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August 14 - September 14, 2025
Returning from a hunting trip, Orde-Lees, traveling on skis across the rotting surface of the ice, had just about reached camp when an evil, knoblike head burst out of the water just in front of him. He turned and fled, pushing as hard as he could with his ski poles and shouting for Wild to bring his rifle. The animal—a sea leopard—sprang out of the water and came after him, bounding across the ice with the peculiar rocking-horse gait of a seal on land. The beast looked like a small dinosaur, with a long, serpentine neck. After a half-dozen leaps, the sea leopard had almost caught up with
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But Shackleton was not an ordinary individual. He was a man who believed completely in his own invincibility, and to whom defeat was a reflection of personal inadequacy. What might have been an act of reasonable caution to the average person was to Shackleton a detestable admission that failure was a possibility.
“We got quite homesick tonight,” James wrote on the eighth, “at the smell of a piece of burning twig which we found [in some old seaweed]. Any new smell or a smell bringing old associations appeals to us in a wonderful way. Probably we smell a little ourselves & would be very noticeable to strangers since it is nearly four months since we had a bath.
Consequently, the sight of land was but another reminder of their helplessness. Greenstreet’s attitude was rather typically cynical: “It is nice to think there is something else besides snow and ice in the world, but I fail to see any cause for excitement as it puts us no nearer getting out. What I would far rather see would be a crowd of seals coming up so that we might get food and fuel.” Yet frustrating as it was, the sight of land was welcome, as James noted, if for no other reason than “it is nearly 16 months since we last saw any black rock.” Macklin especially benefited since, in the
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Shackleton had hardly left when Macklin turned on Clark for some feeble reason, and the two men were almost immediately shouting at one another. The tension spread to Orde-Lees and Worsley and triggered a blasphemous exchange between them. In the midst of it, Greenstreet upset his powdered milk. He whirled on Clark, cursing him for causing the accident because Clark had called his attention for a moment. Clark tried to protest, but Greenstreet shouted him down. Then Greenstreet paused to get his breath, and in that instant his anger was spent and he suddenly fell silent. Everyone else in the
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Toward eleven o’clock, Shackleton became strangely uneasy, so he dressed and went outside. He noticed that the swell had increased and their floe had swung around so that it was meeting the seas head on. He had stood watching for only a few moments, when there was a deep-throated thud and the floe split beneath his feet—and directly under No. 4 tent in which the eight forecastle hands were sleeping. Almost instantly the two pieces of the floe drew apart, the tent collapsed and there was a splash. The crewmen scrambled out from under the limp canvas. “Somebody’s missing,” one man shouted.
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All the boats were thick with ice, but the Wills was weighted down like a log. The seas poured on board her, flowing over the pile of sleeping bags in the bow and leaving them sheathed in ice. Ice formed in masses around her bow as she dipped into each sea, weighting her down that much more, so that every half hour or oftener, men had to be sent forward to beat the ice off her bow lest she go under.
Unlike the land, where courage and the simple will to endure can often see a man through, the struggle against the sea is an act of physical combat, and there is no escape. It is a battle against a tireless enemy in which man never actually wins; the most that he can hope for is not to be defeated.
The actual position on April 26 was 59°46´ South, 52°18´ West, and it put the Caird a scant 14 miles north of the 60th parallel of latitude. Thus they had just crept over the line separating the “Raving Fifties” from the “Screaming Sixties,” so called because of the weather that prevails there. This, then, was the Drake Passage, the most dreaded bit of ocean on the globe—and rightly so. Here nature has been given a proving ground on which to demonstrate what she can do if left alone. The results are impressive. It begins with the wind. There is an immense area of persistent low pressure in the
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At midnight, after a drink of hot milk, Shackleton’s watch took over, and Shackleton himself assumed the helm while Crean and McNeish stayed below to pump. His eyes were just growing accustomed to the dark when he turned and saw a rift of brightness in the sky astern. He called to the others to tell them the good news that the weather was clearing to the southwest. A moment later he heard a hiss, accompanied by a low, muddled roar, and he turned to look again. The rift in the clouds, actually the crest of an enormous wave, was advancing rapidly toward them. He spun around and instinctively
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But sufficiently provoked, there is hardly a creature on God’s earth that ultimately won’t turn and attempt to fight, regardless of the odds. In an unspoken sense, that was much the way they felt now. They were possessed by an angry determination to see the journey through—no matter what. They felt that they had earned it. For thirteen days they had absorbed everything that the Drake Passage could throw at them—and now, by God, they deserved to make it.
Worsley thought to himself of the pity of it all. He remembered the diary he had kept ever since the Endurance had sailed from South Georgia almost seventeen months before. That same diary, wrapped in rags and utterly soaked, was now stowed in the forepeak of the Caird. When she went, it would go, too. Worsley thought not so much of dying, because that was now so plainly inevitable, but of the fact that no one would ever know how terribly close they had come.
Sitting on the rocks waiting for morning, Shackleton came to the conclusion that instead of sailing to Leith Harbor, they would remain on the south side of the island and three of the party would go overland to bring help. By sea it would have been a voyage of more than 130 miles out around the western tip of the island and then along the north coast. By land it was a scant 29 miles in a straight line. The only difference between the two was that in the three-quarters of a century that men had been coming to South Georgia, not one man had ever crossed the island—for the simple reason that it
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Shackleton was extremely anxious to begin the journey, primarily because the season was getting on and the weather was bound to turn bad before long. In addition, the moon was now full, and they were certain to need its light while traveling at night. However, the next day, May 16, dawned cloudy and rainy, keeping them confined under the Caird nearly all day. They spent the time discussing the journey and McNeish busied himself fixing their boots for climbing. He had removed four dozen 2-inch screws from the Caird, and he fixed eight of them into each shoe to be worn by the members of the
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Hurriedly Shackleton turned and started down again with the others following. This time he did his best to keep as high as possible, cutting steps in the slope and working laterally around the side of the third peak—then up again once more. They moved as quickly as they could, but there was very little speed left in them. Their legs were wobbly and strangely disobedient. Finally, well after four o’clock, they struggled to the top. The ridge was so sharp that Shackleton was able to sit astride it, one leg on either side. The light was fading fast, but peering warily down he saw that though the
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That evening a sort of crude reception was held in what Worsley described as a “large room, full of captains and mates and sailors, and hazy with tobacco smoke.” Four white-haired, veteran Norwegian skippers came forward. Their spokesman, speaking in Norse with Sørlle translating, said that they had sailed the Antarctic seas for forty years, and that they wanted to shake the hands of the men who could bring an open 22-foot boat from Elephant Island through the Drake Passage to South Georgia.