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Hole in Ice

The 22 men left behind after the departure of the Caird still had no shelter. A “cave” was dug in the snow slope, but was unsatisfactory: “We have already excavated a fair sized chamber big enough for eight men to sleep in, but it is much too wet for anyone to try the experiment yet.” ( Lees, diary)

“We pray that the Caird may reach South Georgia safely and bring relief without delay,” wrote Hurley, still one of the toughest and most resilient members of the group. “Life here without a hut & equipment is almost beyond endurance.” It was the last day of April; the Caird had been gone only six days.

Marston and Greenstreet suggested building a shelter using the only materials at hand: the two overturned boats. This meant taking them permanently out of commission; the stores at Cape Valentine would now be retrieved only if a second boat journey was made in the spring, in the event of the failure of the James Caird. Such an eventuality was unthinkable, and the need for shelter was immediate.

“Owing to the lack of carbohydrates in our diet we are all terribly weak,” wrote Lees, “and this part of the work was exceedingly laborious & took us more than twice as long as it would have done had we been in normal health.” Eventually, two walls standing four feet in height, nineteen feet apart were erected between two large boulders that acted as additional windbreaks. The Stancomb Wills and Dudley Docker were lain on top of the walls and weighed down with loose rocks. Odd pieces of salvaged timber were placed like rafters on top of the boats and then the whole construction was overspread with one of the large tents. More tent material was cut for outer walls, and the sack mouth entrance from one of the domed tents was attached as a doorway.

When the “Snuggery” was completed, Wild officiated over the distribution of berths. Ten men, including all the sailors, took upper “bunks” on the thwarts of the boats, while the rest were carefully arranged along the ground. The hut floor had been cleared as well as possible, but under the various remnants of ground cloths and tents there still lay ice and frozen guano. During the first night, a screaming blizzard revealed the hut's every weakness. The men had gone to bed in the weary hope that they had at last secured shelter, but they awoke to find themselves under several inches of drift.

“And then what a miserable getting up,” wrote Macklin. “Everything deeply snowed over, footgear frozen so stiff that we could only put it on by degrees, not a dry or warm pair of gloves amongst us. I think I spent this morning the most unhappy hour of my life—all attempts seemed so hopeless, and Fate seemed absolutely determined to thwart us. Men sat and cursed, not loudly but with an intenseness that shewed their hatred of this island on which we had sought shelter.”

But Wild persisted, and gradually the cracks through which snow and wind infiltrated were discovered and assiduously caulked with the remains of an old Jaeger woolen sleeping bag. Later, Hurley brought in a small blubber stove, which was placed in the triangle between the sterns of the two boats.

In front of hut on Elephant Island

Frank Hurley rests against the “Snuggery.” “[The hut] is a decided improvement & a step in the direction of making life more endurable under such severe climatic conditions. The entire party of 22 sleep in this small space snugly though sardiniously.” ( Hurley, diary)

“From now on we shall always be black with smoke, but we hope, at least dry,” wrote Wordie. Additional refinements, made through trial and error, increased the general comfort. A chimney constructed by Kerr from the lining of a biscuit tin removed much of the smoke, while Marston and Hurley devised blubber lamps from sardine tins, capable of shedding light for a few feet around. Hurley and Greenstreet supervised the construction of a galley, built of a six-foot-high roughly circular wall of stones, covered