Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

by Alfred Lansing

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 pulled his head down. “For God’s sake, hold on!” he shouted. “It’s got us!” For a long instant nothing happened. The Caird simply rose higher and higher, and the dull thunder of this enormous breaking wave filled the air. And then it hit—and she was caught in a mountain of seething water and catapulted bodily forward and sideways at the same time. She seemed actually to be thrown into the air, and Shackleton was nearly torn from his seat by the deluge of water that swept over him. The lines to the rudder went slack, then suddenly seized up again as the boat was viciously swung around like some contemptible plaything. For an instant, nothing existed but water. They couldn’t even tell whether she was upright. But then the instant was over; the wave had rolled on, and the Caird, though stunned and half dead under a load of water that rose nearly to the seats, was miraculously still afloat. ...