lees recorded in his diary, in a typical entry. “I.e. the carbohydrates (farinaceous foods and sugar) should be more than double the other two.… As it is, our flour will only last out for another ten weeks at the most,” and so on, and on. The sight of Lees's nakedly anxious face, his incessant fussy inventory-taking and worried pronouncements of shortages must have driven Shackleton wild.
It did not help matters that Lees's observations were entirely correct. But Lees does not appear to have grasped the single salient fact of the crew's predicament— that by all rational calculations their situation was not merely desperate but impossible. Any strategy for survival, therefore, could not completely defer to reality; Shackleton's tactics always involved a dangerous gamble of morale against practical necessity. The last thing he needed was for the men to hear Lees's grim invocations of the laws of science and reason. Hence, a move to ostracize Lees, or undermine his credibility, could only have been welcomed by Shackleton.
On the other hand, certain practical measures could be taken, such as the preparation of the boats for their inevitable journey.
“I have been busy since Saturday finishing the sledge for the boat,” wrote McNish on November 16, “& now I am building the boat up 1 foot higher & decking her in half way making her fit to carry the whole party in case we have to make a longer journey than we intisipate at present.” The work was done with his only surviving tools—a saw, hammer, chisel, and adze. Less than two weeks later, he had finished all three boats, but was still tinkering.
“I have started to raise the Dudley Docker a strake higher at my leisure,” he wrote. “It is pass time for me & it makes the boat carry more & more seaworthy.” Everyone who stopped by was impressed by his work. In mid-December McNish was still tinkering with the boats. It was, as he said, “pass time.” The particular object of his care was the twenty-two-foot-long whaler, christened the James Caird after the expe-dition's principal benefactor. The boat had been commissioned by Worsley and built in a Thames dockyard according to his specifications.
“The Wreckage Lies Around in Dismal Confusion. Wild taking a last look at the ship before she sank.” (Shackleton, South) Probably taken on November 14, 1915, when Wild and Hurley walked from Ocean Camp to take a look at the wreck, only seven days before she sank for good.
“Her planking was Baltic pine, keel & timbers American elm & stem & sternpost English oak,” according to Worsley. One of McNish's refinements was to put chafing battens on her bow, as he said, “to keep the young ice from cutting through as she is built of white pine which wont last long in ice.” In lieu of the usual caulking materials—oakum and pitch—McNish had filled the seams with lamp wick and sealed them over with Marston's oil paints. The nails he used had been extracted from salvaged timber of the Endurance.
The landscape around them had subtly changed with the thaw. The convoluted ice fields had softened and were threaded with small, broken leads of water. The days were very long, with the sun rising at 3 a.m. and setting at 9 p.m. The crew passed the time by hunting seals amid the slush, playing cards, and arguing over articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In tent No. 5, Clark read aloud from Science from an Easy Chair. Singsongs were still held in the evenings. Marston resoled everyone's boots,