Shackleton’s ‘evil ice’ sinks hopes of finding Endurance
On November 21, 1915, Ernest Shackleton left Endurance for the last time, and watched as his ship – his only refuge in the bleakest spot in the world – was slowly crushed by the Antarctic floes.
‘‘Huge blocks of ice, weighing many tons, were lifted into the air and tossed aside as other masses rose beneath them,’’ he wrote. ‘‘We were helpless intruders in a strange world, our lives dependent upon the play of grim elementary forces that made a mock of our puny efforts.’’
Over a century later, grim elementary forces continue to mock those who venture to the bottom of the world. The team seeking the final resting place of Endurance has announced it has given up, defeated once again by Shackleton’s ‘‘evil ice’’.
In a statement yesterday, the expedition said that after losing one submersible to the sea ice, and with its own ship at risk of being caught in the same floes that doomed the Endurance, the team had decided to abort.
Mensun Bound, director of exploration on the expedition, said that over the course of the search he came to appreciate how he and Shackleton shared the same implacable enemy.
‘‘It all comes down to ice, ice, ice and more ice,’’ he told The Times, speaking from his research vessel. ‘‘A massive jigsaw of it is always shifting and mutating as well as expanding and contracting with the tide. Even for a
‘‘You have really got to punch your way right into the heart of it. It’s only then you feel the real icy breath of this place and the awesome embrace of the pack.’’ Mensun Bound
ship like this, it is a struggle – charging, reversing, charging again. And we have been caught in its embrace.’’
He and his colleagues are part of an expedition, funded by the Flotilla Foundation marine charity, to explore the Weddell Sea. For the past week they have taken a break from their scientific programme, backed by the Royal Geographical Society and the Scott Polar Research Institute, to use submersibles to try to find the final resting place of Endurance.
The sinking of Endurance was the start of an epic tale in which 28 men fled the ice-bound ship in lifeboats and crossed the most treacherous sea in the world.
After landing on the bleak Elephant Island, their first solid ground for more than a year, Shackleton left behind most of the crew to survive on penguins and ship’s biscuit. He and a small team of five then sailed and rowed on, making a brutal 14-day ocean crossing, aiming for a remote whaling station where they hoped to make contact with civilisation and charter a rescue boat.
A year after their ship first became ice-bound, they returned to collect their crewmates – thinner, tired of penguin meat, but all alive.
Bound revealed yesterday that for him, the story had a special significance. He was born in the Falkland Islands, and his family ran a hotel where Shackleton stayed while looking for a boat to return to Elephant Island.
‘‘The visitors’ book with Shackleton’s signature is still with my family,’’ he said.
But, despite 30 years of experience in underwater archaeology, he admitted that he never fully understood Shackleton until he sailed to the same spot where his ship sank.
‘‘For real insight on what Shackleton experienced and achieved, you really have to come down here to the Weddell Sea. And I don’t mean just dance around the loose edges as you do in the tourist vessels.
‘‘You have really got to punch your way right into the heart of it. It’s only then you feel the real icy breath of this place and the awesome embrace of the pack.’’
Now the sea has claimed another victim. Although the SA Agulhas II, the expedition’s ship, is free of the ice, it leaves behind a submersible named AUV7. There is a chance that even now, it is lying above the wreck of Endurance itself.
Perhaps one day someone will brave the evil ice again to find them both. Until then, together they will slowly rust, monuments to the power of nature and to heroic polar failure. – The Times