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From my first voyage with my brother in Akaroa, New Zealand,
I knew I would spend my life on the ocean.
Growing up as a colonial boy
the freedom I enjoyed instilled in me a love of adventure that was to shape my destiny.
I am fortunate to have lived in a golden age of exploration
and doubly blessed to have played a part in one of the greatest expeditions of that time.
It’s been said that early explorers were perhaps the astronauts of their day.
And for people like captain Frank Worsley,
his whole life was adventure
and Antarctica was the last frontier.
We set out to explore a continent but we became trapped by the ice.
In today’s standards it’s like being on a space station, cut loose.
And they thought, you know, there’s just no way of salvation.
They had stepped off the planet.
For nearly two years, we struggled to find the courage to survive in one of the cruellest places on earth.
It’s a position that explorers often get into.
Some how they have to find a reason for existence and a reason for carrying on.
Through out our journey the hardships we suffered taught us,
it takes more strength to live than to die.
Lord and Lady Heyward,
Ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured to have been asked to speak with you
this evening.
My story begins in London.
It was 1914.
I had been a sailor all my life and had Captained many ships.
One night I dreamt I was navigating between icebergs down a city street.
The dream was extremely vivid
I recognized I was in Burlington Street.
When I awoke I went there immediately and
stumbled upon the headquarters of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
where I met the great Explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton
who was hiring men to join him.
Shackleton had been twice to Antarctica before.
He’d got within a whisker of the south pole in 1909.
When he came back, he was knighted.
He was a big celebrity.
Hugely ambitious.
Huge ego.
A great buccaneering adventurer.
When Shackleton hired men,
he did it completely with a gut instinct.
Worsley was so full of exuberance and enthusiasm for things.
And I think Shackleton would recognise that
as something that would give a phenomenal amount of lift to an expedition.
And he had a very good background as a captain.
He had had by then 25 years experience at sea.
He had sailed most of the major oceans
Shackleton hired Frank Worsley then and there as the captain of the ship.
Sir Ernest’s plan was to set off from Argentina,
collect supplies from a whaling station on South Georgia,
and then sail on to the Antarctic coast.
From there a team of six men
would attempt to be the first to traverse Antarctica by way of the pole.
Another ship would land on the Ross Sea side of the continent
leaving provisions for the second half of the trek.
The early 20th century, Antarctica was the next great frontier.
It was just a huge unknown land just waiting to be explored.
Amundsen had got to the south pole in 1911.
Scott had got there in 1912 and died.
So crossing the Antarctic was the last great challenge in the last place on earth.
Every time I give this talk I’m struck by the irony
that while I’ve commanded many ships
I seem destined to be remembered for the one I lost.
Her name was Endurance.
And I don’t believe I shall ever sail a pluckier vessel.
On October 26th, 1914 we set off from Buenos Aires.
On board was Australian photographer and filmmaker Frank Hurley.
Whose wonderful images both still and moving
make it possible for me to share my story with you.
Worsley was a good lecturer.
He went on tours.
The popular press loved him.
He was a natural on the circuit.
He had an agent.
Shackleton was there at the top.
Untouchable. Um, the great man.
But he didn’t have the common touch that Frank Worsley had.
And this was a good story.
Shackleton knew that films would be absolutely key
to selling the adventure that he was planning.
It was just as it is these days.
Sponsorship was key to being able to put anything together.
And having a film, especially in those days when film was fairly new –
was extremely important.
Shackleton was a very early version of today’s PR man.
He made sure that when you signed up for the expedition,
you signed over the rights to your diaries and journals.
He made sure that it was always the Shackleton expedition.
Like many great leaders,
Shackleton seems to have had an ability
to gather around him a group of people who provided
all the talents that he might not necessarily have had himself.
And always with himself,
Shackleton is the reflection of all those talents.
The focus of attention.
Of the 5000 men who applied,
Shackleton hired 26 to crew the expedition.
There was also one stowaway,
two pigs and 69 Canadian sled dogs.
Even a hardened man like first officer Frank Wild
enjoyed the company of our four legged shipmates.
It took eleven days to sail
from Buenos Aires to a Norwegian whaling station on South Georgia.
It was a harsh place where the smell of blood and blubber permeated the air.
The two tons of whale meat we purchased
would help sustain both man and dog in the months to come.
It was early summer but much colder than usual.
When they got to South Georgia.
The Norwegians warned Shackleton that the ice conditions
to the south were worse than they’ve ever seen.
And they advised him strongly not to go.
Despite the whaler’s advice
a determined Sir Ernest gave the order to set sail on December 5, 1914.
At first it seemed as though the whalers’ warnings had been unfounded.
For three days the conditions were favourable and we made good progress.
Then, a thousand miles further North than expected we encountered the enemy…
pack ice.
By any rational analysis the decision
to push on into the Weddell Sea was ludicrous.
All the signs were against it.
The Norwegian whalers on South Georgia told them before they set off.
It’s crazy. You’re not going to get through.
Worsley on several occasions spoke to Shackleton about the conditions of the ice
and that he thought that it wasn’t going to get any better.
But Shackleton elected to continue.
You have to put into context where Shackleton was coming from.
He was desperate to get away.
He was openly having an affair with an American actress
and so life at home can’t have been too rosy.
And his brother,
Frank Shackleton was implicated in a fraud
so the shit was hitting the fan as far as Shackleton was concerned at home.
And also it would have been a crushing blow to his ego to turn around and go back.
And so against all common sense,
he somehow persuaded his captain Worsley to push on regardless into the ice.
Hurley captured our progress from all manner of precarious perches.
More than once he used colourful Australian language
to accuse me of trying to throw him into the frozen sea.
We were travelling through a city of ice.
Some of the bergs were miles wide,
and loomed like white castles.
Negotiating a route through pack was taking its toll
and we began to fall well behind schedule.
The continental crossing could only be achieved in the Antarctic summer.
But rather than making landfall at the first opportunity
the Boss wanted to push as far South as he could to shorten the trek.
Then just 60 miles from our destination progress halted altogether.
Shackleton didn’t take the opportunity of going to a relatively close point on the coast that they could see.
Ah, he kept going.
And Frank Worsley of course, he didn’t have much say in the matter
in terms of the ambitious nature of Shackleton’s dream to cross the continent. And Frank Worsley of course, he didn’t have much say in the matter
in terms of the ambitious nature of Shackleton’s dream to cross the continent.
So he was driven forward
and that sealed the fate of the Endurance.
Worsley was the captain of the ship. But Shackleton was the leader of the expedition
and what the boss said, the boss got.
The ice closed in around the Endurance.
It was the height of summer
but we could see no water in any direction.
Worsley never ever criticises Shackleton for basically getting them into this terrible predicament.
He seemed to have had a willingness to present things in a positive light.
I could not dwell on the gravity of our situation.
My logbook entry reads simply,
“We therefore lie to for awhile,
to see if the Pack will open at all
or when this North Easterly wind ceases.”
…but it did not open.
We were tantalisingly close to our destination
but as our storekeeper put it,
we were stuck “like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar”.
They thought it was just a temporary hold up.
May be having to winter over it meant that expedition was going to put, be well behind time.
But Shackleton of course never actually admitted just how serious the situation was.
A month later open water was spotted in the distance
and a Herculean effort was made to free the ship.
For two days we dug and chipped away at the ice
in the hope of reaching the lane of water before it closed.
I then drove into the pack with full engines.
But the ice was too thick to penetrate and
and we were forced to abandon this last desperate bid for freedom.
Finally the ice just completely glued around them and
really it’s a case of waiting for the next year,
summer to come and the ice to move north
and break up and then release the tension in the pack.
But in the meantime there was nowhere to go. They would have to stay as they were.
It’s a total trap.
Sir Ernest and first officer Frank Wild
confirmed what most of us already knew,
any hope of crossing the Antarctic Continent was gone.
Shackleton’s focus was now on our survival.
He wanted to save everybody.
It was important to him personally that he bought his men home.
Close behind that would be his desire to get Frank Hurley’s pictures home as well.
Shackleton needed those films because Shackleton needed money.
The expedition was put together in bit of a hurry like most things Shackleton did.
And it was a very, very ambitious project.
These fellows were going to walk 1800 miles across mostly unchartered territory.
Um and my own view is that ah,
they would have all died if they had actually landed. They would have almost certainly would have perished.
I was now Captain of a floating hotel
we affectionately christened The Ritz…
though I can assure you there were few similarities to the London establishment of the same name.
We would settle in for the winter
and sail home in the spring.
We threw ourselves into the tasks required to sustain life on the ice,
everyone pitching in regardless of rank.
We collected snow for drinking and bathing.
We hunted seal and penguin,
and toiled to keep Endurance clean.
Life was busy and even comfortable.
Our situation was desperate,
but we all put on a brave front
and pretended otherwise.
There were many diversions,
we listened to grama-phone records,
played games and held debates
about the books we were reading.
And Hurley gave a few lantern talks a little like this one.
Every Saturday night we toasted our sweethearts and wives,
and tried to convince ourselves we would soon return to them.
Shackleton knew the need to keep men busy.
Insanity wasn’t by any means unknown on a ship.
You have very little room to escape.
And um it’s quite common in those days
to take a lot of women's frocks and things down.
Just to put on plays and so on.
It seemed to be regarded as pretty essential to keep moral up.
Feeding 28 men from limited stores is no small task
and though he was the victim of merciless ribbing,
our cook, whom we affectionately called Doughballs…
did a magnificent job.
He baked a dozen loaves of bread a day,
and thankfully he developed a talent for preparing penguin.
Shackleton immediately realised that scurvy would be one of the
major problems for them so they went to great efforts to kill penguins and seals where ever they possibly could find them.
There is not an awful lot of vitamin C in meat but there is certainly some so that is what saved them from having scurvy.
And let us not forget an Englishman’s best friend, the dog.
Our canine crewmates became true companions.
The dogs must have been such great companions and that would have helped them enormously.
They were exercising them and
the dogs were everything for them.
Much more than they were working dogs. They were their pets.
We gave them names like Samson, Nelson and Smiler.
In this cold, barren place they provided us
with an opportunity to express love and affection.
But as the months passed it became more difficult to keep spirits up.
There is no desolation more complete than the polar night,
24 hours of darkness.
Life without the sun is soul destroying,
and it made our incarceration nearly unbearable.
Sometimes cheering up the crew required drastic action.
An ice bath at 29 degrees below freezing may not have been pleasant,
but it provided an entertaining distraction.
When you had a naked snow bath,
the carpenter, Harry McNish recorded in his diary,
the poor old skipper’s gone mad.
Worsley played many roles.
I’m not sure that Frank Worsley ever totally grew up.
The enthusiasms of youth stayed with him.
I think the word laricken always comes to mind.
All of these characteristics really came to the fore
as the chips got down.
I’m not sure what it says about my character but from my logbook entry of the time,
it seems I was finding the situation rather jolly.
“While looking ahead and planning to meet all possible dangers, I live comfortably and happy,
and can truly say that at present
I am enjoying myself far more than in civilisation”.
Despite being trapped
I took solace in the fact we were moving.
The currents were forcing the pack ice North
carrying the Endurance with it.
The Weddell sea has what they call a gyre and that is a current that rotates clockwise.
And measuring that gyre was something that captain Worsley was doing all the time, even though the ship was in the ice,
he was navigating and keeping a record of where she was.
Well, these ice flows are so large and yet they are still moving in this, in this gyre.
They’re rafting up on top of each other at times.
Pressure just builds and builds and builds.
They spent months hacking away at the ice and trying to keep the ship clear.
There are those who describe optimism as a kind of madness.
If that is the case, then I was most certainly lunatic,
because at no stage had I considered the possibility that I may lose my ship.
But six months after our stranding,
the Boss and Wilde informed me I must face the horrible likelihood
that Endurance was doomed.
My ship was being strangled
and I could do nothing to save her.
The weight behind these ice flows was just immense.
The grip just got too strong of course and gradually started tilting the ship
and being a wooden ship it eventually started crushing it of course.
They could split apart at any time so really, really scary.
I had to accept Endurance was mortally wounded.
I think he would have struggled hugely knowing that he was going to lose it.
Not only from the perspective of a captain losing any vessel
but for the situation it was going to put them in.
And I think he was well aware that if they lost the ship,
they were likely to perish.
On October the 27th, 1915.
Almost a year to the day since leaving Buenos Aires
we abandoned ship.
To be suddenly cast out on to the ice with
the security of the ship no longer there
would be a big shock.
It must have been incredibly hard for them.
We were exiled to a frozen wasteland
that could soon become a graveyard.
I overheard one of the men reciting a prayer
while another whispered
“will none of us see our homes again.”
Our situation was dire.
We had nothing to keep out the cold save thin linen tent.
That first night we were forced to move camp twice
as the unstable ice flow we now lived on continued to shift and crack.
For the first time,
it was possible to imagine
the obstacles before us insurmountable.
The icy depths below us seemed to beckon.
Imagine you've got 28 men
on this this crust of ice. This thin crust, maybe two or three feet thick
lying on top of an ocean
five hundred, five thousand feet deep, whatever it is.
But that’s not just a smooth plain of ice.
The ocean currents and waves cause it to buckle and crack and to rear up in great ridges and hammocks.
Just unbelievable.
I was now a Captain, in a frozen ocean, without a ship.
My crew castaways with faint hope of survival
but we could not succumb to despair.
We had to determine a way forward.
I felt we should wait for the flow to move towards open water and then set off in our lifeboats.
Shackleton’s plan, however,
was to march to Paulet Island
which my calculations put at 346 miles away
and where twelve years earlier
a Swedish expedition had built a hut.
Before setting off
we were forced to dispose of anything that might weigh us down,
even our most precious belongings.
McNish the carpenter had a cat.
He was actually a male cat
but he was called Mrs Chippy
and McNish loved this cat very much. And it was also a bit of a mascot
for the rest of the men.
And that was the first animal to go
because she couldn’t play any part in the rescue or just another mouth to feed, but
I think there was a lot of resentment.
McNish never forgave Shackleton for issuing the order to kill his cat.
The dogs were still a valuable part of the crew
as they negotiated the treacherous terrain.
When we reached open water we would need the lifeboats,
so like the dogs we were also harnessed to sled.
Despite the ruthless culling of our once prized possessions,
each boat weighed more than a ton.
It was back breaking work.
They were dragging in through hummocky ice.
They were making maybe one mile a day.
And then frequently they would have gone a mile forward
but the ocean currents might have caused them to drift a mile backwards.
And it became obvious within a few days that this was achieving nothing
other than trashing the sledges, trashing the boats.
And trashing the men.
Shackleton eventually had to admit to himself, ‘yes, it was a crazy idea.
We’ve just got to basically stay put.
And wait and see where the ocean currents take us.
We established “Ocean Camp”.
A home made miserable by the summer thaw.
The surface of the flow a quagmire of melted snow and rotting ice.
Our belongings constantly sodden.
We were still in view of Endurance,
and over the next two months
we watched as she was slowly crushed by the pack.
We visited her twisted hull on a number of occasions,
pillaging what supplies we could.
These were dangerous excursions
because we knew it would not be long
before she was swallowed by the ice.
It was with great remorse
but a little relief that I finally watched her go.
He must have felt alittle bitter because he probably felt
if his advice had been followed they may not have got into that particular situation.
Five weeks later we began our second attempt to cross the ice.
We trekked at night when the ice was crisper.
Once again it was a slow,
soul destroying journey.
And for the first time
some members of the crew questioned Sir Ernest’s command.
There were something like 300 miles to go
and McNish the chippie
and for that matter, captain Worsley
really didn’t think that was a very good idea.
The lifeboats, which were going to save them, could not be damaged.
And after about a week of that,
Harry McNish, the carpenter,
the oldest member of the expedition, a wryly old bird
who was always critical of Shackleton’s leadership
basically staged a mutiny and said ‘this is crazy.
We shouldn’t be doing this’.
And Shackleton brought out his revolver and threatened to shoot McNish if he didn’t do as he was told.
We marched on, and after seven gruelling days
we had only covered 10 miles.
I explained to the Boss,
at the rate we were moving our journey would take a year.
If we continued we would all perish.
So it was decided we would stop.
As I’d originally suggested our best chance was to wait for the moving ice to carry us to open water.
We established our new home
ironically named “Patience Camp”.
It was almost a year since Endurance first became trapped.
I could no longer remember life on land
and I fought against the mounting desperation
we were all experiencing.
Then inexplicably
our main sources of sustenance
penguins and seals disappeared.
Our rations were reduced to a mere nine and a half ounces a day.
Hunger was a constant companion
and we became obsessed with food.
Facing starvation we could no longer spare meat for the dogs.
We were left with no choice
but to shoot and eat them.
A decision so distressing
it felt worse than anything we’d endured so far.
On the days when currents meant fast progress I was greatly relieved.
It seemed the men held me responsible for the camp’s advancement
as if I was Skipper of the floe itself.
Eventually
the day came when the ice broke up and open water was sighted.
We could finally launch the lifeboats
and set off in search of land.
After 15 months some of the men had lost their sea legs,
but I was glad to be back on the water.
We faced the constant threat
of being crushed by moving bergs as they ploughed through the ice pack.
Our expedition Artist, George Marsden captures, I believe,
the vulnerability of our situation.
I was to navigate all three craft from my boat, the Dudley Docker
We thought our best chance
was to head for the South Shetland Islands
50 miles away.
It would have been extremely difficult because they weren’t yet in open sea.
They had all the risks of the ice
and this is where they had to have faith in Captain Worsley.
Shackleton was the big picture man and
in terms of small boats, Worsley had far more experience.
And of course he knew how to navigate.
Until we cleared the pack ice it was too dangerous to travel at night.
And so we camped on bergs
Sleep was almost impossible.
They weakened
without sleep and without
warmth and very inadequate food.
And some of them so sea sick as well.
The weight of responsibility was onerous.
I had to navigate from glimpses of the sun in my sextant.
Yes, it’s a little bit of a black art
because there’s a huge skill
to what they call bringing the sun down onto the horizon.
If you’re on a boat that’s leaping from wave top to wave top,
the horizon is all over the place.
And the sun is in your sextant
because you see it through a smokey mirror.
This little green thing is leaping around and you have to take two sights before you can get a complete fix of where you are.
So you’ll be able to imagine my distress when after three days of rowing
my calculations indicated that the currents had pushed us back 30 miles towards our starting point.
Information we felt best kept from the crew.
After several false starts
the conditions dictated our only hope
was to head for the uninhabited Elephant Island.
Elephant Island is a dot.
It’s like a grain of sand on a beach.
It’s just a lump of rock sticking out of the Southern Ocean
As the days passed
some of the men struggled to maintain their sanity.
Their fragile conditions made worse
by Killer Whales who cruised beneath us like black torpedoes.
That would have been extremely frightening
and the day length getting shorter obviously.
Every day the temperature is dropping
and dropping and dropping.
And that was doubly scarey.
I believe it was Napoleon
who said it takes more courage to suffer than to die,
and as such my men were truly courageous.
After five days
we were freezing to death.
Fresh water was in short supply
and we resorted to chewing on raw seal meat
for the sake of the blood.
There is a state that you get into when it’s completely grim.
Life just doesn’t seem that important.
That’s where the leadership was so key.
Captain Worsley who was on the helm for
40 hours, non-stop.
They had to bend him back into position
to straighten him out so that he could sleep.
because physically he had just
formed into that frozen V shape of clutching the tiller.
Several of the men had simply given in,
they had no spirit.
They were doomed.
And then,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
to my great relief,
Elephant Island appeared.
But we weren’t to make landfall that night.
A gale blew in and we lost sight of land.
I am certain that had we not known Elephant Island was out there,
the storm would have defeated us.
And that’s when I think his true seamanship would have come to the fore.
And this is where they began to realise
just what a very, very special man he was.
After fifteen months on the ice,
and seven gruelling days at sea,
all 28 men made landfall
on April the 15th, 1916.
How they got through without losing anybody
was a miracle.
Having been through Hell
this desolate, uninhabited, lump of rock seemed to nothing short of Heaven.
The Boss congratulated me for getting us there
and for a brief moment I allowed myself to enjoy our success.
It would seem that having reached land we should have been saved.
But unfortunately I am unable to end the story here.
For our new home on the “beach”
was by no means the Riviera .
Most of the island is guarded by hundred foot high ice cliffs;
very steep glaciers come right down into the sea.
Elephant island is an unbelievably violent place.
We’d landed on one of the most inhospitable islands on earth,
and we had only ourselves to look to for salvation.
Nobody was interested or searching for the missing explorers.
There was a war on. More important things were happening.
Winstone Churchill was on record as snaring at them,
calling them penguins.
The fortunes of this particular expedition were not regarded as terribly important
against the background of thousands of men dying in the trenches of France almost every day.
I think the assumption by those who even thought about them was that they were dead.
Sir Ernest, First Officer Frank Wild and I
discussed the options
and determined a rescue mission was our only hope.
I tried to convince the Boss to stay with the men
but he would not hear of it.
Wilde would be left in charge on the Island.
Worsley had already been planning way back on the ice before the Endurance sank.
He’d been planning contingencies, possibilities. He’d been calculating distances
thinking of how they were going to escape from this terrible predicament.
The closest settlement was Port Stanley on the Falkland Islands,
but I determined the winds favoured an attempt at South Georgia
800 miles away.
We would attempt to reach the whaling station we'd visited
what seemed like a lifetime before.
Then
in a dramatic scene which I shall never forget,
the Boss addressed the men.
He outlined the plan to them
and made it clear this journey promised to be even more difficult than anything we’d experienced to date.
He was also honest about the slim chance of success.
Despite the great risk of failure,
every single man volunteered.
Four were chosen to join Shackleton and myself,
McNish the carpenter,
John Vincent
and two Irishmen, young Tim McCarthy
and Tom Crean.
Shackleton was a great persuader.
He had this amazing ability to gather around him a group of people
and to inspire them, to lead them,
into danger, to take colossal risks but some how to keep them with him.
And always with himself as the centrepiece, the head.
We threw ourselves into preparing the James Caird.
At 22 feet 6 inches long,
she was the largest of our three lifeboats.
First and foremost was the importance of covering in the lifeboat by McNish the carpenter,
who’d already fallen out with Shackleton. And Shackleton purposely took him on that voyage
to make sure that he didn’t cause further trouble for Frank Wilde.
It was McNish of course who was openly critical of the boss for getting them into this mess,
who made the James Caird sea worthy.
He recorked the planking
and cannibalised the other two smaller boats,
which was such a sacrifice because it meant that the men left behind,
the two boats that they had were really not useable.
And they ballasted her more heavily.
Shackleton wanted very heavy ballast. Worsley didn’t but Shackleton’s word won out.
Ladies and Gentlemen
as we reach this part of the story I must admit to a slight swell of emotion
for to say goodbye to those truly courageous men
was one of the most difficult moments of my life.
The evening before we left
there was a sort of farewell “party”.
For the occasion we made “wine” from ginger, sugar and methylated spirits.
I did my best to appear festive that night,
but it took some effort,
as I felt anything but.
I think Frank Worsley knew that it was a very risky thing to do.
In terms of the odds,
maybe a ten percent chance.
But I think they knew it was the only chance.
My mate’s put on a show of optimism
joking about how much beer we should bring back
planning our homecoming celebrations.
But we all knew it was more likely
that we would never see each other again.
Haggard and bedraggled
these men were the best I had known.
I was haunted by images of
their fate if our mission should fail.
On the 24th of April, 1916
we launched the James Caird.
I was woefully aware
that no matter what adversity we would face,
we were embarking on an adventure.
The men we were leaving behind
were condemned to wait and hope,
with no way of knowing our progress.
I especially felt for Wilde who’d be in charge,
a role which could ultimately amount to a suicide watch.
I don’t think anyone else could have kept those men together
as well as he did.
If the plan failed, they’d all perish. There’s no doubt about that.
The men kept waving for as long as they thought we could see them.
I think they had a pretty good idea of what was ahead. Um 800 miles.
of the world’s worst ocean in winter;
a lot of ice at first to work their way through;
a lot of overcast weather which meant
difficulty in getting sights and knowing where they were;
and after 800 miles, an island only a hundred miles long,
um which isn’t that big a target.
By darkness on that first night,
we’d cleared the ice surrounding Elephant Island
and reached open water.
Below deck
any hopes we had of sheltering from the wet and freezing conditions were dashed.
The cramped space forced us to lie on the ballast rocks.
That night conditions confirmed that this would be an arduous journey.
I think at this point the responsibility was still shared between Shackleton and Worsley, but
I think Worsley probably knew that it was his talents that would be the defining reason for survival.
Shackleton confessed to Worsley,
I don’t know anything about small boats.
I’ve never been in this situation before. I’m counting on you.
I think Worsley probably knew that.
Shackleton at least admitted
that he knew nothing about sailing so they were totally in the hands of Frank Worsley.
Once again our lives depended on the sextant. And once again nature conspired against us.
It was three days before I glimpsed the sun.
When I managed to take a sight I shouted to Sir Ernest below.
He'd yell "mark"
and Shackleton in this case
would take the time because the time is also very important
for any longitude sightings.
And then to go down below and sit on these moving rocks of ballast with water swilling about the place
and do his calculations
to make sure that he was on track
um was yeah, very, very crucial to the whole thing.
Worsley had four sights in 16 days
but he seemed to have a unique instinct for dead reckoning,
which is the seamen’s term for finding out where you are without relying on celestial navigation.
So he knew which way the currents were going.
He felt what the speed of the boat was.
And this they were stopping and starting and and changing course because of the winds.
But he had in his brain some kind of a map
that he could say at the end of the day,
well, we’ve made about 56 miles in a north easterly direction or whatever it should be.
And to do all of that in his head,
it’s um it’s a gift far more than a science.
Ice built up on our hull, and threatened to sink us.
They didn’t have any sailing clothes.
They didn’t have any sea boots.
They didn’t have any water proof gloves.
This is on a boat that’s been thrown around 20 feet in the air.
So they very easily could've lost a man over board.
These freezing conditions were so bitter
we could only bear to work on deck for five minutes at a time.
Those bodies must have been aching.
They were getting no rest
and what rest they were getting was lying on rocks.
Frank said the only good part of the day was when they were served hot hoosh.
The hoosh sounds very unpalatable
but was a life saving mixture.
It was a hot milk mixed with something called pemmican,
which is a high fat compressed meat
for combatting hypothermia because of the fat content.
And even that was difficult because they had to try and
keep the prim ace upright
and they were bent double underneath this canapé.
Unable to sit sit upright
we suffered stomach pain and cramps.
Our misery threatened to overwhelm us.
By the second week I had grave concerns for the crew.
Our hands and knees were raw from crawling over the ballast rocks
and our limbs were swollen; covered with sores.
Worse, the sleeping bags were rotting.
Their reindeer sleeping bags had become so sodden with salt water that the hairs of the reindeer skin were disintegrating.
They were in their food, in their hair, in their mouths.
The discomfort was just extraordinary. Not to mention the cold.
They were never warm the whole time.
It was exasperated badly
when one of the casks of what they thought was fresh water
was found to have leaked.
And was not fresh water anymore. It was a salty mess.
Everything was cutting against them.
McNish was severely frostbitten,
suffering from exposure,
while Vincent seemed to have lost the will to live.
To be in a boat like the James Caird which would have been hard to, hard to steer; the ballast was shifting all the time;
and they were hit by rogue waves that could have finished them in seconds.
There was nothing nature hadn’t thrown at us,
however by the 13th day,
despite having only managed three sun sights with the sextant
I was confident that we were nearing our destination.
By my reckoning South Georgia was only about 15 miles away.
I began watching for the tell tale signs land was ahead.
Then on the 7th of May
young Tim McCarthy, whose optimism had never wavered,
spotted the peaks of South Georgia.
However,
as you now all know,
the nature of this journey was that we were to be tested at all times,
and making landfall was to be no different.
The weather turned and we were hit by a severe gale.
In that same storm there was a hurricane force blow that sank a 500 ton steamer,
who was on her way to South Georgia with coal.
And she disappeared without a trace.
For two days we battled the storm
and after all we’d endured I feared we would not have the strength to fight on.
We would be smashed against the coast we had so longed to reach.
And a little boat like that doesn’t go into the eye of the wind very easily.
He alone had the knowledge of how to beat off a lee shore.
Which is one of the most terrifying thing a seaman can ever encounter.
If they were swept straight past South Georgia that was it. And they knew that.
They knew that from the outset that they had to make land fall as quickly as they possibly could. And they landed at a place that they called Cape Cove.
Frank’s 20 plus years under sail
and operating small boats around New Zealand –
that was crucial to the whole deal.
It was a masterpiece of navigation. No question.
They had set their feet on real land. Not Elephant Island’s rocky, icy, little, shingly beach.
But this was land that had tussock grass,
fresh clear water.
This was real heaven by comparison to anything they had had for the last 18 months.
They ate Elephant seal heart and Albatrosses.
They had to spend a few days just building up their strength because they knew they still had to save 22 other men, so
even in that moment of absolute joy, it wasn’t the end of the story. They still had to go on beyond that.
The storm had forced us to land on the wrong side of South Georgia.
We were on the Western shore
while the Whaling Station was at Stromness Bay
on the Island’s eastern side.
To sail there
would be a 150 mile passage round the blustery coast.
The last storm had severely damaged the James Caird. Vincent and McNish were near death so going back to sea
was not an option.
The Boss and I agreed
that walking across the Island’s uncharted interior was our only chance.
The condition of the men was such that it would be impossible for all of us to make the journey.
Sir Ernest, Tom Crean and I
would attempt the crossing,
leaving young McCarthy to care for the others.
They waited for calm weather.
They knew they were, their strength was running out. Um, they needed to be able to see
more than anything because the outline of the map of the island
had nothing. No one had been into the interior.
So they needed clear weather and they waited for a full moon.
In the middle of the night, nine days after making landfall we set off.
After our previous ordeals we were thin,
wasted, and poorly equipped for a mountain climbing expedition.
They had a 90 foot rope with them but they didn’t have any ice axes. They had a rough
carpenters adze which they could chop a few steps every so often perhaps but…
They had screwed brass screws from the life boat through the soles of their shoes
so they had rudimentary crampons to grip the ice but not being mountaineers – pretty damned frightening.
And what’s particularly extraordinary is that they had no tent.
They knew that if they got caught by a blizzard they’d probably die.
So they just had to keep moving.
Once again I was the navigator.
No one had ever crossed the island before,
and we knew the mountains to be at least 9,000 feet high.
I estimated we were 25 to 30 miles from the whaling station,
although I had no way of being certain.
I’ve attempted to illustrate our journey from memory,
my recollections I hope not too confused by the exhaustion I felt at the time.
We didn’t know where we were going or what obstacles lay ahead.
Too often we had to double back.
Retracing our steps was a devastating blow that tested our resolve to carry on.
The going was so demanding
we had to halt every twenty minutes.
These brief rest stops
were all we could allow ourselves
as to sleep would be to die.
They were so tired that at one point Shackleton told them he’d give them half an hour.
And let them sleep for five minutes and woke them up and said they’d had their half hour
because he was scared that they would not wake up at all.
So they kept on going.
And what normally happens when you’re traversing glacier roped up,
is people don’t keep quite the same speed and then you trip up on the rope and you curse and swear at each other.
And Worsley actually mentions this and says, how they were so careful not to lose their tempers, still to maintain that, that sort of calm cheerfulness.
Through out the journey all three of us had a strong feeling of being accompanied by a fourth man.
And perhaps it was this soul who kept us safe for there is one incident that defies explanation.
16 hours after we’d set off
we came to the edge of a precipice.
We had no idea what lay below
but time was running out and we could not turn back.
It was decided that, using our rope as a sled, we would throw ourselves into the void…
if we were to die,
it would be on our own terms.
Our toboggan ride took us a thousand feet down the steep slope.
Yet again we had cheated death.
By then of course they were utterly driven. They still had another range to cross.
They ran out of kerosene half way across the crossing, so they had their last hoosh.
And Shackleton heard
the sound of the station whistle at Stromness, he thought. He wasn’t sure.
That was at 6:30. At 7 o’clock they all listened.
And there it was again. The whistle to turn to, to go to work.
And this was the first sound that they’d heard for 17 months
that haven’t been generated by themselves.
So that was an absolutely
marvellous moment.
After 36 hours, half frozen and nearly unconscious
we reached the whaling station.
And the sight of men and buildings and all of those things that they’d been without for so long;
and it meant safety; and it meant more than anything else
rescue and safety for the other 22 men, which the burden of carrying them –
their lives with them
is what kept Shackleton, Worsley and Crean going.
For the first time since abandoning Endurance
I enjoyed a hot bath.
A change of clothes and a shave.
Then that same night the whalers took me back to collect the three men on the other side of the Island, because
but we knew we could not rest until everyone was safe.
That very night he didn’t stop to rest. He didn't stop to um...
you know revel in the fact that he you know had made this journey and it was complete.
He turned around and went straight back to pick up his three James Caird ship mates.
In the months that followed
Tom Crean, Sir Ernest and I
were forced to abandon three separate attempts to reach Elephant Island
and the 22 men waiting there.
It was a gigantic frustration for Shackleton.
The boats or ships were either too small or unsafe to take into icy waters.
He was trying to get some help out from Britain.
Nobody wanted to offer him any help at all.
Sir Ernest knew that the men would be in a very bad way
and worried that should they perish
he would be accused of having abandoned them.
Then, on our fourth attempt,
in the Chilean boat, The Yelcho,
we sighted the island.
It had been 128 days since we’d left its shores.
It seemed too much to expect
that after four months of winter on a God forsaken lump of rock,
that all our shipmates could still be alive.
The whole spit could have been totally swept clear of everything.
during winter storms.
Ah no question there could have been nobody alive at all.
As we neared the coast
we watched the men gather on the beach
as their number grew
so too our hopes.
The Boss counted anxiously and then said…
they’re all there Skipper,
"they’re all alive.
…they’re are all alive Skipper,
and they’re all coming home.”
We had not conquered Antarctica, but
I believe in our failure
there was greater success.
Thank you.
Frank never lost hope.
Somebody said once. ‘He was not born to be drowned’.
He did believe he could get through everything and did.
Getting everybody home was Shackleton’s responsibility as a leader
but without Frank Worsley I don’t think he’d have managed it.
All the credit went to Shackleton. That was the sort of man that he was
but without question the journey could not have been achieved without Frank Worsley’s contribution.