in brutal cold, always wet and frozen by spray from the waves. When they were forced to row, the oars grew thick with ice. Yet when they reached the tiny island, they laughed and cheered and picked up pebbles from the shore – the first time they had set foot on true land for a year and a half.
Despite having reached solid ground, their predicament was still unknown. To get back to civilisation would require a much longer journey. Shackleton chose to make for the island of South Georgia. The Falkland Islands were closer, but the winds blew from that direction and the lifeboats were too frail to beat up against them. Though South Georgia was 800 miles away across wild and open sea, it lay with the winds. Shackleton knew the whaling stations there would put them in touch with civilisation – if he could reach them.
The James Caird was the largest and heaviest of the three lifeboats, so was chosen for the job. Shackleton needed Worsley for his skill at navigation. He asked for volunteers to form the rest of a crew of six. They would risk their lives to bring back a rescue party for those they left behind. They took supplies for just four weeks. It is difficult to imagine how it must have felt to watch that tiny boat set off. The men on the island had seal meat and could camp under the hulls of the other two boats, but Elephant Island was still a bleak and inhospitable place. They remained in polar waters, and the terrible cold, gales and hard conditions wore them down.
On 24 April 1916, Shackleton, Worsley, Tom Crean, Harry McNeish, Tim McCarthy and John Vincent set off in the James Caird. They had rigged canvas and wood to give a little shelter on the open boat – enough to allow them to use a primus stove. Each man took two-hour spells at the tiller or kept a four-hour watch, while the others tried to rest in sodden sleeping bags. For sixteen days they were never dry. Shackleton’s account of that voyage remains one of the all-time great stories of seacraft and survival. They ran north into continuous gales and storms, so that the little boat climbed mountainous waves that made it look like a child’s toy. When the rough seas opened seams in the boat, they had to bale at all hours, though the cold meant they were always exhausted. There was never enough fresh water, never enough food or sleep. The little boat grew sodden and heavy under the weight of ice and they had to spend hours each day chipping it away.
Worsley navigated using a sextant when there was sight of the sun or stars, as well as dead reckoning – a master sailor’s estimate of speed, time and bearing to give distance and position. In that way, he brought them across open sea to South Georgia, though the winds were blowing a savage gale around the island and the sea was too rough to land at first. The men on the boat had grown weak and Shackleton decided he must land or see them die. He tacked back to bring the James Caird onto the south of the island, the only place he could reach.
With the boat leaking and the seas still running high, Shackleton knew how lucky they had been to make safe landfall. Some of the six were not doing well. Vincent and McNeish were weak from exhaustion and frostbite. Shackleton ordered McCarthy to stay and look after them. The waves were far too rough to consider venturing out into them again, even if the boat had not been leaking and made fragile by the constant battering. Shackleton knew that he had been fortunate to survive the extraordinary journey. So instead of trying to sail around South Georgia to the north side, he made a decision to cross the island on foot. It was a risky choice. The island had never been explored and no one knew what lay in the interior. Shackleton set off with Captain Worsley and Second Officer Crean on Friday 18 May.
The James Caird
Courtesy of the author
These three men crossed the mountain range of South Georgia, walking doggedly on with the fate of the twenty-two on Elephant Island and their three boat companions on their shoulders. They walked and climbed to the point of complete collapse, but kept going. Shackleton asked nothing more from the others than he gave himself and, by his uncomplaining endurance, inspired the others to the same.
On the morning of 20 May 1916, they climbed the last ridge and sighted the whaling station below. They had marched for thirty-six hours, though they had barely recovered from the sea journey. Yet the odyssey was at an end. Pausing only to shake hands, the three men climbed down a frozen waterfall to get close enough to signal the astonished whalers. Filthy and bearded, they were not recognised at first by those who had met them on the way out.
They picked up the three on the other side of the island, as well as the James Caird that had brought them so far. Yet winter had come again – and the sea to the south had begun to freeze into the same pack ice that had trapped and crushed Endurance. Shackleton made four attempts to reach the men on Elephant Island, but each one was defeated by savage winter conditions.
In August 1916, the sea ice began to break up once more – and Shackleton set out in a small steamship he had borrowed from the Chilean government. The ice had thinned enough for him to get through and he reached Elephant Island at last, desperate for some sight of those he had left behind.
When the waiting men saw the ship, they lined up on the shore. On board, Shackleton counted them aloud in joy, one by one. They had four days of food left and had been so certain ‘The Boss’ would return that for weeks they’d begun each day by rolling up their kit for a quick rescue. They had never lost faith that Shackleton would come for them – and he did.
In 1917 they returned to a world that was still at war – and a world that had discovered how terrible war can be. Most of his men signed up to fight and, of course, some of them did not make it home again.
Shackleton was brutally honest and blunt about the expedition being a failure. Yet the rescue of his men is still one of the great tales – of endurance, courage and honour. He did not let them down.
Shackleton wrote his account of it in the book that forms the main source for this chapter, still in print as South: The Endurance Expedition. He gave the copyright of that book to his creditors to pay debts and tried to live simply with his wife. Yet he was unhappy in the real world, away from the ice. It was not long before he was planning a return.
In 1921, Shackleton sailed back to the southern continent as commander of the Quest scientific expedition. With Antarctica in sight, he had a heart attack and died. When news reached his wife, she sent back the instruction ‘Bury him where he was happiest.’ His grave is on South Georgia, where he knew at last that he had reached civilisation – and saved his men.
As a postscript, the James Caird lifeboat was brought back to England. Shackleton gave it to an old school friend in exchange for him sponsoring the Quest expedition. It was then donated to the school both men had known: Dulwich College in London. It can be viewed today, with prior appointment, on any Tuesday. It is a small, frail boat that has known the howling gales and vast swells of the Antarctic oceans.
Left. Ivan Vdovin/Alamy Stock Photo; Right. Simon Evans/Alamy Stock Photo
Each generation loses some old knowledge – and learns something new. Along with death and taxes, this is one of life’s certainties. Over passing centuries or millennia it can lead to great shifts in ‘general knowledge’. What was once known to all can become the knowledge only of specialists – or lost for ever.
Our task is not to preserve the past for its own sake. There are many thousands of books and plays that refer to the pre-decimal coinage of Britain. We include a brief sampler here of those coins. It would not feel
