The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [7]
On the bow of the Endurance, December 9, 1914
“Misty weather obscuring distant view & at 4:15 run into the pack again.” ( Hurley, diary)
South
Leaving England on August 8, 1914, the Endurance headed south by way of Madeira, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires, where it spent nearly two weeks loading stores while adjustments were made to the crew. Shackleton himself did not join the expedition until it reached Buenos Aires in mid-October. All had not been easy on this first leg south. Short of fuel, the Endurance had burned the wood allocated for the magnetician's Antarctic hut, and under the command of the high-spirited Captain Frank Worsley, a New Zealander, discipline aboard ship had been markedly lax. Worsley himself mentions an altercation in Madeira, noting with some gusto, “Irving was cut with a sword on top of his head & Barr had had a large flower pot broken in his face.” Significantly, shortly after Shackleton met his ship, the names Irving and Barr, along with two others now forgotten, disappear from the ship's roll.
Also joining the Endurance in Buenos Aires, a few days before Shackleton, was James Francis Hurley, a gifted Australian photographer, and the man upon whom Shackleton's film syndicate had pinned its hopes. Hurley was born for this kind of venture. Independent and stubborn even as a boy, he ran away from home at the age of thirteen, finding work with the local ironworks, which in turn took him to the Sydney dockyards. While a teenager he bought his first camera, a 15-shilling Kodak box paid for with a shilling a week. Hurley's first professional work was taking pictures for postcards, but he had quickly moved on to more congenial assignments.
On October 26, the Endurance, painted black and loaded with fresh supplies as well as sixty-nine Canadian sledging dogs, set sail for the South Atlantic. The company had not been particularly reassured to learn that the unusually wet weather in Buenos Aires indicated that the ice had not broken in the Weddell Sea. Nor could the state of the funding, shaky as usual, have contributed to Shackleton's peace of mind. James Wordie, the expedition's geologist, had advanced personal monies to Shackleton for the purchase of fuel. And although the ship carried a wireless receiver, the expedition could not afford to purchase a transmitting plant. Nevertheless, the Endurance was bound at last for South Georgia, east of the Falklands, her final port of call.
Like most expeditions of this kind, the ship carried a mixed company of officers and scientists, as well as seamen. In Scott's expeditions, the two groups had been strictly segregated in naval fashion, but under Shackleton less attention was paid to niceties of class.
“So I find we have got to work!” wrote marine captain Thomas Orde-Lees in his diary. “The crew of the ship is insufficient for her needs as a sailing ship & so whenever she is under sail & a sail requires altering in any way we—the scientists, six of us—have to pull on the ropes.… Rope pulling makes the hands sore & the ropes are exceedingly dirty & tarry but it is good exercise.”
Lees was Shackleton's ski expert, and was also in charge of the aero-propellered motor sledges that were destined not to work. His diary, the most chatty and opinionated of those kept by expedition members, is also one of the most informative. Lees was a public-school man, educated at Marlborough. No one found the menial tasks more distasteful, and yet even he could discern their purpose.
T. Orde-Lees
Seconded from the Royal Marines, where he was a physical training instructor, Captain Orde-Lees had served in China before joining the Endurance. He had narrowly missed being chosen to join Scott's second expedition.