The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [70]
Incredulous, Shackleton cabled both the Admiralty and his friend and agent Ernest Perris seeking clarification.
“Impossible to reply to your question except to say unsympathetic attitude to your material welfare,” Perris replied, “and customary attitude of Navy to Mercantile Marine which it seems resulted from desire of Admiralty to boom its own relief open-handed and open-hearted support; only in England did the concern to put him South Georgia Island in his place exceed that for the plight of his men. Galvanized into frenetic action by this response, Shackleton begged the Chilean government to come forward once again. Knowing perhaps that honor as well as life was now at stake, they lent him the Yelcho, a small, steel-built tug steamer entirely unsuitable for the purpose, and on August 25, Shackleton, Crean, and Worsley set out with a Chilean crew for Elephant Island.
In a moment of introspective summing up, Shackleton at the end of his account of crossing South Georgia had written:
When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Ele phant Island from our landing-place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, “Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.” Crean confessed to the same idea.
Now that they were back in the world of men, this guiding presence seemed to have fled; and the grace and strength that had brought them so far would count for nothing if, when they eventually arrived, they found even one man dead on Elephant Island.
Hut on Elephant Island
Marston and Greenstreet suggested that the two remaining boats, the Stancomb Wills and the Dudley Docker, be converted into a hut. The boats were overturned on stone walls standing some four feet high, and in this shelter the 22 men lived for the next four months. The remains of the tents were used for the windbreaking “skirt” around the walls.
Elephant Island
“We gave them three hearty cheers & watched the boat getting smaller & smaller in the distance,” wrote Wild, on the departure of the James Caird. “Then seeing some of the party in tears I immediately set them all to work. My own heart was very full. I heard one of the few pessimists remark, ‘that's the last of them' & I almost knocked him down with a rock, but satisfied myself by addressing a few remarks to him in real lower deck language.”
The Caird had left at 12:30 p.m., and at 4:00 p.m., Wild climbed a rocky lookout from where, through binoculars, he caught the boat just before she vanished into the pack.
All hands had gotten completely or partially soaked in the process of preparing and loading the Caird, and after a hot lunch, everyone wrung out his sleeping bag as well as he could and went to bed for the rest of the day.
On the following morning the bay was filled with pack ice—the Caird had not left a day too soon. After breakfast, Wild addressed the entire company, “concisely yet pertinently relative to future attitudes,” according to Hurley's approving report. Although Shackleton had gone, Wild made it clear that there was still a boss in charge. The men were put to work skinning penguins and carving out shelters in the snow. High hopes had been pinned on these snow “caves,” before the men discovered that their body heat raised the temperature inside to the melting point, making things wetter than ever.
The land at their disposal was a narrow, rocky spit that jutted out from the pre cipitous mainland by some 600 to 700 feet. Standing about 9 feet above high tide, it was little more than 100 feet wide. A glacier to the west frequently calved enormous chunks