Our hero of the icy wastes
ANTARCTIC EXPLORER SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON DIED 100 YEARS AGO. MARION McMULLEN LOOKS AT THE MAN WITH A TASTE FOR ADVENTURE
“SUPERHUMAN effort isn’t worth a damn unless it achieves results.” Those are the words of Sir Ernest Shackleton, one of the last of the great explorers
He set off to find the magnetic south pole and also wanted to be the first to cross the Antarctic, but became best known instead for one of the most dramatic ship rescues.
His vessel Endurance became trapped in thick ice in 1915 and was ultimately crushed and sank, leaving 28 men with just three lifeboats between them. No-one knew where they were and no-one was looking for them. They knew they had to make their own way to safety in hazardous conditions if they wanted to survive.
It was seen as the last in the golden age of Antarctic exploration. On board was photographer Frank Hurley who would document the epic journey. Within weeks the crew had run into trouble. Heavy pack ice surrounded the vessel, which stopped their progress and gradually began to crush the ship.
Miraculously, they remained aboard for almost a year, but by the end of the following October, the damage from the ice was so bad that they were forced to abandon ship. Hurley was able to rescue 400 of his precious glass plate negatives from on board, but due to their weight, he could only carry 150 with him on the onward journey.
Having selected the best, to make sure he would not be tempted back to collect anymore, he smashed the rest
Shackleton and his crew had to abandon Endurance as it sank in 9,000 feet of water in the Weddell Sea. He had named it after his family motto – Fortitudine Vincimus, which translates as “by endurance we conquer”.
The ship’s tabby-striped cat Mrs Chippy and five dogs were sadly shot because it was felt they would not survive the harsh conditions ahead.
The crew’s escape across the frozen floes on foot and by lifeboats, through the swiftly melting ice cap, eventually saw them making land at the uninhabited Elephant Island. By the time they came ashore, they had not set foot on dry land for 497 days.
Shackleton’s skipper, Frank Worsley, was a very skilled navigator and used a sextant and chronometer to calculate the precise co-ordinates of the Endurance sinking – 68°39’30.0” South and 52°26’30.0” West.
The vessel was trapped in ice for 10 months before it disappeared beneath the water and the explorer and his crew survived for six months before reaching Elephant Island.
Shackleton and five other men then set off on an epic journey to seek help at a whaling station on the island of South Georgia. After three unsuccessful attempts, Shackleton finally returned to rescue his men in August 1916. Their perilous journey is regarded as one the most heroic feats of navigation and Shackleton ended up travelling 720 miles to save the lives of all his crew.
“Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all,” he once said.
The explorer described the ice terrain they tackled, saying: “The noise resembles the roar of heavy, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice one can image it is disturbed by the breathing and tossing of a mighty giant below.”
A search for Shackleton’s lost ship had to be called off in 2019 after extreme weather trapped an underwater research vehicle in a sheet of frozen ice.
Severe weather closed in and the sea ice conditions led to the loss of the AUV7, a specialist submersible autonomous underwater vehicle, which was deployed to locate the wreck using HD still colour cameras.
The Weddell Sea Expedition team was on the final leg of the mission when contact was lost.
Efforts to recover the equipment had to be abandoned because of the danger of the team becoming trapped in the ice themselves.
Mensun Bound, director of exploration on the expedition, said: “As a team we are clearly disof appointed not to have been successful in our mission to find Endurance. Like Shackleton before us, who described the graveyard of Endurance as ‘the worst portion of the worst sea in the world’, our well laid plans were overcome by the rapidly moving ice, and what Shackleton called ‘the evil conditions of The Weddell Sea’.”
Living dangerously was nothing new for father-of-three, Shackleton. His famed attempt to reach the South Pole as part of the 1907 to 1909 British Antarctic Expedition, better known as Nimrod, came within 100 miles of the South Pole before they were forced to turn back.
The explorers would have died had they not decided to return home, having already stretched their rations to the very limit and it became a race against time to return safely. On their return to the UK, Shackleton and his men were hailed as heroes.
An 11ft sledge, one of four used to haul supplies and equipment, was brought back to England along with the flag by Dr Eric Marshall, who served as a surgeon, surveyor, cartographer and photographer on the expedition.
Shackleton was just 47 when he passed away 100 years ago on January 5, 1922, after suffering a massive heart attack while on board a ship at South Georgia getting ready for another expedition.
Some said the loss of the Endurance and the fight to save his crew had broken his spirit,.
He never made it across Antarctica, but once noted: “We have seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.”